The APRA Conference has been convened annually since 2008, and is usually held mid-year at a different location within Australasia. The aim of the Conference is to bring together academics and graduate students working within the fields of philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies and allied disciplines to discuss and debate a wide range of topics in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.

Keynote Speakers

Professor Herman Philipse (University of Utrecht, Netherlands)
Professor Michael Ruse (Florida State University, USA)
Professor John Bishop (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Professor Peter Forrest (University of New England, Australia)

Other Speakers

Professor Purushottama Bilimoria (UC-Berkeley/Melbourne University)
Professor James Franklin (University of NSW)
Dr Bruce Langtry (University of Melbourne)
Professor David G. Santos (University of Beira Interior, Portugal)
Dr Jeremy Shearmur (Australian National University)
Dr Lloyd Strickland (Manchester Metropolitan University, Great Britain)

This Conference is intended to provide a formal occasion and central location for philosophers and scholars of the Midwest region (and elsewhere) to present and discuss their current work on Aristotle’ and his interpreters in ancient, medieval and contemporary philosophy.

Please see website for more information.

Ever since Descartes, the soul understood as immediate mental consciousness has tended to stand as a last bastion securing religious belief against naturalistic reduction. But today that bastion is under assault from the ‘new atheists’. However, the bastion is proving very hard to storm, with increasing numbers of even atheist thinkers denying that its capture by neuroscience will ever prove possible. Meanwhile, more subtle naturalisms are arguing that the body and the environment as well as the brain are involved in thinking processes. Thus we are seeing the emergence of a tripartite debate between lingering dualism, outright denial of the reality of mind and various accounts of mind-body unity, sometimes embracing panpsychism. Within this third option there exists scope to revisit traditional, pre-Cartesian monothesitic accounts of the soul as the form of the body as well as the site of an immortal spark of reason. This debate is of crucial cultural significance, because, if the last bastion cannot be stormed, it will throw the intellectual coherence of naturalism into doubt and encourage a new intellectual boldness on the part of believers. Since most people assume, against naturalism, the reality of things like free will, intentionality and love, it might well be that religion, rather than scientism, will soon be generally perceived as more aligned with common sense. For if mind and soul are not readily derivable from below, must they not rather be derivable from above? The topic of this conference therefore could not be more crucial and timely.

Featuring: John Behr, Terrence Deacon, William Desmond, John de Gruchy, Jonathan Lowe, Iain McGilchrist, John Milbank, Nancy Murphy, Marilynne Robinson

See website for additional information and details.

Presented by the Departments of Philosophy at the University of Denver and Marquette University and the University of Denver’s Center for Judaic Studies

July 10-12, 2013 at the University of Denver

Organizers: Prof. Sarah Pessin (University of Denver) & Prof. Richard C. Taylor (Marquette University)

This Conference is intended to provide a formal occasion and central location for philosophers and scholars of the Arabic / Islamic, Jewish and Latin Christian philosophical traditions of the Middle Ages to present and discuss their current work in medieval philosophy.

First held at Marquette University in 2008, this Summer Conference alternates between the University of Denver and Marquette University.

Please see website for more information.

“Kierkegaard in the World” celebrates the 200th anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth by examining the ways in which the world figures in his thought, and the ways in which his thought has entered the world.

Kierkegaard’s work is rightly seen as a corrective of “worldliness,” but he is equally attuned to the necessity that the life of faith appear in the world (not in monastic retreat from it). This conference aims to explore how worldly life is transformed by Kierkegaard’s insights. How does the Kierkegaardian subject appear in the world? What about the incognito: Is it a form of strict invisibility or does its counter-worldliness paradoxically show up in the world? Kierkegaard is a thinker of transcendence, but is there a Kierkegaardian theory of immanence? The priority of subjective truth is obvious in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, but what of his theory of objective truth? How would subjective truth make its way in the world? How would it be embodied or transmitted? What implications does Kierkegaard’s thought have for political orders, cultural artefacts, communicative strategies, or the founding and perpetuation of traditions? How might Kierkegaard’s work intersect with various world religions? And how has Kierkegaard’s own thinking been translated, transmitted, and given expression in contexts across time and space?

The conference organizers are pleased to announce keynote lectures from:

C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University)
Kevin Hart (University of Virginia/Australian Catholic University)
Daphne Hampson (Oxford University)
Charles Guignon (University of South Florida)
John Lippitt (University of Hertfordshire)

In recent decades, an increasing number of philosophers in the so called “analytic tradition” have begun to produce exciting philosophical work on topics belonging traditionally to the provenance of systematic theology. The Analytic Theology Project is a multinational four-year endeavor that contributes to this development in a creative way. It funds systematic research to promote long overdue interdisciplinary cooperation among analytic philosophers and theologians. All research initiatives aim at examining the traditional questions of theology from the perspectives of contemporary Christian theology and analytic philosophy. In this way new advances at the intersection of both fields shall be explored. Moreover, the project will critically reflect on possible limits of analytic approaches and will consider the value of complementary philosophical approaches for theological research.

Among the main grant activities for achieving the goals of the project, the 10-day Summer Schools provide younger scholars with a survey of methods of analytic philosophy and theology as well as training in key topics in Analytic Theology. In addition the seminars aim to develop professional relationships among younger scholars in the interest of long-term collaboration and mutual intellectual support as their careers progress.

