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Action, Thought, and Decision-Making - Dr. Joshua Hochschild

The Thomistic Institute

Dr. Joshua Hochschild asks how action, thought, and decision-making fit together, and he shows that prudent choice is the uniquely human act that unites intellect, desire, and moral formation under the guidance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This lecture was given on June 25th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. Keywords: Action, Choice, Decision-Making, Gifts Of The Holy Spirit, Moral Virtue, Practical Reason, Prudence, Rational Choice, Thomas Aquinas, Virtue