The "Glimpses into Existence" Series So Far

Last night, I wrote a short post about a Simone de Beauvoir talk in one of my other more specialized blogs, Sadler's Existentialism Updates (SEU) -- an electronic forum originally intended for me to set down ideas about the online course on Existentialist Philosophy and Literature which I was (and admittedly still am) developing.  There's an interesting story to be told about that, of course, but it's already available over there on SEU, so no sense reposting it here -- at least not until I've actually got a course up and running.

Instead, I'd like to write a bit about the monthly series of talks on Existentialism -- the recent de Beauvoir talk being the tenth session -- that I've been providing at the Kingston Library this year.  We decided to call the talks "Glimpses into Existence," since each session would introduce a general, library-going (so educated and interested) audience to some of the main works, key ideas, and contributions, as well as the times and cultural setting of one important Existentialist thinker.  Devoting one-and-a-half to two hours of discussions to thinkers like Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Rilke, or Sartre -- well, that really is just a glimpse into their thoughts, writings, and lives.

Six Senses of Justice in Saint Anselm's Thought.

Last weekend, down in Washington D.C., I read a paper and got involved in some very interesting and provocative discussion on the borderlines between philosophy and theology.  The American Catholic Philosophical Association -- one of my old haunts in an earlier academic life (I'd not been there since 2008) -- includes a great variety of what are called "satellite sessions."  Many of these are in fact meetings of other scholarly organizations and institutions whose membership overlaps partly with the ACPA, and one of those, with which I have a longstanding and particularly close personal connection, is the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies.

This year, the Institute hosted a panel focused specifically on one of Anselm's greatest works, the Cur Deus Homo - or Why God Became Man.  One of the issues about which I've been thinking for quite some time, and particularly in light of St. Anselm's thought and writings, is the relationship between divine mercy and justice.  So, when the opportunity presented itself to become the third interlocutor on the panel, I gladly put myself forward, and the Institute accepted.  The paper that I presented -- which is still in rather unpolished state (I'll post it once I've added the requisite footnotes and transitions) -- was titled "Is God's Justice Unmerciful in St. Anselm's Cur Deus Homo?"  You can listen to the paper, my responses to questions and comments, and the general discussion (after all three papers had been read) in this podcast, if you like.  What I'd like to do here is to take up a related topic that I inserted into a footnote of the paper and touched upon in the Q&A -- the differing senses of "justice" in Anselm's thought.