The Summer School 2013 will be held at Mainz (near Frankfurt/Main) and will focus on the issue of Theological Realism. It proceeds from the observation that the debate initiated by analytic approaches to the Philosophy of Religion can be characterised by three areas of discussion: the relation between the Philosophy of Religion and other philosophical disciplines, the connection between Philosophy of Religion and Theology and finally the correlation between the Anglo-American and the Continental Philosophy. The Frankfurt Summer School will serve as a forum to discuss the problem of Theological Realism as a test case with regard to all of these fields.

Confirmed Speakers:
Philip J. Rossi SJ, Marquette University (USA)
Genia Schönbaumsfeld, University of Southampton (UK)
Sami Pihlström, Collegium for Advanced Studies Helsinki (Finnland)
Merold Westphal, Fordham University (USA)

Deadline for submission: April 15, 2013. For more information, please visit the website.

The BSPR’s Tenth Conference: Atheisms. September 11-13, 2013.

Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Pamela Anderson (Oxford)
Professor Stephen R. L. Clark (Liverpool)
Professor Owen Flanagan (Duke)
Professor Robin Le Poidevin (Leeds)

Buddhists, Epicureans, Christians, Pantheists, Materialists, Liberal Humanists, Transhumanists, Nietszcheans and Idolaters have all at different times been content to be called “atheists”, and even the most ardent of “New Atheists” will insist that they need have no “positive” beliefs, except to reject whatever God or notion of God it is that they oppose. There need therefore be no one doctrine or way of life identified as “Atheism”. The question is rather what forms of life and thought are to be reckoned “atheistical” and why they might (or might not) seem attractive.

Nor need the rejection of whatever God or Gods are in question always be a matter of intellectual conviction rather than politics (as anti-clericalism) or broadly “spiritual” practice (requiring the rejection of any authority superior to the individual’s own will, or to the State’s judgement).

Please see website for additional information and details.

Psychology and the Other Conference 2013
The Interhuman and Intersubjective: An Intersection of Discourses

Eric Fromm bemoaned the divorce of psychology from philosophical and religious traditions and, in many ways, this artificial separation from our historical and conceptual siblings has only increased. The purpose of this organization is to provide venues that enrich conversations at the intersections of philosophy, psychology, and theological/religious studies, particularly emphasizing scholarship around the notion of the “Other.” The term “Other” constitutes a shared space for continental thought, theology, and a variety of psychological discourses. This phenomenon bears significantly on ethical, epistemological, and phenomenological scholarship in each of these fields. As an interdisciplinary organization housed in and graciously supported by Lesley University’s Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, we are committed to developing conferences and publications that explore the rich discourses that have emerged around the concept of the “Other” in various intellectual traditions, ranging from phenomenological work like that of Emmanuel Levinas to the work of John Zizioulas in theology or that of Jessica Benjamin in psychoanalysis.

Plenaries

Lewis Aron (New York University)
Tina Chanter (DePaul University)
Simon Critchley (New School for Social Research)
Donna Orange (Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity)
Ann Pellegrini (New York University)
Malcolm Owen Slavin (Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis)

Other featured and invited speakers:

Jessica Benjamin (New York University)
Scott Churchill (University of Dallas)
Philip Cushman (Antioch University)
Ruella Frank (Center for Somatic Studies)
Mark Freeman (College of the Holy Cross)
Sue Grand (New York University)
Lynne Jacobs (Pacific Gestalt Institute/Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis)
Claire Katz (Texas A&M)
Dennis Klein (Kean University)
Richard Kearney (Boston College)
Lynne Layton (Harvard Medical School)
Ana-Maria Rizzuto (PINE Psychoanalytic Center)
Jean-Marie Robine (Institut Français de Gestalt-thérapie)
Donna San Antonio (Lesley University)
Gordon Wheeler (Esalen Institute)

Numerous pre-conference workshops, as well:

Donna Orange: The Suffering Stranger (October 3rd, $250)
In this pre-conference workshop, Donna Orange will bring a philosophical (and clinical) eye toward five major thinkers in psychoanalysis – Sándor Ferenczi, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, D. W. Winnicott, Heinz Kohut, and Bernard Brandchaft – investigating the hermeneutic approach of each, engaging these innovative thinkers precisely as interpreters, and as those who have seen the face and heard the voice of the other in the ethical sense.

Why the Other? A Philosophical Survey (October 3rd, $250)
How similar is the other to the self? How does her suffering rank alongside the suffering of the self? What assumptions can be made about the other person based on my own experiences? To what degree does the suffering of the other person render me responsible?

This workshop will contextualize the critical question of the other, with particular attention to the appearance of psychology in the trajectory of western thought about otherness. Psychology appears during the heyday of modern philosophy, at a point in time when alterity and debt were frequently subordinated to grand metaphysical systems. Philosophy has come to challenge these systems, which Emmanuel Levinas considers “totalizing” and “violent,” setting up an important conflict within the fields of psychology.

Tracking Emergent Experience: Gestalt Therapy at the Intersection of the Interhuman & the Intersubjective (October 2nd & 3rd, $300)
This pre-conference workshop introduces participants to contemporary gestalt therapy as an experiential practice at the intersection of the interhuman and intersubjective. Not only will participants learn the relevant concepts of contemporary gestalt therapy, but they will also experience them directly as the workshop develops. Participants will learn by doing how gestalt therapy tracks emergent experience. They will become familiar with how contemporary gestalt therapy focuses on various kinds of meetings of the self and other, which is called “contacting.” These meetings are the basis for gestalt therapy as an approach at the intersection of the interhuman and intersubjective. This workshop will offer a lasting support for the participants since they can take the relationships they form and the concepts they understand with them for the rest of the conference. Implications for psychotherapy, philosophy, and theology will be explored. Didactic, experiential exercise, and discussion will be employed.