NDIAS Quarterly, Vol. 4, 2015-2016 Year in Review

Vol.4

quarterly

2015-2016 YEAR IN REVIEW

this issue q EVERYTHING IS INTERCONNECTED 3 q TRAVERSING, TRANSLATING ROME 6 q 2015-2016 CLASS OF FELLOWS 30

transcending disciplinary boundaries

q TEMPLETON COLLOQUIA AT NDIAS 60

Laurent Lafforgue Examines Speculation and Narration in Mathematics

Tomáš Halík’s Afternoon of Christianity

Sean Costello Asks “What Kind of Thing Are Humans?”

Vanessa Davies Explores the H.S.-College Transition Celia Deane-Drummond’s Science-Inspired Theology

David B. Hart’s Mind, Soul, World

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contents

regular From Our Director 03 Call for Fellows 21 Class of Fellows 30 Quarterly Interview 38 Templeton Colloquia 60 Fellow News 62 Publication Showcase 74

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41 PHOTO creditS Matt Cashore Vanessa Davies Barbara Johnston William Koechling Grant Osborn Andreas Praefcke Donald Stelluto Jiuguang Wang www.oaktownart.com Special thanks to Carolyn Sherman and Jonathan Vandenburgh for their assistance in proofing this issue.

COVER: God AS architect of the universe, Frontispiece of Bible Moralisee. c.1220-1230. Public domain.

featured 06 10 17 22 41 46 54

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Traversing & Translating Rome Speculation, Narration in Math Liberal Arts, HS-College Transition Theology Inspired by Sciences The Afternoon of Christianity Mind, Soul, World What Kind of Thing Are Humans?

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COLOPHON

Brad S. Gregory

everything is interconnected

S

omething remarkable happened in late June 2015: the entire world’s attention focused on a papal encyclical. Laudato Si’ is a traditional Catholic reflection on the connectedness of the natural and human worlds as well as an admonitory tract for the times. Pope Francis was not primarily addressing an academic audience. Yet the encyclical repeatedly recognizes the ways in which our many global contemporary problems, ecological and environmental no less than social and political, require analysis that transcends specialist expertise and technological mastery: “The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant” (§110). Or again: “It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected. . . . [T]he fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation of bits of information can actually become a form of ignorance, unless they are integrated into a broader vision of reality” (§138).

These ideas are not simply Catholic; they’re also catholic. They’re part of what made Laudato Si’ the most widely discussed papal encyclical

ever and a significant influence on the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris in December. What Pope Francis said resonated because he addressed not questions of merely parochial interest to Catholics but fundamental issues of human concern about the interconnectedness of all reality and all knowledge, and about the relationship between descriptive realities and normative imperatives that we ignore at our peril.

When Laudato Si’ was released, NDIAS was at Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway Center, sponsoring an intensive two-week seminar for graduate students and faculty colleagues on “Philology Among the Disciplines” (see the article in this issue). Participants came from across Europe and North America to discuss the critical importance of philology to history, art history, law, archaeology, classics, philosophy, and theology. Thus began an extraordinarily busy year at the Institute, anchored in our regular twice-weekly seminars at which Fellows, supplemented by Notre Dame colleagues and visiting scholars, present their research in a multidisciplinary setting. We are hosting four Templeton Fellows for the academic year; besides conducting their respective research projects

CONTRIBUTORS

Margaret Abruzzo Mark Alfano Karl Ameriks Clifford Ando Robert Audi Lewis Ayres Elise Berman Paolo Bernardini Francesco Berto Justin Biddle Laura E. Bland W. Martin Bloomer Costica Bradatan Eric Bugyis Sean Costello Vanessa Davies Thadious M. Davis Diego De Brasi Annelien de Dijn Celia Deane-Drummond Michael C. Desch Melissa Dinsman Carsten Dutt Sabrina Ferri Erwin Feyersinger Naomi Fisher Bjarne Sode Funch Brandon Gallaher Ilana Gershon Alyssa Dinega Gillespie Brad S. Gregory Kevin G. Grove Ethan Guagliardo Tomáš Halík Lawrence O. Hall David Bentley Hart Douglas Hedley Jessica Hellmann Vittorio Hösle Slavica Jakelić Maxim Kantor Scott M. Kenworthy Mary M. Keys Philipp Koralus Laurent Lafforgue David Lantigua Ulrich L. Lehner Vincent Lloyd Jacob L. Mackey Jonathan Marks Elisabeth Mégier Henrike Moll Susannah Monta Vittorio Montemaggi Hildegund Müller James Nolan Mark A. Moll Atalia Omer Richard Oosterhoff Grant Osborn Gladden Pappin Gabriel Paquette Jaime Pensado Aleta Quinn Bharat Ranganathan Mark Roche Andrea Rogers Otto Santa Ana Scott Shackelford Daniel Sportiello Donald L. Stelluto Vasileios Syros Kimba Allie Tichenor Alexis Torrance Andrea L. Turpin James C. VanderKam Joseph P. Wawrykow

CONTACT: 1124 Flanner Hall, Notre Dame, IN USA 46556 * Phone: (574) 631-1305 * Facsimile: (574) 631-8997 * Email: ndias@nd.edu * Web: ndias.nd.edu * Twitter: @NotreDameIAS

from our director

Editor & DESIGNER Grant Osborn

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in existential psychology, sociolinguistics, philosophy of mind, and developmental psychology, a colloquium is devoted to the work of each at the NDIAS this spring. In addition, the Institute welcomed for the fall 2015 semester a fifth Templeton Fellow, Tomáš Halík, a renowned Czech philosopher of religion, Catholic priest, and the winner of the Templeton Prize in 2014, whose project and colloquium explored the character of Christianity under circumstances of advanced secularization in Europe.

The NDIAS book symposia have continued to be a great success. Related to issues broached

by Pope Francis’s encyclical, the environmental philosopher Dale Jamieson (NYU) spent two days in early October at Notre Dame for an NDIAS book symposium on his recent study, Reason in a Dark Time, about the international public reception of and resistance to the science of climate change. In early February, the Institute hosted Samuel Moyn (Harvard) for a symposium on his book, Christian Human Rights, which reconstructs the indebtedness of the post-1970s discourse on human rights to Catholic and Protestant interventions in the 1930s and 40s. Later in April, NDIAS and the History and Philosophy of Science Program hosted Peter Harrison (University of Queensland) for a symposium on his book, The Territories of Science and Religion, which explores little-known relationships between science and religion, enriching our understanding of each. In addition to offering a public lecture, each author participated in separate seminars with faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates, all of whom had read their book in advance. Manifest in all three symposia was the cross-disciplinary engagement that reflects the Institute’s commitment to the unity of knowledge, and encouragement of the exploration of descriptive and normative issues: the faculty seminars brought together colleagues from biology, chemical engineering, philosophy, law, history, anthropology, political science, English, sociology, and theology, in addition to various other university research centers and institutes.

Everything is interconnected. We see that more clearly, and our understanding of complex questions grows, when we come together from our various corners of the university around the

same table with a common focus to discuss serious issues of shared concern.

