Liz Everett, Campus Editor
The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture will host its 14th annual Fall Conference this weekend in McKenna Hall.

 

Entitled “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Body and Human Identity,” the conference will explore questions surrounding the meaning of the human body from several points of view, including philosophy, theology, political theory, law, history, economics, the biosciences, literature and the arts. The conference will take place November 7-9 in McKenna Hall, and the presentations are free and open to all Notre Dame, St. Mary’s and Holy Cross students and faculty.

 

O. Carter Snead, William P. and Hazel B. White Director of the Center and Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, commented on this year’s theme:

 

“We are very proud of this year’s Fall Conference—‘Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Body and Human Identity.’  It will feature a stellar and diverse array of the world’s leading thinkers engaging in spirited and civil dialogue on the most pressing human questions.  We regard this flagship event of the Center for Ethics and Culture as one of our most important contributions to Notre Dame’s mission ‘to provide a forum where, through free inquiry and open discussion, the various lines of Catholic thought may intersect with all the forms of knowledge found in the arts, sciences, professions and every other area of human scholarship and creativity.’”

 

Stephen Freddoso is the Program Manager at the Center for Ethics and Culture. He played a major role in organizing the conference this year, and is excited for it to be realized this weekend. The Fall Conference has a special place in the mission of the Center for the Notre Dame campus. Freddoso said:

 

“Through the conference, the Center strives to give students and scholars a chance to interact outside of the classroom, and to give students some insight into what it means to participate in the wider intellectual life. Students have the opportunity to see and learn from scholars who truly are the best in their field.”

 

Why should undergraduates attend the conference this weekend? The atmosphere at the Fall Conference is always one of fellowship, with many people coming from various viewpoints and levels of education uniting in discussion.

 

“The conference is a great opportunity for undergraduates to learn from prominent scholars in many different fields and on a wide range of topics,” Freddoso said. “It also gives them an opportunity to participate in the intellectual community that the Center strives to build on campus; they are able to talk to people from across the country and from many different institutions.”

 

The description of the conference theme quotes Gilbert Meilaender, Professor of Theology at Valparaiso University, as a way of framing the discussion of the human body and identity: “[W]e know a person only in his or her embodied presence. In and through that body the person is a living whole. For certain purposes, we may try to ‘reduce’ the embodied person simply to a collection of parts, thinking of the person (from below) simply as the sum total of these parts. But we do not know, interact with, or love others understood in that way; on the contrary, we know them (from above) as a unity that is more than just the sum of their parts.”

 

The conference will open with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Kevin Rhodes, of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, in the Basilica at 5:15 p.m. today. The featured presentations include Gilbert Meilaender, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, John Haldane, John Finnis, Ryan Anderson, Joseph Bottum, Sherif Girgis and Charles Reid.

 

For more information, and to download a schedule of events, please visit ethicscenter.nd.edu.

Liz Everett is a senior PLS and English major. She wants to go back to Fall Break when she could read whatever she wanted. Want more details about the Fall Conference? Contact her at eeveret1@nd.edu.