Monthly Archives: October 2025

Russell Johnson at the Philosophy of Religions Workshop

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Russell Johnson
Assistant Instructional Professor, Associate Director, Undergraduate Religious Studies Program and Core Sequence, UChicago Divinity School
“Why Write a Philosophical Dialogue?” book chapters from Opposites Attract (forthcoming)
 
Thursday, November 6th, 5:00 PM, Swift Hall, Room 207
 
The workshop will consist of a brief introduction followed by discussion. We will focus on pre-circulated book chapters, which can be accessed here.
Abstract
This is a draft of the opening chapters of a forthcoming book on dialogue and dialectic, followed by an outline of some later chapters. The audience for the book is undergraduate students who are taking a course in philosophy, communication studies, rhetoric, or theology. At present, I am not aware of any accessible primers on dialectic for that readership, so this book is being written to invite novices into the dialogical tradition. I welcome any input you have, but I would especially solicit comments and questions about the definitions I offer of dialectic and the thirty reasons I provide for why someone would write a philosophical dialogue. Are there other dialogues I should engage with, or other affordances of the genre I neglected? Does the connection between political polarization and philosophical dialogue make intuitive sense? What else needs to be said to help students not feel disoriented when they encounter the term “dialectic” in the wild?
 
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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Halley Haruta (haruta@uchicago.edu) or Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Joe Troderman at the Philosophy of Religions Workshop

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Joe Troderman
MA student, UChicago Divinity School
“Ajase’s Salvation: re-examining evil in Shinran’s soteriology through his application of the Nirvana Sutra”
 
Friday, October 31st, 12:30 PM, Swift Hall, Room 200 
(unusual time and location)
 
The workshop will consist of a presentation, followed by discussion and Q&A. With the author’s permission, the paper is attached in this email and is also accessible here 
Abstract
 
This paper examines Shinran’s radical reframing of evil within the context of Pure Land Buddhism, particularly in relation to Other Power (他力 tariki). Drawing on Tiantai and Pure Land sources such as Zhili, Genshin, Shandao, and Tanluan, it argues that Shinran articulates a vision of “thoroughgoing commitment” in which Amida’s vow universally infringes on all possible acts, leaving no remainder of jiriki (self-power). In Shinran’s soteriology, evil is not overcome through human effort—indeed, any effort to overcome evil is itself evil, entangled in greed, anger, and ignorance. Instead, Amida’s vows operate as the sole guarantor of liberation, extending even to those who commit the five gravest transgressions. This stance marks a decisive shift from earlier Chinese Pure Land interpretations by rejecting the salvific efficacy of auxiliary practices and radicalizing exclusive reliance on Amida’s primal vow.
The paper demonstrates this through a close reading of Shinran’s creative manipulation of the story of Ajase in the Nirvana Sutra. By reinterpreting Ajase’s patricide and eventual salvation, Shinran foregrounds the paradoxical dynamic by which the deepest expressions of evil are already encompassed by Amida’s compassionate activity. In doing so, Shinran both affirms the universality of Buddha-nature and dismantles the notion of moral qualification for salvation. This reading also demonstrates that Shinran’s distinctive soteriology resonates with Tiantai Zhiyi’s nuanced response to antinomianism: evil is neither negated nor excused but enfolded within the workings of a vow that renders all beings, without exception, the site of liberation.
 
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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Halley Haruta (haruta@uchicago.edu) or Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Yeti Kang at the Philosophy of Religions Workshop

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Yeti Kang
PhD student, UChicago Divinity School
“The Dual and The Fourfold: Heidegger’s Pre-Socratics and Xiong Shili’s 熊十力 Pre-Qin Confucianism”

Thursday, October 9th, 5:00 PM, Swift Hall, Room 207
 
The workshop will consist of a presentation, followed by discussion and Q&A. With the author’s permission, the paper is attached in this email and is also accessible here.
Abstract
This paper juxtaposes Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) and Xiong Shili’s 熊十力 (1885–1968) engagements with archaic thought to examine how each reconfigures the relationship between difference and non-duality in the mid-twentieth century. It traces Heidegger’s interpretations of Anaximander from his 1932 lecture The Beginning of Western Philosophy to his 1946 essay “The Saying of Anaximander,” alongside Xiong’s engagement with the Yijing (易經) and Mahāyāna Buddhism from the 1932 New Treatise on the Uniqueness of Consciousness (新唯識論) to the 1958 Ti yong lun (體用論). The analysis identifies a synchronic transition in both philosophers from a “paradoxical doubling” to a “self-reflexive fourfold,” where duality simultaneously inhabits both difference and non-duality. Section (iii) presents a diagram of their respective fourfold, not to establish a definitive comparative framework, but to expose the tension between philosophy and the history of philosophy. Finally, the paper situates these tensions within Heidegger’s entanglement with National Socialism and Xiong’s alignment with Revolutionary Confucianism (革命儒學), thereby grounding their philosophical configurations within specific political-historical contexts.
 
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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop. Please contact Workshop Coordinators Halley Haruta (haruta@uchicago.edu) or Yeti Kang (hkang01@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.