Significant firsts at NDIAS have occurred this year. In the fall semester we were delighted to collaborate with the College of Engineering to welcome Larry Hall (South Florida) as the first-ever engineering Fellow at NDIAS and the Melchor Visiting Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame. His participation in the Institute’s twiceweekly seminars throughout the semester enhanced discussions of other Fellows’ projects, ranging from an ethnographic analysis of (un) employment in the digital age to the history of Catholic youth in Cold War Mexico, just as other Fellows’ questions and comments aided his reflections in his research on the use of Big Data, especially in the medical and health insurance industries. The Institute remains dedicated to fostering interactions among all academic disciplines, including the natural sciences and engineering.

The NDIAS commitment to the involvement of both graduate and undergraduate students continues to grow. Both groups have been keen participants in our book symposia. Our five Templeton Fellows this year meant ten Templeton Undergraduate Research Assistants (TUGRAs), who not only have worked with their respective Fellows but also formed a community within the Institute under the outstanding mentorship of Monica Solomon, an advanced graduate student in the History and Philosophy of Science whose dissertation explores the relationship between mathematics and metaphysics in Isaac Newton’s thought.

As the Director of the NDIAS, it is a privilege to foster this research and activity, these discussions and interactions, seeking to promote greater awareness of the interconnectedness of everything, including the relationship between our knowledge of reality and the inescapability of ethical questions. It’s a fitting charge for an institute for advanced study at a Catholic research university.

Brad S. Gregory Director, Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study Professor of History and Dorothy G. Griffin Collegiate Chair

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traversing and translating the roads of rome

by Donald Stelluto

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n 2015, the NDIAS partnered with the Italian Studies Program, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and Notre Dame Research to offer an ambitious two-week program of probative seminars in Rome, Italy. The subject of the Rome Seminar Series was philology, broadly studied, as it has been applied to a number of disciplines. The daily seminars brought together an international and interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate student participants to pursue a rigorous daily program focused on the use and application of philology in archaeology, anthropology, history, art history, classics, law, philosophy, and theology. Rome offered a singular opportunity, situated as it is at the crossroads of history, a city marked by transformative religious ideas and institutions, millennia of cultural exchange, and significant international political developments. Rome offered an exciting classroom where the great subjects of philological study, including imposing architecture, irreplaceable artifacts, and the great documents of history, were within daily reach of the Seminar’s participants. Among the Seminar’s participants, the importance of Rome as the center of Catholic thinking and engagement with the world was not lost, especially as the Seminar drew into its sessions faculty and students from the Pontifical Institutes and local basilicas.

Seminars were designed to enable participants to explore the theoretical foundations and practical benefits of philological approaches in a number of disciplines and fields of study in order to develop new insights and fresh methodological perspectives that enrich the application of philology to modern scholarship. Drawing on descriptive as well as normative questions and comparative analyses, especially as applied to documents and collections in Rome and in Italy, this

Seminar Series was designed to foster greater engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars who rely and reflect on philological knowledge. The seminars were highly successful, both institutionally and individually, impacting the thinking and practice of its participants. In assessing the success of the seminars, several key factors for success became apparent.

While philology may not always rank among the most popular or glamorous of modern academic subjects, the seminars attracted an international group of committed intellectuals, at all levels, and both faculty and graduate students, from numerous disciplines and fields, who understood the value of philology in their own research and to scholarship in general. They shared a deep commitment to learn, to seek greater understanding, and to ask probative questions. Many participants heard about the opportunity through their own scholarly networks and sought out information from the Institute. The Seminar’s daily schedule featured morning and afternoon sessions in which superb presentations by faculty scholars were matched by rigorous questioning, with conversations most days trailing long after the day’s seminars had been concluded. The results were significant, with presenters revealing changed assumptions and the development of their ideas and students drawing into the conversations reassessments of their conceptual frameworks and the application of research in their own dissertations.

Contributing to the success of these seminars were programmatic features long valued at the Institute: the benefit of time, space, and shared reflection. Most faculty and graduate student scholars are protective of their time, their greatest resource, and they typically manipulate busy schedules to preserve time

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‘‘Rome offered an exciting classroom where the great subjects of philological study, including imposing architecture, irreplaceable artifacts, and the great documents of history were within daily reach of the Seminar’s participants.’’

for research and writing. Yet, even so, the many duties of modern faculty and graduate student scholars often fill daily calendars, leaving little time to think through intellectual puzzles, especially major questions that often transcend disciplines. Our Rome Seminar was organized to provide time for serious reflection by both groups and individuals. With the many demands of philology, participants’ time for reflection was essential in order to enable them to work through the development of major ideas and puzzles, to apply to disciplinary issues what was learned in the daily seminars, and to spend time learning new insights from other disciplines, something that neither academic training in graduate school nor departmental life can often provide. The time to posit, to propose, to explore, and to probe proved to be invaluable components in the Seminar’s daily regimen, offering especially the graduate students the chance to explore their own analytical processes and to take stock of their capabilities.

Scholars presenting and participating also enjoyed the opportunity to consider alternatives to the assumptions that had long shaped their work. The end result, like what we experience at the NDIAS, was a rich understanding of issues and methods, as well as significantly enriched modes of thinking.

The Rome Seminar also benefitted from having space, that is, having an environment in which to study, discuss, engage, and think, where distractions and daily concerns were kept at bay from interrupting or influencing such powerful and thorough reflection. Our band of philologists benefitted from the superb facilities and staff at the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway (RGG) where excellent space was offered for seminars, discussions, workshops, and small group meetings. Each week, as engagement

continued, so too grew the number of trailing conversations and a broadening of the scope of academic conversations. Shared reflection often liberates the scholar from the disciplinary assumptions that can often prejudice or influence argumentation and findings. Within an environment where intellectual engagement was highly prized and shared among the community, conversations broadened to draw in more questions that transcend disciplines, presenters re-evaluated earlier premises, and a number of students’ dissertations incorporated additional insights and took new directions. Studying philology in Rome offered other unparalleled opportunities, especially the chance to apply what was learned in the classroom to the correlating historical “space” (historical sites) of the Eternal City, including the Ara Pacis, the Vatican Museums, the Roman Forum, and the Colosseum.

The experience of the 2015 Rome Seminar, exceptional in many ways, revealed that many of the most visible features of the NDIAS academic community—an excellent group of scholars motivated to broaden their own research and to pursue major questions—could be transplanted with success if also afforded time and space to reflect, an environment in which a diverse community could posit and probe ideas and research projects, prompting engagement, rethinking, and intellectual realignment. That the NDIAS could be taken on the road successfully for two weeks in Rome is a great achievement. That the NDIAS might someday in the future be once again taken on the road, to reignite the collective engagement and ideas of its worldwide alumni Fellows, their students, their colleagues, and others is an idea worthy of reflection. Where and when the road calls remain critical questions. Perhaps this road may lead someday back to Rome.

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when in rome . . .

Top Left: Director Brad Gregory leads a seminar session; Top Right: Martin Bloomer offers insights with Linda Bredvik atop the Rome Global Gateway (RGG); Center: Faculty and graduate student particpants; Bottom Left: Carsten Dutt engages graduate students; Bottom Right: Sunset over the Tiber, looking to St. Peter’s Basilica.

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Top Left: Michael Rottmann, Ovanes Akopyan, and Sean Kelly model Rome Seminar gear; Top Right: St. John Lateran Archbasilica; Center: The School of Athens by Raphael as seen in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican; Bottom: Faculty and graduate student particpants out and about in Rome (L) and in the Rome Global Gateway (R).

