At the beginning of the 2025-26 academic year, Vice-Chancellor of St Mary’s University, Twickenham Prof Anthony McClaran welcomed the establishment of the first gifted chair in the University’s 175-year history, The Wolfgang Smith Chair in Philosophy.
Catholic businessman and philanthropist Mr Mark Bruce-Smith personally funded the new chair in Philosophy, which will oversee the development of philosophical programmes within the University’s School of Theology and the Arts. Dr Sebastian Morello, a Catholic scholar and author, has been appointed to the new chair.
Dr Morello has lately been focusing on what he calls “the growing ‘re-enchantment’ debate”, which he says, “is really a debate about feasible worldview options amid the observable collapse in confidence in the hitherto prevailing reductionist account of the world that shaped modernity”.
Professor Anthony McClaran commented, “It is good to welcome the first externally funded Chair in the year in which we are celebrating the 175th anniversary of the founding of St Mary’s. The appointment of Dr Morello is excellent news, which will further strengthen our growing School of Theology.”
Mr Bruce-Smith proposed naming the chair in honour of Professor Wolfgang Smith, a mathematician, scientist, philosopher, and Catholic mystic who died last year.
Smith was noted for his robust criticisms of “scientism”, dedicating much of his scholarship to demonstrating how physics requires a metaphysics to render its findings explicable. Moreover, Smith contended that findings in post-Newtonian, quantum theory were accommodated better by a classical-realist metaphysics drawing on Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and medieval scholasticism than by any of the reductionist accounts which still tend to dominate contemporary discussions in physics.
Mr Bruce Smith said: “It is my honour to underwrite the first privately funded chair at St Mary’s University. With Dr Morello in post, the Wolfgang Smith Chair in Philosophy will explore the crossroads of science, classical metaphysics, and the Christian intellectual tradition, and hence help to address the ‘meaning crisis’ that characterises our age”.
The Wolfgang Smith Chair in Philosophy will be dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom especially in relation to those key areas to which Smith himself contributed, highlighting where further fruitful work is yet to be done. Those areas of enquiry are primarily: 1) the dialogue between, and reconciliation of, modern science with classical philosophy; 2) the creative dialogue between the Catholic intellectual tradition and the great spiritual and philosophical traditions of the world; and 3) the retrieval of Christian wisdom as integral to the wider Catholic worldview.
Head of the School of Theology and Catholic Mission at St Mary’s said Dr Jeremy Pilch said, “This is an excellent and exciting development. Relaunching Philosophy at St Mary’s has been a desire, and this endowed chair makes this possible. Offering a distinctive philosophy degree which is consonant with our Catholic theology programmes is a really positive step forward. Being able to welcome Dr Morello to the university is a great pleasure; he is a real asset and a great addition to our faculty.
“In addition, the research focus on Wolfgang Smith’s work, centring on the interface between modern science, metaphysics, and the Catholic faith, significantly contributes to the mission of the university in re-evangelising our secularised culture”.
Speaking of his appointment, Dr Morello said, “The establishment of this chair, of which I’m delighted to be the incumbent, is the first move towards St Mary’s University becoming the UK’s heart for studies in the classical philosophical tradition which has been persistently fostered by the Catholic Church, of whose mission in this country St Mary’s University is a key part”.
“In an age in which young people in particular are said to be in a ‘meaning crisis’, amid what has been called a rising ‘re-enchantment debate’, wherein there is an observable collapse in trust towards materialist assumptions that have endured through the stages of modernity, the establishment of such a chair—with its associated programmes and research—could not be more fitting in an institution such as St Mary’s University
“I am really looking forward to overseeing the launch of the new philosophy BA next year, as well as supporting post-graduate philosophy students in their research and the production of their theses”.
When asked what will distinguish the study of philosophy at St Mary’s University in comparison with other universities throughout the country, Morello said, “My hope is that, in the future, any prospective students who want to study philosophy as a classical discipline—as a path of initiation into wisdom, in which students come to understand and make their own the greatest insights of the greatest thinkers of our civilisation—will consider studying at St Mary’s University before they look anywhere else”.