The Killeen Chair of Theology & Philosophy is a resource that underscores the importance of theology and philosophy in a Catholic liberal arts education and highlights the commitment of St. Norbert College to provide an education that is personally, intellectually and spiritually challenging.
Monday, March 23, 2026, 7 p.m.
Peter Wicks, Ph.D. Executive Secretary of the International Society of MacIntyrean Enquiry, Elm Institute of Yale University.
Fort Howard Theater, Bemis International Center
Register HERE!
“Alasdair MacIntyre's Influence on 20th and 21st Century Philosophy”
In a remarkable career spanning seven decades, Alasdair MacIntyre established himself as a singular and influential voice in Anglophone philosophy. Accounts of MacIntyre's influence that treat him as the originator of the revival of "virtue ethics" in contemporary moral philosophy are not wrong - MacIntyre's work unquestionably played a major role in the revival of interest in virtue-based approaches to ethics - but they do risk underestimating the radicalism of MacIntyre's critique of moral philosophy. What he saw in Aristotle was not simply an unjustly neglected moral theory, but a conception of the proper relationship between theory and practice that challenged fundamental assumptions about how moral philosophy should be done. Attending to this aspect of MacIntyre's Aristotelianism can help us to understand both why some of his most important insights have proved hard to assimilate into contemporary moral philosophy and why his writings have been influential far beyond the academy.
Educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Peter Wicks came to the United States as Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow at Princeton’s Graduate School before pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Notre Dame. He taught in the Ethics Program at Villanova University before joining the Elm Institute in 2015. His research focuses on the contemporary applications of Aristotelian ethical and political thought, the history and philosophy of higher education, and the psychology and ethics of argument and persuasion. He is the author of Begin With Wonder: A Commonplace Book and the co-editor, along with Kelvin Knight, of Alasdair MacIntyre on Practical Philosophy: Essential Works. He is Executive Secretary of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry, a faculty affiliate of the Yale Program for Biomedical Ethics, and a Lecturer at Yale University, where he teaches a seminar on the psychology and ethics of argument and persuasion.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Andrew Meszaros, Ph.D., Professore Invitato, S.T.D. S.T.L., S.T.B., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, M.Phil., University of Oxford, B.A., Boston College
Mar 23
Apr 22
Apr 22
