The After Dinner Scholar

Fr. Romano Guardini, a professor at the University of Berlin at the time, witnessed first-hand the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis, the destruction wrought by World War II, and the cultural and social aftermath. Coming out of that experience he wrote The End of the Modern World in 1957. 

In this podcast, Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski, Academic Dean at Wyoming Catholic College, discusses Guardini’s observations as they are related to the theme of exile and our present day. 

(Photo by Greg Tonkowich)

In Dante Alighieri Purgatorio, the second canticle of The Divine Comedy, Dante the pilgrim, finally cleansed from all sin and disordered love, reaches the Garden of Eden atop Mount Purgatory. And while there is more to his pilgrimage, his exile is at an end.

Wyoming Catholic College Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Humanities Dr. Jason Baxter discussed the return from that exile in Dante Alighieri at teh 2017 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought. Here is his lecture in its entirety.

In Dante Alighieri Purgatorio, the second canticle of The Divine Comedy, Dante the pilgrim, finally cleansed from all sin and disordered love, reaches the Garden of Eden atop Mount Purgatory. And while there is more to his pilgrimage, his exile is at an end.

Dr. Jason Baxter, Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Humanities here at Wyoming Catholic College discusses how the final Canti of Purgatorio describe the return from exile to sanity, to complete humanness, to purity of heart, to natural contemplation, and, with the arrival of Dante’s beloved Beatrice, to true love.

One of Plato's most famous texts comes from Book 7 of The Republic and is known as The Allegory of the Cave. Imagine, Plato’s protagonist Socrates says, people chained up in a cave since birth and unable to see anything but shadows on the wall in front of them. Would they not think the shadows were the only reality there is? But what if someone escaped and ran into the sunlight world beyond the cave?

At the 2017 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought, Wyoming Catholic College Academic Dean Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski discussed the Plato’s cave and the theme of our exile.

At the Wyoming School of Catholic Thought this past June, Wyoming Catholic College Academic Dean Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski began his lecture stating, “Plato’s cave is a television set.” And beginning with the question of why study Plato at all, he discussed our exile from the real, an exile that can only be remedied by grace and contemplation.

Dr. Kozinski is this week's guest on The After Dinner Scholar.

Reflecting on the death of Moses, the writer of the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy said, “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt—to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land.  For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”

At the 2017 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought, Bible scholar and Wyoming Catholic College professor Jeremy Holmes reflected on how the Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land and the life of Moses illustrate the theme of Returning from Exile. Here is his lecture in its entirety.

Throughout the Old Testament, there’s a familiar refrain: Remember. “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there.” 

The Exodus—God’s saving work among the Israelites whereby He brought them from slavery, through the Red Sea, across the wilderness, and into the Promised Land of Canaan—is the primary and paradigmatic act of salvation in the Old Testament and the event the New Testament writers looked to in order to understand faith in Jesus.

Bible scholar and Wyoming Catholic College professor Dr. Jeremy Holmes discusses how the Exodus as critical to understanding how we as Christians return from exile.

In this world we find ourselves feeling alienated and in exile, looking for communion with others and a true home. The reason is what Dr. Glenn Arbery calls out "primal exile," the banishment from Paradise. In this podcast he summarizes his lecture "Exile from Eden" which is also available as a podcast.

This past June 11-15, Wyoming Catholic College held what will be the annual Wyoming School of Catholic Thought. Our topic was “The Splendor of Imagination: Returning from Exile.”

On the first evening of the school, Wyoming Catholic College President Glenn Arbery delivered this lecture on John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. With it he introduced the topic of exile in the Fall and banishment of Adam and Eve.

We live in a postmodern culture. It’s something we did not choose and cannot avoid. And, as Wyoming Catholic College Academic Dean Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski argued last week, it’s not an entirely bad state of affairs since modernity was rife with problems—problems highlighted by two world wars and the tyranny of ideologies falsely branded as scientific.

This week Dr. Kozinski looks deeper into postmodernity and some of the conflicts within our current culture. We'll discover that understanding postmodernity is thus necessary to understand the world in which we live, ourselves, our children, and the prospects for the future.