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speculation and narration in mathematics

by Laurent Lafforgue

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he inspiration for the topic of this essay came from two pages by the young French philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj, published in a recent book of interviews, L’Héritage et la promesse (Legacy and Promise).1 Asked about the key question on the articulation between theology and sciences, Hadjadj replied: If science seems to us so far removed from faith, it is not so much because of the supposedly insurmountable obstacle between experiment and faith, as the fact that ‘truth’, as most often represented by sciences, blanks out the proper noun, rejects actual existence, ignores the relationship. Truth tends to be thought of as seeing, and not living. Knowing truth is understood as being in the position of a spectator dominating his object.

In that sense, contemporary technology, television, the virtual world, would all appear to emanate from this concept of truth, where seeing takes over from living. You could say that this is a concept of truth that is not nuptial but pornographic: we want to see love made, possibly make love, but not live it. For truth to be nuptial, it needs to resemble an embrace: I must give up being an invulnerable spectator to enter into a relationship with someone.

ABOVE: Photo of Salvador Dali’s Ascension (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eoskins/5649034697) by plum leaves (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eoskins/) CC BY-NC-SA. TOP RIGHT: Drawing of Laurent Lafforgue by Philippe Jaunatre with permission from the artist (http://www.dessinnocent.com/).

Christ’s extraordinary words to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6), do indeed reveal the fact that “truth will not be found in general terms, in what could be called anonymous clauses; no, Truth is a person, with his uniqueness, with a proper Name of which Peter says: ‘there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved’” (Acts 4:12).

Which is why, says Hadjadj, “in theology, exploring truth always requires both a speculative and a narrative approach, it has elements of both science and biography.

Yet, for us, biography and science have been separated, speculation and narration have been perceived as opposites.”

The intuition we have of the existence of truth and of its unity therefore prompts us to think of sciences from the point of view offered by Hadjadj: are they purely speculative and in accordance with the way we currently represent them, or are they also narrative and therefore closer than is usually acknowledged to the model of the Revelation? Are they purely theoretical—that is, etymologically, visual— or are they also life experiences? Are they completely impersonal, or do they also include at least in part relationships with people?

It seems perfectly natural to consider mathematics, as it is in the first analysis seemingly the most speculative among the sciences, the most theoretical and the most impersonal of all, as well as one that provides the models for modern physics and, to a lesser

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Newton, c.1804-1805. William blake (1757-1827). Tate Britain. Public domain.

extent, to other sciences. The mathematician that I am therefore believes it quite justifiable for me to speak in front of philosophers and representatives from other fields of learning and—because that is the crux of the matter— address the link between this unique science and truth.

Let us first ask ourselves what thoughts would go through the mind of a person who was a complete stranger to mathematics and who, for the first time in his life, was invited to visit a university department or research center dedicated to this discipline.

The first thought to take hold of his mind after this visit would surely be that, in a mathematics center, there is “nothing to see”: in other words, there is no spectacular experimentation equipment, no out of the ordinary object that might spark some curiosity or interest, just corridors, offices, rooms, and amphitheaters furnished only with chairs, tables and seats, chalkboards or sometimes wipe boards, the sort of computers and keyboards that you see everywhere nowadays,

books stacked in shelves, a few printers and photocopiers, some printed and some blank paper, and pens.

Thinking about it a little more, the visitor might also reflect that, as well as being very common and uninteresting, the objects seen are few.

In comparison with places of social activity—shops, transportation hubs, industry, construction, craft, hospitals, police stations, the military—places of mathematics would seem to comprise an unusually far higher proportion of people to material objects. Only teaching places—schools and high schools—and those other places of abstract and speculative activity— banks and insurance companies—seem to offer a similar appearance: everyday objects, few of them in fact, and proportionally many people.

It is not just the case that places of mathematics look like teaching places: they are, mostly. Our visitor could attend lectures, and if he did, would first and foremost be struck by the fact that he understood nothing, that all the

‘‘The intuition we have of the existence of truth and of its unity therefore prompts us to think of sciences from the point of view offered by Hadjadj: are they purely speculative . . . or are they also narrative . . . ?’’

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Digital art Rendering of Author Photo.

sentences were woven with words the meaning of which escapes him, or more intriguingly still, words that are familiar in the common language but that become incomprehensible in the context of the sentences spoken or written on the board. He could also attend seminars, that is, sessions similar to lectures, but where, as he could see, mathematicians would be teaching other mathematicians, and not students, another cause for surprise and questions.

If, for want of anything interesting to look at, the visitor tried to catch the people who inhabit places of mathematics in all their activities, he could also overhear informal conversations among mathematicians—and find then, not perhaps without feeling a degree of terror, that it seems natural for these people to speak in a casual way with words no less obscure than those used in lectures and seminar presentations. He could also observe many people in offices busy reading—reading books as well as printed texts or texts bound into what these people quaintly call journal fascicules (in French, the same word is used for a journal as for a newspaper)—or busy writing on a keyboard or with a pen. In the last instance, he could catch a few people apparently lost in thoughts more mysterious than everything else.

In short, the visitor would conclude that places of mathematics are inhabited mainly by people who are busy talking and listening in large and small groups, or reading, writing, and thinking alone.

So, are mathematicians related to writers, journalists, orators, or activists, who commit to the cause presented in the talks they hear, or to friends putting the world to rights, chatting over a café counter?

To attempt a reply to these questions, there is no other way than to

explore the contents of mathematicians’ lectures, presentations, conversations, journals, and books. What are they in fact talking about in their prolific speech and writing, what are they expressing to one another, and what are they expressing to themselves when they think?

For this reason, our visitor would need to venture into opening articles and books written and read by mathematicians. Even if not one word made sense, he would be struck by the extremely structured and organized appearance the texts display: they are broken down into parts, chapters, paragraphs, and subparagraphs, each with a title or at the very least a sequencing and identification number.

In addition, they comprise clearly identified and themselves numbered statements, with names such as “definition,” “lemma,” “proposition,” “theorem,” together with wellframed expositions introduced with words like “notation,” “demonstration,” “remark,” and so on. The visitor would also notice that these texts are riddled with internal and external references and that these references obey a simple rule: they refer practically always to

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parts of the text situated above, that is, read beforehand, and to articles or books published previously.

Our mathematics visitor would therefore be led to observe that each mathematical text is like a step on a journey, or a path, as if it told a story in chronological order and, what is more, as if the specific story it appears to tell were part of a general step in mathematical science and in the history of that onward march.

However, the visitor would necessarily make a comment that seems to contradict the previous one: whereas any text is structured like a story and is explicitly linked to the wider story that mathematics as a whole appears to form, it is written in the present tense. As if it were a story without events, or rather a story telling events outside or beyond time.

Our visitor would then understand that mathematical texts belong to the writing and reading time frame, as well as to the publications time frame, but that the temporal structure of their neatly ordered storytelling mirrors the intemporal structure of what they are telling the story about. The chain of logical implications that weaves the fabric of deductive reasoning is displayed in the layers of linear reading over time and in carefully dated publications.

Through the linear progression of single stories they each expound, and in the vast story they all make up together, mathematical texts reveal logical implications as if there were causes and effects linked over time, as if logic were a form of the principle of causality, as if logical and structural structures identified one another. But the use of the present tense in the texts’ verbs means that, in its very essence, mathematical logic does not depend on time.

