Sean will be reading this draft paper. Workshop attendees are not required to read it in advance; but feel free to do so if you want, or to bring it and read along at the Workshop.
Tuesday, February 17, 4:30 pm
Swift 201
Abstract:
In recent years, certain philosophical circles have come to revolve around a shared interest in reviving the project of what they’d like to call realism, materialism, or ontology. This movement is no monolith. Conversations have grown up around the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour, the Badiou-inflected materialism of Quentin Meillasoux, and the Heidegger-influenced ontology of objects put forth by Graham Harman. What ties these disparate threads of thought together is the goal of somehow moving past a state of intellectual gridlock, which has supposedly stalled the momentum of movements tracing their roots back to German Idealism and phenomenology. The way to do this, according to many, is to take away the privilege accorded to the human subject in order to treat all ‘things’ as ontologically equal.
One of the liveliest voices in the field belongs to Tristan Garcia, a young French novelist and philosopher whose substantial work—Form and Object: a Treatise on Things (Edinburgh UP, 2014)—has just been translated into English. Garcia’s take on things has, even more recently, turned towards time as a suitable topic for post-idealist or post-phenomenological speculation. In his article “Another Order of Time: Towards a Variable Intensity of the Now” (Parrhesia 14 [2014], 1-13). Garcia offers up a new theory of temporality that, in his estimation, will allow us to move beyond the inadequate theories once offered up by idealism, phenomenology, and even Anglo-American ‘analytics.’
Throughout the article, Augustine of Hippo appears as a foil. In the account of temporality given in Book XI of Augustine’s Confessions, Garcia finds a precursor to the phenomenology of time as inaugurated by Edmund Husserl. And yet, while Garcia’s approach to time comes off as fresh and thought-provoking, it’s not entirely clear that he’s adequately dealt with the questions posed both by Augustine and the phenomenological tradition. Most specifically, he fails to appreciate the degree to which certain thinkers—Augustine not least among them—were willing to dethrone the ‘present’ from its privileged position at the center of temporality. This paper, then, aims both to sketch out Garcia’s doctrine of time and to push back against it from the perspective of Augustine’s critique of the present. It might turn out that the question of the now has less to do with intensity or intension than with what Augustine called ‘distension.’
Tuesday, February 3, 4:30pm (Location TBA)
Abstract:
“In this paper, my aim is to articulate the nature of William James’ debt to and divergence from the ideas of his student Edwin Diller Starbuck through an analysis of the latter’s The Psychology of Religion conducted in light of the “Conversion” lectures in the Varieties of Religious Experience. As I will demonstrate, The Psychology of Religion was not simply “source material” for James, who actively edited Starbuck’s work as he presented it. My hope is contribute to a fuller understanding of James’ Varieties while introducing the work of a mostly forgotten figure in the history of the study of religion, but it is perhaps more importantly to show that the psychology of religion in America, at its inception, was not defined by a single trajectory.”
Tuesday, Jan 20, 4:30 PM, Swift 201
Abstract:
“Situations of religious diversity seem to raise special epistemological demands. How does one establish epistemic authority in the face of fundamental disagreement? In India, where religious diversity has been a fact of life for all of recorded history, interreligious debate and disagreement was formative of a number of interesting philosophical solutions to such problems. The Jains, best known for their ethics of non-violence, took the problem of disagreement so seriously as to ask: How can one be free of contradiction in the face of religious rivals, even as those rivals contradict each other? I will examine how a Jain locus classicus attempts to solve this problem through a dialectically synthetic epistemology that stands out in the Indian panorama, and remains provocative as well as potentially appealing to contemporary sensibilities.”
presents
Suggested pre-workshop reading:
“Editorial: In Guise of a Miracle,” Pamela Sue Anderson. From Sophia (2014) 53:171-181.
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The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is pleased to welcome Oxford’s Pamela Sue Anderson to the University of Chicago on Wednesday, January 7th, 2015. Professor Anderson will be discussing the future of philosophical reflection on religion and the methodological challenges that the future poses. For instance, do we need to create new concepts? This would be to replace the dominant focus on traditional theism and the omni-perfect God. But it is also to raise questions about the social and material locatedness of the concepts which have been used, as if they were inclusive and ‘neutral.’ Another example of where this conceptual issue could take our discussion is whether we should be focusing more on religious practices; and if so, how do we ensure that these practices are not mystifying; that is, empty of content?
