D. C. Schindler

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D. C. Schindler
Schindler in 2018
Born	(1970-12-22) December 22, 1970 Upland, California
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Neoplatonism Thomism Continental Philosophy
Main interests	History of Philosophy Metaphysics Philosophical anthropology Political Philosophy Philosophy of Religion Neoplatonism German idealism Thomism Nouvelle Théologie Communio Theology Phenomenology

David Christopher Schindler (born December 22, 1970), winner of the University of Dallas' 2022 Aquinas Medal, is a widely-published American philosopher and translator, specializing in metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of religion, and moral and political philosophy. His work falls in the broadly Neoplatonic tradition, though he is also associated with Thomism, certain strains of German Idealism, and the Communio/Ressourcement school of theology. He is professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C.

Education and academic work

Schindler was educated in the Program for Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where his father, David L. Schindler, was then teaching. During his time at college, he completed a year of French study at L’Université Catholique de l’Ouest, in Angers, France. In 1995, he completed a Masters of Sacred Theology at the John Paul II Institute in Rome, and in 1997, a Masters of Arts in Philosophy at The Catholic University of America. In 2001, he completed his Doctorate in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, with a dissertation on “The Dramatic Structure of Truth, in Dialogue with Hans Urs von Balthasar and Continental Philosophy from Kant to Heidegger,” under the direction of Riccardo Pozzo.

From 2001 to 2013, Schindler taught philosophy in the Department of Humanities at Villanova University, with a stint in Munich for an Alexander von Humboldt Research fellowship, 2007-2008. Since 2013, he has taught at the John Paul II Institute in Washington D.C., where his father also teaches. He has served as an editor and translator for the English edition of Communio: International Catholic Review since 2002. A prolific author, from the start of his academic career, Schindler has published a steady stream of articles, books, and translations.

Original publications

His first book was developed from his doctoral dissertation, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (2004), focusing broadly on Balthasar’s conception of reason as approaching truth “dramatically,” in a way that unfolds over time. Schindler argues that a Balthasarian model unites the classical concern for the unity of truth with the postmodern concern for particular difference, allowing for a play between the two in the human act of understanding.

In his second book, Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic (2008), Schindler makes an extended analysis of Plato’s most famous work, against the backdrop of the contemporary crisis of reason. His claim is that the Republic, by grounding rational activity in the goodness of being, presents a model of the philosophic life that has the capacity to confront the “misology” of modern intellectual life.

Schindler did much of the work for his third book The Perfection of Freedom: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel between the Ancients and the Moderns (2012), during the year of his Humboldt fellowship in Germany. In it, he gives an account of these three major German philosophers, especially with respect to their treatment of “form,” in aesthetics, natural philosophy, and politics. His conclusion is that their dynamic approach to the interpretation of form provides a path back, through modern philosophy, to meaningful dialogue with the classical tradition of metaphysics.

In his fourth book, The Catholicity of Reason (2013), Schindler collected a number of previously published articles, to which he added a few new pieces. The volume, which may be said to mark Schindler’s own thought most clearly, centers around a conception of reason as “catholic,” in the linguistic sense of being open to the whole of being, and always so to speak knowing more than it can say. It is, in Schindler’s terms, “ecstatic,” by which he means, standing “out beyond itself,” in its openness to reality; discrete rational acts then try to reach out and express what reason has already seen ecstatically. The various chapters of the book extend this account in various directions, with reference to a number of different thinkers and sub-disciplines.

Schindler’s fifth book, Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (2017), marks his first full-length foray into ethical and political theory. The work concerns the transformation of freedom in modern philosophy, beginning with Locke’s account, and moving into later modern formulations: the argument is that the sense of freedom presumed in much modern philosophy forces its adherents into a set of intellectual and moral problems that would be avoided given a classical account of freedom. The last chapters of the book then move back to Plato and Aristotle in an effort at retrieving that classical account. Elsewhere, Schindler has made clear that Freedom from Reality will be the first of a three book series on the topic of freedom in Western philosophy.

His sixth book is a collection of essays on the transcendentals, Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (2018).

His seventh book, A Companion to Homo Abyssus (2019), is a commentary to go with Schindler's translation of Ferdinand Ulrich's master work.

In a more direct turn into political philosophy, Schindler wrote his eighth book on The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism (2021). In it, he stakes out ground between the Catholic defenders of political liberalism, on the one hand, and the recent Catholic defenders of integralism, on the other.

