John Marvin

MA Student, Philosophy of Religions in the Divinity School

Edward Nelson vs. Arithmetic: God, Iconoclasm, and the (In)consistency of PA 

This paper examines the final mathematical work of Edward Nelson, his attempted proof of the inconsistency of Peano arithmetic and primitive recursive arithmetic, fo- cusing on its philosophical framing and its admitted religious motivations with consid- eration of both his theologically adjacent writings and his account of a visionary expe- rience. The paper outlines the mathematical and philosophical significance of Nelson’s attempted proof, and clarifies the relationships among that project, his mathematical formalism, and his religious convictions. The article situates Nelson’s thought in terms of its inheritance from Catholic Aristotelianism, iconoclastic and apophatic discourses, and its relationship to post-20th-century foundational debates. This paper will try to address concerns including: how would one be driven by religious convictions and experiences to heterodox positions in the philosophy of mathematics, and why would one feel it necessary to make dramatic technical discoveries to defend such convictions, as Nelson did? The body of this paper presents Nelson’s work and thought in a man- ner accessible to the engaged mathematical layperson, offering a simplified intuition for keystone ideas from modern logic when necessary, with more rigorous and precise discussions offered for interest and accuracy in frequently referenced appendices. The article is intended to be a comprehensive account of Nelson’s final writings and their reception, providing mathematical specialists with a unified resource for the historical and philosophical details surrounding Nelson’s proof attempt as well as with a lucid but sufficiently technical presentation of the proof’s strategies, and, for scholars in other fields, serving as an introduction to and a vignette of a previously inaccessible, philosophically significant event in very recent mathematical history. 

The paper may be accessed here.

Tuesday, November 10th, 12:30 PM

Hosted by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop at the University of Chicago. To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, please email Tyler Neenan (tjneenan@uchicago.edu)

Mat Messerschmidt

PhD Candidate, Committee on Social Thought

The Nietzschean Body and “Incorporation”

with a response by David Kretz,

PhD Student in the Committee on Social Thought & Germanic Studies

In this chapter I examine Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, observing how Heidegger’s sense of Nietzsche’s philosophy as a “detheologization” of Christian thought depends on the notion that both Protestant Christianity and Nietzsche participate in the continual advancement of a subjectivist metaphysics, a process that culminates in the Nietzschean “body,” the last Western “subject.” Through a critique of Heidegger’s understanding of “incorporation [Einverleibung]” in Nietzsche’s work, I argue that the Nietzschean detheologization that takes place in his notion of the body in fact does not make Nietzsche an unwilling participant in some Christian metaphysics, as Heidegger believes; rather, the Christian legacy in Nietzsche’s body is an emphasis on a human finitude that has more resonances in Heidegger’s own thought than Heidegger would care to admit.

Tuesday, October 13, 12:30 PM

Virtual Meeting via Zoom

To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, please contact Rebekah Rosenfeld at rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu.

The paper may be accessed here. Note: The workshop will be discussing pgs. 19-43.

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Tyler Neenan (tjneenan@uchicago.edu) or Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Tyler Neenan

PhD Student, Philosophy of Religions

“The Jiji / Weiji Dyad and the End of the Changes”

Wednesday, April 22, 12:30 PM

Virtual Meeting via Zoom

Please contact rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu for Zoom link and dial-in.

Tyler’s paper may be accessed here.

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) or William Underwood (wunderwood@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

William Underwood

PhD Student, Philosophy of Religions

“On the Jewish Question”: Marx at the End of Reason

with a response by Samuel Catlin,

PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature & Religion, Literature, and Visual Culture

Monday, February 24, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

Refreshments provided

William’s paper may be accessed here.

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) or William Underwood (wunderwood@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Samuel Catlin

PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature & Religion, Literature, and Visual Culture

Syllabus Design and Teaching Portfolio Workshop: “Masters of Suspicion: The History of ‘Critique’ and Contemporary Debates in Hermeneutical Theory”

Monday, February 10, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

In this workshop, we will look at a syllabus-in-progress for an upper-level undergraduate seminar in comparative literature, continental, philosophy, and/or religious studies (including the philosophy of religions), titled “Masters of Suspicion: The History of ‘Critique’ and Contemporary Debates in Hermeneutical Theory.” I will supply beforehand the syllabus as well as excerpts from two of the readings, which should be read in advance of the workshop.

The purpose of a syllabus-design workshop is double. The syllabus is in the very roughest stage of conception and I am seeking constructive feedback about the course objectives, structure, readings, etc. Going in the other direction, the workshop contributes to the professional preparation of current pre-candidacy PhD students by giving them a chance to look at a component of most academic job portfolios, the sample syllabus, and learn about the process of developing such syllabi (how many? at what levels? What course content?) as well as the role these documents and related pedagogical materials play in positioning oneself on the academic job market. To that end, the PR Workshop has planned this workshop specifically to benefit pre-candidacy PhD students working at the intersection of (continental) philosophy, religious studies, and/or literary theory.

The course is intended for advanced undergraduates with a working familiarity either with major trends in continental philosophy since the 17^th century or with contemporary literary theory. The course treats the notion of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” as it gets articulated in the 1960s by Paul Ricoeur and Michel Foucault; the syllabus aims to situate this notion in a longer genealogy of post-Enlightenment “critique” (especially the critique of religion) and to interrogate the recent, increasingly widespread push for “post-critical” reading in literary studies over the last two decades (e.g. R. Felski, B. Latour, H. Love, S. Marcus and S. Best, F. Moretti, The Point, the later E.K. Sedgwick). I want this course to accomplish three related objectives:

(1)   to get students reflecting about the relationship between the modes of critical reading in which their education has trained them and, by denaturalizing the genealogy of critique, religious modes of engagement with texts against which such critical reading has historically been defined;

(2)   to think seriously about the relationship – genealogical and phenomenological – between “suspicion” and “charity” as hermeneutical and ethical principles;

(3)   to acquaint students with of-the-moment theoretical and methodological debates in the study of literature, especially as these bear on philosophy and religious studies.

Finally, as you shall see on the syllabus document itself, the course is divided in two parallel streams: various short theoretical and philosophical texts, on the one hand, and on the other a single, particularly difficult literary work which the class will read very carefully with an eye toward its explicit thematization of the hermeneutics of suspicion and the unrestricted economy of charity – Herman Melville’s late novel The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade.

Lunch provided

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) or William Underwood (wunderwood@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Daniel Wyche

PhD Candidate, Philosophy of Religions

Georges Friedmann: From the Great Disequilibrium to the Interior Effort

Monday, January 27, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

Refreshments provided

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) or William Underwood (wunderwood@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Ryan Bingham

PhD Student, Religion, Literature, and Visual Culture

Grammēsis: Time and Writing in Derrida’s “Ousia and Grammē“

Monday, November 11, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

Lunch provided

Ryan’s paper may be accessed here. Please contact rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu for password.

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) or William Underwood (wunderwood@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

David Newheiser

Australian Catholic University

A Pessimistic Politics of Hope

Monday, November 4th, 12:30 PM, Swift Common Room

Lunch Provided

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) and William Underwood (wunderwood@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.

Peter Chen

MA Student, Divinity School

a this and a that: atheism and interpretation

Monday, October 21, 12:30 PM, Swift 200

Lunch provided

Peter’s paper may be accessed here

The Workshop on the Philosophy of Religions is committed to being a fully accessible and inclusive workshop.  Please contact Workshop Coordinators Rebekah Rosenfeld (rrosenfeld@uchicago.edu) or William Underwood (wunderwood@uchicago.edu) in order to make any arrangements necessary to facilitate your participation in workshop events.