AMA president James Jacobs (Philosophy, Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans) opened the conference with welcoming remarks and a lecture on, “The Wheat and the Tares: Political Crises and the Discernment of the Natural Law.” Drawing on Catholic social teaching and Maritain's understanding of the clarification of the natural law through history, Jacobs considered moral considerations that ought to guide responses to the global immigration crisis.
The conference hosted four keynote addresses. Steven D. Smith (University of San Diego Law School) delivered the first keynote on the evening of Friday, March 20, “Reading the Signs of the Times: Sorokin, MacIntyre, Maritain," placing Maritain's evaluation of modernity in conversation with that of sociologist Pitirim Sorokin and philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. Smith then considered issues in the history of legal theory within the critical framework provided by the above thinkers. Christopher Kaczor (Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University) delivered the second keynote on, "A Thomism for Today: Learning from McCormick, MacIntyre, and McInerny,” considering the scholarly virtues embodied by Richard McCormick SJ, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Ralph McInerny, each of whom Kaczor studied under during his doctoral work at Notre Dame. Kaczor especially encouraged conference attendees to draw on their intellectual tradition to engage problems of general consequence, to communicate ideas concisely and eloquently, and to exhort students to true excellence in the classroom.
In the third keynote, John Finley (Thomas Aquinas College) presented on "Aquinas in the Contemporary Age: Human Integrity and Dissolution," placing Aquinas's understanding the soul as the substantial form and principle of unity in the human being with Robert Sokolowski's phenomenology of the human person. In the fourth and final keynote, Edward Feser (Philosophy, Pasadena City College) discussed, "The Epistemology of Microphysics," arguing that the conception of analogical predication that is central to Thomistic natural theology also should guide how physicists discuss the existence and properties of particles hypothesized by mathematical physicists.
Denis Scrandis, a longtime member of the AMA, received the Founders' Award for his service to the association. Kathleen Curtis (Faulkner University) received the award for the best graduate student paper on, "Maritain on Poetry, Meaning, and the Human Soul.”
The Maritain Center looks forward to hosting the AMA's 50th annual meeting on Notre Dame's campus on April 8-10, 2027. Details will follow nearer the time of the event.