This Saturday, July 12, 12:00 noon at the Cambridge School or via Zoom…

Economics: The Teachings of the Austrian School

Dear Society Members, Friends, and Supporters,

This Saturday, the Lewis Tolkien Society will focus on the Austrian school of economics which built upon the insights of the Spanish scholastics of the 16th century to advance our modern understanding of economics. Join LTS board members Bill de Decker and Dr. Ron Muller as they review the basic principles of economics as the science of commerce and exchange promoting the optimal allocation of resources for the improvement of the human estate.

Topics

What is economics? How does it always involve human actions and decisions? Is economics an empirical or theoretical science?

How is economics related to political philosophy?

How is economics related to Christian social teaching?

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Our next session will be held at the modern campus of the Cambridge School located at the intersection of Royal Lane and Webb Chapel.  To participate in person, enter the academic building (by the circle adjacent to the parking lot), take the elevator down the hall to the second floor.  Exit, turn right.  then left at the end of the walkway.  

Participate via Zoom by connecting to the LTS calendar page and clicking on the date for the Text and Talk. 

Meeting information on the website

This Saturday, June 28, at the Cambridge School or via Zoom…

Economics: From Rome to the Austrian School

Dear Society Members, Friends, and Supporters,

This Saturday, the Lewis Tolkien Society will sponsor a conversation about economics, its development and history, and its status as a science. Join LTS Board members, Mr. Bill de Decker and Dr. Ron Muller, as they review how modern economics grew from the Roman period through late Scholasticism and the Renaissance to Adam Smith and the Austrian School. 

Topics

• What is economics and what phenomena does it study?
• How did the adoption of Arabic numerals led to the advance of accounting, banking, and commerce
• How questions raised by the late Scholastic philosophers at Salamanca clarified economic principles regarding supply and demand, prices, inflation, and monetary theory
• How economics as a science from Adam Smith to the Austrian School.

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Our next session will be held at the modern campus of the Cambridge School located at the intersection of Royal Lane and Webb Chapel.  To participate in person, enter the academic building (by the circle adjacent to the parking lot), take the elevator down the hall to the second floor.  Exit, turn right.  then left at the end of the walkway.  

Participate via Zoom by connecting to the LTS calendar page and clicking on the date for the Text and Talk. 

Meeting information on the website

This Saturday, June 21, at the Cambridge School or via Zoom…

Envisioning a Bright Future for Lewis Tolkien 

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Please make plans to join the LTS Board of Directors this Saturday, June 21, as we  build on Dr. Patrick’s legacy, look to the future, and explore new academic programs for the coming year.   Dr. Ron Muller will present a proposal to expand LTS lectures and short courses for Society members to delve more deeply into the relationship between Christian teaching and contemporary issues through a greater understanding of the liberal disciplines of theology, philosophy, literature, and history.   

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Bill de Decker and Dr. Muller on economics, accounting, and the Austrian School of Economics

Our next session will be held at the modern campus of the Cambridge School located at the intersection of Royal Lane and Webb Chapel.  To participate in person, enter the academic building (by the circle adjacent to the parking lot), take the elevator down the hall to the second floor.  Exit, turn right.  then left at the end of the walkway.  

Participate via Zoom by connecting to the LTS calendar page and clicking on the date for the Text and Talk. 

Meeting information on the website

This Saturday, June 14, at the Cambridge School or via Zoom…

Dr. Patrick on Lewis

Dear Friends and Supporters,

This Saturday, our review of  Dr. Patrick’s book The Magdalen Metaphysicals: Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford, 1901-1945 will focus on how the intellectual currents at the beginning of the last century influenced Christianity’s great apologist C. S. Lewis.  Recounting Lewis’ engagement first with atheism and the views of British realism, Dr. Patrick describes how the nature of the desire and human longing led Lewis–through the legacy of Idealism– to see the truth of Christianity.

Topics:

How Lewis was influenced to accept the realism of Carritt.

How Lewis came to see the importance of thought, meaning, and human endeavor in the philosophy of idealism.

How, rejecting the reductionistic analysis of Freud and the realists, Lewis found the “middle way” through literature as explained in Pilgrim’s Regress.

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Our next session will be held at the modern campus of the Cambridge School located at the intersection of Royal Lane and Webb Chapel.  To participate in person, enter the academic building (by the circle adjacent to the parking lot), take the elevator to the second floor, and turn right then left at the end of the hall. Participate via Zoom by connecting to the LTS calendar page and clicking on the date for the Text and Talk. 