Additionally, Schindler has published more than forty published articles and book chapters. While many of his articles have appeared in Communio, the journal he edits, others have come out in Apeiron, Modern Theology, The Review of Metaphysics, and others.

Themes

Broadly, Schindler’s theme is the place of reason in the context of a rich, neo-Platonic metaphysics: while he frequently adverts to Aquinas and Aristotle, it is Plato he sees at the heart of the philosophic tradition he is seeking to follow. A second concern, interlinked with the first, is the unity of the transcendentals, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, as they interplay within the rational experience of persons: following Balthasar, Schindler sees the transcendentals “circumincessing,” as the persons of the Trinity were classically understood to do. On this view, Being draws the individual perceiver into its goodness through beauty, thence leading the person to affirm its truth. Thereafter, our enhanced grasp of Being’s truth breaks in upon us all the more as beautiful, and the circumincession (or perichoresis) of the transcendentals continues, leading the knower ever deeper into the abyss of reality. A third theme is the classical metaphysics of freedom, in relation to the modern liberal theories of liberty that have animated much ethical and political thought of the last few centuries.

Translations

Schindler is fluent in German and French, and proficient in Italian, with a reading knowledge of Latin and Greek. He has translated or co-translated numerous articles and books over the years, including (among the books alone) George Bernanos’ The Heroic Face of Innocence: Three Stories (tr. 1999); Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible (tr. 2004); A Robert Spaemann Reader: Philosophical Essays on Nature, God, and the Human Person (tr. 2015); and Ferdinand Ulrich’s Homo Abyssus (tr. 2018).

Scholarly reception

Schindler has been called “one of the leading Anglophone authorities on German philosophy from the eighteenth century through to the present,” “masterful in his grasp of the history of metaphysics up to and including the modern and postmodern critiques of it,” and “quite simply, the best Catholic philosopher of [his] generation." Of his first book, it has been said, “no other English-language study of Balthasar has reached its depth, range, and perspicacity." “Evident throughout,” according to another review, “is Schindler’s compendious knowledge of the philosophical tradition.” His second book, Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason, has been called “a fascinating interpretation of Plato’s Republic . . . . a captivating counterweight to the preponderance of less dramatically unified interpretations." His work on The Perfection of Freedom in Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel has been called “a masterfully written and richly intricate book." The Catholicity of Reason has been called “brilliant . . . providing the most satisfactory and comprehensive account of the nature of reason” available. And a reviewer of his latest book wrote that “Schindler is inspiring in his breadth of discussion and depth of insight, . . . clearly demonstrating what it is that makes a classical metaphysical vision coherent and compelling,” and “conducting . . . a perspicacious diagnosis of why certain contradictions exist in many pockets of modern culture.”

Honors and awards

In addition to the 2008 Humboldt fellowship, Schindler has received a number of other academic honors, including several prestigious invited lectures. In 2014, he was invited to give the annual John Paul II Lecture at the University of Dallas;; in 2015, he gave the Bitar Lecture at Geneva College in Pennsylvania;; in the Fall of 2017, he gave the McMahon Aquinas Lecture at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, IN; in Fall of 2018, he gave the Albacete Lecture at the Sheen Center in New York. In 2022, he was awarded the Aquinas Medal at the University of Dallas, delivering the annual Aquinas Lecture there.

He has also given invited lectures at Hillsdale College in Michigan, Franciscan University in Ohio, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Pennsylvania,, St. Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D.C., St. Patrick's Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland, and other locations.

Books

• Retrieving Freedom: The Christian Appropriation of Classical Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022).
• The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism (Steubenville, OH: New Polity Press, 2021).
• A Companion to Ferdinand Ulrich's Homo Abyssus (Washington, D.C.: Humanum Academic Press, 2019).
• Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018).
• Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017).
• The Catholicity of Reason (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013).
• The Perfection of Freedom: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel Between the Ancients and the Moderns (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012).
• Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Truth and Goodness in the Republic (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of American Press, 2008).
• Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004).

