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Philosophy Fortnightly Research Seminars 2012

Faculty of Theology and Philosophy

School of Philosophy

Overview

Each fortnight, the School of Philosophy holds a regular research seminar that unites the national ACU philosophical community via videoconference.

The seminar is an opportunity for post-graduate students, staff and invited guests to present their research, and to receive support and feedback through shared discussion and debate.

When and Where

Seminars are held every second Monday, from 1pm - 3pm AEDT (12 - 2pm AEST) unless indicated otherwise. All seminars are held over ACU's video conference system and so, can be joined in your city of preference where ACU has a campus (Brisbane, North Sydney, Strathfield (Sydney), Canberra, Ballarat and Melbourne). Simply go to the ACU campus most convenient for you and go to the video conference facility there (the ACU website has maps for each campus that are helpful in finding your bearings). You should be able to join the seminar from that site.

Speakers and topics will be announced closer to each seminar.

For further information, please contact Dr. Nick Trakakis by email: nick.trakakis@acu.edu.au

Upcoming Seminars :

May 28, 1-3pm

Chris Hackett - “Phenomenology of the Knowledge of God”
Philosophy, ACU
Abstract:
The Christian tradition is motivated by a fundamental problem. How can the Christian revelation be the “fullness of the truth” if God infinitely transcends his revelation? First a (mostly) philosophical sketch of the limits of human knowing rooted in the conviction that grace does not destroy nature. Second a justification of religious faith in light of the preceding. Through (1) the phenomenological analysis of biblical theophanies, leading to (2) the discernment of a dialectic between appearing and word as the structure of revelation, I attempt to locate the path by which the question can be answered – all the while working, as it were, “remoto Christo,” that is, avoiding a direct Christological deduction as the solution to the question that it most obviously is.
June 4, 1-3pm
Jack Reynolds - Topic TBA
La Trobe University

Friday June 15 , 1-3pm

Richard Kearney - Topic TBA
Boston Colledge

June 18, 1-3pm

Marilyn McCord Adams - Topic TBA
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

July 30, 1-3pm

Robert Sinnerbrink - Topic TBA
Macquarie University

August 6, 1-3pm

Honours/postgraduate seminars

August 20, 1-3pm

Michael Fagenblat - Topic TBA
Monash University

September 10, 1-3pm

Patrick Stokes - Topic TBA
Deakin University

September 24, 1-3pm

Phil Dowe - Metaphysics and Physics"
University of Queensland

October 1, 1-3pm

Stephen Buckle - Topic TBA
Philosophy, ACU

October 8, 1-3pm

Patrick Madigan SJ - "Expressive Individualism, the Cult of the Artist as Genius, and Milton's Lucifer."
Heythrop College, London

October 15, 1-3pm

Morgan Luck - Topic TBA
Charles Sturt University

October 22, 1-3pm

John Armstrong - Topic TBA
University of Melbourne

October 29, 1-3pm

Christopher Cordner - Topic TBA
University of Melbourne

November 19, 1-3pm

Speaker and Topic TBA

Recent Seminars:

February 27, 1-3pm

John Ozolins- “Newman and the Idea of a University”
Philosophy, ACU
Abstract:
Newman’s conception of the University is well known. In this paper, it is argued that though he seems reluctant to use the term, and despite the controversy engendered by his preaching on wisdom, a central aim of education as far as Newman is concerned is wisdom. The reason why Newman does not identify wisdom as a central aim of education is because he does not develop an account of wisdom that unifies the notion of philosophical knowledge or liberal education that he propounds. Newman seems content to remain somewhat vague about what he means by an enlargement of mind. A reading of Newman through an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework, however, shows that a more developed conception of wisdom can provide a unifying foundation for his conception of liberal education. Moreover, since Newman was an advocate of Aristotle, it is plausible to suppose that he would not find such a broadened understanding of wisdom uncongenial to his conception of liberal education. The paper provides an outline of what we take the concept of wisdom to be about, drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, as well as making use of Bonaventure’s division of wisdom into four lights. The paper then shows how Newman’s ideas about liberal education and the enlargement of the intellect can fit the framework.