And yet our visitor could wonder, any mathematical text is well and truly anchored in time: it not only includes a logical structure in the time frame of a story; it is itself included in the time frame of mankind as a moment and stage in the long history of the science it belongs to. Most concepts, results, and methods that are part of it or that make it possible are borrowed from other articles and books, or from other mathematicians, long gone or contemporaries. Any mathematical text is both a story, that is, a temporal form, of an intemporal mathematical story and the hinge—between past and present—of the history of mathematical science in its

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‘‘[E]ach mathematical text is like a step on a journey, or a path, as if it told a story in chronological order and, what is more, as if the specific story it appears to tell were part of a general step in mathematical science and in the history of that onward march.’’ own time frame. This duality in the identity of mathematical texts would in fact be particularly manifest in our visitor’s eyes in the fact that very many mathematicians’ names are used to designate mathematical objects and results, which is another way of linking the intemporal substance of mathematics to their history made by mankind.

Our observant visitor could also discover that mathematical texts veer between, on the one hand, the use of prior methods, concepts, and results in new analyses in order to solve problems set since a specific time and, on the other, the development of new methods, the introduction of new concepts, the exploration of new territories, the formulation of new statements the demonstration of which follows or are suggested as conjectures. Each of these two models could then appear to be both narrative and speculative, but in reverse: the model using established theories in new analyses to prove well-known conjectures fits more easily in the history of mathematics, in the illustration, summary, and, in a way, the renewed telling of one of its pages. It is however more speculative from the point of view of the substance of mathematics, as it consists in solving given problems by working back in the chain of their causes, to find the implications that derive from them. On the contrary, the model of discovery and development of new theories is more speculative from the point of view of mathematical history, as it equates to going back to the source of ancient theories so that, from those sources, another path is followed, but more narrative from the point of view of mathematics, as it flows down the causal chain, just as water flows down a riverbed.

Allegory of Mathematics. Bernardo Strozzi. Kaluga Art Museum, Russia. Public Domain.

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Mathematical texts that expound or introduce a theory are indeed similar to narratives, more specifically, to travel tales. The entirely discursive nature of speech or writing prevents an entire theory from being presented in one scene: its paths need to be traveled slowly, its crossroads negotiated, its towns, lands, and buildings need to be visited one by one.

Our still uninitiated visitor could finally ask himself if mathematical texts comprise events in the stories they unfold. He would conclude that, from the history of mathematics angle, this is certainly the case: the solution to an old problem or the emergence of a new concept represents historical events. But, from the substance of mathematics angle, do events exist? If it is true that mathematics are outside of time, can anything happen there?

Our visitor would doubtless avoid answering such a strange question too quickly. He would simply note that when mathematicians talk through this or that theory or demonstration they often use such expressions as “Here is where something happens.” As if striking statements, an unexpected simplification, a computation result, gave these mathematicians the feeling they were moving from one landscape to another, opening a new vista.

But if it is true that mathematicians’ texts and speeches, each individually and all together, have the form of narratives, our visitor might well ask for whom are mathematicians telling their stories?

However paradoxical it may seem, given the manifestly unentertaining nature of these texts and the difficulty of understanding them, an objective fact would immediately spring to our visitor’s mind: lectures are given so that students can follow them, seminar presentations are made for colleagues to listen to them, conversations are held so that mathematicians can enter into a dialogue with one another, articles are written to be published, and, finally, journals and specialized books are commercialized so that they can be bought—especially by university libraries—and read by mathematicians.

‘‘Mathematicians necessarily compose their articles and books—that is, the tales of their mathematical journeys—thinking that the regions these tales describe are beautiful and worthy of being known and visited by others.’’

Our visitor would then ask what inclines mathematicians to teach students, give presentations for the attention of their colleagues or speak to them informally, to write articles or books intended for publication.

He would then learn that what those institutions which employ mathematicians expect from them is that they give mathematics lectures and presentations and publish articles or books in exchange for the means of subsistence provided to them. This information would, however, doubtless only displace the question in his mind, and make him address those formative years, when longing to become a mathematician appears and takes shape: why would young people ever engage in careers of which the objective reality for them will consist of speaking to be listened to and writing to be read? It is obvious that this fact echoes far deeper human aspirations that dwell within them. So what can these aspirations be?

Our visitor could first recognize in most researchers in mathematics— as in all academic fields—the avatar of a desire, highly visible in children

and probably still present in adults, although in a more concealed manner: the desire to obtain confirmation from others, to draw their attention, and to receive their approval of what they do, which is felt in part to be approval of who they are. In other words, the desire to be loved, more or less corrupted and confused by the tenacious illusion that it is possible to conquer love by merit. Young children seek their parents’ approval of what they do every day; to grow, they need to feel their parents’ benevolent and supportive gaze on them. Later and in parallel, the desire to receive positive judgments from their teachers and professors represents one of students’ most powerful reasons for working diligently. Our visitor, discovering the world of mathematics, would not fail to liken this well-known characteristic of the human heart to the importance afforded to small and great honors in university life and the prestige attached to certain places, names, institutions, and journals, and so on.

Acknowledging this could lead our visitor to interpreting the obligation, which mathematicians and other academic researchers have placed upon themselves, to try to be listened to and read, as a sign of immaturity. Unless he realized that another very deep human longing dwelled in researchers side by side with the previous one, and in the purest hearts, dominated it: the longing to share. In other words, the need to offer others a form of love, by sharing with them objectively precious things, which we possess or hope to be able to discover and make known. People know deep in their hearts that giving brings more happiness than receiving. For mathematicians, there is no other possible gift than speech, and therefore, our visitor would think, no true happiness is possible unless the narrative content of mathematics is liable to be of considerable value. Mathematicians necessarily compose their articles and books—that is, the tales of their mathematical journeys—thinking that the regions these tales describe are beautiful and worthy of being known and visited by others.

They are propelled by their desire to make known and loved their mathematics pathways and landscapes, the wealth and splendor of which they discover; in the same way are we happy to invite friends to a beloved country and try to share with them all the knowledge that this country gives us.

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Jesus among the Doctors (as a child debating in the temple), 1506. Albrecht DĂźrer (1471-1528). Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Public domain.

But our visitor would soon observe that the efforts deployed by mathematicians to share with others the truth and beauty they discover encounter obstacles and disappointments similar to those we suffer from when we invite dear friends to a familiar region, where everything speaks to our hearts but not to theirs. Nowadays especially, mathematicians seem to be moving away from one another at great speed, and whereas the number of published articles and books never ceases to increase, that of actual readers of almost all these articles and books is undoubtedly constantly decreasing.

Mathematicians expound their narratives in the hope of sharing, that is, of experiencing a form of love with their human brethren through mathematics; but most will know the secret misery of the fruit of their mind’s labor awakening no particular interest, as if they were talking and writing in a desert without ears or eyes. Even the most highly regarded

mathematicians, those whose presentations and writings are awaited, listened to, and read, generating other work, are not sheltered from selfdoubt and despair; this can arise if they become conscious that, in the tokens of respect and admiration they are surrounded by, fascination for social glory and strength, or even jealousy, dominates and supplants the shared love for truth.

