Summer Seminars
Exploring Foundational Questions
Each year, institutions from across FEHE’s extensive network host a wide range of summer seminars for high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and young professionals.
Ranging in subject matter from moral philosophy to modern bioethics, and metaphysics to marriage, our summer seminars offer a vision of human flourishing at both the individual and the societal level. The seminars offer unique opportunities for rigorous study of classical traditions and contemporary questions, conducted in a spirit of intellectual friendship, free inquiry, interdisciplinary study, and truth-seeking.
Summer Seminars Schedule 2023
- For High School Students
Moral Life and the Classical Tradition
The Witherspoon Institute
June 11-17, 2023
A week-long program for students interested in the ancient philosophical tradition and its influence on the Christian moral life.
- For High School Students
Human Meaning and the Moral Life
The Austin Institute
June 11-17, 2023
A highly interactive week-long seminar that explores fundamental philosophical questions concerning what it means to be human.
- For High School Students
How to Be Happy: Leisure, Festivity, Art, and Contemplation
The Collegium Institute
June 26-28, 2023
A three-day seminar that explores the question of happiness through seminars and panel discussions, music and exhibits, and communal service and feasting.
- For High School Students
Happiness, Virtue, and God in Philosophy and Literature
The Houston Institute
June 26-30, 2023
A seminar that explores ancient and medieval visions of the crucial elements of a life that is happy in a deep way: virtue or moral excellence, friendship in its various modes (including marriage as a distinctive type of friendship), and knowledge of God.
- For High School Students
Principles of American Politics
The James Madison Program, Princeton University
June 26-30, 2023
A one-week seminar that invites students to study the fundamental questions of equality and liberty in American political life.
- For High School Students
Ethics and Happiness
The Zephyr Institute
July 17-21, 2023
A week-long summer camp that invites students to explore philosophical questions about what we ought to do and what will make us happy.
- For High School Students
Pursuing the Common Good in the Digital Age
The Abigail Adams Institute
July 31-August 4, 2023
A week-long seminar that invites students to study the fundamental questions of democracy and equality within the context of a rapidly changing technological society.
- For Undergraduate Students
Medical Ethics
The Civil Discourse Project, Duke University
June 15-17, 2023
A seminar that invites students to examine the central ethical questions that arise in the everyday practice of medicine and to interpret those questions through a moral framework drawing from both natural law and medicine’s traditional orientation toward the patient’s health.
- For Undergraduate Students
Theorizing Man & Woman: From Plato to Judith Butler
The Abigail Adams Institute
June 18-23, 2023
A week-long seminar that moves from metaphysics to ethics to politics, asking the following questions with “sex and gender” foremost in mind: Who am I? How am I to live? How are we to live together?
- For Undergraduate Students
Natural Law and Public Affairs
The Witherspoon Institute
June 27-July 1, 2023
A week-long seminar that examines the application of natural law insights to a variety of moral and political issues, including religious liberty and the role of the state; justice in commerce and in communication; just war and capital punishment; abortion and euthanasia; and marriage and sexuality.
- For Undergraduate Students
First Principles
The Witherspoon Institute
July 9-22, 2023
A two-week intensive seminar that examines two topics central to the work of the Witherspoon Institute: the purpose of the university and friendship and marriage.
- For Undergraduate Students
The Machine Has No Tradition
The Abigail Adams Institute
July 9 – 14, 2023
An immersive week-long seminar that studies the essence of technology and life in a technological society, including consideration of how technology is reshaping our souls and our society and what a humanistic approach to technology might look like.
- For Undergraduate Students
Foundations of Modern Political Economy
The Abigail Adams Institute
July 16 – 21, 2023
A seminar that invites students to examine the fundamental ideas that shaped our open societies, which are built (at least in theory) on the principles of market economy and constitutional democracy.
- For Graduate Students and Young Professionals
Medical Ethics
The Civil Discourse Project, Duke University
June 15-17, 2023
A seminar that invites students to examine the central ethical questions that arise in the everyday practice of medicine and to interpret those questions through a moral framework drawing from both natural law and medicine’s traditional orientation toward the patient’s health.
- For Graduate Students and Young Professionals
Theorizing Man & Woman: From Plato to Judith Butler
The Abigail Adams Institute
June 18-23, 2023
A week-long seminar that moves from metaphysics to ethics to politics, asking the following questions with “sex and gender” foremost in mind: Who am I? How am I to live? How are we to live together?
- For Graduate Students and Young Professionals
Natural Law and Public Affairs
The Witherspoon Institute
June 27-July 1, 2023
A week-long seminar that examines the application of natural law insights to moral and political issues, including religious liberty and the role of the state; just war and capital punishment; abortion and euthanasia; and marriage and sexuality.
- For Graduate Students and Young Professionals
Statesmanship in American History
The James Madison Program, Princeton University
July 16-21, 2023
A seminar that allows up to 20 high school teachers to participate in a weeklong professional development event on the study of statecraft.
- For Graduate Students and Young Professionals
Moral Foundations of Law
The James Madison Program, Princeton University
July 24-28, 2023
A one-week seminar that covers some of the most contested areas of inquiry in legal philosophy today, including legal positivism, practical reason, human good and positive law, morals legislation, pluralism, crime and punishment, property, and rights and duties.
- For Graduate Students and Young Professionals
Thomistic Seminar
The Witherspoon Institute
July 30-August 5, 2023
A week-long seminar that invites students to think about angels, demons, human beings, and our ideas about what more perfect intellectual activity might be.
