The Thomistic Institute

Prof. Carlos A. Casanova argues that a properly understood Aristotelian–Platonic metaphysics of form, final causality, and nature allows human reason, without biblical revelation, to infer a governing divine intellect that orders the cosmos and human history in a providential way.​

This lecture was given on October 22nd, 2025, at Clemson University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

A native of Venezuela, Carlos Casanova holds a law degree from the Catholic University Andrés Bello and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Navarre, Spain. He is now a lecturer at the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center.

He is a native of Venezuela. There he served as an attorney for the Office of the Attorney General of Venezuela and for the Venezuelan Congress, and as an assistant to a Justice of the Venezuelan Supreme Court in the early 90s. Afterward he was a professor of the Graduate Studies in Philosophy at the Universidad Simón Bolívar and Chair of the Program. In 2002, threatened by the Chavista regime, he was forced to leave the country. During his first stay in the USA, professor Casanova was a visiting scholar at Boston University and a senior research associate at the Jacques Maritain Center, University of Notre Dame, where he worked with Ralph McInerny. During this time he married Laura Ternan with whom he has 5 children.

In 2005 he went to Chile, to work at the International Academy of Philosophy with professor Josef Seifert. Afterward he taught at Universidad Santo Tomás in Chile, and at the School of Law of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In 2020-2022 he opposed the abortionist movement and the attempts to introduce comprehensive sexual education during the early years of basic school. These efforts led to him receiving in 2022 the National Award bestowed by the “Network for Life and the Family.” Due to the Marxist turn of the country, the Casanova family decided to leave Chile and migrate again, back to the United States in 2022.

Professor Casanova’s work focuses on metaphysics, political and social philosophy, ethics, and classical Greek philosophy. He has endeavored to dismantle the black legend that hides the achievements of Christianity in the Spanish American empire and in the Latin Christendom (so called “Middle Ages”). His scholarly competence also includes philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, medieval philosophy, and contemporary European philosophy. He has published nine books and numerous scholarly papers.

Keywords: Aristotelian Teleology, Divine Governance Of Nature, Final Causes And Natural Law, Hume On Miracles, Natural Theology And Providence, Newman’s Critique Of Hume, Plato's Timaeus And Phaedo, Powers And Dispositions In Nature, Teleology Versus Mechanism, Thomistic Fifth Way

Fr. John Langlois presents Saint Louis de Montfort’s Marian spirituality of “total consecration” as the surest, easiest, and most secure way to live Mary’s maternal mediation and grow in intimate union with Jesus by entrusting one’s whole life to her.

This lecture was given on December 14th, 2024, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Born in Berlin, NH, Father John Langlois, O.P. entered the Dominican Order in 1985 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1991. He holds a doctorate in Church History, and has spent most of his priestly life teaching, both at Providence College and at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Immediately before coming to St. Gertrude, he served as President of the Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies for seven years.

Keywords: Marian Consecration, Mary As Mediatrix, Personal Vocation Story, Secret Of The Rosary, Saint Louis de Montfort, Spiritual Warfare And Temptation, True Devotion To Mary, Union With Christ, Virgin Mary As Mother, To Jesus Through Mary

Fr. John Langlois traces how Marian doctrine and devotion—from Scripture and the early Fathers through medieval councils, liturgy, and architecture—culminate in the rosary as a Christ-centered, biblically rooted prayer that brings believers to Jesus through Mary’s maternal intercession.

This lecture was given on December 14th, 2024, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Born in Berlin, NH, Father John Langlois, O.P. entered the Dominican Order in 1985 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1991. He holds a doctorate in Church History, and has spent most of his priestly life teaching, both at Providence College and at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Immediately before coming to St. Gertrude, he served as President of the Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies for seven years.

Keywords: Annunciation And Incarnation, Council Of Ephesus, Marian Intercession, Mary As New Eve, Medieval Marian Spirituality, Mystery Plays, New Adam Christology, Rosary Devotion, Sub Tuum Praesidium, To Jesus Through Mary

Prof. Joshua Hochschild argues that free will is not an illusion but a real, rational power by which human beings participate in God’s causality, and that the supposed “problem of free will” arises from a reductive modern picture of causation and human nature rather than from the classical Aristotelian–Thomistic framework.

This lecture was given on October 10th, 2025, at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speaker:

Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Keywords: Augustinian Free Choice, Classical Causality, Dante’s Purgatorio, Imago Dei, Participated Theodeterminism, Rational Appetite, Responsibility And Moral Agency, Sam Harris Determinism, Thomistic Psychology Of Choice, Will And Divine Providence

Prof. Thomas Osborne argues that, on an Aristotelian–Thomistic account of human nature, it is never truly good for you to be bad, because vice damages your very being as a rational, social creature ordered to common goods and ultimately to God.

