The Morningside Institute

Tradition describes courage, moderation, justice, and prudence as the cardinal virtues (a list going back to Plato) and faith, hope, and charity as the theological virtues (a list going back to Saint Paul). Can we conceive of hope as a virtue, as a good quality for people to have, without a theological framework — without any notion of salvation?

On Monday, February 10, 2024, the Morningside Institute hosted Dhananjay Jagannathan, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, for a discussion on the possibility of secular hope. The seminar also explored questions including: What types of despair might be damaging to our individual and social lives? Is hope simply another name for a sunny or optimistic disposition? Is hope compatible with looking squarely at the truth about the present and likely predictions about the future?

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Birth is one of the most fraught and polarized issues of our time, at the center of debates on abortion, gender, work, and medicine. But birth is not only an issue; it is a fundamental part of the human condition, and, alongside death, the most consequential event in human life. Yet it remains dramatically unexplored. Although we have long intellectual traditions of wrestling with mortality, few have ever heard of natality, the term political theorist Hannah Arendt used to describe birth’s active role in our lives.

On February 7, 2024, Morningside held a talk with Jennifer Banks, Senior Executive Editor of Yale University Press, on her new book revealing a provocative counter tradition of birth from Nietzsche and Wollstonecraft to Arendt and Morrison.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

On October 9, 2023 the Morningside Institute and the Galileo Center at Columbia Law School hosted Joshua Katz (AEI) for the last lecture in our series Language Rights and Wrongs. This series explores the relationship between world and word, honing in on ancient texts, namely Homer, Plato, and the Bible.

This evening's conversation was not about the Constitution of the United States per se but rather the things that interest comparative linguists when they read texts like Homer's Iliad. These peculiarities are related to larger and increasingly pressing issues of how to interpret words and phrases from decades, centuries, and millennia ago.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Does language contain truth in itself? And whether or not it does, at what level are the words we use natural, and at what level are they a matter of convention? Plato’s Cratylus provides the earliest in-depth discussion of these matters, and it turns out that we can learn something about our own linguistic problems today by considering this neglected dialogue.

On October 3, 2023, the Morningside Institute and the Galileo Center at Columbia Law School hosted Joshua Katz (AEI) for his second lecture in our Fall 2023 series Language Rights and Wrongs.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

This fall, the Morningside Institute and the Galileo Center at the Columbia Law School hosted Joshua Katz (AEI) for a three-part lecture series on the relationship between word and world. The series focused on ancient texts—namely, Homer, Plato, and the Bible—and what these reveal about the nature (or artificiality) of language.

On September 26, 2023, Dr. Katz introduced the series and led a discussion on the relationship between language and creation in a number of ancient traditions, especially the Book of Genesis but also well beyond.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

In his famous Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki writes, “In the Beginner’s Mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” These words have served as a guide for James Valentini during his time as a professor of Chemistry and then much-beloved dean of Columbia College. As he has developed it, the concept of beginner’s mind encourages us to put aside the judgment of others as our guide and to use self-awareness and self-reflection to formulate our own assessments of the world. It reminds each of us to consider the possibility that we might be entirely wrong in an assessment about which we feel certain, and to temper our judgment of others who have made a different assessment.

On September 27, 2023, the Morningside Institute and the Earl Hall Center for Religious Life hosted a conversation with Deantini, Szabolcs Marka (Physics), and Elaine Sisman (Music).

For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Thomas Aquinas's ethical system is framed in terms of evaluating an individual's intentional actions, which may be good or bad depending on their conformity with the natural law.  Can such a framework make sense of the notion that social structures and practices can also be just or unjust, as in the contemporary notion of structural racism?

On Thursday, February 23, 2023, the Morningside Institute hosted the John and Jean Oesterle Associate Professor of Thomistic Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Therese Cory for an online lecture. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

We instinctively think of images as things we create, control, and consume. But in this lecture, Prof. Thomas Pfau (Duke) argued that our encounter with images and the visible world as a whole serves as a test of our spiritual and moral condition. Following a brief overview of his recent book on this subject, Prof. Pfau's lecture considered three images in some depth: the famous Pantocrator icon from Mt. Sinai monastery; a painting by Jan van Eyck; and a portrait by Paul Cézanne.

On Wednesday, February 15, 2023, the Morningside Institute hosted Professor Thomas Pfau for an online lecture. Professor Pfau is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English at Duke University, with a secondary appointment in the Divinity School at Duke University. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

Are some books “great” in a way others are not? Can a core curriculum represent all the members of a university community? What should students get out of their classes in the Core? How should we justify liberal education today? These questions shaped many universities' curricula, including Columbia's Core, and today are at the center of debates about the purpose of education and the university.

On Friday, February 3, 2023, the Morningside Institute hosted a conversation between Roosevelt Montás (Columbia) and Zena Hitz (St. John’s College), moderated by Emmanuelle Saada (Columbia).

Zena Hitz is a tutor at St. John's College and the author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Roosevelt Montás directed Columbia's Center for the Core Curriculum for ten years and is the author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation.  The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.

As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called "left" and "right," people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of "liberal" and "conservative."

On Tuesday, January 24, 2023, the Morningside Institute and Elm Institute hosted Verlan Lewis (Harvard, Utah Valley University) and Hyrum Lewis (Brigham Young University-Idaho) to discuss the shortcomings of the political spectrum.