Workshop at the Catholic Academy of Berlin

Illuminations from Aquinas and Maimonides
and Meanings Today

June 11–12, 2025

Images: Maimonides, Photogravure, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons / Aquinas, Justus van Gent, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Illuminations from Aquinas and Maimonides and Meanings Today

Workshop at the Catholic Academy of Berlin

June 11–12, 2025

We would like to invite participants for a conference, “Illuminations from Aquinas and Maimonides and Meanings Today.” The conference is hosted by the Catholic Academy’s Center for Intellectual Diaspora, forum for scholarly exchange on questions of contemporary politics, religion, society, and culture. Participants are drawn primarily from the Catholic and Jewish traditions, and the Center seeks exchange as well with other traditions – Islamic, other Christian denominations, and African, Asian, and other transnational communities. The Center brings together theory and politics and international academics and decision-makers.

The two-day conference will include a public lecture and several panels, each with contributions from scholars with expertise in Maimonides and Aquinas to engender as much cross-illumination as possible. All scholars are free to develop their own topics in a 20-minute presentation with an eye to a subject that would engage participants from both traditions. Topics may draw from philosophy, theology, metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, ethics, etc. and the scholarly methodologies and debates employed in interpreting these thinkers. 

Some examples include: the nature of God, God’s relationship to world and ordering of the cosmos, God and science, creation/emanation, the nature of nature and of humanity, how humanity knows (or doesn’t know) of God’s existence, via negativa/apophasis, the summum bonum, the ordering of personal and community/political living, theodicy, reward/punishment, providence, the meaning and purpose of revelation, of prayer, ritual, morality, commandments, prophecy, miracles, redemption, salvation, and notions of the messianic era. In addition: past and present debates about any of the above and discussion of the methods appropriate to studying and interpreting Aquinas and Maimonides. But we stress again that scholars are free to develop their own topics. 

Organization

Prof. Dr. Marcia Pally, New York University / Humboldt University Berlin
Prof. Dr. Patrick Zoll SJ, Munich School of Philosophy
Dr. Stephan Steiner, Catholic Academy of Berlin

Live Stream on Youtube

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Illuminations from Aquinas and Maimonides and Meanings Today
June 11, 2025, 6 pm

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Illuminations from Aquinas and Maimonides and Meanings Today
June 12, 2025, 7 pm

Kooperation

Program

 Wednesday, June 11, 2025 
3:00 pmWelcome Reception & Introduction
Marcia Pally, New York University/ Humboldt University of Berlin
Patrick Zoll SJ, Munich School of Philosophy
Stephan Steiner, Katholische Akademie Berlin
3:30 pm  Panel I 
The Earliest Christian Reception of Maimonides: Exegesis and the Christian-Jewish Debate in Toledo
Lucy Pick, University of Chicago

Divine Naming in the alia lectura attributed to Aquinas
Mark Johnson, Marquette University

Hans Blumenberg on Maimonides and Aquinas: A Previously Unpublished Lecture
Omer Michaelis, Tel Aviv University
5:45 pmCoffee break
6:00 pm  Public Evening Debate 
Maimonides on the State, Divine Law, and Individual Perfection
Josef Stern, University of Chicago

Thomas Aquinas on the State, the Church, and Idolatry
Barbara Hallensleben, University of Fribourg

Chair: Marcia Pally, New York University/ Humboldt University of Berlin
8:00 pmJoint dinner for the conference participants
 Thursday, June 12, 2025 
9:15 am  Panel II 
Rethinking Some Pre-Modern Reasoning on Knowing God and Divine Transcendence 
Richard Taylor, Marquette University

Can We Know the Essence of a Simple God? Thomas Aquinas’s Critique of Maimonides in De potentia 
Patrick Zoll SJ, Munich School of Philosophy

Maimonides and Aquinas on the Mercy of Creation
John O’Callaghan, Notre Dame University
11:30 amCoffee break
12:00 amAnimal Suffering From Rabbi Moses to Aquinas and Beyond
James Dominic Rooney OP, Hong Kong Baptist University

Maimonides on Angels: The Strange Case of the Cherub 
James Diamond, University of Waterloo
1:30 pmLunch
2:30 pm  Panel III 
Virtue, Grace and the Law of Sin: Limitations of Acquired Virtue in Aquinas
Angela Knobel, University of Dallas

Maimonides and Aquinas on the Different Types of Law
Howard Kreisel, Ben-Gurion University 
4:00 pmCoffee break
4:30 pmWhat does it save? And who is saved? Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas in dialogue 
Marienza Benedetto, University of Bari

The Definition of Belief in Medieval Jewish Philosophy 
Shalom Sadik, Ben-Gurion University
6:00 pmLight Supper
7:00 pm  Public Evening Debate 
From Fear to Love: Philosophy and Self-Transfomation in Maimonides 
Moshe Halbertal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

Transformed by Knowledge: How Catherine of Siena Put Thomas Aquinas’s Theology into Action
Christina J. Van Dyke, Columbia University

Chair: Felix Körner SJ, Humboldt University of Berlin
8:30 pmPublic Reception & Farewell

#intellectualdiaspora is an initiative by the Katholische Akademie in Berlin e.V.

www.katholische-akademie-berlin.de

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