Second Vincentian Chair of Social Justice Lecture to Be Held Nov. 16

The St. John’s University community is invited to attend “Thinking Through a World in Crisis: Uprootedness and Transcendence,” the second lecture in the Vincentian Chair of Social Justice lecture series, on Monday, November 16, from 1:50 to 3:15 p.m. in the D’Angelo Center Ballroom. 

Each year, the Vincentian Chair of Social Justice selects a justice theme with the help of the wider St. John’s University community. National and international scholars then contribute to the theme’s exploration. 

This year’s theme is How to Love the World: Thinking Love and Justice in Difficult Times with Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. The four-lecture series explores the lives and legacies of Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil, two Jewish social philosophers who engaged deeply with Christian sources and bequeathed to us a rich body of work on questions of love and justice. Both contribute to the canon of 20th-century political theology, demonstrating the need for community, as well as the dangers of the violence we can enact in the name of community. 

They do not always agree with each other and differ in important ways on questions of the role of transcendence in the pursuit of social justice. Both women were refugee thinkers, whose philosophy is reshaped by the experience of loss and flight, uprootedness, and exile. New York City is part of that story, and these lectures will weave the story of the refuge they find in New York into the narratives of their lives and ideas.

The lecture is presented by Anna Rowlands, Ph.D., St. Hilda Professor of Catholic Social Thought and Practice in the Department of Theology and Religion and the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, UK.

For those unable to join us in person, the talk will be recorded. 

Visit stjohns.edu/VCSJ to register for more information.