Opening Frames: Cinema and Transcendence

A Two-Day Conference on Film and Spirituality

April 3–4, 2017

TIFF Bell Lightbox, Green Room
350 King Street West, Toronto · map

Featuring cinematic legend Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Affliction), speaking on the "Transcendental Style" in film

Other speakers include:

• Catherine Wheatley, King's College, London UK
• Joe Kickasola, Baylor University, New York
• Mark Cauchi, York University
• John Caruana, Ryerson University
• Special panel featuring social change consultant David Peck interviewing filmmakers Sherien Barsoum and Hugh Gibson, and also including Mark Kingwell and Paul Johansen 

Schedule

Monday, 1:00pm–4:00pm
Registration (1:00) and Panel Discussion (2:00–4:00) with David Peck (moderator), Hugh Gibson, Sherien Barsoum, Paul Johansen, and Mark Kingwell

Keynote Speaker 7:00pm
Paul Schrader (with Joe Kickasola)

Tuesday, 10:00am–4:00pm
Workshop 1: Catherine Wheatley (10:30–12:00)
Workshop 2: Mark Cauchi, John Caruana (1:00–2:25)
Workshop 3: Joe Kickasola (2:35–4:00)


Register ($65 for both days)
Registration for Paul Schrader's lecture only can be done at the TIFF page for the lecture. (Note that on the linked page you must float your cursor over the event date and click on that in order to be taken to TIFF's Ticketmaster page, where you can then purchase tickets for the Schrader lecture.)

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Presented through a partnership between TIFF, The Institute for Christian Studies' Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics, Ryerson University, and Imago.

Are We There Yet? Economic Justice and the Common Good

On May 12 & 13, 2014, The King’s University College and the Institute for Christian Studies co-hosted a conference on economic justice in Edmonton, Alberta, entitled Are We There Yet? Economic Justice and the Common Good.

• Watch Address by Dr. Bob Goudzwaard (YouTube)

• Watch Address by the Honourable Diane Ablonczy (YouTube)

• Jump to the Conference Archive

ICS conference organisation by the ICS Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics (CPRSE). Ronald A. Kuipers, director of the CPRSE.

Richard Rorty Book Launch

Thomas E. Reynolds, Ronald A. Kuipers. 2013

Who's Afraid of Rorty? CPRSE Celebrates the Launch of Director Ronald A. Kuipers' Book on the Infamous American Philosopher, Richard Rorty.

• Watch on YouTube

Explore the latest volume in Bloomsbury Press' Contemporary American Thinkers Series, which Princeton's Jeffrey Stout describes as "a well-informed, interesting, and clear overview of Richard Rorty's contribution to American thought." Meet Rorty, the bad-boy of analytic philosophy, the liberal ironist, and the anticlerical prophet, on his mission to save Western thought from itself. Tom Reynolds of Emmanuel College provides opening reflections on the book, to which Kuipers' then responds.

Responses to the Enlightenment Book Launch

Hendrik Hart, William Sweet and Ronald Kuipers. 2012

Beyond Belief: CPRSE Launches Hendrik Hart and William Sweet's Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community.

• Watch on YouTube

What is the role of reason in religion? What part should religious beliefs play in the life of faith? Is faith more than the sum of the religious beliefs that express it? Can religious language use be an occasion for, or must it always delimit, authentic religious experience? Explore these and other scintillating questions as CPRSE Director Ronald Kuipers leads off this boisterous exchange between three important and interesting philosophers of religion.

Imagination's Truths Art Talks! Event

Imagination's Truths: Re-envisioning Imagination in Philosophy, Religion and the Arts. Richard Kearney, Mark Knight, Ronald Kuipers, Anne Michaels and Rebekah Smick. 2012

• Watch on YouTube

Videos include an interview with and a lecture by Richard Kearney (Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy, Boston College) and a panel discussion including Kearney plus Mark Knight (English, U. of T.), Ronald A. Kuipers (Phil. of Rel., ICS), Canadian writer Anne Michaels and Rebekah Smick (Phil. Of Arts & Culture, ICS) moderating.

The event was produced by the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics (CPRSE) in conjunction with Emmanuel College, in Toronto Canada, and took place on October 13, 2012.

