In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink, Mario Ramos-Reyes, and Christopher Zehnder discuss philosophy, the family, and politics with Mark Spencer. He’s an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). He and his wife Susanna are the parents of four children. He writes on the nature of the human person, beauty, and natural theology. Prof. Spencer’s first book, The Irreducibility of the Human Person: A Catholic Synthesis, is forthcoming from The Catholic University of America Press.

Could you begin by telling us a bit about your students?

Some wag has said that “Philosophy bakes no bread” (assorted “yahoos” have said worse). Why are your students taking philosophy courses?

Teaching and scholarship go together! What do you bring from your first book to the courses you teach?

What does it mean to be a phenomenological Thomist?

Solzhenitsyn, following Dostoyevsky, believed that beauty will save the world. What do you make of this claim?

You draw on the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand, a political exile. How did he come to flee his country?

Philosophy and politics go together, as Plato taught. How did you discover the American Solidarity Party?

Do you see the American Solidarity Party as expressing Catholic Social Teaching?

Some say that the American Solidarity Party is too intellectual and too Catholic to gain traction in our “interesting times.” What’s your reaction to this charge?

Why did you resume cross-country skiing after 20 years? Is there a link between your doing so and your concoction of the perfect martini?