In this episode, I am joined by author and theologian Tara Isabella Burton. Tara and I explore the distinctive erotic pleasure one can experience in the act of creating a character out of another human being. This sort of seduction involves coming to possess someone else so as to transform them into a character in your own drama. This is a theme in the two works we discuss, Soren Kierkegaard’s The Seducer’s Diary and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray . We also talk about the influence of ...
Feb 11, 2021•1 hr 26 min
In this episode, I speak with my colleague, Agnes Mueller, who is a professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, about why Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice , is a must-read during our ongoing pandemic. We talk about Modernism, Plato, and Nietzsche. We see the novella as exploring sickness, death, and eros, and we find similarities and continuities between the lovesickness that grips von Aschenbach and cholera that eventually kills him. We also ask whe...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 29
In this episode, I have a wide ranging conversation with Agnes Callard. We discuss our experience teaching the Great Books Core at the University of Chicago, as well as why philosophers should read and teach great literature, how to teach Homer in a philosophy class, and how humans gain wisdom through mistakes and suffering. We also talk about arguments, piety, and wisdom in Antigone .
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 17 min
In this episode, I speak with Karen Swallow Prior , who is professor of English literature, Christianity, and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. We discuss how reading great books can be an education in virtue, and we apply these ideas to a reading of Joseph Conrad’s influential and controversial novella, Heart of Darkness .
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 3 min
In this episode, I talk with philosopher Jamie Smith (Calvin College) about St. Augustine and Christopher Beha’s latest novel, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts . Our conversation covers the surprising connections between St. Augustine and the existentialists–most especially Albert Camus–and how St. Augustine can help us understand the gap between what we long for and the finite world that we are situated in.
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 2 min
In episode 25, I speak with Ian Marcus Corbin (Harvard) about solitude. We discuss Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke alongside Thomas Merton’s essay, “Rain and the Rhinoceros.”
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 12 min
In this episode, I am once again joined by philosopher and poet Troy Jollimore, to talk about the absurd, evil, suffering, theodicy, God, death, metaphysical rebellion, and of course, virtue. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 23 min
In Episode 23, I speak with Zena Hitz about her new book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life . We discuss how love of learning saved us and how we can reclaim it for ourselves in our busy and distracted world. I hope you enjoy our conversation!
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 38 min
In episode 22, I am joined by the philosopher David McPherson, of Creighton University, to discuss Huxley’s famous sci-fi dystopia, “Brave New World.” We discuss how technological progress can accelerate processes of dehumanization and how the loss of piety transforms how we experience love and desire. Along the way, we bring in help from Nietzsche, Alasdair MacIntyre, Cora Diamond, Michael Sandel, and of course, Leon Kass. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 42 min
Episode 21 is a discussion about Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim . Phil and I discuss narrative identity and self-knowledge, the perils we encounter in our search for truth, and the nature of the absurd. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation....
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 19 min
With the recent passing of the philosopher Sir Roger Scruton , I decided to devote episode 20 to his provocative and comprehensive analysis of Wagner’s famous opera, which he lays out in his book, Death Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (Oxford University Press, 2003). In this episode, I speak with philosopher Fiona Ellis (University of Roehampton), about the self-transcendent and potentially redemptive and religious character of erotic love. I hope you enjoy our c...
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 10 min
After a long winter’s nap–i.e., the end of the semester madness followed by holidays with my family–I am back to releasing new episodes of Sacred and Profane Love. I am starting the Spring semester with a discussion of Nabokov’s celebrated but controversial novel, Lolita . In episode 19, titled “Love and Lust in Lolita,” I speak with Becca Rothfeld , award winning essayist, literary critic, and PhD candidate in philosophy at Harvard University, about the tensions we readers are forced to navigat...
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 13 min
In episode 18 of Sacred and Profane Love, I speak with my friend, Fr. Gregory Maria Pine, O.P., about the virtue of hope in Cormac McCarthy’s painfully beautiful novel, The Road ( which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007). In our conversation, we talk about why hope requires an open future and a sense of uncertainty, and how hope is a state of character that strikes a middle position between presumption and despair. We also explore the essential connections between hope and love, ...
Jan 11, 2021•55 min
In episode 17 of Sacred and Profane Love, I speak with Dr. Angela Knoble about Graham Greene’s masterpiece, The Power and the Glory . Set in Mexico during a period of brutal religious persecution, Greene’s novel explores questions of what true power and glory consist in, and what sort of love and life can make one a witness to it.
Jan 11, 2021•54 min
In episode 16, “King Lear’s Vision,” I speak with Professor and poet Troy Jollimore about the connections between love and perception. In his recent book, Love’s Vision , Jollimore, drawing on Plato and Iris Murdoch, argues that true love consists in grasping the objective value of the beloved rather than the projection of it. This vision involves the bestowal of patient, loving, and imaginative attention on the objectively valuable qualities the beloved truly possesses. We explore this theme of...
Jan 11, 2021•56 min
In episode 15 of Sacred and Profane Love, titled, “Faustian Ambitions,” I speak with my colleague and neighbor, Professor Anne Pollok, about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous tragedy, Faust . For the purposes of our conversation, we use the Norton Critical Edition, translated by Walter Arndt and edited by Cyrus Hamlin, which is available here . Goethe’s drama deals with the infinite striving that lies at the heart of the human condition, and how our quest for the transcendent can go terribly a...