Russell Johnson (PhD Student, Philosophy of Religions) will respond
Lunch will be served
Abstract:
This paper will attempt to lay out some theses for the task of doing theology after Kant and in the spirit of his philosophical work. In particular, I am interested in the problem that faces any would-be Kantian theologian of how to offer a theological account of things like God, or the immortality of the soul, or human freedom. Kant sees these sorts of ideas as necessary postulates of reason which can, however, never become objects of knowledge for us. Yet in many cases, theologians do not consider ideas like these from such an epistemological remove. Ideas which according to Kant are merely regulatory for theoretical knowledge and at most objects of faith are, for theological inquiry, often treated as objects of knowledge. Can theology engage these objects (systematically, critically, and theoretically) as objects of theological knowledge without thereby abandoning the original Kantian framework of human knowledge limited to the categories of understanding? And what resources are available within Kant’s Critiques for dealing with these theological ideas as objects of theological knowledge?
Abstract:
In this paper I argue that Hegel’s account of self-consciousness marks a break in the phenomenological method of “immanent” criticism, and that this is instructive for the self/no-self debate in that it points the way to a concept of socially achieved selfhood which would not constitute an exclusive disjunction between conceptions of the self as real, substantial, and enduring self-identity on the one hand, and the self as transient, contingent, and epiphenomenal on the other. Both “self” and “no-self” would be moments of the concept in the process of adjudicating claims about what selves are as well as shaping them in concrete social practices –particularly those which have a renunciative character, and which Hegel describes in terms of sacrifice. I then consider possible criticisms of Hegel’s position, namely those which we might draw from Heidegger’s analysis of temporality and those explicitly given in Derrida’s account of mechanical memory and dialectical “conservation.” I will finally argue that Hegel’s account of ritual and repetition provides a rejoinder to their critiques which may serve to reconcile their objections to a Hegelian intention. I conclude by suggesting that the “sacrificial” and ritualistic character of these social processes –which performatively resist an exclusive disjunction between the positive and negative assessments of the epistemic and ontological status of selfhood –serve to locate Philosophy of Religions, specifically, in a unique and privileged position with regard to the question of selfhood.
Swift 208 – 4:30pm, adjourning afterwards to The Pub at Ida Noyes
Abstract:
Cross-cultural inquiries of the self in philosophy of religions can proceed to frame the philosophical distinction between ‘self’ and ‘no-self’ as a cultural distinction—between some Western religious traditions and some Eastern religious traditions. One of the more obvious examples that can apply this cultural analysis is the comparative study of the Christian self as part of the Western tradition and the Buddhist non-self as an Eastern practice. What kinds of philosophical and political problems emerge, however, when one religious tradition is historically saturated with cultural dissonance and multiplicity—that is, when the cultural encounter or dissonance between ‘East’ and ‘West’ occurs not between religious traditions, but within (and sometimes, because of) one religious tradition? When the Orthodox Church emerges as a distinct Christian tradition in the East? Or when contemporary Buddhist practices take root in North America or Europe, or when Christianity spreads (through missionary or colonial activity or for other complex reasons) over the East? Defending the significance of culturally and politically embodied historical moments, this paper considers the philosophical complexities of culturally heterogeneous religious traditions by undertaking a specific case study of selfhood and agency in twentieth century Korean Christianity. The first part of the paper will sketch the historical elements opened up by theories of the Christian self in the West by considering contemporary works in philosophy of religion that examine modernity and subjectivity. The second part of the paper will then reflect on the implications of displacing and re-constituting those questions of the Christian self in another cultural context. Finally, I hope to open up further methodological questions concerning the political implications of cross-cultural inquiry in philosophy of religions.
For more information or accessibility assistance, please visit http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/philofreligions/
We’ve added a “Links” page to our website! Here we’ve linked to associated workshops and organizations. Hopefully, with time, the list will grow in keeping with our commitment to interdisciplinarity!
Please feel free to peruse this new (and oh so exciting) content.
In anticipation of what is certain to be a lively and stimulating talk, please check out this video from 2006 of Amy Hollywood‘s inaugural lecture as Harvard Divinity School’s Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies. The talk was entitled “Acute Melancholia.”
Now that your intellectual appetite is whetted, we hope you will join us for prof. Hollywood’s talk this Friday at UChicago’s Swift Hall!
Amy Hollywood’s talk “On the True, the Real, and Critique in the Study of Religion” on Friday, October 10th at 3pm in the Common Room in Swift Hall.