Articles & book chapters

• "Catholic Politics and the Analogy of Authority." Communio 48.4 (Winter 2021), 799-824.
• "Restoring Faith in Culture." Communio 48.2 (Summer 2021), 223-246.
• "Mediation: The Distinguishing Mark of Christianity." Communio 48.1 (Spring 2021), 6-29.
• "What is Liberalism?" New Polity: A Journal of Postliberal Thought 1.1 (May 2020).
• "The Word as the Center of Man’s Onto-Dramatic Task." Communio 46.1 (Spring 2019).
• “Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue.” Nova et Vetera 16.4 (2018): 1353-69.
• “Redeeming Work: On Techne as an Encounter between God, Man and the World,” in Enlightening the Mystery of Man: Gaudium et spes Fifty Years Later, ed. Antonio Lopez (Humanum Academic Press, 2018), 256-74.
• “Taking Truth for Granted: A Reflection on the Significance of Tradition in Josef Pieper,” Communio 44.4 (Winter 2017), 690-717.
• “Love and Beauty, the ‘Forgotten Transcendental,’ in Thomas Aquinas,” Communio 44.2 (Summer 2017), 334-356.
• “Perfect Difference: Gender and the Analogy of Being,” Communio 43.2 (Summer 2016), 194-231.
• “‘Unless You Become a Philosopher . . . ’: On God, Being, and Reason’s Role in Faith,” Communio 43.1 (Spring 2016), 83-103.
• “A Very Critical Response to Karen Kilby: On Failing to See the Form,” Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015), 68-87.
• “Work as Contemplation: On the Platonic Notion of Technê,” Communio 42.4 (Winter 2015), 594-617.
• “The Healthy and the Holy,” Communio 41.3 (Fall 2014), 544-563.
• “The Crisis of Marriage as a Crisis of Meaning: On the Sterility of the Modern Will,” Communio 41.2 (Summer 2014), 331–71 .
• “On Reason’s Authority,” Communio 41.1 (Spring 2014), 40-60.
• “Liberalism, Religious Freedom, and the Common Good: The Totalitarian Logic of Self-Limitation,” Communio 40.2 (Summer-Fall 2013), 577-615.
• “On the Universality of the University: A Response to Jean-Luc Marion,” Communio 40.1 (Spring 2013), 77-99.
• “‘The Free Will Which Wills the Free Will’: On Marriage as a Paradigm of Freedom in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” The Owl of Minerva 44:1–2 (2012–13) 93-117.
• “‘Ever Ancient, Ever New’: Jesus Christ as the Concrete Analogy of Being,” Communio 39.1 (Spring-Summer 2012), 33-48.
• “Beauty and the Analogy of Truth,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85.2 (2011), 297-321.
• “Beauty and the Holiness of Mind,” in Being Holy in the World, eds. Nicholas Healey and D.C. Schindler (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 3-30.
• “Analogia Naturae: What Does Inanimate Matter Contribute to the Meaning of Life?,” Communio 38.4 (Winter 2011), 656–81.
• “On Experience and Reason,” Communio 37.2 (Summer 2010), 255-265.
• “Enriching the Good: Toward the Development of a Relational Anthropology,” Communio 37.4 (Winter 2010), 643–59.
• “Metaphysics within the Limits of Phenomenology: Balthasar and Husserl on the Nature of the Philosophical Act,” Teología y Vida 50 (2009), 243-258.
• “Hans Urs von Balthasar, Metaphysics, and the Problem of Onto-Theology,” Analecta Husserliana 1 (2009), 102-113.
• “Why Socrates Didn’t Charge: Plato and the Metaphysics of Money,” Communio 36.3 (Fall 2009), 394–426.
• “An Aesthetics of Freedom: Schiller’s Breakthrough Beyond Subjectivism,” Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society (2008), 84-109.
• “Plato and the Problem of Love: On the Nature of Eros in the Symposium,” Apeiron 40.3 (2007): 199-220.
• “On Being Invisible: Socratic Asceticism and the Philosophical Life,” Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions 4 (2007), 7-18.
• “Why We Need Paul Claudel,” Communio 34 (2007): 120-49.
• “Hope and the Freedom of Philosophy,” in How Balthasar Changed My Mind, eds. Larry Chapp and Rodney Howsare (New York: Herder and Herder, 2008), 209-223.
• “Mystery and Mastery: Philosophical Reflections on Biblical Epistemology,” in The Bible and Epistemology, ed. by Mary Healy and Robin Parry (Carlisle, England: Paternoster Press, 2007), 181-198.
• “Restlessness as an Image of God,” in Communio 34 (Summer 2007): 264-91.
• “Truth and the Christian Imagination: The Reformation of Causality and the Iconoclasm of the Spirit,” in Communio 33 (Winter 2006): 521-39.
• “Homer’s Truth: The Rise of Radiant Form,” Existentia: An International Journal of Philosophy 16.3-4 (2006): 161-82.
• “What’s the Difference? On the Metaphysics of Participation in Plato, Plotinus, and Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 5.3 (2007): 583-618.
• “The Redemption of Eros: On Benedict XVI’s First Encyclical,” Communio 33 (Fall 2006): 374-98.
• “Toward a Non-Possessive Concept of Knowledge: On the Relation Between Reason and Love in Aquinas and Balthasar,” Modern Theology 22.4 (October 2006): 577-607.
• “‘Wie kommt der Mensch in die Theologie?’ Hegel, Heidegger, and the Stakes of Ontotheology,” Revista Española de Teología 65 (October-December 2005): 437-65.
• “Surprised By Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental Theology,” in La missione teologica di Hans Urs von Balthasar: Atti del simposio internazaionale di Teologia in occasione del centesimo anniversario della nascita di Hans Urs von Balthasar, Lugano 2-4 marzo 2005, ed. A. -M. Jerumanis, A. Tambolini (Lugano: Eupress FTL, 2005), 131-50.
• “Reason in Mystery: Balthasar’s Gestalt and the Augustinian Paradox,” Second Spring: An International Journal of Faith & Culture 6 (2004): 23-33.
• “Going Down: Founding Reason in The Republic,” Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 9.1 (2001- 2003): 81-132.
• “The Community of the One and the Many: Heraclitus on Reason,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 46 (December 2003): 413-48.
• “Freedom Beyond Our Choosing: Augustine On the Will and Its Objects,” in Augustine and Politics, eds. J. Doody, K. Hughes, and K. Paffenroth (New York: Lexington Books, 2005), 67-96.
• "‘Wie kommt der Mensch in die Theologie?’: Heidegger, Hegel, and the Stakes of Onto-Theo-Logy," Communio 32.4 (Winter 2005), 437-465.

