D. C. Schindler

D. C. Schindler is Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at The John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., having previously taught for 12 years at Villanova University as one of the founding members of the Humanities Department. Prof. Schindler has focused his research and writing on the nature of the transcendentals — beauty, goodness, and truth — and their correlates in the human soul, namely, love, freedom, and reason. 

Prof. Schindler is a translator from French and German, one of the editors of the North American edition of Communio: International Catholic Review, and a board member of the Review of Metaphysics, New Polity, and the College of St. Joseph the Worker.  He is also the author of many books, including Love and the Postmodern Predicament (Cascade, 2018), Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame, 2019), and most recently God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics (St. Augustine’s Press, 2023). In addition to his books, he has published more than 70 articles and book chapters, and his work has been translated into six languages. He is currently Vice President/President-Elect of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. Prof. Schindler lives with his wife, the political philosopher Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, and their three children, in Hyattsville, MD. The Schindlers have been deeply involved in the local homeschooling community, and Jeanne has recently brought together a group of families committed to work together to help keep smart phones out of the hands of their children. The group has adopted the name “the Postman Pledge,” after Neil Postman, an early critic of social media and its effects especially on young people.

Dr. Schindler studied the Great Books as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, received a Master’s degree in theology at the John Paul II Institute, and then completed his education with a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy at The Catholic University of America. After teaching for twelve years at Villanova University, first as a teaching fellow in philosophy and then as a founding member of the Humanities Department, Dr. Schindler returned to Washington, DC to teach philosophy courses at the Institute. 

Click here to see a list of books by D. C. Schindler

Links to posts and programs featuring D. C. Schindler:

  • Truth, goodness, and beauty (and why they matter) —
    FROM VOL. 147
    Philosopher D. C. Schindler examines how postmodernism poses a unique threat to our sense of an interior self. (28 minutes)
  • The Symbol of Authority — In the second of two lectures given by D. C. Schindler, he explores the nature of authority with reference to the transcendental dance of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. (60 minutes)
  • The profound drama of human sexuality — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler explains the cosmological significance of human sexuality and why it is paradigmatic of the relationship between nature and freedom. (32 minutes)
  • The nature of freedom reconsidered — In anticipation of this Fall’s Areopagus Lecture entitled “‘For Freedom Set Free’: Retrieving Genuine Religious Liberty,” we present selections from interviews with three MARS HILL AUDIO guests who have raised questions about the modern understanding of freedom. (27 minutes)
  • The interiority of reality —
    FROM VOL. 132
    D. C. Schindler discusses the thought of contemporary German philosopher Robert Spaemann, and his defense of a purposeful structure in nature. (28 minutes))
  • The hatred of logos — D. C. Schindler draws on Plato to argue that in its very form, social media evidences a general contempt for logos — reason and language — which defines man. (26 minutes)
  • The gift of meaningful work — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that genuine work is inherently meaningful and facilitates an encounter with reality and therefore, ultimately, with God. (36 minutes)
  • The dramatic ecstasy of reason —
    FROM VOL. 120
    D. C. Schindler argues that the Enlightenment was not wrong for giving too much to reason; it was wrong in endorsing an impoverished conception of reason. (19 minutes)
  • The collapse of public life —
    FROM VOL. 154
    D. C. Schindler explains how liberalism sought to make way for individuals to function together without any orientation to an explicit common good. (37 minutes)
  • The Authority of the Symbol — In this lecture presented at the CiRCE Institute national conference, D. C. Schindler presents a metaphysical description of what symbols are. (54 Minutes)
  • Speaking the word in love — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler examines core insights from Ferdinand Ulrich on the central vocation of man and the meaning of being. (32 minutes)
  • Social media is hate speech — D. C. Schindler argues that much modern speech effectively expresses contempt for that which language (and reason) have been given to us: Truth. (33 minutes)
  • Recovering the meaning of reason — James Peters discusses how Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Pascal, and many others understood the nature and purpose of reason quite differently from the common modern understanding. Also, D. C. Schindler explains how consciousness and reason necessarily involve reaching outside of ourselves. (24 minutes)
  • Politics and the good —
    FROM VOL. 160
    D. C. Schindler argues that political order cannot be disentangled from the social, and that fundamental questions of what humans are and what the good is cannot be bracketed from politics. (30 minutes)
  • Personhood and the gift of the self — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler examines the concept of self-gift which was central to Karol Wojtyła’s thought. (39 minutes)
  • Perceiving the common good during a pandemic — D. C. Schindler reflects on the shape of our way of life in wake of a killer virus, seeing signs both encouraging and sinister. (35 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 160 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jessica Hooten Wilson, Kyle Hughes, Gil Bailie, D. C. Schindler, Paul Tyson, and Holly Ordway
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS: Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 147 — FEATURED GUESTS: R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 142 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, Jeffrey Bishop, Alan Jacobs, D. C. Schindler, and Marianne Wright
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 132 — FEATURED GUESTS: David I. Smith, Susan Felch, D. C. Schindler, Malcolm Guite, and J. A. C. Redford
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 120 — FEATURED GUESTS: Douglas Rushkoff, Phillip Thompson, Jonathan Wilson, James Bratt, D. C. Schindler, and Paul Elie
  • Knowing by heart — D. C. Schindler reflects on Plato’s idea of “conversion” in education, assuming the symbol of the heart as the center of man. (39 minutes)
  • Is liberalism compatible with religious freedom? — D. C. Schindler relies on two Thomistic axioms to illustrate why liberalism — which claims to offer a minimalist conception of the common good — is ultimately incompatible with a Catholic understanding of religious freedom. (34 minutes)
  • In the image of our devices? — In light of the history of the meaning of intellectus, D. C. Schindler questions the use of the word “intelligence” to describe systems employing large language models. (18 minutes)
  • Governments officially committed to ignorance — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler explains why authority, properly understood, is essential to genuinely human life. (39 minutes)
  • Freedom, real and counterfeit — D. C. Schindler contrasts the classical and Christian understanding of freedom with the modern understanding of freedom, and explains how true freedom is a condition of harmony with reality. (59 minutes)
  • Freedom, ancient and modern — In a brief excerpt from David Bentley Hart’s book Atheist Delusions, and a longer excerpt from an Areopagus Lecture by D. C. Schindler, the modern view of freedom is contrasted with the understanding of freedom present in ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman thought. (27 minutes)
  • D. C. Schindler: “For Freedom Set Free” — D. C. Schindler argues that the Christian notion of religious liberty is a synthesis of the Jewish, Roman, and Greek traditions. (61 minutes)
  • D. C. Schindler on Robert Spaemann — On this Friday Feature, Ken Myers talks with philosopher D. C. Schindler about philosopher Robert Spaemann’s work in general and his defense of anthropomorphism in particular. (14 minutes)