Current Courses
Following the standard academic calendar, the Accademia Balthasar offers a selection of weekly seminars available to university students and researchers upon request. The subject material of these courses can vary greatly, ranging from philosophy to theology to literature, and typically has roots in the works of our authors of reference or in the vast cultural milieu of Hans Urs von Balthasar.
For those interested, comprehensive catalogues of past course themes and
session details are available in the archives below.
Maurice Blondel: l'Action
TUESDAY
11:00 - 12:20
«Whatever our century may have produced in terms of Christian philosophy, the decisive breakthrough towards such a philosophy took place in 1893, when, after a long prayerful struggle, Maurice Blondel submitted his thesis [l'Action] to the almost entirely faithless Sorbonne. Beyond Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, and promoted by all, he found the way back to the primal source of Christian life with unfailing instinct.» (Balthasar) This work is the basis of our course.
Virgil and his main works
WEDNESDAY
11:30 - 12:20
«He stands at the centre of European culture, at a point that no other poet can share with him or claim to conquer in his stead.» (T.S. Eliot) The course aims to present and explore some texts from the Bucolics, the Georgics and the Aeneid.
Metaphysics of the Saints
THURSDAY
11:00 - 12:20
In «the metaphysics of the saints, which has marked the whole of Christian thought up to the modern age, including Ignatius, Francis de Sales, Fénelon, Newman ... there occurs a theology or theological metaphysics that is truly at the heart of the problems, both theoretically and as an incidence in the history of the spirit». (Hans Urs von Balthasar)