Meeting information on the website

This Saturday, June 7, at the Cambridge School or via Zoom…

Dr. Patrick on Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford

Dear Friends and Supporters,

This Saturday, the Lewis Tolkien Society will continue our review of  Dr. Patrick’s book The Magdalen Metaphysicals: Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford, 1901-1945.  This week, we’ll focus on how the Oxford dons grappled with the challenge of defending Christian orthodoxy in the aftermath of Kant’s intellectual skepticism, Hegel’s metaphysics of World Spirit, and the reaction of British realism and Ayer’s positivism. 

Topics, Issues, and Questions:

Who were the Magdalen Metaphysicals and what did they hold regarding the relation between philosophy and theology?

What is metaphysics, classical metaphysics, and metaphysical idealism?

What did “Idealism” mean for the Oxford philosophers?  Did they accept Hegel’s philosophy of world spirit?

Why did the emergent “realism” of Cook Wilson, G. E. Moore, and Bertran Russell dismiss the thought of Thomas Green and reject Collingwood’s vision of philosophy?

Are these ideas important for modern ideology?

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Join the Lewis Tolkien Society at the Cambridge School located at 3202 Royal Ln, Dallas, TX 75229 (at the intersection of Webb Chapel and Royal Lane) to participate in person– or participate via Zoom by connecting to the LTS calendar page and clicking on the date for the Text and Talk. 

Next week– June 14: The Philosophical Influence on C. S. Lewis 

Meeting information on the website

This Saturday, May 31, at the Cambridge School or via Zoom…

Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford

Dear Friends and Supporters,

This Saturday, the Lewis Tolkien Society will begin a three part series reviewing Dr. Patrick’s book The Magdalen Metaphysicals: Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford, 1901-1945.  This work details the Oxford climate of ideas at the end of the Edwardian age which unfolded between those influenced by the metaphysical legacy of Kant and Hegel on the one hand and the emergent positivist and analytic traditions of G. E. Moore, Bertran Russell, and A. J. Ayer on the other.  Dr. Ron Muller will discuss how the Oxford dons grappled with the challenge of defending Christian orthodoxy through the work of Clement Webb, R. G. Collingwood, and others while influencing C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Topics:

May 31     Background: Oxford in 1901

June 7      Metaphysics in the 19th century: From Kant to Hegel, Croce, F.H. Bradley, Collingwood and G. E. Moore – The Great Debate

June 14    Idealism, Orthodoxy, Philosophy, and Literature  – Lewis and Tolkien

Questions:

What is metaphysical idealism?  What was the teaching of Kant and Hegel regarding the ultimate nature of being?

What did this mean for the Christian orthodoxy of Anglicanism in the work of Clement Webb, Thomas Green, and R. G. Collingwood?

Why was metaphysical idealism challenged by the philosophical realism of Moore and Russell?

How did the literary vision of Lewis and Tolkien influence the debate?

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Join the Lewis Tolkien Society at the Cambridge School located at 3202 Royal Ln, Dallas, TX 75229 (at the intersection of Webb Chapel and Royal Lane) to participate in person– or participate via Zoom by connecting to the LTS calendar page and clicking on the date for the Text and Talk. 

Meeting information on the website

Great News!  Text and Talk will meet at the Cambridge School beginning tomorrow, Saturday, May 17. This week, Dr. Ron Muller will introduce the classic, Joseph Pieper’s Leisure: the Basis of Culture.

Dear Friends and Supporters,

The Lewis-Tolkien Society is pleased to announce that Text and Talk Saturdays will now meet at the Cambridge School of Dallas for those wishing to participate in person.  The Cambridge School is located at the intersection of Webb Chapel and Royal Lane at 3202 Royal Ln, Dallas, TX 75229.  Facilities at Cambridge will also allow easy access via Zoom to those preferring to participate via an internet connection. 

Meeting information on the website

Join Dr. Muller to discuss the work of the Lewis-Tolkien Society as a center for teaching, learning, and reflection on the perennial truths revealed by Christ and understood through natural human reason.

This Saturday we’ll meet via Zoom, but soon we hope to meet again in person at the Cambridge School of Dallas.

Meeting information on the website

The Lewis-Tolkien Society for the renewal of the Common Tradition
“Saving Western Civilization…”

Text and Talk this Saturday and Next

(February 8 and February 15)

Noon
Christ the King Catholic Church, Community Center
8017 Preston Rd, Dallas
(also available via Zoom)

Introduction to Cosmology

presented by Dr. Ron Muller

 Recalling Aristotle’s observation that philosophy was born in wonder—especially regarding the nature of cosmos, Dr. Muller will discuss how metaphysics and natural science have provided mankind with extraordinary insights and astonishing discoveries about the physical universe while raising intriguing questions about topics such as the “big bang,” cosmic inflation, dark matter, black holes, and the very nature of time and space.

Join the Lewis-Tolkien scholars for a review of contemporary thinking about cosmology and the great questions it occasions about mankind’s place in the ultimate order to things.

 
Meeting information here