Thinking Inside and Outside the University: Zena Hitz on the Inner Life

A discussion with Professor Zena Hitz (St. John's College), moderated by Professor Jared Ortiz (Hope College). Originally broadcast as a live online event November 10, 2020. In a world where efficiency and utility are the standards by which we measure success, how do we appreciate what resists quantification? And at a moment of institutional change and instability for higher education, what do we hold onto? In her new book, Lost in Thought, Zena Hitz lays out the case for the inner life as a good in itself. Today, when even the humanities are often defended only for their economic or political usefulness, Hitz says our intellectual lives are valuable not despite but because of their practical uselessness. Within or without institutional structures, the intellectual life offers a source of meaning and fulfillment. In this webinar conversation with Jared Ortiz, Hitz will elucidate the hidden pleasures of contemplation, assess the possibilities for its re-emergence in the contemporary university, and debate whether figures as dissimilar as the Virgin Mary, Albert Einstein, and Malcom X can be said to participate in a common intellectual activity.