Our visitor could also ask mathematicians the difficult question of whether they prefer to read or write mathematics. Judging by the ever increasing flow of articles sent to the editorial boards of journals and by the matching increasing difficulty of finding reviewers for the articles submitted, our visitor would probably hear most mathematicians reply that they prefer to write mathematics. And this is humanly quite normal, the visitor would reflect, as there is more joy in giving than in receiving.

This clearly identified fact would then bring the visitor to ask himself whether writing a mathematical narrative intended to be read is indeed a form of gift to other mathematicians, if the latter do not in fact appear to be very interested in reading them. And if writing mathematical narratives represents a gift of questionable value to others, then why write?

Perhaps to write to one’s self?

Our visitor would observe in any case that, as in any text, mathematical texts are prepared and drafted by their author before being read by others: at least chronologically, writing precedes reading, with the result that a

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mathematician who writes has no other witness than the narrative itself. This general nature of writing is particularly strongly marked in mathematics, because, when compared to other sciences, time flows in it slowly: the time taken to craft books and articles is measured in months, even years, and articles are generally published long after they have been submitted to a specialized journal. Today most articles are made available beforehand on the web; they are easier to download, but time is still needed to read them, and most are probably never read.

If he were to ask mathematicians, our visitor would in fact learn that when they write up their work mathematicians are not thinking about their future readers or anybody. They even forget themselves. They think of nothing but the narrative, from which they are trying, through their writing, to reveal in their minds the clearest possible picture. A mathematical narrative is like a travel story in which, in fact, the journey consists of the narrative itself, the attentive traveler is its author, and the pen, pencil, or keyboard are both instruments of the tale and instruments of the journey featured in the story. The paper or screen, a proxy for paper, is an ocean, and the pen or keyboard, the stereotyped form of a pen, is a boat on that ocean.

But if it is true that mathematicians first themselves tell their tales for themselves, our visitor could ask, what is the point of this?

The question deserves all the more to be asked that mathematical writing requires considerable efforts of concentration and attention, at the very limits of the possibilities offered by the human mind. Our visitor might then reflect that telling one’s self a story is only of true value if it is apparent that the story is not one’s own, in other words, that the story is inspired. The term inspiration is often used by widely differing mathematicians.

But most go no further. They talk of inspiration, without the idea entering their mind that it could come from an unknown person or author, from God, whose marvels every mathematician would praise and celebrate in writing and in speech.

Some mathematicians even say in the same breath that, to write mathematics, hearing needs to be finely tuned to the subtle, and very discreet, almost inaudible voice of mathematical truths that are waiting to be told, to receive form in language; most, however, do not think that anyone is speaking, and yet, in laying down on paper their mathematical narratives, they show that they are paying attention to a certain kind of words from this someone and that they find their only joy in becoming servants to these words, following them as faithfully as they can.

Laurent Lafforgue Professeur Permanent at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES), in Bures-sur-Yvette, France Former Research Director, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) 2002 Fields Medal Laureate Presenter at 2012 NDIAS Conference on “Conceptions of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge”

Translation by Hélène Wilkinson, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques

Note

1.

Mgr. Dominique Rey and Fabrice Hadjadj, L’Héritage et la promesse (n.p.: Éditions RCF Méditerranée, 2011).

This article is an excerpt from Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge (UND Press), edited by Vittorio Hösle, which culminated from the NDIAS conference, “Conceptions of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge.”

euclid (detail) from The School of Athens (1511) by raphael (1483-1520).

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liberal arts and the high schoolcollege transition

by Vanessa Davies

F

or three summers, I taught a college-level introductory Egyptology course to high school students through the University of Chicago’s Graham School of Continuing Studies. I saw that these students were capable of learning a difficult ancient language, participating in discussions about literature, and thinking critically about ancient history and culture.

Listening to my students, I learned a tremendous amount about their attitudes towards college education, their concerns about their educational futures, and their preparedness for life beyond high school. What is now called K-14 education, 13 and 14 representing the two years of coursework required for an Associate’s degree, features prominently in my concern for the future of education.

My interest in K-14 education is partly related to the way that my field is viewed. We think of ancient Egypt as kids’ stuff. In schools, ancient Egypt is taught in elementary or middle school, never to be mentioned again. Too few colleges and universities devote resources to the field of Egyptology, leaving students without the ability to develop a more mature perspective on this ancient culture. But Egyptology is one of the academic disciplines that are truly relevant to young people.

One point of interest to students is the intersections of the ancient Egyptian religion and Coptic Christianity, and later, Islam, in texts, art, architecture, and cultural practices. Important conversations can be started around recent political and social tensions in Egypt followed secondarily by the causes and effects of looting and environmental change on archaeological sites. Contemporary American adoption and reuse of ancient Egyptian cultural symbols is another rich area of discussion and exploration.

Because students are interested in topics like these, they approach with enthusiasm the difficult work of learning hieroglyphs, analyzing historical data, and thinking about literary works written by people far removed in space and time.

In my summer Egyptology courses, I saw high school students eager to tackle the complex material that I presented to them in class because the subject matter meant something to them. They all had their own motivations for taking my intensive summer course, which ran from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon, five days a week for three weeks.

But despite the very different reasons that propelled them to enroll in the course, they all found in the classroom a group of equally enthusiastic colleagues who wanted to explore the material with as much vigor as they did. When students are engaged in their course of learning, when they take

‘‘We think of ancient Egypt as kids’ stuff. . . . But Egyptology is one of the academic disciplines that are truly relevant to young people.’’

ownership of it, their personal motivation becomes the driving force in their education.

In general, the high school students whom I taught came from privileged backgrounds, but other institutions are showing that young people from all types of backgrounds can excel at college-level work while in high school.

Teachers with graduate degrees instruct students in Bard High School Early Colleges and Early College programs (tuition free!) in seminar classes using college-level material in the liberal arts and sciences.1 These students graduate from high school with one year of college credits or with an Associate’s degree. With growing pressures on colleges and universities to lower costs and to raise graduation rates, classes of the type offered at early college high schools and taught by people with collegelevel teaching experience can be a bridge from secondary to post-secondary education for students who might not be able to envision themselves in college.

A college-high school connection does not have to involve a program that results in an Associate’s degree awarded with a high school diploma. Any amount of exposure to college classes and to college professors can help students discern whether or not a particular school, major, or life path is right for them.

Nelzy Gonzalez-Zaragoza, a senior at MetWest

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High School in Oakland, CA, blogged about her class trip last spring to the University of California, Berkeley to attend a lecture in Robert Reich’s Wealth and Poverty class. She wrote: “Honestly, I don’t think I had heard his name before the lecture was proposed to me. I also thought that I wasn’t going to be able to understand the topics he was talking about because it was a UC Berkeley Robert Reich lecture! The truth is that it was easy to follow because a lot of the things he talked about I already knew and understood.”2 Gonzalez-Zaragoza’s educational breakthrough resulted not because Reich fed her new data, but because her experience in a college classroom left her feeling capable, confident, and invigorated.

Young people who are from under-resourced communities and who are first-generation college students face obstacles not just with the onetime leap into undergraduate education, by which I mean applying and getting accepted into college, but in understanding the academic culture of college. The resulting culture shock for students who are unfamiliar with college can hinder or bring to an end their college careers. Students often lack preparation for the expectations placed on them, the freedoms and responsibilities they will have, and the pitfalls they will face. Students flounder when unfamiliar with the more subtle aspects of academic culture, such as specialized academic terms, ways of participating in classes, and when and how to ask for assistance.

