What is Love? Plato’s Theology of the Body | Prof. Joshua Hochschild

Prof. Joshua Hochschild compares Plato’s philosophical exploration of love in the Symposium with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, analyzing how both traditions address the unity of eros and agape, the meaning of embodied love, and the enduring questions of sexual ethics in light of Humanae Vitae.This lecture was given on February 18th, 2025, at The Basilica of Saint Mary’s Lyceum.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speaker:Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.Keywords: Agape and Eros, Embodied Love, Humanae Vitae, Imago Dei, John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, Personalist Philosophy, Plato’s Symposium, Sexual Ethics, Theology of the Body

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The Thomistic Institute exists to promote Catholic truth in our contemporary world by strengthening the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square. The thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Universal Doctor of the Church, is our touchstone. The Thomistic Institute Podcast features the lectures and talks from our conferences, campus chapters events, intellectual retreats, livestream events,  and much more.  Founded in 2009, the Thomistic Institute is part of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC.