A Conversation with Dean Lewis: Insights, Vision and Future of the School of Philosophy

Since its formal inauguration in 1895, the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America has been at the forefront of shaping generations of philosophers, scholars, and intellectuals. As the only ecclesiastical faculty in the United States, it remains dedicated to engaging with every major philosophical discipline while advancing a distinctly Catholic vision of philosophy in the modern era.

To explore the school’s profound legacy and evolving mission, Dennis Strach, director of Diocesan Engagement at The Catholic University of America, sat down with V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D., the newly appointed dean of the School of Philosophy.

A faculty member since 1997, Dean Lewis specializes in political and legal philosophy, with a focus on classical Greek political thought and the theory of natural law. He holds degrees from the University of Maryland and the University of Notre Dame and has established himself as a prominent voice in both philosophical and legal scholarship.

He has published scholarly articles in Polity, History of Political Thought, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Communio, The Josephinum Journal of Theology, The Pepperdine Law Review, The Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, and the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, as well as chapters in several books. He was the associate editor of the American Journal of Jurisprudence from 2005-2024 and is currently working on a book project provisionally titled The Common Good and the Modern State. In addition to his teaching and research, Lewis is a fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology.

Now, as dean, he envisions elevating the School of Philosophy to the preeminent Catholic philosophical faculty in the world. “The international reputation of the School of Philosophy is the fruit of our faculty’s dedication,” he says. “We have the foundation—and the potential—to build on this legacy.”

In the conversation that follows, Dean Lewis shares his insights on the school’s impact, its academic mission, and the path ahead.

The following is the written version of the conversation. To hear the entire interview, in audio format, click here.

Dennis Strach: 
Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Dennis Strach and I'm the director of Diocesan Engagement at the Catholic University of America. And today I'm joined by Dean Brad Lewis, Dean of the School of Philosophy. Dean Lewis is currently in the middle of his first year as Dean, but he has spent more than 25 years of his academic career here at the national University of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Dean Lewis, it's a pleasure to have this opportunity to learn more about you and your vision for the School of Philosophy. Thanks for joining us today. Your scholarly work has been recognized through a number of grants, honors, and awards, notably the Marianne Remick Fellowship from Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture and the Earhart Foundation Research Fellowship Grant.

You've served as the Associate Editor of the American Journal of Jurisprudence for the past 19 years. You co-directed the Institute for Human Ecology's program in Catholic political thought.

Take me back to the beginning, and tell me a little bit about your early years, your upbringing, your family. Where did you grow up?

Dean Lewis: 
I grew up not far from here, in Montgomery County in Maryland. I went to the public schools there and, eventually, to the University of Maryland. I lived in the area and, after I was at graduate school I didn't really ever expect to come back, but, fortunately it worked out that way.

Dennis Strach: 
You went on to earn your bachelor's degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland. Maybe looking back on that time in your life, your early academic career, your college years, what did you imagine that you might be doing one day, professionally speaking, and why political theory?

Dean Lewis: 
Well, I don't think I thought about this. At that time when I started, my interest was really in practical politics. And I'd worked in political campaigns and had an interest in politics. When I started college, my plan was politics. It was the early 1980s and what I really wanted to do was kind of fight the Cold War.

I was studying international relations, Russian language and history. I wanted to take the Foreign Service exam and work at the State Department as a diplomat. But, in studying those things, I took some classes in political philosophy along the way and I became increasingly interested in politics. You know, not just practical politics, but really what the first principles of political life and political morality and political ethics were.

I came to think that those things, to me at any rate, were far more interesting, than the things that I had started with. So, I increasingly just focused on studying political philosophy and went to graduate school. Instead of what I had originally planned on doing, I went to graduate school to study.

Dennis Strach: 
For our audience, Dean Lewis attended the University of Notre Dame. where he earned both his master's and doctorate degrees in government and international studies. Dean Lewis, after your doctorate, you land here at Catholic University as an assistant professor. There're many places you could have ended up. Why did you choose to teach at Catholic University?

Dean Lewis: 
The academic job market, as many people may know, is not the easiest market to navigate. So, you apply for a lot of  jobs, and then you hope that you get an interview. And ultimately, a job, and I applied for a lot of jobs.

I didn't even think of applying for this job. A friend of mine showed me an advertisement for it and said, you really ought to apply for this. And I thought they wouldn't hire me. I don't think I'd really have a chance there. But I applied anyway.

It came kind of to my surprise, Dean Jude Dougherty, who was the dean then, called me on the phone and asked me to come for an interview, which I did. Then ultimately he called me, in the middle of a class that I was teaching at Notre Dame and said that they wanted to offer me the job.

So, I was really quite surprised. But it's, you know, one of the best things that, happened to me, is to wind up teaching here and spending my professional life here at The Catholic University of America.

Dennis Strach: 
A particularly special moment in your career here that you come back to often or a unique experience, something that you're most proud of?

Dean Lewis: 
I don't know that there's any – one thing. I mean, there are a lot of things that add up. I've always thought and I've always said the best thing about being here really are the people. I honestly don't think I could have had better colleagues anywhere than I've had here in the School of Philosophy.

The School of Philosophy is a real community. And it's animated by friendship and by an interest in the same things and a real commitment to the work that we do – both in research and teaching. I've really been fortunate to have the colleagues that I have and the deans who've been here before me – Jude Dougherty, Father Kurt Pritzl, and then John McCarthy, who was the dean until this past July. I mean, you know, they're all just wonderful, academic leaders and, and they really have kept the School of Philosophy, the kind of community that it is, and it made it such a wonderful place to work.

Dennis Strach: 
You alluded to this in your last comments, but, of course in May of 2024, President Kilpatrick announced your appointment as Dean of the School of Philosophy, effective July of this past year, 2024.

You've been in this role for a few months now, a full semester, and you've had some time to think strategically about the School of Philosophy.

What is your vision for the school and what would you say are your priorities, priorities that you've set at the beginning of your tenure here as dean?

Dean Lewis: 
The fundamental mission of the school remains what it has been. The way that we all think about this is that we are concerned both as scholars and as teachers to study questions of philosophy, to continue to ask and to think about those questions, both as scholars but also with our students, and to do that in dialogue with the great texts and the great thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition. We do that also with a kind of center of gravity and a kind of common language, which is the Aristotelian tradition, we have a group here of specialists in all kinds of different, eras of philosophy and philosophical thinkers and different subjects, but the language that we kind of speak in common is Aristotle.

And that's been true for a long time. So that basic mission and that orientation of the school, I think that's really what makes it unusual and makes it special. I don't think there's any other philosophical faculty in the country that's quite like it in all the different facets that we have.

So I think what we need to do are some things that will ensure that this project continues into the future and that it's able to improve in various ways. So one thing that we really have to do is get the word out more about what we have here. And also we need more resources, so that, we can do it better.

I'm trying to spend as much time as I can on development, on trying to meet people, and to find people who want to help us, in our work, and to help advance it. In particular, the Basselin Program, which trains some of the best seminarians in the country, but also our doctoral program.

We have a wonderful placement rate for our doctoral students. Most of them get jobs teaching in seminaries and colleges and universities around the country. Those places, especially Catholic colleges and universities and certainly seminaries, really look to us to be able to provide faculty that they can trust, to carry out their own missions.

And I don't think any place does it, better than we do. But we do need more support, to enable us to do that. So that's one aim. Another is, what I call faculty development. Being a little more intentional about helping our faculty to get their research done, to move forward in their careers, to get promoted, to publicize what they're doing better, and to get them more of the resources that they need in order to carry out their own research and teaching more effectively.

And then to think about, what the long term future of the School of Philosophy is and, you know, what areas do we really want to focus on? In the past, we've had a particular excellence in ancient philosophy and medieval philosophy, especially in German philosophy and are there other things that we really should be doing.

Dennis Strach: 
Zooming out just for a second, we talk, across many departments, about the relationship between faith and reason. And maybe from your vantage point, some 27 years supporting the mission here, forming leaders for the church and the nation, what makes The Catholic University of America a unique place to study and grow in one's faith?

Thinking about the diverse audience we have, certainly prospective students tuning in, why is that relationship with faith and reason so essential to our mission here and how we carry it out?

Dean Lewis: 
So I think the main thing there is that the Christian faith is a reasonable faith and that doesn't mean that the great doctrines of the faith, certainly the most important aspects of it, are things that you could simply figure out or discover on the basis of reason.

Obviously the most important things come from revelation. but those truths can be defended by reason. And they need to be defended by reason. They can be better understood on the basis of reason. Rational argument helps to present the faith in a more effective way. That's a notion that's very deeply rooted in our tradition, going back, to early Christian thinkers who almost immediately, made use of philosophy to try to develop the faith intellectually and to pass it on, culminating in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, who's studied, in great detail, here and always has been at Catholic University.

So, that connection between philosophy, but more broadly of the intellectual faith, of the intellectual life with our faith is really crucial, and I think something that's always been very important at Catholic University. I think we occupy a very important space, there are a lot of institutions out there now, colleges, for example, that are very dedicated to their Catholic mission, and they do a very good job at that.

Mainly at teaching and forming undergraduates, in the faith. And there are other institutions, in some cases Catholic institutions, church affiliated institutions that are very fine universities, but where it's not always clear how close the connection is between what they're doing academically and the Catholic faith.

Catholic University has always been a place that's tried to be both, faithfully Catholic, but also a real university dedicated to achieving very high standards of research and scholarship that help us to understand our tradition, to further develop our tradition, and to pass it on, at the highest possible level.

There isn't nearly as much of that as you'd think there would be, and it's a very important mission that I think our University is uniquely fitted to provide.

Dennis Strach: 
The School of Philosophy was formally inaugurated back in 1895, and that was just a few years after the University opened its doors.

But another area that makes the school so unique, along with two other of our schools, with the School of Canon Law and the School of Theology and Religious Studies, the School of Philosophy is accredited by the Holy See, under the Apostolic Constitution Veritatis Gaudium.

And so it's authorized to confer all three ecclesiastical degrees in philosophy. The bachelor's of philosophy, the licentiate in philosophy, and the doctorate in philosophy. To some folks, enjoying this interview, they might not have any concept of the significance of that distinction or what that means.

Dennis Strach: 
So, maybe if you could share with our audience why this is so special and why this is a unique distinction here at the Catholic University.

Dean Lewis: 
It is very important. It's really at the center of what we do, in the University generally, but in the School of Philosophy we offer both civil and ecclesiastical degrees.

We have a B.A., and we have an M.A. and a Ph.D. that are civil degrees, but then we also have the ecclesiastical, versions of all of those degrees. Those degrees are granted, by the authority of the Holy See and the members of our faculty  teach in the name of the Church. I mean, they teach philosophy.

We're not theologians here. We're philosophers in the School of Philosophy. But we do teach in the name of the Church. So anyone who's employed as a faculty member in our school has to have a credential. the missio canonica or canonical mission, that allows them to teach on an ecclesiastical faculty.

And that's, granted with consultation with Rome and through the chancellor of the University. If there's someone who's not a Roman Catholic who's on our faculty, they have a separate credential, a permissio docendi. And then when a member of the faculty is reviewed for tenure, ultimately they have to obtain a nihil obstat from the Dicastery for Culture and Education.

One thing that's important about us is that we have a faculty that's qualified to perform this mission. And there are a couple of reasons why we have it. One is that candidates for ordination to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church have to study philosophy before they study theology.

They have to have 30 hours of philosophy, certainly in the United States and practically speaking, that means they have to be a philosophy major before they study theology. So, about half of our undergraduate majors are seminarians and they take the Ph.B., the pontifical degree, before they then take up the study of theology.

But then some also take the licentiate degree, which is the ecclesiastical degree that corresponds to a master's degree, and that's what allows one to teach in a seminary. Then some, ultimately, also the doctorate. And that means that seminaries hire a lot of our Ph.D.s, but also other Catholic colleges and universities because they can trust that the faculty that they hire from our institution know the Catholic tradition and they can contribute to those institutions' missions of passing it on to their own students.

Dennis Strach: 
It's sort of a subset of that religious formation, a group that we're discussing, here at Catholic. We have the Basselin Scholars Program, and you alluded to this a little earlier. A number of our clergy are graduates of this program. Many of them are alumni bishops as well. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and Bishop Robert Barron, to name a few.

Tell us a little bit more about this program. How did it start and how does it support the formation of future ministers in the church?

Dean Lewis: 
Theodore Basselin was a Catholic businessman, and he left a substantial endowment to Catholic University in order to fund the philosophical education of seminary students in 1913.

And it took a few years for that fund to get going. They started coming in the early 1920s, and the provisions of that endowment seminary students studying philosophy. It covers their tuition and their room and board, at the University seminary. So that they complete a bachelor of philosophy degree, the Ph.B., and then they stay for an additional year, to take the Ph.L., the licentiate in philosophy, so more advanced, graduate training.

They do that before they then move on to take up their theological study. The idea behind this is to take candidates who have exceptional talents and allow them to further develop them and to think more about philosophy, to think more deeply about philosophy. I think for Theodore Basselin in particular, he thought this would make them better preachers and better evangelists.

Think about somebody like Robert Barron and you really can see that and he often talks about the importance of Catholic University and of the Basselin Program to his own education. We still have that program going a hundred years later, and those students are some of the best, intellectually best young men studying for the priesthood in the United States and a lot of very fine clergy have come out of it and many bishops, cardinals.

