A First Things Partner Feature

released 5/8/2026

In this lecture, Bishop Robert Barron explores the anthropological crisis at the heart of the modern university. A misanthropic and inherently unstable view of human nature comprised of ideas from Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Sartre has estranged students from learning that aligns with a genuine human capacity to seek truth and experience wonder. The result is an intellectual life “transformed from a common search for truth into a contest of competing identities and narratives.” Barron praises Josef Pieper for recalling us away from a pedagogy of despair and toward a Christian humanism that addresses and honors the fullness of our being and of reality. Students today need this renewed vision, Barron argues. Pieper counters the reigning “pedagogy of despair” with “an alternative picture that rings truer” and that leads to real human flourishing.

This lecture is provided courtesy of First Things. It was delivered as the First Things 2026 Neuhaus Lecture at New College of Florida. The full title of the lecture is “Recovering the University’s Soul: Christian Humanism Against the New Nihilism.” An essay of the lecture can be found here on the First Things website.

46 minutes

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