From Christian Eschatology to Political Ethics
Join the IHE and the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition for our third Annual Lecture on Catholic Political Thought. Émilie Tardivel-Schick, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Religious Anthropology at the Catholic Theology Faculty of the University of Strasbourg, will deliver this year’s lecture: “Hope and Salvation: From Christian Eschatology to Political Ethics.”
At a time when the state of the world threatens to lead us into despair, the Christian tradition offers an antidote, which is none other than hope. But how can we still access this antidote in a world that has long since revoked the very object of hope, namely salvation?
Professor Tardivel-Schick will address this question in the three parts of her lecture, with the help of great Christian authors, both ancient (Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas) and contemporary (Pieper, Moltmann, Ratzinger…). After recalling the Christian meaning of the virtue of hope and its relationship with the other theological virtues (faith and charity), this lecture will deconstruct the modern impossibility of hope, which has its origins in both the suppression of its object (despair) and the focus on merit or grace alone (presumption), and establish that a return to the Christian virtue of hope should not aim to found a utopia, nor an eschatology, but a political ethics.
This event is free and open to the public. A reception with refreshments will follow.
