Aug 31, 2026 · 1 hr 24 min · 13 segments
To mark the opening of applications for Ralston College's 2027–28 MA in the Humanities, President Stephen Blackwood and Provost David Butterfield sat down on Samos to discuss the theme of the coming…
Stephen BlackwoodHostDanHostNeedless to say, it's one of the great pleasures of my life to have you as a colleague and indeed to be able to spend my time speaking in a community such as this.
We might take it for granted, thinking that this kind of gathering, talking about these sorts of things happens everywhere, every day, but I can tell you factually it is rare to be in a community that has such a shared sense of mission and curiosity as Rolston.
That word curiosity is one to keep in mind because it's going to be a major theme in what I have the pleasure of talking about today.
Cupid and Psyche, you may have heard of those names, you may indeed have heard of the tale, you may know the tale back to front, but as I will reveal, that tale is a mere internal part of a bigger work, and that work is a very strange outlier of one of the most remarkable figures from the ancient world, this man called Apuleius.
And it was this phrase that Aristotle, in his metaphysics, drops in the middle of his discussion.
He says, That is to say, the question that then, now, and always is asked, and yet always leaves us in doubt without an answer, is this.
What is being? What is reality? Now, the bad news is I am not one of the great philosophers of the Western world, and I won't be able to help you with that ontological problem.
But the good news is I will be focusing on a different question, which to someone of mere mortal powers such as me, is much more important in our diurnal lives.
And it's a question I genuinely ask myself each week and often every single day.
What is it to love and to be loved? It's genuinely one of the great mysteries of being human, but also one of the great joys.
And that question, what is love, is literally at the heart, the beating heart of what I will be talking about today.
He's living under the Roman Empire, as almost everyone was in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia at the time.
Needless to say, it's one of the great pleasures of my life to have you as a colleague and indeed to be able to spend my time speaking in a community such as this.
We might take it for granted, thinking that this kind of gathering, talking about these sorts of things happens everywhere, every day, but I can tell you factually it is rare to be in a community that has such a shared sense of mission and curiosity as Rolston.
That word curiosity is one to keep in mind because it's going to be a major theme in what I have the pleasure of talking about today.
Cupid and Psyche, you may have heard of those names, you may indeed have heard of the tale, you may know the tale back to front, but as I will reveal, that tale is a mere internal part of a bigger work, and that work is a very strange outlier of one of the most remarkable figures from the ancient world, this man called Apuleius.
And it was this phrase that Aristotle, in his metaphysics, drops in the middle of his discussion.
He says, That is to say, the question that then, now, and always is asked, and yet always leaves us in doubt without an answer, is this.
What is being? What is reality? Now, the bad news is I am not one of the great philosophers of the Western world, and I won't be able to help you with that ontological problem.
But the good news is I will be focusing on a different question, which to someone of mere mortal powers such as me, is much more important in our diurnal lives.
And it's a question I genuinely ask myself each week and often every single day.
What is it to love and to be loved? It's genuinely one of the great mysteries of being human, but also one of the great joys.
And that question, what is love, is literally at the heart, the beating heart of what I will be talking about today.
He's living under the Roman Empire, as almost everyone was in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia at the time.
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