Syllabi 2010-2015ICS Course Syllabi 2010-2015http://hdl.handle.net/10756/3379472024-01-18T02:36:35Z2024-01-18T02:36:35ZDemocracy and DiversityShadd, Philiphttp://hdl.handle.net/10756/5833402019-08-30T09:54:30Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZDemocracy and Diversity
Shadd, Philip
Modern democracies are not only made up of diverse individuals but diverse cultures. How ought liberal democracies address cultural pluralism, especially when the claims of cultures conflict? This question is explored principally by critically examining liberal multiculturalism, which argues that group-differentiated rights are not only consistent with, but required by, the basic liberal democratic values of freedom and equality. Ultimately the course goes beyond a secular multiculturalism by seeking to understand cultural pluralism within a political theological framework. Will Kymlicka and Nicholas Wolterstorff are among the theorists considered, and particular attention is given both to Quebec and Islam as case studies.
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZCharles Taylor and the Religious ImaginaryKuipers, Ronald A.http://hdl.handle.net/10756/5569742019-08-30T09:53:09Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZCharles Taylor and the Religious Imaginary
Kuipers, Ronald A.
The notion of a "social imaginary"—the way people come to understand their social surroundings by way of images, stories, and legends—plays a key role in Charles Taylor's thought, including his magnum opus, A Secular Age. In this intellectual tour de force, Taylor attempts to trace the historical development of Western secularism as we experience it today. In doing so, he challenges the "subtraction story" which he sees animating the social imaginary of today's typical secularist. According to this story, the emergence of secularism in the West follows a linear trajectory, along which humanity slowly sheds the irrational accretions of myth, religion, and the sacred, in order to uncover a rational core of free thought and autonomous science, which may now flourish without the constraints of heteronomous religious authority. In challenging this story, Taylor offers an intriguing new understanding of Western secularism, as well as tantalizing suggestions concerning the continued social relevance a religious imaginary might have in "a secular age." This seminar will be devoted to an in-depth study of this major work, which in its relatively brief life has already become a landmark text in both the philosophy of religion as well as secularization theory. Through this study, seminar participants will also consider what role Taylor's Roman Catholic religious commitment plays in his thought, as well as the role a religiously-informed "social imaginary" might play in a pluralized global society that is deeply impacted by, but also largely at odds with, the particular social imaginary of Western modernity.
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZART in Orvieto Summer IntensiveSmick, Rebekahhttp://hdl.handle.net/10756/3464732019-08-30T09:54:10Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZART in Orvieto Summer Intensive
Smick, Rebekah
The Art in Orvieto advanced summer studies program will take place in Orvieto, Italy between June 29 and July 24 in the Summer of 2015. The intensive will include the Art, Religion, and Theology seminar, led by Dr. Rebekah Smick, as well as and artist's workshop and a writer's workshop (led by Paul Roorda and John Terpstra, respectively)
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZReligion and Philosophy at the Extremes of Human ExperienceKirby, Josephhttp://hdl.handle.net/10756/3464262019-08-30T09:54:08Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZReligion and Philosophy at the Extremes of Human Experience
Kirby, Joseph
John Newton, who wrote the lyrics for "Amazing Grace" in 1772, was the captain of a slave ship prior to entering the clergy. In other words, the man to whom the words "a wretch like me" originally referred – was actually a thoroughgoing wretch, a man who bought and sold human beings for profit. The grace that saved him, meanwhile, first appeared over the course of an extended brush with death: the ship he was on almost sank in a violent North Atlantic gale, then floated at the mercy of the winds and currents for nearly a month before drifting fortuitously onto the coast of Northern Ireland.
We live most of our lives in a state of relative equilibrium, calmly passing through more-or-less predictable sequences of habit and custom, work and play, activity and rest. This course will explore what happens when these predictable sequences vanish, when we no longer know where we are or where we are going, what we should do, who we should strive to become. We will focus in particular on how religion and philosophy operate, both experientially and discursively, when the normal equilibrium of our lives has been shattered. This will involve a comparison between two opposing approaches to theses edges: in short, the very suffering that often seems necessary to open the soul out unto God is often cited as evidence that God cannot possibly exist, that religion is nothing more than a retreat into illusion spurred by the fear of death. Thus, beginning with a comparison between Victor Frankl’s account of his experiences in the Nazi death camps, Man’s Search for Meaning, and Freud’s classic denunciation of religion in The Future of an Illusion, this course explores how the tension between devastation, hope, and despair has played out in various other extremes of human experience.
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z