The example of Oakland I recently sat on a panel of judges as part of a successful initiative in the Oakland Unified School District called Educating for Democracy in the Digital Age (EDDA). Members of my panel listened to high school seniors at Fremont High School present their research and then defend their theses in twenty-minute question-and-answer sessions. The topics covered included poverty and education, the adultification of minors in the legal system, climate change, Type 2 diabetes, and the deportation of undocumented adults whose children are American citizens. These students, who had conducted polls of their peers and incorporated published articles into their papers, presented their arguments with great poise and with a lot of heart. I listened to ninth graders from Castlemont High School speak on civic issues at a council committee meeting at City Hall in Oakland. They presented

their research to the council members, who then engaged in a vibrant exchange with the students about the issues.

Not all students will want to or be able to participate in an early college high school, but the style of critical thinking skills that a liberal arts education imparts can be acquired through research projects like the ones the students in Oakland did this past year. Those projects touched on important issues in the students’ lives, topics that are tangible and relevant to their everyday experiences. Perhaps even more importantly, the projects encouraged students to observe, reflect on, and think about a topic.

Initiatives like EDDA successfully refute the idea that young people share in a culture that devalues learning.3 With meaningful research topics, assistance, and encouragement, high school students demonstrated personal investment in their work, and they were excited to share and defend their research. Young students should not have to wait until their college years to engage in meaningful exercises in thinking. This type of college-level learning must be brought into more high schools.

In Oakland, this change is happening now.

A ballot measure passed in 2014 is providing direct funding to the school district for an expansion of college and career readiness programs, student support services, and programs designed to ease transitions into high school and into college. Linked Learning is bringing to Oakland high schools dual enrollment, that is, college-level classes, as well as technical education and work-based learning experiences. The East Bay Career Pathways

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Consortium works with school districts, community colleges, businesses, and local agencies in the East Bay to create pathways oriented around four career tracks to facilitate the transition from high school to college by offering college-credit classes and work-based learning opportunities.

My dream is for career pathways education to have a humanistic critical-thinking component so that students could receive mentoring by technical experts and humanists. The four growth industries in the Bay Area that career pathways are currently being developed around are information technology, health and biosciences, manufacturing and engineering, and public services and law. An introductory and an advanced critical thinking course in the mode of the humanities that supplemented these courses of study could help students consider the human aspects of their chosen career paths. I envision courses that meet one-on-one or in small groups of two or three students with one humanities faculty member. The students are asked to think about certain questions related to their career pathways and technical education and to discuss those questions with the group. These questions would address topics such as audience (whom do you envision using the products that you create or whom do you envision assisting in your line of work), the self (what personal reasons do you have for choosing this particular path), as well as topical questions (e.g., controversies concerning price gouging in the pharmaceutical business).

Integrating career pathways with a liberal arts style of learning, which involves critical thinking

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exercises in a small group format, can help young people focus on the big picture of their career pathway, how their work affects themselves and other people.

The role of the liberal arts in the digital age Faced with a barrage of information and perspectives shared via social media, young pre-college students require the tools to think critically about the information they encounter. With practice in reading, research, and careful consideration, young people can formulate their own informed opinions about the diverse subject matters that they encounter in our interconnected world. They must analyze a surfeit of news headlines delivered via the web, have the insight to consider or disregard usergenerated content on review and opinion sites and on sites like wikis that claim to provide factual information, as well as process and deal with everything from the disappointment of not getting likes on posted material to the cruel words of anonymous cyberbullies. To do this, they must learn how to look for implicit meaning and understand issues of authorship and intent. In the digital world of the 21st century, young people need to learn the skills of discernment and argumentation at an early age. A liberal arts education facilitates students’ acquisition of these critical skills.

The benefits are immense for colleges and universities that participate in programs that offer some college-level learning in high schools. Two- and four-year colleges and universities that recruit students from schools in neighboring areas will benefit from outreach efforts that provide smoother transitions from high school to college and that could very well lead to higher rates of successful completion of the college degree. Students for whom four-year college is not the right path will ideally make this discovery early and, in the tuition-free models, before accumulating any debt. Yet they will benefit from having had exposure to a liberal arts college style of thinking at the high school level. The current situation, where college is not accessible to everyone, is effectively reversed because everyone will have some collegelevel education. Efforts at outreach and connection between high schools and colleges, as we are seeing in Oakland, lead to further collaboration and dialogue between K-12 teachers and college professors, creating an expansive community of education professionals.

Mural (now demolished), formerly located at 49th Street and Broadway in Oakland, CA, by students from the Multicultural Arts School in Chicago and artists Abicus, Daz, Desi, Fact, Jinx, and Raven. Photo credit: www.oaktownart.com.

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To return to ancient Egypt, one text tells the story of a teacher of scribes who struggled with how to best reach his students. The teacher remarks that farm animals respond to the coaxing words of humans. Even the obelisk hears the words of the quarry men who endeavor to position it upright. The teacher describes the young scribe as “denser than an obelisk,” and claims that he does not respond to the teacher’s inducements to learn, which include harsh and cruel punishment: “But though I beat you with every kind of stick, you do not listen. If I knew another way of doing it, I would do it for you, that you might listen. You are a person fit for writing, though you have not yet known a woman. Your heart discerns, your fingers are skilled, your mouth is apt for reciting.”4 Apparently incapable of reaching his student or inadequate to the task, the teacher desperately seeks a solution.

Although the passage’s teacher has exhausted his pedagogical repertoire, we should cast about for “another way of doing it.” Sir Ken Robinson challenged our age-based educational model, describing it as a factory, where we organize our product by date of manufacture.5 Programs that bring college-level learning into high schools demonstrate that young students are capable of and interested in college-level work. We need to engage students in this type of learning at an earlier stage in their education.

With two-year or four-year college now a goal for a greater and greater number of people, colleges and universities must find ways to extend a hand across that traditionally great divide.

Detail from mural by artist Peps 357 at Skyline High School, Oakland, CA.

Vanessa Davies Visiting Scholar Researcher Department of Near Eastern Studies University of California, Berkeley Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow

Notes

1.

For Leon Botstein’s perspective on this issue, see Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, New York: Doubleday, 1997.

2.

Nelzy Gonzalez-Zaragoza, “Wealth and Poverty: In the Eyes of a High School Student,” youngoakland.com, April 24, 2015, accessed May 21, 2015.

3.

In Jefferson’s Children, Botstein articulated this notion and described the role of a rigorous, reinvented high school curriculum in combating it.

4.

Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II: The New Kingdom, 1976. Reprint, University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2006, p.

168-169.

5.

His speech “Changing Paradigms” of June 16, 2008 at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce can be found online: www.thersa.org/discover/videos/eventvideos/2008/06/ changing-paradigms/. The section to which I refer begins at 40:04.

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Call for Fellows for 2017-2018

The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) supports research in all academic disciplines that is directed toward or extends inquiry on ultimate questions and questions of value. Fellows are encouraged to reflect on broad questions that link multiple areas of inquiry and to explore the relationship between the descriptive and the normative in an engaging academic community of scholars, scientists, and artists.

