Saving the Sacred in a Secular Age
February 26th & 27th, 2010
REGISTRATION CLOSED
“Saving the Sacred in a Secular Age” is a two-day symposium hosted by the Department of Philosophy, and co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the Center for Ideas and Society, and the Templeton Foundation. Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007) will present the keynote address for the conference, entitled “Modes of the sacred in the post-Axial Age.” This interdisciplinary meeting will present philosophical, sociological, and religious responses to contemporary secularism as we seek to understand and articulate different notions of the sacred. An important theme will be to consider how we can recover and secure practices that are responsive to an experience of the sacred in the world. We will be exploring questions like: What are the stages by which our culture became monotheistic and then secular? Does this history show, as Nietzsche claims, that our culture has outgrown Christianity and needs a way to come to terms with nihilism? Or if not, what is the place of the sacred and our Judeo-Christian heritage in the current age? Can we learn to appreciate and repossess our Judeo-Christian heritage? If so, how? Or should we turn to other ways of imagining and experiencing the sacred?
In conjunction with this seminar, Tao Ruspoli will present a special preview screening of his documentary film: Being in the World.
Presenters:
- Charles Taylor, Political Science & Philosophy, McGill University and Northwestern University
- Albert Borgmann, Philosophy, University of Montana, Missoula
- Craig Calhoun, Sociology, New York University
- Peter Gordon, History, Harvard University
- Ivan Strenski, Religious Studies, UCR
- Iain Thomson, Philosophy, University of New Mexico
- Tu Weiming, Chinese History, Harvard University
- Sean Kelly, Philosophy, Harvard University
- Hubert Dreyfus, Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
- Howard Wettstein, Philosophy, UCR
Registration:
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