President’s Lecture Series: “Mercy and Justice in Political Life: Augustine, Seneca, and Nussbaum”

Professor Sarah Byers, Ph.D. will lecture on Mercy and Justice in Political Life: Augustine, Seneca, and Nussbaum in the context of Augustine’s letters to Roman magistrates and other bishops concerning the distinction between ‘compassion’ and ‘mercy,’ the importance of justice, and the moral rightness and wrongness of various kinds of punishment (including cases of human trafficking and the use of torture by the government). 
Prof. Byers is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston College, whose research interests include St. Augustine, Hellenistic philosophy, and the history of ancient and medieval ethics and metaphysics. Through her vast catalog of scholarly work, Prof. Byers has become a specialist in Augustine and ancient and late philosophy. 
At Boston College, Prof. Byers teaches a number of courses including Ancient Greek Philosophy, Augustine and Perspectives, and Western Culture.
Prof. Byers has written a book titled, Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis. She has also published a number of articles including Augustine’s Debt to Stoicism in the Confessions, Augustine and the Philosophers, Augustine and the Cognitive Cause of Stoic Preliminary Passions (Propatheiai) and The Meaning of Voluntas in Augustine as well as many book reviews.
Prof. Byers earned a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Toronto and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.