Peter Bolland

If empathy is the ability to understand and feel the feelings of another, how is it different from sympathy? Is empathy innate or is it learned? Was our capacity for empathy selected by Darwinian evolution as a desirable trait that enhances our survival? Or was empathy built into human nature by a benevolent Creator? Why do some people seem to have so little of it, while others effuse empathy through their every pore? What role does the consciousness of empathy play in the establishment of moral norms, and even our political stances? And what’s up with Narcissists and psychopaths? Join us for this fascinating and timely investigation into the nature of empathy.

For millennia, philosophers have wondered about love. It is obviously a central, formative and essential human experience. But what is it exactly? What are the different kinds of love? What kinds of errors occur when we mistakenly conflate or mistake one kind of love with another? Do we misuse the word “love?” What are the distinctions between compassion, altruism, aesthetic appreciation, erotic attraction, family or tribal bonding, personal need, pathological obsession, kindness, etc.? Working with classical sources and contemporary examples we will examine the experience of love from a number of perspectives and bring clarity to the complex and multi-faceted phenomenon of love.