Annual Ethics Lecture

"Robots, Leisure and Earning a Living:  A Christian Ethic of Work for the 21st Century"

Dr. Kate Ward-Marquette University

Thursday, September 27, 2018-7:00pm

The Cinema-Connelly Center

Kate Ward is Assistant Professor of Theology at Marquette University, conducting research on economic ethics, virtue ethics, and ethical method. She has published articles on wealth, virtue, and economic inequality in journals including Theological Studies, Journal of Religious Ethics, Heythrop Journal, and Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and presented a plenary talk for an international audience of ethicists at Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church in Sarajevo in 2018. She is completing a monograph exploring the impact of wealth, poverty and inequality on the pursuit of virtue.

Dr. Ward earned a Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from Boston College, an M.Div with concentration in Bible from Catholic Theological Union, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Harvard College. Before beginning her Ph.D. studies, she worked at AFSCME Council 31, a labor union organizing workers in Catholic health care settings.

Dr. Elizabeth Barnes, Univeristy of Virginia

"Disability and the Good Life"

Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 4:30pm, Driscoll Auditorium

Elizabeth Barnes is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability (2016, OUP), and the editor of Current Controversies in Metaphysics (2016, Routledge) and the journal Philosophy Compass. Her work focuses on the intersection of feminist philosophy, ethics and social philosophy, and metaphysics. 

Click here to view the lecture

"Ethics of Love:  What We Can Learn From Our Incarcerated Brothers and Sisters"

Tuesday, October 4, 2016-Bartley Auditorium

 Vincent Lloyd is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, where he also co-edits the journal Political Theology. Lloyd’s books include Black Natural Law (Oxford, 2016) and the co-edited volume Race and Secularism in America (Columbia, 2016). He is currently writing Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the End of Mass Incarceration, with Joshua Dubler. Lloyd has written for magazines and newspapers including First Things, Labor Notes, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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Barbara Herman (2015)

"LOVE AND MORAL AGENCY"
 Monday, October 26, 2015, 4:30-p.m.

Driscoll -Room 134

Professor Barbara Herman has appointments in both the law and philosophy departments at UCLA. She is the Griffin Professor of Philosophy at the UCLA Department of Philosophy and is teaching in the new Law and Philosophy Specialization at the law school.  She teaches and writes on moral philosophy, Kant's ethics, and the history of ethics, as well as social and political philosophy. She has published widely in moral philosophy, including The Practice of Moral Judgment, (Harvard University Press, 1993); "The Scope of Moral Requirement,"Philosophy and Public Affairs, Summer 2001; "Rethinking Kant's Hedonism," inFacts and Values: Essays for Judith Thomson, eds. R. Stalnaker, R. Wedgwood, & A. Byrne (MIT Press, 2001); and "Morality and Everyday Life," in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, Nov. 2000.

"Let Us Make God: Onto-Theology and the Political"
4:30 p.m., Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Driscoll Auditorium

Please join us in welcoming Timothy J. Golden to Villanova for the fall 2014 Ethics Lecture. Dr. Golden is associate professor of Philosophy and director of the Frederick Douglass Institute at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Memphis, and a J.D. from the Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law, where he served on the editorial board of the Thurgood Marshall Law Review. In philosophy, his areas of specialization are nineteenth and twentieth century continental philosophy, philosophy of religion/philosophical theology, and African-American philosophy/critical race theory. He is the author of And the Word Was Made Flesh: Frederick Douglass and the Philosophy of Religion (Lexington Books, Under Contract) and Subjectivity, Transcendence, and the Problem of Onto-Theology(Palgrave Macmillan, Under Contract). He is the editor of both Racism and Resistance: Essays on Derrick Bell (SUNY Press, Under Contract) and Solidarity, Striving, and Struggle: The Moral, Political, and Religious Thought of Frederick Douglass (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Under Contract). He has also authored a book chapter entitled “Two Forms of Transcendence: Justice and the Problem of Knowledge” in Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics (Lexington Books, 2012). His journal essays include “Epistemic Addiction: Reading 'Sonny’s Blues' with Levinas, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche” in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (2012) and “From Epistemology to Ethics: Theoretical and Practical Reason in Kant and Douglass” in the Journal of Religious Ethics (2012).

He has practiced law in Philadelphia, both as a public defender and also as a sole practitioner, concentrating primarily on criminal defense (both trial and appellate) and civil litigation. He has litigated several cases before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He currently practices law as a member of the Criminal Justice Act Panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where he represents indigent criminal defendants who appeal their convictions and sentences. His legal academic interests include individual rights (constitutional criminal procedure, the right of privacy, and religious liberty) and federalism.

A recording of his lecture can be found here.

Darlene Fozard Weaver (2013)
"Goodness and Holiness: On Spirituality and Ethics"

Darlene Fozard Weaver currently leads Duquesne University's Center for the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. An ecumenically trained moral theologian, she specializes in moral anthropology and ethical theory.

She is the author of Self Love and Christian Ethics(Cambridge University Press, 2002) and The Acting Person and Christian Moral Life (Georgetown University Press, 2011). She is editor of and contributor to The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition (Springer/Kluwer, co-edited with Sarah-Vaughan Brakman).

Weaver has published essays in scholarly journals and in a number of edited collections, including the Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, as well as journals of opinion such as Commonweal. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Religious Ethics and Conversations in Religion and Theology. Her work has been supported by the Louisville Institute, the Center of Theological Inquiry, and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.

A recording of her lecture can be found here.

William F. May (2012)
"The Bearing of Religion on Fears and Appetites in American Politics"

William F. May is a senior fellow at the Institute of Practical Ethics and Public Life at the University of Virginia and Cary M. Maguire Professor of Ethics Emeritus, Southern Methodist University.

He received his Ph.D. from Yale and taught for many years at Southern Methodist University, where he was the founding director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility. A former president of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics, he has written several books on medical and political ethics.

A recording of the lecture can be found here.