Author Archives: goggin

Monima Chadha on Selflessness and Experience in the Abhidharma

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Monima Chadha (Monash University)

“Selfless Minds: An Abhidharma Buddhist Analysis of Experience”

Wednesday, Oct 7th, 4:30 pm

Swift Hall, 106

Abstract:

The Abhidharma view of mind and consciousness emerges as a consequence of the Buddhist doctrines of no-self and impermanence. These two doctrines taken together are not only fundamentally at odds with contemporary science and most Western philosophy but also with our ordinary everyday experiences. This revisionary Buddhist-Abhidharma metaphysics is profoundly counterintuitive. And the Buddhists are acutely aware of this fact. This underlies the Buddhist-Abhidharma drive to develop an accurate descriptive metaphysics of mind. In my paper I provide a rational reconstruction of a Buddhist-Abhidharma account of mind and conscious experience in the absence of mind or any persisting entities. And then I explore whether the sparse Abhidharma ontology can account for the phenomenological and cognitive features of our experience.

Start of the Year Meet-and-Greet!

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Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions

Meet-and-Greet

Wed Sept 30, 4:30 pm Swift Hall – East Lawn

Please join the UChicago Philosophy of Religions Club and Workshop and as we kick-off the 2015-2016 season with a welcome reception. Find out about the Philosophy of Religions program and Workshop, preview this year’s events, mingle with fellow students and enjoy a wide variety of food and beverages.

Check out our website for our Workshop’s Call for Papers, Schedule, and updates!

https://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/philofreligions/

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.

2015-2016 Call For Papers

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 Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions

2015-2016 Call for Papers

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions welcomes proposals for papers, presentations, mock-job talks, and panel discussions for the 2015-2016 Academic Year.  Given the broadly interdisciplinary nature of our endeavor, we welcome work from the Divinity School‘s doctoral programs in Philosophy of Religions or Theology or Ethics, the departments of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, Classics or History, area studies programs such as SALC, EALC or NELC, and so on. The essential criterion for inclusion is a willingness to treat the objects of inquiry with philosophical seriousness, and (what amounts to the same) an interest in mining those objects for lessons of general philosophical import.

Paper or presentation proposals should be submitted to Anil Mundra, Workshop Coordinator (amundra@uchicago.edu) and should be suitable for a 90 minute workshop session (leaving between 45-30 minutes for questions and discussion).  Papers may be distributed to attendees prior to the workshop meeting, but need not be, depending on the author’s preference.  We welcome paper and presentation submissions throughout the year, but please submit your proposal at least 2 months prior to your proposed presentation date.  While each year the Workshop seeks out papers pertaining to our chosen theme, we also welcome papers that do not explicitly address such concerns, particularly work relating to dissertations-in-progress, conference presentations, and mock job-talks.

This year’s theme: Comparison

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions will focus on the theme of comparison during the 2015-2016 academic year.  Throughout the year we will host thinkers who pursue questions including, but not limited to, those regarding epistemological, metaphysical, methodological, ideological, and ethical dimensions of comparison in context of the academy and more broadly.

Many philosophers of religion work comparatively in some way, juxtaposing disparate thinkers, texts, philosophical and religious traditions in hopes of generating a clearer, more critical, or more comprehensive philosophical understanding of religion and the ways that religion accords with and departs from philosophical rationality.  Meanwhile, comparative methods in religious studies have largely fallen out of favor. Critics often charge such an approach to the academic study of religion as distortive at best, violent at worst.  How feasible are such critiques? Without jettisoning the very useful lessons they teach us, is it possible to retrieve a methodology of comparison? Is comparison part and parcel of any rational reflection?  If so, what do these critiques of comparative studies tell us about rationality generally?  Is there a future for religious studies (generally) and philosophy of religion (specifically) which works outside the bounds of comparative frameworks, or is comparativity inescapable, such that we should focus on learning better ways to compare, rather than attempting a cessation of comparison?  We hope to address these and other philosophical questions related to the comparison during the coming year.

Stay Tuned!

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The workshop would like to extend a thank you to all the students, faculty, and visiting scholars who helped to make this year such a success by joining into our ongoing discussion on the intersections of religion and philosophy.

We have yet another exciting and stimulating academic year on the horizon, and can’t wait to see our friends and colleagues for another round of rigorous interdisciplinary conversation!

Please stay tuned to the blog and mailing list for imminent updates, the upcoming schedule, and more!

