On Being a Reformational Philosopher: Spirituality, Religion, and the Call to Love

Lecture to the ICS "Scripture, Faith, and Scholarship" seminar. Lambert Zuidervaart. November 14, 2014.

• Watch the videos below.

• Read the paper in the ICS Institutional Repository.

Outline:

A Christian philosopher continually seeks to align the spiritual orientation of his or her philosophical practices and their results with the scriptures-within-worship of the Christian community, insofar as this authoritative touchstone discloses the God of love—preferably doing this within a religiously inflected tradition of scholarship—while remaining vigilant in the pursuit of alignment and open to having one’s philosophy spiritually reoriented by God’s self-disclosure.

Christian philosophy is a spiritually oriented response, both in practices and in results, to the God of love, faithful to the scriptures-within-worship, and ever open to the surprising ways in which God calls and guides and inspires us to follow Jesus along the pathways of love.

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.

Rights and Worlds: The Political Significance of Belonging

Rights and Worlds: The Political Significance of Belonging.  Paper presented by Shannon Hoff at Guelph University, January 17, 2014.

View: on Youtube

Listen: audio file of the lecture

Modernity is characterized by an assertion of the individual as a singular unit of significance and its various systems (political, legal, economic, and so on) have taken their lead from the idea of the individual as the bearer of rights. This modern prioritization of the individual, however, while a powerful accomplishment, is also problematic: it does not adequately recognize how the individual it prioritizes would itself point to other contexts of significance by which its identity is constituted and made meaningful. This paper will explore this basic tension between these two visions of selfhood – one expressed in terms of "rights" and the other in terms of "worlds". It will show how care for these basic worlds of significance is necessary for the very operation of rights, and it will point to various ways in which the significance of these "worlds" could be politically recognized and protected.

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.

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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.

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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

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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.

Social Justice and Human Rights Conference

Social Justice and Human Rights. Organising Committee: Lambert Zuidervaart, Thomas Reynolds, Kathy Vandergrift, Shannon Hoff, Allyson Carr, Matthew Klaassen and Lyle Clark. April 2012.

• View session videos, descriptions and summaries

Social Justice and Human Rights was a two-day interdisciplinary, interreligious and cross-sectoral conference presented by the ICS Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics in partnership with Emmanuel College. Thirty-six presenters hosted seventeen sessions including keynote addresses by Nicholas Wolterstorff and Melissa Williams.

Truth Matters Interdisciplinary Conference

View videos from the conference at: Ustream

Also see the book: Truth Matters: Knowledge, Politics, Ethics, Religion

From the original conference website:

We live in an age of skepticism about the idea of truth. Contemporary skeptics question the nature and value of truth and the concomitant virtue of truthfulness. Skepticism about truth is not restricted to popular culture. It occurs within the academic world, where deflationists have argued that the idea of truth is not a substantive notion and some poststructuralists have portrayed it as primarily the scene of struggles for power. Such skepticism is surprising, for truth and truthfulness have been central to Western civilization and the academic enterprise.

Given both contemporary skepticism and the centrality of truth, we believe it is time to reconceptualize truth and to reclaim truthfulness for the academic enterprise. The conference organizers have undertaken an interdisciplinary philosophical effort to develop a new model of truth. Now we wish to expand the scope of our work by engaging with discussion partners from other schools and from across the disciplines. The Truth Matters conference will be an occasion for international dialogue and debate.

Truth Matters continues a series of conferences on issues of faith and scholarship organized by four schools in the Reformed tradition. It is hosted by the Institute for Christian Studies, a graduate school for interdisciplinary philosophy in Toronto, and co-sponsored by Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI), Dordt College (Sioux Center, IA), and the Free University (Amsterdam).

This conference is supported by a generous grant from the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust.

Why We Don’t Join Institutions Anymore

Why We Don't Join Institutions Anymore. Robert Sweetman. Presented at the ICS Worldview Conference "Another Brick in the Wall", Oakville, Ontario, September 27, 2008.

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• Read the paper

This essay argues that institutions are a perennial feature of human society and culture.  They preserve default positions on how to act together in any number of ways to perform those functions necessary to human living or deemed necessary to human flourishing.  But institutions take on the colour and texture of the age in which they emerge or function. Our most successful institutions, those identified with globalizing capitalism, betray the colours and texture of the age of ideology.  Thus they are aggressively expansive, coercive, hugely complex and very large.  What becomes ever more obvious however is that we no longer trust institutions of the ideological type to steward our common human good.  We are emerging into a post-ideological world.  The institutional experiments most attuned to the new world are very different in colour and texture from those formed in the age of ideology.  They are localized (although tied via new technologies to similar groups worldwide), small, simple and participatory or democratic.  What does this have to say to the Christian community in its institutional life?

This is the first of two addresses by Bob Sweetman given at the ICS Worldview Conference titled "Another Brick in the Wall" on September 27, 2008 in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.