But also, men who've left study for the priesthood and, but they've gone on to, live as active Catholic laymen and business and law and different fields like that and even, academic life. Two of the most distinguished members of the School of Philosophy's faculty in its history were Basselin students.

Monsignor Robert Sokolowski and Monsignor John Wippel. Monsignor Wippel passed away a little over a year ago, but he was, perhaps, the foremost student of the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas in the world, during most of his career. Monsignor Robert Sokolowski is still teaching, he's 90 years old, and I heard him lecturing upstairs just a little while ago, and he's still very active.

Dennis Strach: 
Switching gears a bit, I'm curious how you might speak to the role that philosophy plays in our modern culture. We know the Church is beginning to understand the implications of synodality. They're starting to, we're starting to, identify specific priorities that are coming out of those meetings in Rome and trying to implement those across the United States.

American Society nowadays is grappling with what it means to truly listen to the other, how the bridge divides when it comes to any number of differences, political divides, socioeconomic divides, racial divides. When it comes to these concepts that are really central to our faith, communion, unity, mercy, listening, what role does philosophy play in our everyday lives?

Dean Lewis: 
I would say there are three, big roles that it certainly plays. One is that, a lot of the ideas, a lot of the way that institutions work that we have have their roots in philosophy. And this is true both in the life of the Church, but it's also true in our civic life.

A lot of our theology, a lot of the way that the Catholic faith is formulated and presented, is related to the thought. For example, of great medieval thinkers, most of whom were Aristotelians of one kind or another. So a lot of those formulations and a lot of the way that they were developed and presented, have a lot to do with the thought of Aristotle and ancient philosophy, in particular.

But in our civic life, this is true too. If you think about just our own American institutions, how connected they are to the thought of early modern philosophers like John Locke or Montesquieu, and in other countries, for example, parts of the world where Marx is very important, and Hegel.

If you really want to understand those things, you want to go to the roots and understand the ideas that they came out of. You know, so that's one reason. The second one simply has to do with living a human life. We were created with the capacity to understand the world.

And, we're not really fulfilled unless we exercise those powers. And one of the ways we do that is by asking the really big questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are things the way they are rather than some other way? Why do we think there's a God? And what is God responsible for?

How should we treat one another? Is it alright to lie? Sometimes? Never? How should we understand that? Issues about life and death, the beginning of life, the end of life. These are big questions that we have to think about to live a properly human life. And they're philosophical questions.

Philosophers just spend more of their time thinking more about those questions that are really the questions of everybody. But then third, philosophy is reason. That's what philosophy is. Really working out the possibilities of reason. Is how we communicate with one another, and how we present our own views. How we understand other people. How we engage in a dialogue with other people.

Catholic University, came into being, in one respect, because of Leo XIII’s  work. That project, was laid out, in his early encyclicals, which revived philosophy within the Catholic tradition, but which also created, what we now call Catholic social teaching.

Those two things are related to one another, because Leo thought that the church had to undertake a dialogue with the modern world and that required it to speak using reason. He thought we really needed to re-embrace our philosophical tradition precisely in order to talk to that modern world in a way that really wasn't happening so much in the 19th century and the end of the 18th century.

I think, you know, we're really in a moment like that now too, when we have a lot of polarization and strong disagreements about that philosophy. It should be a way that we try to make our civic conversation deeper, more respectful, and ultimately more reasonable.

Dennis Strach: 
That certainly sheds light on why philosophy is such an essential part of one's Catholic education here, particularly part of our core curriculum.

It's not just those who are preparing to be priests or ministers in the church or perhaps professors in the realms of philosopher taking philosophy, rather the entire student body.

Dean Lewis: 
Absolutely. Students at Catholic University as part of the liberal arts curriculum have to take three courses in philosophy.

They take two courses in their freshman year that introduce them to some of the classic works in ancient, and medieval and modern philosophy as a way of  preparing them, for the studies that they later undertake and for understanding our tradition. And then they take a third philosophy course, later on.

More than half of our undergraduate majors in philosophy are lay men and women. And I think that philosophical study helps them in a lot of different ways in their lives. I mean, you understand that mostly by talking to them. I think our majors are among the happiest in the University.

That's what they tell us, and that's what we can see in class. But again, that's because asking these questions and thinking about these questions is really a part of a flourishing, human life and it helps you do the other things you do better.

Dennis Strach: 
Well, Dean Lewis, I want to thank you so much for your time and for spending this afternoon with us in conversation.

If you want to learn more about our School of Philosophy here at The Catholic University of America, you can visit our website at philosophy.catholic.edu. Dean Lewis, thank you again.

Dean Lewis: 
Thank you.