Philosophy and Theology Seminar

About the Seminar

The seminar meets about once a month to discuss a selected text. Readings are usually grouped in series around a topic. While participation in a full series provides the opportunity for people to draw comparisons and connections between readings, you are also welcome to come to individual meetings.

The seminar is an opportunity to engage fully with a text. It is not intended as a "survey course." To allow this engagement, the texts are short works, chapters, or extended passages, rather than abbreviated excerpts. A background in philosophy or theology is not required, only a willingness to read and think about a text and to participate in the discussion.

We do ask that you read and think about the selected text prior to coming to the meeting; you may find it helpful to annotate your copy and list both the questions the text itself is dealing with and those you have about the text.

Copies of the readings are available at the Parish Office prior to each meeting. There is a nominal charge to defray the cost of photocopying.

Meetings are typically the third Thursday of the month, unless there are scheduling conflicts, at 7:30 p.m., in the Conference Room of the Priory at 2390 Bush Street, San Francisco.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the facilitator, Hennie, at hennie@planeteria.net, or leave a message at the Parish Office (415) 567-7824.

Philosophy and Theology Seminar Guidelines

However "free" the free man may be, he has thus still to free himself from the shackles of conventional views which pass for the truth of things.
- Jacob Klein

1. The struggle to be freed from conventional views takes us outside the marketplace to discuss those writings that have shaped or challenged civilization.
2. Through discussion of significant works we hope to wrestle with great minds.
3. Part of our task is to probe the meaning of words, to free them from overlaying connotations, and to re-capture, if possible, the original insight.
4. A discussion is not a contest; the goal is not to prove a private position, nor to defend a dogmatic belief. The goal is to probe the writer’s thinking, to engage in a conversation not only among ourselves, but with the writer.
5. The participants at times will assume that some position is true in order to play out its logic. The participants should feel free to "test" a position without the rest assuming that it is a personal belief.
6. Each participant is responsible for the discussion. Each must be solicitous of others, assuring that each has an ample opportunity to speak. Each must be cautious lest they dominate the conversation.
7. Each participant invites others to challenge his/her interpretation.
8. The format is always the same:
   1. At the beginning, questions or topics to be discussed are suggested by the participants.
   2. The group decides which question(s) or topic is/are to be discussed.
9. The role of the discussion moderator will be rotated until at such time the group decides who the moderator will be. Currently we are scheduling moderators based on whom recommended the given reading or whomever is willing. Know that as this isn’t a class, the moderator isn’t giving a lecture, and doesn’t need to be particularly well versed in the text. Rather the moderator is there to facilitate the discussion, to make sure that it doesn’t get off track (one of the reasons we list questions at the beginning), and most of all to make sure that everyone has a chance to participate.
10. Our goal is not to gather "intellectual treasures," but to join in the common endeavors of critical reading, reasoning and reflection.

Schedule

May 15, 2003
Poetry of the Spanish mystics, Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. Original translations by St Dominics' very own Dr. William O'Neil.