Name: Dr. Victor M. Salas
Subject: Philosophy
First year teaching at Sacred Heart: 2007
What are you working on right now that excites you?
I am presently completing a book devoted to Francisco Suárez's doctrine of being. Deo volente, it will be the first book-length, English-language study devoted to this central aspect of his metaphysical thought, and it capitalizes upon the interest in Suárez that has been steadily growing in the Anglophone world.
What's something that makes you love teaching SHMS students?
SHMS students have a distinct openness to having a Catholic worldview in all of its aspects (intellectual, cultural, liturgical, aesthetic, etc.) fashioned and cultivated within them.
What inspires you in your teaching?
I’m inspired by the concreteness of our human facticity. Education is not a matter of taking core courses; much less is it about learning outcomes and/or course objectives. Such minutiae can obscure the fact that teaching is the personal interaction with another person. As such, teaching carries within itself the entire drama of human existence.
What makes SHMS unique among higher learning institutions?
Sacred Heart is unique in that many students have a counter-cultural worldview, which makes them disposed to critical analysis of competing theories and points of view. In short, they are mostly freed from the totalitarianism of ideology.
What's one of your favorite memories from your time at Sacred Heart?
Years ago, before Bishop Battersby was made a bishop, I recall a class when he spilled the same cup of water — with the same water! — three times in a row!
How do you see the Holy Spirit at work at Sacred Heart?
With subtlety.