The Civitas Podcast

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with D.C. Schindler about his recent work, God and the City, and how to think about politics ontologically. 

Purchase the book:
D.C. Schindler
God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics
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About Dr. Schindler

Dr. Schindler’s work is concerned above all with shedding light on contemporary cultural challenges and philosophical questions by drawing on the resources of the classical Christian tradition.  His principal thematic focus is metaphysics and philosophical anthropology, but he also works in political philosophy, phenomenology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, and philosophical theology.  His main historical areas are ancient Greek philosophy (especially Plato and Neoplatonism), German philosophy (especially Hegel and Heidegger), and Catholic philosophy (especially Aquinas and 20th Century Thomism).

Dr. Schindler studied the Great Books as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, received a Master’s degree in theology at the John Paul II Institute, and then completed his education with a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy at The Catholic University of America.  After teaching for twelve years at Villanova University, first as a teaching fellow in philosophy and then as a founding member of the Humanities Department, Dr. Schindler returned to Washington, DC to teach philosophy courses at the Institute.  He has published more than a dozen books—including two volumes of a planned trilogy on the nature of freedom with the University of Notre Dame Press and a Robert Spaemann Reader with Oxford University Press—and more than 70 articles and book chapters, and his work has been translated into six languages.  He is an editor of the English-language edition of Communio: International Catholic Review, and a board member of The Review of Metaphysics and New Polity: A Journal of Post-Liberal Thought; he is a translator of books and articles from French and German; he is a Fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at CUA and served on the Executive Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association; and he has been invited to deliver named annual lectures in a variety of venues, including the Thomas Aquinas Lecture at four universities and colleges, the Bitar Memorial Lecture series at Geneva College, the John Paul II Lecture at the University of Dallas, the Lorenzo Albacete Lecture in New York City, and the Areopagus Lecture at Mars Hill Audio Journal in Charlottesville, VA.

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with Philip Bess about architecture, cities, and his book titled Till We Have Built Jerusalem.

 
Philip Bess is Professor of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame.

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with David Dusenbury about his books "I Judge No One" and "The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: How the Roman Trial of Jesus Shaped History."

David Lloyd Dusenbury is a philosopher, historian of ideas, Times Literary Supplement contributor and senior fellow at Budapest's Danube Institute. He is also Chair for Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Antwerp.

Titles from Dusenbury:
I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: How the Roman Trial of Jesus Shaped History

Articles by George Steiner mentioned in this episode:
The Scandal of Revelation
Two Suppers

Peter Leithart and James Wood sit down in person to discuss recent podcast guests, as well as the new book "Hell Shall Not Prevail," which is on sale now from Athanasius Press.

Forgive the poor audio quality in this episode, as it was not recording with our typical microphone setup. 

James Wood and Peter Leithart talk with Tim Carney about ways that today's America is unfriendly to families.

Timothy Carney is a father of six children, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a columnist at the Washington Examiner.

Tim and his wife, Katie, have raised their family in suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia. He grew up with three older brothers in Greenwich Village and later in Pelham, New York.

Pick up Family Unfriendly HERE.

He is also the author of Alienated America, The Big Ripoff, and Obamanomics.

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with Dr. Ephraim Radner about his latest book, Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty.
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Ephraim Radner (Ph.D., Yale University) is Professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College, an evangelical seminary of the Anglican tradition at the University of Toronto, where he teaches both ministerial and doctoral students. He is the author and editor of several books on ecclesiology, ecumenism, the nature of Scripture, natural theology, pneumatology, and the character of the human creature. A former church worker in Burundi and an Anglican priest, he has also served several parishes in the United States, including inner-city Cleveland. He has also been active in the affairs of the global Anglican Communion. He continues to visit, consult, and teach in various parts of the world, including Asia and Africa, and comments on cultural and political topics as they relate to the Christian Church’s life.

Peter Leithart and James Wood discuss Augustine, politics, and the earthly city with Dr. Veronica Ogle.
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Dr. Ogle is the author of Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God, and is Assistant Professor of Political and Social Thought and the Augustinian Catholic Intellectual Tradition at Villanova University. 

Peter Leithart and James Wood discuss human rights and liberalism with Samuel Moyn.
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Samuel Moyn is Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University.

He received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of California-Berkeley in 2000 and a law degree from Harvard University in 2001. He came to Yale from Harvard University, where he was Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and Professor of History. Before this, he spent thirteen years in the Columbia University history department, where he was most recently James Bryce Professor of European Legal History.

His areas of interest in legal scholarship include international law, human rights, the law of war, and legal thought, in both historical and current perspective. In intellectual history, he has worked on a diverse range of subjects, especially twentieth-century European moral and political theory.

He has written several books in his fields of European intellectual history and human rights history, including The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (2010), and edited or coedited a number of others. His most recent books are Christian Human Rights (2015, based on Mellon Distinguished Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania in fall 2014) and Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018). His newest book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, appeared with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in fall 2021.  Over the years he has written in venues such as Boston Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dissent, The Nation, The New Republic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

James Wood and Peter Leithart are joined by special guest, Dr. Andrew Jones, to discuss his works "The Two Cities," and "Before Church and State."

Dr. Jones is a professor of theology and the Director of Catholic Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is also the founding editor of New Polity.

Select Bibliography:

The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2021)

Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX, (Emmaus Academic, 2017) 

Evidence of Things Unseen: An Introduction to Fundamental Theology (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2019)

The Word Became Flesh: An Introduction to Christology (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2019)

This Is My Body: An Introduction to Ecclesiology (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2019)

Other Published Articles: 

“What States Can’t Do” New Polity (online)
https://newpolity.com/blog/what-states-cant-do?rq=subsidiarity “

Catholic Ironies: A Review of George Weigel’s The Irony of Modern Catholic History,” First Things, November 2019, 45-48.

“The Postliberal Moment” Postliberal Thought https://www.postliberalthought.com/blog/2018/10/10/what-is-liberalism

“What the Nationalists Get Wrong: A Defense of the Particular and the Universal” Postliberal Thought.
https://www.postliberalthought.com/blog//a-defense-of-the-particular-and-the-universal 

Peter Leithart and James Wood discuss key texts in their thinking through political theology. 

0:00 - 10:00
James Wood on Leslie Newbigin

10:00 - 20:35
Peter Leithart on RJ Rushdoony
 
20:35 - 31:30
James Wood on William Cavanaugh

31:30 - 36:00
Peter Leithart on Stanley Hauerwas
"The church doesn't have a social ethic, it is a social ethic." - SH

36:00 - 44:00
James Wood on Oliver O'Donovan

44:00 - 52:30
Peter Leithart on John Milbank

52:30 - 59:40
James Wood on  Henri de Lubac

59:40
Peter Leithart on DC Schindler