The Thomistic Institute

This lecture was given on April 26th, 2024, at University of California, Berkeley.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speaker: Tomás Bogardus earned his BS in biology at UC San Diego, his MA in philosophy at Biola University, and his PhD in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He works mainly in metaphysics and epistemology, and is most interested in the mind-body problem, the rationality of religious belief, and the nature of gender.

This lecture was given on October 11th, 2024, at Thomistic Institute in New York City.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speaker:Fr. Gabriel Torretta was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, the youngest of four children. He was raised Presbyterian and converted to Catholicism in high school. He attended Arizona State University, where he earned a B.A. in Japanese, after which he entered a PhD program at Columbia University in pre-modern Japanese literature. He joined the Dominicans after three years there, having earned an M.A. and an M.Phil. “I entered the Order of Preachers because of Dominicans I met at Columbia University, who showed me the face of Christ as I had never known Him; ever since then I have believed that God is calling me to do the same for others.”

This lecture was given on October 15th, 2024, at Mississippi State University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speaker:Fr. John Mark Solitario is from St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in West Springfield, MA and the eldest of four children. After attending Catholic schools through high school, he earned his bachelor of arts from Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. Desiring to contribute to Catholic education, he was admitted to the PACT (Providence Alliance of Catholic Teachers) Program at Providence College where he completed a Masters of Education and taught high school in Lowell, MA for two years. He credits his growth in the Catholic Faith and inspiration to live it fully to outstanding teachers and role models, among them not a few Dominicans—priests, sisters, and lay. “From the time I met the Order, I aspired to the Dominican ideal of contemplation followed by a generous sharing of the fruits of that encounter with God. I have found this ideal realized and sustained within the fraternal life of the Province of St. Joseph.”

This lecture was given on October 9th, 2024, at Universidad Panamericana Campus Mixcoac.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speaker: Robert C. (“Rob”) Koons is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, M. A. Oxford, Ph.D. UCLA. He is the author or co-author of five books, including The Atlas of Reality with Timothy H. Pickavance (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) and Is Thomas’s Aristotelian Philosophy of Nature Obsolete? (St. Augustine Press, 2022). He is the co-editor of four anthologies, including The Waning of Materialism (OUP, 2010) and Classical Theism (Routledge 2023). He has been working recently on an Aristotelian interpretation of quantum theory, on defending and articulating hylomorphism in contemporary terms, and on interpreting and defending Thomas's Five Ways.