Please save the date for Collegium’s annual Intellectual Retreat on Saturday, March 28 on “Contemplating Love and Death in Athens and Jerusalem”. This retreat serves as one of three seminars exploring contemplation and education as part of our Integral Humanities Symposium series co-sponsored by Villanova University’s Humanities Department and Eastern University’s Honor’s College.
What is love? How should we prepare for our inevitable death? What happens to us after we die? Can love transcend death? Philosophers and poets, thinkers and theologians have pondered these deep human questions for centuries. Over the course of a day, join students from Penn, Drexel, Villanova, and Eastern as we contemplate love and death in the picturesque Dundale Mansion at Villanova University.
We will begin the morning with Plato’s provocative dialogue on love, the Symposium, paired with classic Christian accounts of the nature of love from the Song of Songs to Augustine, Aquinas, and St. John of the Cross. We will ponder whether we can reconcile the pagan account of love as eros with the self-sacrificial love of the Christian tradition. We will consider how our account of love shapes our families and friendships through sources like C.S. Lewis's Four Loves and John Paul II's Theology of the Body. After lunch, we will face our own mortality with texts like Plato’s Phaedo, St. Robert Bellarmine’s The Art of Dying Well, and Gerard Manley Hopkins’ searing meditation on death. Finally we will pose one of mankind’s most probing questions: can love survive the ravages of death?
Breakfast and lunch will be provided free of charge for all attendees. Collegium will provide Penn and Drexel students with means of transportation to and from Villanova’s campus.
Date: Saturday, March 28, 9:30am-3:30pm
Location: Dundale Mansion, Villanova University (800 E Lancaster Ave)
To register, click the button below. Spots are limited.
For students from Penn/Drexel, priority will be given to Collegium Undergraduate Fellows. Other students will be considered on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Please direct any questions to Quinn Moore (qmoore@collegiuminstitute.org).