Author Archives: Kaisu H Taskila

Religious Music, Inter-Group Dialogue and Religious Recognition

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Friday 19 May, MONTHLY SEMINAR, at 12:15–15:30, venue: Faculty Hall

Religious Music, Inter-Group Dialogue and Religious Recognition

Prof. Tala Jarjour (Notre Dame) speaks about her recent research project concerning the possibilities of music in the progress of religious dialog toward peace in the Syrian conflict.

Tala Jarjour is Associate Professor of Music and Concurrent Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. Her research is marked by interdisciplinary study of Near Eastern repertories of sacred music, especially the chant of the Syrian Orthodox Church. She completed her PhD at Cambridge (2011) and MPhil in Music at Cambridge (2005).

 

For further information of Jarjour, see: http://sacredmusic.nd.edu/people/faculty-by-alpha/tala-jarjour/

Helsinki Analytic Theology Workshop 2018: Investigating Theological Epistemologies

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Investigating Theological Epistemologies
Helsinki Analytic Theology Workshop 2018, 22-23 February

Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki
Faculty Room, Vuorikatu 3

Keynote lectures will be delivered by Prof. William Abraham (Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA) and Prof. Victoria Harrison (University of Macau, Macau, China).

Call for Papers

In addition to the two keynotes, the workshop will have approx. five one hour slots for substantial papers that address epistemological questions in religious and theological contexts.

Please send abstracts as a doc-file of a maximum of 700 words to Dr. Rope Kojonen (ropekojonen@gmail.com) by the end of August 2017. The organising committee will make their decisions within two weeks. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer bursaries to presenters. The final manuscript should be sent to Dr. Kojonen by the end of January 2018.
HEAT 2018 is supported by the Centre of Excellence for Reason and Religious Recognition of the Academy of Finland, Faculty of Theology.

For more information:
Olli-Pekka Vainio, Olli-pekka.vainio@helsinki.fi
https://blogs.helsinki.fi/theological-epistemologies/

A Seminar on Human Freedom

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Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Friday 24 March 2017, 10:15–14:00
Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki
Room 524, Fabianinkatu 24, 5th floor

Programme:
10:15–10:30 Risto Saarinen & Sami Pihlström (Helsinki): Opening Words
10:30–11:15 Aku Visala (Helsinki): “Is the Problem of Free Will a Scientific Problem?”
11:15–12:00 Hanne Appelqvist (Turku): “Kant on Freedom and Rules”
12:00–13:00 Lunch Break
13:00–14:00 Thomas Buchheim (LMU Munich): “The Concept of “Human Freedom” according to Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom”

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Oppi luottamuksesta

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RISTO SAARINEN

Oppi luottamuksesta, Gaudeamus, 2017

Ihmiset toimivat läheissuhteissaan ja yhteisöissään keskinäisen luottamuksen varassa. Maailman epävakaus ja ennustamattomuus voivat murentaa luottamusta. Mutta mitä luottamus pohjimmiltaan on?

Oppi luottamuksesta uppoutuu kysymykseen ihmistieteiden ja aatehistorian näkökulmasta. Teoksessa pohditaan perusluottamuksen syntymistä ja itseluottamusta, luottamusta toisiin ihmisiin, luottamusta työelämässä ja markkinoilla sekä uskonnollista luottamusta. Samalla tarkastellaan näiden suhdetta uskollisuuteen, haavoittuvuuteen ja myötätuntoon. Tarinat ja esimerkit tuovat pohdinnan lähelle lukijaa.

Luottamus ei tarkoita pelkästään ennustettavuutta muiden ihmisten ja maailman toiminnassa. Se on myös toimijan kykyä empatiaan ja avoimuuteen. Kun luottamuksen molemmat puolet ovat kunnossa, voi yhdessä saada aikaan enemmän kuin yksin.

Recognition and Religion: A Historical and Systematic Study

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RISTO SAARINEN

Recognition and Religion: A Historical and Systematic Study, Oxford University Press, 2016.

recognition-and-religion

Religious life is typically shaped by acts of interpersonal recognition. Other people grant us access to religious communities and initiate us in their practices. God appears as the supreme ruler who acknowledges us, loves us, and even creates our very being. While such acts are common in Jewish-Christian tradition and their meaning has been extensively discussed in the history of theology, scholars have not paid attention to the long history of religious recognition in Christian sources. Recognition and Religion undertakes the task of writing the first intellectual history of recognition in Western religious thought. Starting from the New Testament and Greco-Roman antiquity, Risto Saarinen clarifies the Latin terminology of recognition from the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions to the European Reformations. He then connects the emerging French, English and German theological vocabularies with the philosophical innovations of Hobbes, Locke, Fichte, and Hegel. This history stretches to the contemporary legal and ecumenical understanding of mutual recognition.

In its conducting chapter, the study outlines the distinctive profile of religious recognition. This profile includes personal conversion, the promise of self-preservation, and existential attachment. While it also alludes to mutual bonding, respect, and status change, it emphasizes the transformation of the recognizing subject. Religious recognition is thus both a predecessor of Hegelian philosophical modernity and a distinctive theological current that complements the Enlightenment views of toleration and autonomy.

“What Kind of Normativity is the Normativity of Grammar?”

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Hanne Appelqvist, “What Kind of Normativity is the Normativity of Grammar?”, forthcoming in Metaphilosophy January 2017 issue

Abstract

The overall goal of this paper is to show that aesthetics plays a major role in a debate at the very center of philosophy. Drawing on the work of David Bell, the paper spells out how Kant and Wittgenstein use aesthetic judgment as a key in their respective solutions to the rule-following problem they share. The more specific goal is to offer a Kantian account of semantic normativity as understood by Wittgenstein. The paper argues that Wittgenstein’s reason for describing language a collection of language-games is to allow for a perspective that shows those games as internally purposive without any extra-linguistic purpose. This Kantian principle of the power of judgment, which is identified in Wittgenstein’s text, is sufficient for treating the rules of language as normative in spite of their contingent base in the historically varying practices. It also allows for that union of the general rule and its particular application in practice that the original paradox of rule-following is wanting.