Spiritual Exercises as Christian Philosophy from Augustine to Bonaventure

This seminar examines the notion of spiritual exercise as it evolved in Hellenic and Hellenistic philosophy to understand the emergence of ‘Christian philosophy’ as a cultural project within the Augustinian tradition that begins in Augustine’s own work and finds its medieval high point in Bonaventure.  It explores the effect on our understanding of philosophy, theology and their history of identifying as properly theoretical cognitive operations that do not have logical validity as their end and horizon.