The NDIAS encourages fellows to include questions about value, meaning, and purpose in relationship to their particular research projects, to examine how their findings might influence the world in concrete ways, and to think through the moral implications of their research. Fellows receive stipends up to $60,000, subsidized housing, research funding, a faculty office at the NDIAS, and multiple opportunities for engagement with other scholars and faculty at the University of Notre Dame.

The Institute offers residential fellowships for faculty and for graduate students. All those with promising and appropriate projects, whether distinguished and established or beginning a career, are invited to apply.

For further information on fellowships at the NDIAS, please see ndias.nd.edu.

The application deadline is October 15, 2016. Awards will be announced in spring 2017. Direct questions to ndias@nd.edu or (574) 631-1305, or write to: NDIAS, 1124 Flanner Hall, Notre Dame, IN USA 46556.

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how is theology inspired by the sciences?

T

by Celia Deane-Drummond

hat science might be inspired by religious or theological insights is well known in the history of science. We can consider, for example, the natural theology of the early thirteenth century, which moved from merely a contemplative activity to one that was imbued with an effort to understand how and why creation worked the way it did. Such natural theologies persisted to the eighteenth century, so that in the botanical realm William Paley’s Natural Theology or John Ray’s The Wisdom of God was intent on finding evidence of how God thought in the workings of the natural world.1 Charles Darwin was apparently inspired by such natural theologies while a student at Cambridge, but his growing confidence in the explanatory powers of the scientific account left any theistic underpinning somewhat fragile.2 In the secular climate today, the question becomes inverted, so that it now asks how theology might be inspired by the sciences, instead of how can science be inspired by theology. Indeed, some might consider that this question can no longer be asked, as the motivated quest for pure scientific discoveries as representing truth about the world tends to give way to pragmatic technological solutions to problems within the world. But if we hold onto the ideal of science as a search for truth about the world for a moment, then a common desire underlying such a search is one motivated by wonder at the complexity, beauty, and diversity of the world in which we live. Richard Dawkins, well known for his hostile representation of theism, acknowledges, in his book Unweaving the Rainbow, the wonder that arises from scientific discovery. He claims: The impulses to awe, reverence and wonder which led Blake to mysticism (and lesser figures to paranormal superstition, as we shall see) are precisely those that lead others to science. Our interpretation is different but what excites us is the same. The mystic is content to bask in the wonder and revel in the mystery that we were not “meant” to understand. The scientist feels the same wonder, but is restless, not content, recognizes the mystery as profound, then adds, “But we are working on it.”3 Of course, he is quite wrong here to suppose that such a religious view, which he represents as stereotypical mysticism, is the only religious view possible in relation to a natural phenomenon. A scientist can just as easily be motivated to explore reasons why the mystery is there for explicitly religious reasons as for reasons of pure curiosity. Here we can think of wonder as a kind of preliminary elative experience that joins with intellectual curiosity to drive the search for the truth behind particular natural phenomena.

Is such an experience of wonder in the scientific quest at all analogous to specific religious experiences? The answer to this question is somewhat ambiguous and depends to a large extent on how far and to what extent natural theology is acceptable as a way of thinking theologically. By way of clarification, natural theology is most often understood as a methodological approach, a way of moving toward an understanding of God from close observation of the natural world. There are present-day examples of this position, such as Paul Davis’s reflection on modern, contemporary Left: Woman Science, Eugène Grasset (1845-1917). Public domain.

cosmology, where, for him, the precise laws of our own universe point to the Mind of God.4 This is a good example, as it shows up the limitations of such a method, for am I really inclined to believe in or be in a relationship with a God who is represented simply by such mathematical laws?

Those who hesitate to attach themselves to natural theology are also aware of the difficulties of bringing together belief in a good God with the apparently cruel and wasteful processes found in the natural world. This is particularly true for biologists, which may be one reason that theism is less common among prominent contemporary biologists compared to physicists. There seems no need for the God hypothesis, and, if anything, religious views are thought of as evolved capacities, selected either directly during the process of hominid evolution or indirectly as a result of other evolutionary advantages such as agent detection capabilities that were then conveniently transferred to belief in gods.

More hostile elements associated with biology simmer here as well, not least by philosophers of biology, such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, who advance rather more aggressive versions of atheism along with their biological explanations.5 Given this trend, it is hardly surprising that, following Karl Barth’s famous “Nein” to his fellow theologian Emil Brunner, many Protestant theologians, at least, are wary of most forms of natural theology.6 Such a skeptical view becomes reinforced by historical, cultural, and racial problems

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Education (DETAIL), Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). Public domain.

associated with linking belief in a given nature with religious perfection, such as in the blood and soil mentality of Nazi Germany. Accordingly, the revealed theology that puts the most emphasis on the revelation of God in the Bible, and more specifically in Jesus Christ, takes precedent. But then another problem arises, namely, how and in what sense might there be any relationship between revealed theology and the sciences? Can “natural theology” be dispensed with so easily?7 In order to address this question, it is a good idea to consider the way in which early theologians developed forms of natural theology rather than take examples simply from contemporary science or distorted versions of natural theology in cultural history. A good place to start is with the Franciscan writers who developed a tradition of natural philosophy. Saint Bonaventure, a Franciscan writing in 1259, claimed: The supreme power, wisdom and goodness of the Creator shine forth in created things in so far as the bodily senses inform the interior senses. . . . In the first way of seeing, the observer considers things in themselves. . . . [T]he observer can rise, as from a vestige, to the knowledge of the immense power, wisdom and goodness of the Creator. In the second way of seeing, the way of faith[,] . . . we understand that the world was fashioned by the Word of God.8 Although Bonaventure believed that the Word of God as revealed in Jesus Christ is “superior” compared to the vestiges

of God found in the natural world, for him, God as Creator was a cosmic presence, since God is the Creator of all that is.

It would be a mistake, therefore, to think that this form of natural theology was a way of finding God in the natural world somehow independent of faith in God, or that those who were habitual sinners could somehow just “see” God in the natural order of things without prior experience of God in prayer. Bonaventure also seems to go further than this in suggesting that only those who are acting out their faith through actions of justice and only those who already have some knowledge of God through intense meditation can begin the journey and see with a pure heart those vestiges of the wisdom of God in the creaturely world. Given that the believer could reach such heights of contemplative grace, it is hardly surprising that such a view, at first sight, appears antithetical to experimental science. But it is significant that Bonaventure also claimed we need to move beyond mere vestiges, for in creatures “He is present in them by his essence, His power and His presence.”9 Bonaventure, heavily influenced by Augustine in his Platonic descriptions of creatures as “shadows” of that perfect wisdom found in God, also encouraged careful understanding of the truth, including the truth that could come from scientific activity. Such scientific activity is in his case put to a particular goal, namely, the goal of mystical union with God. He believed that the contemplation of the insights of the various sciences takes place in charity. In other words, all knowledge and human endeavor is instilled with the spirit of

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love. He links various aspects of human endeavor together: reading with fervor, speculation with devotion, investigation with admiration, observation with exultation, industry with piety, knowledge with love, understanding with humility, study with grace, and, finally, the mirror with wisdom.10

Ecological Praxis If, as Bonaventure suggests, wonder is a common language through which believing scientists express a kind of implicit religious experience, filled out by closer attention to natural theology, then a more direct inspiration of theology from natural science comes from practical concerns about environmental issues and ecology. Ecology as science can be distinguished from ecology as a social and political movement, and ecotheology draws inspiration from all elements associated with ecology, not just the scientific ones. Nonetheless, scientific accounts about the natural world and close, detailed attention to the behavior of other species act as sources of inspiration and motivation. Different theologians will focus on different aspects of the problem and draw on different elements of the sciences involved, ranging from climate science to discussions about animal suffering, biodiversity loss, and so on. The inspiration for such a reflection has as much to do with the wonder in that biodiversity as a need to address important ethical issues that science on its own does not seem able to solve. Ecotheology forces theological reflection away from the temptation to be narrowly anthropocentric, that is, focusing on humanity in a way that excludes consideration of other creatures and ecological contexts.