Turning Memory into Prophecy: Paul Ricoeur and Roberto Unger on the Human Condition between Past and Future

Kuipers, Ronald A.. “Turning Memory into Prophecy: Paul Ricoeur and Roberto Unger on the Human Condition between Past and Future,” in The Heythrop Journal 52/2, 2011: 1-10.

In The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, Roberto Unger consistently maintains that, in any democracy worthy of the name, ‘prophecy’ ought to speak louder than ‘memory’. Precisely what Unger means by these two evocative terms is not immediately or manifestly clear, although one could be forgiven for getting the impression that, in making this claim, Unger is offering his unique expression of pragmatism’s uneasy and ambiguous feelings about the past; among other things, this claim constitutes a warning against the temptation of succumbing to an enervating conservatism with which the past always presents us. But beyond offering such a warning, what precisely does Unger mean by ‘memory’ and ‘prophecy’? How does he think we ought to understand the relationship between this prophecy that ought to speak louder than memory, and the past from which, he admits, it always emerges? Finally, are there different ways of considering this relationship than the one Unger offers, ways that also resist the temptations of conservatism, yet while in so doing preserve a more edifying role for memory (not to mention tradition or history)? With the aid of the hermeneutical phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur, my purpose in this essay is to explore these questions.

Amor Mundi in a (Post)Liberal Era: The Relevance of an Arendtian Theme for Christian Self‐Understanding Today

Kuipers, Ronald A.. “Amor Mundi in a (Post)Liberal Era: The Relevance of an Arendtian Theme for Christian Self‐Understanding Today,” in Jerald D. Gort, et. al., eds., Crossroad Discourses Between Christianity and Culture. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2010: 85-106.

Privatization, the liberal political strategy for handling religious differences, has been criticized for hegemonically privileging a secularist worldview and for refusing to provide full public scope to the plurality of religious traditions that exist in contemporary democratic societies. For these and other reasons, it is important to explore alternatives to privatization that do not thereby neglect the importance of maintaining citizen solidarity in these societies. This essay explores the potential that amor mundi, a fundamental theme of Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy, has for addressing this vexing issue. In doing so, it also asks whether Arendt’s thematization of the human position between past and future, amidst the demise of tradition, holds any lessons for contemporary Christians. What would it mean for today’s Christian to love a world that has, for both good and ill, become what it is, from out of a past that remains to be discovered, in its full plurality and natal potentiality? Can Christian faith, at the end of the day, do without amor mundi?

Reconciling a Shattered Modernity: Habermas on the Enduring Relevance of the Judeo-Christian Ethical Tradition

Kuipers, Ronald A.. “Reconciling a Shattered Modernity: Habermas on the Enduring Relevance of the Judeo-Christian Ethical Tradition,” in Lieven Boeve, et. al., eds., Faith in the Enlightenment? The Critique of Enlightenment Revisited. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2006: 123-42.

Jürgen Habermas readily owns the evidence his work portrays of an ongoing engagement with explicitly Judeo-Christian theological themes and religious sources of meaning. This engagement, evident throughout most of his career, may at first come as a surprise to those who think of him primarily as a staunch defender of the Enlightenment’s confidence in the liberating power of rational argument, as well as the historical processes of secularization that have tended to flow from that confidence. What may seem even more surprising to those who think of him in this way is the fact that his engagement with religion is not only or even predominantly critical in nature (although it definitely includes strong elements of that). In contrast, this engagement often reveals a willingness on Habermas’ part to treat his religious interlocutors on an equal footing, as dialogue partners from whom he might have something to learn. Their attendance to religious sources of meaning, he thinks, has proven capable of providing unique insights from which secular children of the Enlightenment like himself can still derive benefit. In this essay, I explore the respect Habermas’ shows for the ethical impulse he finds beating within differing manifestations of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.

Stout’s Democracy without Secularism: But is it a Tradition?

Kuipers, Ronald A.. “Stout’s Democracy without Secularism: But is it a Tradition?,” in Contemporary Pragmatism 3/1 (June 2006): 85-104.

This article critiques Jeffrey Stout’s suggestion in Democracy and Tradition that the practice of critical democratic questioning itself forms part of a historically unique secular tradition. While the practice of democratic questioning makes a valuable contribution to the project of fostering an “enlarged mentality” among the adherents of any particular tradition, Stout’s contention that this practice itself points to the existence of a substantive tradition, one that stands apart from and is not reliant upon the moral sources of the traditions it engages, remains problematic.