-The PR Workshop

Eric Ziolkowski on “Kierkegaard and the History of Religions”

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Eric Ziolkowski (Lafayette College)

“Kierkegaard and the History of Religions”

Co-sponsored with the Religion and Literature Club

Thursday, May 21, 3:30 pm

Swift Hall, 106

Abstract:

Kirkegaard’s life coincided with the period that led up to the emergence of comparative religion or Religionswissenschaft, a.k.a. the “History of Religions,” as an academically recognized scholarly pursuit.  This talk considers the bearing of Kirkegaard’s writings, and of their reception, upon the development of HR, mainlty from the early twentieth century up through Eliade.  For better or worse, far from figuring as an irrelevant or theological persona non grata in relation to HR, Kierkegaard was embraced by some of its formative contributors as a datum, as a theorist, and ultimately, in one notable case, as an existential soul mate.

Tyler Roberts on Religion and Critique

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“Reverence as Critical Responsiveness: Between Philosophy and Religion”

Tyler Roberts, Grinnell College

Tuesday May 12, 4:30

Swift Hall, Common Room

Abstract:

A major task of a future philosophy of religion will be to contribute to a post-critical ethos of participation. By “post-critical,” I mean that such a contribution requires philosophers of religion to reimagine the critical relationship between philosophy and religion. By “participation,” I gesture with some hesitation and much qualification to philosophical and religious visions centered on conforming mind and body to God, cosmos, reason or some other fundamental reality through active intellection and receptive contemplation. Today, the idea that we can identify such a reality is properly suspect and so subject to various critical procedures that expose the historical and social construction that produces this “reality.” But even if we agree that it is  imperative to submit all claims for what is ultimately real and authoritative to historicist and other forms of criticism, the question of how we hold together incisive critical thinking and affirmative attachment to or participation in existence remains. Philosophers of religion, because they work at a site of crossing between the philosophical and critical, on the one hand, and the religious and participatory, on the other, have a crucial role to play in working through this question. One starting point is William Desmond’s idea of a “two- way intermediation or communication between religion and philosophy, not just a singular direction from religion to reason.” From here, my paper considers religious dispositions or virtues such as gratitude and reverence as critical disciplines of attention and thoughtful vigilance. I thus seek to counter the modern, but by now well-worn idea that where philosophy and other forms of modern thought are critical, religious thought, grounded in such dispositions, is not.

Dalmar Hussein on Identity and Ideology in Contemporary Somalia

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Somalia in Context: Ideology, Clan Identity, and the Rise of Al-Shabaab in Contemporary Somalia

Dalmar Hussein

Friday, May 1st, 4:30pm

Swift 201

Reception at Ida Noyes Pub to Follow

Abstract:

Surveying Africa-oriented news media and political science literature  for possible causes of Somalia’s cultural and economic deterioration will yield three explanations: the civil war of 1991-1992, warlord dominance following the collapse of the federal government in 1991, and the influx of foreign-born “Jihadists” in the aftermath of American-led, post-9/11 incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq. By themselves, the explanations are not wrong, but they tend to miss something crucial: the social and political roles that clan identity plays in Somalia. By downplaying or ignoring clan identity, accounts about what has caused or accelerated social collapse – as well as proposed remedies for it – are partial at best, missing how clan has been manipulated by various political actors in Somalia to alter the way Somalis view themselves and their neighbors. The aim of my paper is to reintegrate clan (and clan-based identity politics) into the discussion and provide a richer account of the problems Somalia faces today.

 

Matthew Peterson on Jewish Ethics

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Matthew Peterson (MA Student, Divinity)

“Between Halakhah and the Other: Navigating the Scope of Jewish Ethics”

Tuesday, April 14th, Noon

Swift 201

Abstract:

One recurring theme in modern Jewish thought has been the scope of its ethics. That is, upon whom can Jewish ethics make demands, whom can it address, and who may embody Jewish ethics appropriately? To address these questions, this paper puts into dialogue two figures who stand at opposite poles on the spectrum of concern. Emmanuel Levinas, a Jewish philosopher, offers an anthropocentric vision of Judaism that is about responding to the demands of the human Other and is therefore, I argue, universal. In contrast Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, a philosophically-informed authority on Jewish law, offers a fundamentally theocentric view of Judaism, where to be Jewish is to respond to the call of the God of Abraham by following the laws of halakhah, and in this sense I argue its ethics are particular.

Two different positions come out of this conversation: a broad appeal to moral authority grounded in a religiously informed anthropology, and a traditionalist, identity-defined response rooted in religious law. While both positions support moral authority over autonomy, their divergence suggest the need for a more careful distinction between ethics as teleological and concerned with aims, and morals as deontological and concerned with norms. This clarification illustrates a common vision of Jewish ethics as aiming to create a better world through service to others with God in view, yet it also makes apparent two phenomenologically distinct ideas of the Jewish moral life. For Lichtenstein, Jewish morality is only incumbent upon him who is willing to live out the minutiae of a wholly Jewish existence, while Levinas sees Judaism as offering moral resources with which anyone can productively engage. Ultimately, at stake are questions about the applicability of moral norms, their relation to ethical frameworks, and a concern with incorporating tradition into modernity without losing that which constitutes the tradition as such.