Book translations

• Homo Abyssus: The Drama of the Question of Being, by Ferdinand Ulrich (Washington, D.C.: Humanum Academic Press, 2018).
• (with Jeanne Heffernan Schindler) A Robert Spaemann Reader: Philosophical Essays on Nature, God, and the Human Person, by Robert Spaemann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• (with Albert Wimmer) Romano Guardini: Reform from the Source, by Hans Urs von Balthasar (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010).
• (with Nicholas J. Healy) Man Before God, by Adrienne von Speyr (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009).
• (with F.D. Wieck) The Perfection of Technology, by Friedrich Georg Juenger (Alethes Press, 2007).
• The Book of All Saints, vol. 1, by Adrienne von Speyr (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008).
• Love Alone Is Credible, by Hans Urs von Balthasar (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004).
• Light and Images: Elements of Contemplation, by Adrienne von Speyr, with an introduction by Hans Urs von Balthasar (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004).
• (with Brian McNeil) The Laity and the Life of the Counsels, by Hans Urs von Balthasar (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004).
• A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope, by Bernard Schumacher (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004).
• (with Charles Mann) We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, by Madeleine Delbrêl (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2000).
• (with Pamela Morris) The Heroic Face of Innocence: Three Stories, by Georges Bernanos (GrandRapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1999).
• Prayer: The Mission of the Church, by Jean Daniélou (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Pub.Co., 1996).

Media

• A lecture on "Dignitatis Humanae and the Common Good," at the John Paul II Institute (February, 2013).
• A lecture on "Wonder as the Final End," at Villanova University (April, 2013).
• A lecture on "The Labor of Love: John Paul II and the Sanctity of Work," at Villanova University (March, 2014).
• A lecture on "Locke's Revision of the Will: Binding Freedom to Power," at the Center for Ethics and Culture Conference, Notre Dame, IN (November, 2015).
• A lecture on "Love and Beauty--'The Forgotten Transcendental'--in Aquinas," at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN (2016).
• A lecture on "Intentionality and the Transcendent Ends of Consciousness," at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study colloquium on “Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature" (March, 2016).
• A lecture on "Beauty in the Tradition: Hans Urs von Balthasar," at the Hildebrand Project's summer summer seminar in Steubenville, OH (2017).
• An interview with Schindler at the Hildebrand Project seminar (Summer, 2017).
• A panel discussion of Freedom From Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty at the University of Notre Dame (March, 2018).
• A lecture on "Freedom from Reality," at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, New York (December, 2018).

External links

• Faculty website: https://www.johnpaulii.edu/academics/faculty/d-c-schindler.

Category:1970 births Category:21st-century American philosophers Category:Neoplatonists Category:Living people Category:metaphysicians Category:Roman Catholic philosophers Category:Roman Catholic writers Category: Commentators on Plato