Our friends at the Phenomenology Research Center, Southern Illinois University of Carbondale are organizing a conference with the title “Pathways in the Phenomenology of Religion” on November 18-19, 2013.  A PDF of the event poster may be downloaded here.

Presentations will be as follows:

James Hart (Indiana University): “The First Principles of Faith and Phenomenology”

Ludger Hagedorn (NYU Berlin): “Christianity Unthought – Thought by Patocka and Nancy”

John Maraldo (University of North Florida): “Heidegger’s Beiträge as a Phenomenology of Religion”

Michael Staudigl (University of Vienna): “Rethinking Religion beyond Myth and Enlightenment – Reassessing the Role of Phenomenology in the Recent Philosophical
Discourse on Religion”

Anthony Steinbock (SIU Carbondale): “Humility as Religious and Moral Experience”

Guest lecture at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

Prof. Tatiana Shchyttsova (European Humanities University, Vilnius): Misunderstanding in intergenerational interaction: communicative obstacle or structure of intersubjective experience?
Response by Irina Poleshchuk.

Date and time: November 15, 10-12
Venue: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, seminar room 136 (1st floor)

All are welcome!

The event is organized by the research collective Subjectivity, Historicity and Communality: Studies in Philosophy and Political Sciences.

Abstract: Traditionally, misunderstanding is considered as a communicative obstacle which must be overcome through verbal clarifications in the course of dialogue. In a pedagogical field misunderstanding taken in that traditional sense is a phenomenon which is constantly expected by a parent/teacher due to deficiency of knowledge and experience and language skills of a child. Such a vision of misunderstanding is formed originally in the perspective of a teacher as a subject of knowledge and corresponds to the understanding of education as an introduction into the world of adults, as, for instance, preparing for future adult life. Proceeding from certain ideas of a German philosopher Eugen Fink, the author will try to develop an essentially different comprehension of  misunderstanding as a phenomenon which manifests the irreducibility of differentiation between generations (adult and child) and is constitutive for approaching the intergenerational co-existence in terms of equal co-participation of both a child and an adult in being-in-the-world.

Encounters with Animals in Graeco-Roman Antiquity:
The Historicity of Experience
A Multidisciplinary Symposium

Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Fabianinkatu 24, Seminar Room 136, 1^st floor
9 Dec. 2013 – Open to all. Welcome!

Organisers: Research Project Empathising with the Non-Human Other in Ancient Greek Literature, the SHC Research Community (Subjectivity, Historicity and Communality: Studies in Philosophy and Political Sciences), the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and the Department of World Cultures.

This interdisciplinary symposium brings together researchers from the fields of classical studies and philosophy, highlighting intercorporeal and interspecies relationships in Graeco-Roman antiquity, especially as they appear in ancient literature. While introducing a phenomenological reading of this literature, the symposium also offers space for other approaches and analyses of the ancient philosophers’ views on animals. In particular, however, we wish to question the historicity of human experience of animals, the more common emphasis being the historicity of our attitudes and views on animals. The point is thus not only to place the ancient attitudes and views of animals in their historical context, but to discuss our fundamental ability to encounter past attitudes and experiences, including the various ways of seeing the difference between the human and the non-human.

Ancient philosophers certainly acknowledged differences, but prior to Aristotle, they did not see the reasoning faculty as the essential distinction between human and non-humans. Moreover, they included in their discussions continuities and affinities between humans and animals, and thus saw human beings as a more or less privileged class or caste among other living beings – not different in kind, but in degree. The symposium invites all participants to look critically not only into past interpretations of ancient thought, but also into our current preferences which may contribute to the formation of bias.

PROGRAM

10.00–10.15 Opening by Tua Korhonen and Erika Ruonakoski

10.15–11.45 Keynote: Professor Ingvild Gilhus (University of Bergen): Christianity and the Changing Experiences of Animals in Late Antiquity

11.45–12.30 Maijastina Kahlos (University of Helsinki): Beyond the Bounds of Humanity – Animal Imagery in Late Antique Invective Rhetoric

12.30–13.30 Lunch

13.30–14.15 Miira Tuominen (University of Jyväskylä): Why Justice Must Be Extended to Animals? Poprhyry’s On Abstinence

14.15–15.00 Jussi Backman (University of Jyväskylä): Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Historicity of Understanding

15.00–15.20 Coffee

15.20–16.05 Sari Kivistö (University of Helsinki): Birds and Utopia

16.05–16.50 Erika Ruonakoski (University of Helsinki): What Do Greek Depictions of Animals Communicate to Us? A Phenomenological Analysis of Temporal Distance

16.50–17.35 Tua Korhonen (University of Helsinki): No Fear of Metamorphosis? “[…] most ancient Greeks were not seriously worried that they would suddenly become animals” (Forbes Irving 1990, 60)

17.35–17.45 Closing of the Symposium

SPEAKERS

Ingvild Saelid Gilhus is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her seminal book Animal, Gods, and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Thought (Routledge 2006) has ensured her a firm place in all discussions of animality in antiquity. She is a contributor to the forthcoming The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life (Oxford University Press).

Jussi Backman is a Docent of Philosophy and a University Lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, and a Docent of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki.

Maijastina Kahlos is a Docent of Latin Language and Roman Literature, and a Fellow of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki.

Sari Kivistö is a Docent of Comparative Literature and a Deputy Director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki.

Tua Korhonen is a Docent of Greek Literature at the University of Helsinki and works currently in the project Empathising with the Non-Human Other in Ancient Greek Literature.

Erika Ruonakoski is a post-doctoral researcher in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki and works currently in the project Empathising with the Non-Human Other in Ancient Greek Literature.

Miira Tuominen is a Docent of Philosophy and an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä.

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Sponsors: The SHC Research Community (Subjectivity, Historicity and Communality: Studies in Philosophy and Political Sciences) and the AMNE (Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East) Research Community

Organizing committee: Tua Korhonen and Erika Ruonakoski (University of Helsinki)

Contact: tua.korhonen (at) helsinki.fi and erika.ruonakoski (at) helsinki.fi