The Morningside Institute

The Metamorphoses is a work with an insistent modern resonance and relevance. In terms of Roman political commentary, socio-cultural implication, historical awareness, and psychological investigation, Ovid constructs a poem about change that is itself fundamentally slippery in its meanings, hard to deconstruct, and full of human eccentricity. The poem pulses with life, both ancient and modern, and this presentation offers a brief reading of that Ovidian pulse.

On November 11, 2024, Morningside hosted Professor Gareth Williams of Columbia University for this lecture and discussion on Ovid’s masterful work.

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

According to ancient philosophers, all human beings want to be happy. But how can we achieve this?  In Books 3 and 4 of his dialogue “On the Greatest Good and Evil” (De finibus bonorum et malorum), Cicero and his interlocutor, the Stoic Cato, discuss what guarantees a person’s supreme happiness. Is it enough to be a morally good person (as the Stoics maintain) or do you also need some additional goods, such a health, wealth, or social standing? This ultimately raises the question of whether our happiness is entirely under our control, or whether external factors by necessity play a role.

On September 24th, 2024, Morningside hosted Professor Katharina Volk of Columbia University for this discussion on Cicero and the grounds for happiness.

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

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.