Lectures for spring 2025

At the end of 2024, Greater Good Magazine identified two studies—(1) testing the effectiveness of a DIY workbook to promote forgiveness in five high-conflict countries with about 4,600 people and (2) reporting on a campus-wide forgiveness campaign that transformed a Colombian secular university—as one of the top health- and well-being-related scientific insights of 2024. This research started in a counseling supervision room at VCU in the 1980s, and it developed through over 30 randomized controlled trials and international use. How did this happen? In this talk, Dr. Worthingon reflects on his career path as a case study, with the hope that his experience will have broad application for those developing any career they are pursuing.

Everett L. Worthington, Jr., Ph.D., is Commonwealth Professor Emeritus working from the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he holds an affiliate appointment. He also holds a Faculty Affiliate appointment at the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University (Human Flourishing Program). He continues to be active in research and speaking around the world. He is a licensed Clinical Psychologist in Virginia. He has published 48 books and over 500 articles and scholarly chapters, mostly on forgiveness, humility and positive psychology, marriage, and family topics, and religion and spirituality. He also has developed the REACH Forgiveness model (see www.EvWorthington-forgiveness.com for free resources), supported by over 30 published randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and has recently been tested in global grant-funded RCTs in 5 countries (six sites; N = 4,598). Greater Good Magazine (from Berkeley) picked it as one of the top 10 scientific insights regarding health for 2024 [see article here; see also his 2024 TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07XCCVY-3ds&ab_channel=TEDxTalks (TEDxYouth@rva)]. He has developed numerous other positive psychological interventions. 

For fun, Ev ballroom dances and competes in pickleball singles and doubles. He and Kirby have been married since 1970.

In this talk, I will discuss two philosophical anthropologies: one of agency (homo sapiens) and one of passivity (homo patiens). For biological and sociological reasons, the former has dominated human self-understanding. Recent technology, culminating in generative AI, threatens to make a passive anthropology plausible. If this happens, whole swaths of people may outsource the activities that make up life and instead seek a passive existence as subjects of experiences. I discuss current cultural dynamics that make this option attractive. To avoid this, we need properly attuned affective powers, including a healthy sense of disgust. This forms the basis of my anthropological argument for a liberal education. In the age of AI the liberal arts can no longer be justified via economic marketability. Instead they will need to be valued for their formation of students into persons who can use leisure well and who feel a proper disgust for homo patiens.

Dr. Adam Blincoe earned a BA in philosophy at Wake Forest University, a Masters of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary, a Masters of Philosophy from the University of Kentucky and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Virginia. His specialty is Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. His most recent publications treat the intersection of technology and human flourishing.  Outside of academics, Adam enjoys (not in order of importance): reading, hot sauce, liturgical participation, playing with his kids, and having long conversations with his wife, Dr. Sarai Blincoe.