Christianity, The Unity of Knowledge, and the Secularized Academy
The pursuit and transmission of knowledge in the contemporary academy is highly specialized, secular, and regarded as separable from the social circumstances and beliefs of scientists, scholars, and students. This seminar analyzed the historical and intellectual reasons for the secularization and specialized fragmentation of knowledge characteristic of the contemporary academy. Through reading and discussion of scholarship pertaining to the historical processes through which knowledge was secularized, participants explored ways in which knowledge has been alternatively understood within a unifying philosophical and theological framework, and how such a framework might remain intellectually viable today.
In addition to primary sources, this seminar included discussion of the works of Pierre Hadot, Jean LeClerq, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Paul II, George Mardsen, Mark Knoll, and Christian Smith.
