Notre Dame Hosts Renowned Scholar Rémi Brague

Each year the graduate students of Notre Dame's Medieval Institute invite a scholar to present a lecture and offer a following seminar. On April 2, 2019, we were glad to welcome our fifteenth annual speaker, Rémi Brague, Professor Emeritus of Medieval and Arabic Philosophy of the University of Paris.

Professor Brague is a scholar of wide range and has authored numerous books on classical and medieval philosophy, culture, religion, literature, and law. His evening lecture, entitled "Aquinas' Doctrine of Providence and Its Relevance Today," examined Thomas Aquinas's account of divine providence, identifying thirteen different elements of this doctrine—for example, the idea that God's providence is suited to different types of beings, and therefore that divine providence will appear differently, in accordance with a being's (God-given) nature. Not limiting his scope to the medieval period, Professor Brague further discussed the practical, modern implications of each of these aspects of Aquinas's doctrine.

Rémi Brague's scholarly publications include Europe, la voie romaine (1992), La Sagesse du monde: Histoire de l’expérience humaine de l’univers (1999), Introduction au monde grec. Études d’histoire de la philosophie (2005), La Loi de Dieu. Histoire philosophique d’une alliance (2005), Au moyen du Moyen Âge. Philosophies médiévales en chrétienté, judaïsme et islam (2006), Modérément moderne (2014), and Le Règne de l’homme: Genèse et échec du projet moderne (2015). He is the former Romano Guardini Chair of Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and has been Visiting Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University, John Findlay Visiting Professor at Boston University, Hans-Georg Gadamer Visiting Professor at Boston College, and Visiting Professor at the Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona) and the Università San Raffaele (Milan). Professor Brague is a member of the Institut de France and was the 2012 recipient of the Joseph Ratzinger Prize.