Monthly Archives: February 2016

Benjamin Y. Fong – “Religion and the Mind: The Co-Delimitation of Concepts in the Eighteenth Century”

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Benjamin Y. Fong (Assistant Collegiate Professor, The College, University of Chicago)

“Religion and the Mind: The Co-Delimitation of Concepts in the Eighteenth Century”

Wednesday, March 9th, 4:30 pm

Swift 106

Refreshments served

In The Meaning and End of Religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith famously argued that the concept of “religion” gained its contemporary meaning in the Enlightenment.  In this paper, an expansion of Smith’s basic contention, I will attempt to demonstrate the immense importance of the new theory of a bodily, mortal, and fallible mind that emerged in the eighteenth century to the delimitation of the concept of religion.  Couching Smith’s argument in the history of psychology allows us to see more clearly what precisely is involved in the Enlightenment “reification” of religion, and also to better understand the basic features of the category of religion that contemporary religious studies scholars have come to know and lament.

[The paper will be distributed in advance of the event via the Workshop’s listerv]

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to maintaining itself as a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinator Anil Mundra (amundra@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Zeke Goggin: “The Idea of Sacrifice in Hegel’s 1793 ‘Volksreligion’ Fragment”

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Wednesday February 17th, 4:30pm Swift Hall 106

ABSTRACT:

This paper will focus specifically on some fragments which Hegel began while studying at the Stift in Tübingen and likely completed during a visit home to Stuttgart.  The question of sacrifice arises at the height of a characteristically dialectical difficulty which the young Hegel has not yet developed a logic to conceptualize.  The treatment of sacrifice here indicates certain persistent themes in Hegel’s thought which are sometimes taken to be wholly attributable to the interventions of Hölderlin and Schelling, but which in the context of the Volksreligion Fragment appear some three years prior to the the former, and almost a decade prior to the latter.

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to maintaining itself as a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinator Anil Mundra (amundra@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.