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr
In episode 14 of Sacred and Profane Love, “Walker Percy on Being Lost in the Cosmos,” I speak with associate professor of Literature, Jessica Hooten Wilson, about Walker Percy’s dystopian, science fiction novel, Love in the Ruins . We discuss the darkly comic adventures of Dr. Tom More as he tries to figure out how to live and love in the ruins of a society that seems eerily familiar to our own. We also discuss Percy’s satirical take on the self-help genre, Lost in the Cosmos . So bring out the ...
Jan 11, 2021•55 min
In episode 13 of Sacred & Profane Love, “Jane Austen on the Virtues of Social Life, I speak with professor Karen Stohr of Georgetown University about how Austen brings into relief the social dimensions of virtue in her novels. We discuss the importance of social roles and environments for the exercise and development of virtue, and how friendship and family life are the best contexts in which virtue can be fostered and strengthened. I hope you enjoy our conversation!
Jan 11, 2021•51 min
In Episode 12 of Sacred & Profane Love, “Meaning, Murder, and Divine Madness,” I speak with the eminent moral theologian, Fr Michael Sherwin, O.P., about Donna Tartt’s breakout bestseller, The Secret History . We discuss how the novel is best situated within both the Southern Gothic and the Southern Catholic Gothic literary genres, and how Donna Tartt, like Flannery O’Connor, understands the task of the novelist as helping us come to see ourselves and our world as it truly is....
Jan 11, 2021•50 min
In episode 11 of the Sacred and Profane Love Podcast, I speak with Scott Moringiello , assistant professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, in Chicago, Illinois, about Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead . Among other things, we discuss the connection between contemplation, love, grace, and the ability to pay attention.
Jan 11, 2021•53 min
In episode 10 of the Sacred and Profane Love podcast, host Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with scholar Paul Mankowski, SJ, about Evelyn Waugh’s popular novel, Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. They discuss Charles Ryder’s experiences of love, freedom, grace, and redemption as he becomes erotically drawn into the rarefied world of Lord Sebastian and Lady Julia Flyte.
Jan 11, 2021•53 min
In Episode 9 of Sacred & Profane Love “Revelations of Love in John Steinbeck,” Philosopher Jennifer A. Frey speaks with Thomist Theologian, Fr Michael Sherwin, OP, about John Steinbeck’s secular understanding of Christian caritas (charity) and how Steinbeck captures the beauty and power of love in the simple act of sharing breakfast with strangers. Their conversation tackles the nature of divine love as understood by Augustine and Aquinas.
Jan 11, 2021•57 min
In episode 8 of Sacred & Profane Love, Jennifer Frey speaks with Dhananjay Jagannathan about Greek tragedy and the fragility of human loves and happiness, with a special focus on Sophocles’ play, The Women of Trachis.
Jan 11, 2021•46 min
In Episode 7 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey speaks with her colleague in the English department at the University of South Carolina, Professor Holly A. Crocker, about the boasts and pledges of love in Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous Middle English poem, Troilus and Criseyde . This wide ranging conversation considers how the courtly love tradition, the Christian tradition, and the classical pagan traditions are put to use in Chaucer’s poem to help us understand the all too hum...
Jan 11, 2021•57 min
In Episode 6 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey (University of South Carolina) has a conversation with Zena Hitz (St. John’s College) about friendship, the intellectual life, and the virtue of seriousness in Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels. This episode explores how the cultivation of an inner life through contemplation–i.e., seeing, understanding, and savoring things as they are–allows us to enter into a deep and meaningful communion with other human persons.
Jan 11, 2021•54 min
In Episode 5 of Sacred & Profane Love, Professor Jennifer A. Frey (University of South Carolina) discusses the erotic impulse and experience with Professor of philosophy Talbot Brewer (University of Virginia). This discussion explores how eros draws us out of ourselves into a kind of ecstatic union with a beloved–a union whose power over us comes from its potential to give birth to something greater and more beautiful than one’s present self.
Jan 11, 2021•42 min
In Episode 4 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , Professor Jennifer A. Frey speaks with philosopher, poet, and literary critic, Troy Jollimore, about how romantic ideologies and illusions can destroy our ability to experience real and meaningful love–the sort of love that is a central part of a happy and meaningful life. We ground our conversation in a wide ranging discussion of Gustave Flaubert’s incredibly influential nineteenth century novel, Madame Bovary....
Jan 06, 2021•55 min
In Episode 3 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , philosopher Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with fellow philosopher Nancy Snow, about why she thinks we should be reading the poetry of Walt Whitman in our current political moment. We discuss Whitman’s, “Song of Myself” and “Democratic Vistas,” and how each of these works touches on the theme of hope as a democratic civic virtue. We also explore Whitman’s conviction that poetry can help build hope and help to shape the national charact...
Jan 06, 2021•44 min
In Episode 2 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , philosopher Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with fellow philosopher, David McPherson (Creighton University), about transfiguring love as explored by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his influential novel, The Brother’s Karamazov. The episode covers Dostoyevksy’s treatment of the classic problem of evil—i.e., the problem of reconciling God’s love and wisdom with the evil and suffering that are part of his creation—and in particular, his idea that a...
Jan 05, 2021•48 min
In Episode 1 of the podcast Sacred & Profane Love , philosopher Jennifer A. Frey has a conversation with the Thomist theologian, Father Thomas Joseph White, O.P., about Aquinas on grace and charity, and how Thomistic concepts of grace and charity operate in the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. The episode covers themes of grace, redemption, the comic unveiling of the human person to itself, and the violence of Divine Love as a necessary antidote to human folly and brokenness....
Jan 04, 2021•52 min