March 19, 1-3pm

Graham Priest - “Embracing the Groundlessness of Reality”University of Melbourne and CUNY
Abstract: In this talk I will ask what it is that constitutes the metaphysical nature (being) of an object. I will answer that it is its locus in a network of certain relations. It follows that the nature of an object generates an infinite regress. It is usually held in Western philosophy that such a regress is vicious. I will argue that it is not.
March 26, 1-3pm
John Lamont - "Molnar’s Thomism"
Abstract:
The paper considers the metaphysical picture developed by George Molnar in his book "Powers". It shows that Molnar's metaphysics is substantially the same as the metaphysical account of the physical universe that is given by St. Thomas Aquinas. Molnar upholds a version of the Eleatic Principle, the principle that maintains that whatever exists has causal powers, by claiming that all real powers are causal in nature. This corresponds to Aquinas's view that the nature of forms is given by their causal features. The intentionality of causal powers that is defended by Molnar is the final cause of Aquinas. It establishes that Molnar was not only a Thomist in a broad sense, but the first Thomist after Aquinas. The centrepiece of Aquinas's metaphysics is his version of the Eleatic Principle. This position was rejected in the Muslim world as a result of the victory of al-Ghazali's occasionalism, and it was rejected in the Christian world as a result of the general acceptance of the notion of God's general concurrence in secondary causation.

April 2, 1-3pm

Richard Colledge - “Ontological Gratitude and the Idea of a Secular Spirituality”
Philosophy, ACU
Abstract:

In his 2010 article, “Secular Spirituality and the Logic of Giving Thanks”, John Bishop takes his cue from a recent address by Richard Dawkins (that appears to suggest the appropriateness of a “naturalised spirituality” involving “existential gratitude”) to re-examine some aspects of Robert Solomon’s Spirituality for the Skeptic (2002). This paper picks up on Bishop’s engagements with both Dawkins and Solomon, but introduces also Hannah Arendt’s notion of “primary natality” into the discussion. My claim is that any serious naturalistic spirituality needs to take into account not only a gratitude for one’s existence per se, but for the whole context of individual and collective being.

April 16, 1-3pm

Paul Tyson - “Kierkegaard, Ficino and Pseudo-Dionysius on the philosophical insignificance of ‘religious diversity’”

Philosophy, ACU

Abstract: This paper is constructed in three sections. Part One, via Talal Asad, looks at why the notions of ‘religion’ and ‘religious diversity’ are not conceptually valid. Part Two looks at the manner in which three Christian thinkers – Kierkegaard, Ficino and Pseudo-Dionysius – account for variety within unity and incompleteness within truth, without assuming the modern notion of ‘religious diversity’. Part Three briefly explores the manner in which the inclusivist Christian notion of catholicity is one that most satisfyingly accounts for what the discourse of modern Western thinking tends to call ‘religious diversity’ without taking either ‘religion’ or ‘religious diversity’ as being of any real philosophical significance.

April 30, 1-3pm
Michelle Boulos Walker- “The Present of Reading: Listening as Ethics”
Philosophy, University of Queensland
Abstract:
In this paper I explore what it might mean to think of reading as a kind of listening. I think about the role or roles of the body in reading, and of the relation between reading and listening more specifically. While we tend to equate reading with seeing, I contend that any simple or exclusive coupling of reading with vision ‘overlooks’ or misses the possibility of exploring reading as an activity that involves more of the body, in more complex ways. What I suggest is that reading, in the ethical mode that I am investigating here, has much in common with an active and engaged form of listening that preeminently establishes a relation with the other or text. Listening, perhaps better than looking, captures what remains ethical in the practice of reading. If my intuitions here are correct then a turn toward ‘listening’ might be the jolt necessary to remind us of the scene of reading, its bodily dimension and ethical context. To this end, I engage with Hans Jonas’ “The Nobility of Sight” and Luce Irigaray’s The Way of Love, in order to extend my own ongoing work on ethics and reading. In particular, I explore Irigaray’s work on ‘listening-to’ and ‘listening-with’ as a preparation for what she refers to as ‘a wisdom of love between us’. In doing so, I trace the possibility of other ways of thinking about and doing philosophy (and of teaching philosophy) – slow and careful ways that outline an ‘attention to present life’.