This lecture was given on October 29th, 2025, at University of Pittsburgh.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. (Ph.D, Duke University, 2001) is the Frank A. Rudman Endowed Chair in Philosophy and the Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas.  He has published widely on Thomas Aquinas, Thomism, and medieval and late scholastic philosophy.  His interests cover moral psychology, ethics, political philosophy, and metaphysics. His latest book is Thomas Aquinas on Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Keywords: Aristotelian Natural Law, Common Good, Human Dignity, Justice And Self-Interest, Moral Rectitude, Natural Law Theory, Plato’s Republic, Political Community, Prudence And Charity, Vice And Human Defectiveness

Dr. David McPherson argues that human beings are “meaning-seeking animals” and that an adequate neo-Aristotelian ethics must see the virtues as constitutive of a meaningful life ordered to strong goods such as the noble, the sacred, and love of God and neighbor.​

This lecture was given on October 16th, 2025, at University of Florida.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

David McPherson is Professor of Philosophy in the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida as well as Affiliate Professor in the Department of Philosophy. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Creighton University, and during academic year 2021-22 he was Visiting Research Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. McPherson works in the areas of ethics (especially virtue ethics), political philosophy, meaning in life, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of The Virtues of Limits (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Virtue and Meaning: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2020), as well as the editor of Spirituality and the Good Life: Philosophical Approaches (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Keywords: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, Constitutive View Of Happiness, Meaning-Seeking Animal, Nicomachean Ethics, Religious Hope, Stoicism And Loss, Strong Evaluative Meaning, Theological Virtues, Virtue And Happiness, Wartime Martyrdom

Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy presents Aquinas as a medieval theologian whose love of Scripture, clear metaphysics of happiness, integrated view of body and soul, and profound Eucharistic devotion offer urgently needed guidance for Christians facing modern confusion about truth, identity, and God.

This lecture was given on October 30th, 2025, at Southern Methodist University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, OP is a Coordinator for Campus Outreach at the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC. He has served as a parochial vicar at St. Pius V Church in Providence, RI, as well as an adjunct professor and assistant chaplain at Providence College. He originates from Columbus, OH, studied architecture in Virginia and Switzerland, and practiced in the DC area before entering the Order of Preachers in 2013. He was ordained a priest in 2020 at the Dominican House of Studies during the quarantine. In his work with the Thomistic Institute, he has given talks on the virtue of penance, loving God with the mind, and the intersection of theology and architecture. He often travels the country visiting Thomistic Institute Campus Chapters, leading seminars that help students grasp Thomistic concepts. Additionally, he coordinates the TI's intellectual retreat programming, which affords students time to pray and integrate into their lives Thomistic theology and philosophy.

Keywords: Analogical Predication, Beatitude And Happiness, Benedictine Spirituality, Corpus Christi Liturgy, Four Senses Of Scripture, Mendicant Controversies, Philosophical Anthropology, Real Presence Of Christ, Summa Theologiae, Unicity Of The Intellect Debate

Prof. Adam Eitel argues that God’s divine pedagogy makes the examples of the saints indispensable for our salvation, since their concrete, imperfect yet graced lives teach us how to endure sorrow, grow in virtue, and imitate Christ in the real circumstances of our own time.

This lecture was given on October 6th, 2025, at Brown University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Professor Eitel is an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Dallas. Before joining the UD faculty in 2023, he taught for eight years at Yale University, holding appointments in the Divinity School, the Program in Medieval Studies, and the Humanities Program. A specialist in medieval scholasticism, his research interests include doctrinal and moral theology, with a particular focus on the works of Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries. His teaching and research bring historical Christian theology into dialogue with contemporary moral and political issues.

Keywords: Augustine On Virtue, Cardinal Virtues In Scripture, Communion Of Saints, Divine Pedagogy, Exemplarity And Moral Formation, Imitation Of Christ, Job’s Patience, Moral Theology, Summa Theologiae, Thomistic Biblical Commentary

Dr. John-Paul Heil critiques modern marketing’s implicit anthropology, explaining that marketing driven by manipulation, simulation, and quantity undermines human dignity, authentic friendship, and the pursuit of truth, advocating for a vision of marketing grounded in transparency, service, and the intrinsic value of persons.

This lecture was given on October 7th, 2025, at Washington and Lee University/Virginia Military Institute.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

John-Paul Heil is a Core Fellow in history, philosophy, Catholic anthropology, English, and theology at Mount St. Mary's University. He received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago and is pursuing an MBA in marketing. He has received multiple awards from the U.S. and Italian Fulbright commissions. His writing has appeared in Time, Smithsonian, The Week, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the books editor at the University of Pennsylvania's Dappled Things.

Keywords: Abusive Language, Anthropological Reductionism, Aristotle, Authentic Friendship, Cicero, Empathy In Marketing, Joseph Pieper, Regenerative Agriculture, Simulation And Dissimulation, Wendell Berry

Prof. Carl Vennerstrom explores how perseverance, prayer, ordered work, and thanksgiving transform boredom and the temptation to acedia into opportunities for deep spiritual growth, joy, and resilient virtue in an age of digital distraction.

This lecture was given on April 12th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Vennerstrom specializes in eastern patristic theology. Of particular interest are monasticism, scriptural interpretation, and the writings of Evagrius of Pontus. He earned his PhD in Early Christian Studies at the Catholic University of America and teaches courses in church history, theology, and Greek at the Augustine Institute Graduate School in St. Louis, Missouri.

Keywords: Acedia And Boredom, Desert Monasticism, Digital Distraction, Evagrius Of Pontus, Liturgical Order, Patience And Perseverance, Prayer And Scripture, Spiritual Growth, Stillness, Thanksgiving And Joy