The Heart: Seminar with the Hildebrand Project

This week I am participating in an online seminar--today was day one--on "The Heart." It is sponsored by the Hildebrand Project, which is dedicated to promoting the works and legacy of Dietrich von Hildebrand, a German Catholic philosopher who advocated a phenomenological form of personalism. He also had a rather inspiring life story, since he was a critic of National Socialism and had to flee the Nazis, first from Germany, then from Austrian, making several stops before finally ending up in the United States.

The topic of the seminar deals with von Hildebrand's theory that alongside the intellect and the will, the "heart" constitutes a third fundamental aspect of the human soul. It is the seat of our emotions, the capacity we have for being moved by things around us--events, actions, things, persons, art, God--that appropriately call for particular responses on our part (joy, sorrow, admiration, and so on). Von Hildebrand outlined these ideas in various places, but especially in a book entitled, unsurprisingly, The Heart.

Looking forward to a week of discussion.

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