3-4 June 2013, Université de Paris – Sorbonne & Institut Catholique de Paris, “Thomas d’Aquin et ses sources arabes / Aquinas and ‘the Arabs'”. Call for papers on Aquinas and the Arabic Tradition. Initial deadline 15 February 2013.
Organizers: J.-B. Brenet, Isabelle Moulin & Richard C. Taylor
The Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group announces a conference on “Aquinas and Metaphysics in the Arabic Tradition” that will be held 7-8 June at Würzburg. The conference is organized by Profs. Jörn Müller, Dag Hasse and Richard C. Taylor.
Among the program presenters are Pasquale Porro, Deborah Black, Dag Hasse, R. E. Houser, Olga Lizzini, Luis López-Farjeat, Richard C. Taylor, and David B. Twetten.
There will be a workshop for Ph.D. students held on Friday 7 June before the evening plenary lecture opening the conference.
Thomas Aquinas: Free Will & Virtue
What is the nature of human freedom according to St. Thomas Aquinas? Is his analysis defensible today? How does it allow us to understand the ethical character of human actions and the virtues and vices that constitute the moral life?
The first day of the conference is devoted especially to graduate students, either in philosophy or adjacent disciplines. The second and third days of the event will combine presentations by philosophers with times of discussion and debate. Mass and Eucharistic Adoration, as well as opportunities for informal recreation, will be offered each day.
Space for this workshop is limited, and the registration deadline is April 30, 2013. See website for additional information.
The Centre is pleased to announce this one-day colloquium with an academic focus, in order to pursue the celebration and perpetuation of Bonhoeffer’s legacy in the context of contemporary
postgraduate study in the United Kingdom, where Bonhoeffer is currently being given much attention by the Academy.
The colloquium will involve short-papers from postgraduate students on a range of topics related to Bonhoeffer studies. Deadline for paper submission is April 15, 2013.
Please see website for additional information and details.
The Future for Philosophy of Religion? An exploration of recent ‘turns to the human’ in thinking about religion.
The past decade has been marked by significant shifts in the in the Philosophy of Religion. A discipline long characterised by close analysis of a limited number of topics, and focusing mainly on arguments for and against traditional theistic belief, has broken new ground, both in its subject matter and its methodology. Much work by contemporary philosophers of religion has taken on an increasingly ‘humanistic’ shape: to supplement abstract argument and analysis there has been an increasing interest in religion as a response to the problems of lived human experience. This interest has manifested itself in a focus on the relation between religious belief and moral and aesthetic experience; the role played by religion in the struggle for self-awareness and psychological maturity; the contributions to religious awareness made by the emotions, the body, and the disciplines of spiritual praxis; and the way in which a deeper engagement with poetic and literary resources may develop and deepen religious sensibility and also enhance our understanding of the religious outlook itself.
Among the possible themes to be addressed by the Conference are the following:
1. Criteria for evaluating a religious outlook. Is a religious outlook to be assessed in terms of the intellectual plausibility of the claims it purports to make about the origins or workings of the cosmos, or should it be understood instead as an attempt to articulate an appropriate emotional and moral response to the puzzle of the meaning of human life and the how it should be lived?
2. Methodology. What is the appropriate mode for religious philosophizing? Should the philosopher of religion aim at detached intellectual scrutiny of certain truth claims, in the manner of a scientist, or is religious truth a domain that is more fruitfully investigated from a standpoint of emotional and moral commitment?
3. Theoretical implications. Does the ‘humane turn’ in philosophy of religion lead to, or lend support to, so-called ‘noncognitivism’ about religious claims (the view that religious assertions are not really descriptions of states of affairs but express passionate commitments to a certain form of life); or does it need to preserve a cognitive core of essential truth-claims?
4. Theological and anthropological dimensions. Should theology operate primarily at the level of abstract metaphysical doctrine, or does it need to do more to accommodate the perspective of the human subject, and an examination of the nature of what the religious life means for those who are actually involved in the practice of religion, or belong to its institutions?
Speakers: John Cottingham (analytic philosophy); William Schweiker (theological ethics and hermeneutics); Mark Wynn (philosophy/theology and the emotions); Christopher Hamilton (philosophy and literature).
Please see website for additional details.
The APRA Conference, 2013: Religion and Science, Theism and Atheism
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
Submission date 31 March 2013. Please see website for more information.
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)
Virtue, Emotion and Practical Reason in Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition. @ Beaumier Conference Center, Raynor Library, Marquette University
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.
The Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group presents:
A WORKSHOP ON AVERROES AND HIS PHILOSOPHY
This Workshop is intended to provide a formal occasion and central location for discussion of the thought of Ibn Rushd / Averroes, Topics to be considered include: philosophy in the Andalusian context; Ibn Rushd and his Greek and Arabic sources; method in philosophy and religion; the nature of human intellect; providence; creation; cosmology; prophecy; the afterlife; Ibn Rushd and issues of Latin Averroism; and more.
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.