The variety of forms that ecotheology might take are far too extensive to discuss in any detail here, but it is significant inasmuch as it embraces a huge range of methodological starting points, from traditional Eastern Orthodoxy to ecofeminism. Eastern Orthodox engagement with ecology retains a strong focus on the Logos (Word) as revealed in logoi (words) of the natural world and the place of human beings as microcosm and mediator between heaven and earth. By putting emphasis on asceticism and liturgical practices, it seeks to address the fundamental problems associated with a lack of sustainability, namely, the human tendency to take more than is required for a flourishing life and to define that flourishing in material rather than in spiritual terms.

The ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, Bartholomew II, also known in the media as the “Green Patriarch,” has been active in promoting environmental

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responsibility throughout the world. While the extent of environmental damage as shown in scientific study inspires such activism, the underlying motivation is one that seeks to turn human beings away from selfish desires to live more responsibly in communion with God and other creatures.

Symposia and conferences repeat the need for changes in practice and human responsibility, as the opening summit of the June 2012 conference in Halki indicated.

Permit us to propose that perhaps the reason for this hesitation and hindrance may lie in the fact that we are unwilling to accept personal responsibility and demonstrate personal sacrifice.

In the Orthodox Christian tradition, we refer to this “missing dimension” as ascesis, which could be translated as abstinence and moderation, or—better still—simplicity and frugality. The truth is that we resist any demand for self-restraint and self-control.

However, dear friends, if we do not live more simply, we cannot learn to share. And if we do not learn to share, then how can we expect to survive? This may be a fundamental religious and spiritual value.

Yet it is also a fundamental ethical and existential principle.11 Bartholomew claims, then, that a weakened sense of social responsibility stems from a lost ascetic spirituality.

Roman Catholic social teaching also issues a similar call to environmental responsibility; in the writings of Pope John Paul II, we find a modification of the term human ecology used in social science to describe, as in the Orthodox Church, a way of emphasizing the importance of recognizing humanity’s place within a wider ecological network of relationships.12 The pope also used the term ecological conversion, referring to an understanding that all of creation is in one sense linked into a cosmic Christology.13 While the idea of a cosmic liturgy goes back to the early church, for example, Maximus the Confessor, recovering this thread in contemporary discussion gives ecological language a significant place: an association with what is arguably the heart of faith in Jesus Christ. The Word made flesh becomes echoed in the logoi of creation. My own preference is to use the language of wisdom here: Christ as the Wisdom of God is found as in a mirror in the wisdom of the creaturely world.

My preference for wisdom relates to one aspect that ecological study consistently shows, namely, the suffering, predation, and death of myriad creatures, both in present ecological systems and recorded throughout evolutionary history. Some theologians have argued that we need a new

‘‘Ecotheology forces theological reflection away from the temptation to be narrowly anthropocentric, that is, focusing on humanity in a way that excludes consideration of other creatures and ecological contexts.’’

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kind of theodicy as a result of such insights.14 Such limitations are important to recognize in order to remind ourselves that the temptation to hubris is always present, not least in the manner in which we might presume to be able to solve the difficult global problems of sustainability and what this might mean in terms of balancing different pressures in a truly human ecology, one that aims for what Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessors have called authentic or integral human development.15 Sustainability, therefore, in its complex demand on human societies, reaches beyond what might be termed a “univocal” response shaped by specific branches of modern science, if that science is thought of as cutting out aspects of human experience. Here, not just theology is inspired by the sciences, but different sciences come together with other social and human disciplines in order to seek real solutions to practical problems. Sustainability, therefore, when it is defined as inclusive of creatures other than human beings, represents what might be termed ecological praxis directed toward a particular end or goal, namely, the flourishing of the earth as such. Although science usually tries to avoid teleological language, it is clear that the agenda of sustainability is directed toward future generations as well as present ones.

Part of the difficulty is knowing how to balance different demands, and in this context theology contributes to the discussion alongside science. I am convinced that the fruit of such interdisciplinary practices goes beyond that of respective disciplines and is generative of questions and their possible resolution in ways that would not be the case if we just kept to our comfortable watertight areas of specialization.

We need that aspect of prudence that Thomas Aquinas termed “docilitas”: the openness to learn, not simply in relation to our own boundary of unknowing, but in relation to other scholars who join with us to explore this important complex of boundaries.16 Prudence, or practical wisdom, is also, significantly, an intellectual virtue of practical reason,

‘‘[W]e can recover, perhaps, a role for theology that recenters the human enterprise in the search for truth on the moral and religious claims that prioritize some fields of research over others.’’

one that insists on right action following deliberation and judgment. But other elements of prudence are important as well. In the cognitive area, not only teachability but also memoria and solertia are important.17 Part of the difficulty of ecological restoration, for example, is in knowing which particular historical period to go back to in order to construct a new landscape when its predecessor no longer exists as a result of human activities.18 Memory that is “true to being” will consider the social and historical aspects of ecological restoration in sustainable projects and not simply an arbitrary historical baseline. Biologists can try to discern what an ecological system may have been like in the past, but they are not in a position to adjudicate which historical period is the one that should be aimed at today. This is an ethical question that requires prudential judgment. Solertia, or the ability to act right in the face of the unexpected, is also a skill that is not necessarily commensurate with scientific prowess. Given the number of environmental disasters that are also profoundly human tragedies highlighted on a repeated basis in the news media, I will name just a few: Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005; the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010; or Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012. All these events involved a scientific account of what happened, but knowing how to respond quickly and decisively requires solertia.

I could also go on to name the other aspects of imperative prudence that arguably connect with practices of sustainability, including, for example, caution, insight, reason, foresight, and circumspection, which basically means taking account of what is known, in other words, the insights portrayed in science. Foresight is interesting in this respect: if we could have accurate foresight about, for example, climate change, perhaps there would be less intense debate about the level of scientific uncertainty in climate change models.

For Aquinas, foresight is linked with God’s Providence, and therefore it underlies one important difficulty faced by the modern believer and scientist. Do the changes that we are experiencing undermine our faith in divine Providence? Or does Providence give us confidence that, in spite of human sinfulness, or what might be called in this case anthropogenic sin, Earth will still somehow be under divine protection?

This is too large an issue to address here; my intention is to show how theological reflection might be inspired by the uncertainties evident in modern science as much as their discoveries.

Wisdom in the University My concluding discussion reflects, perhaps, a wider sense that theological reflection should not just be seen as inspired by the sciences but as actively making a contribution to the way truth is not only perceived but also realized in practical ways.19 MacIntyre famously described the normative principles of justice and rationality as culturally laden.20 Much the same could be said about conceptions of truth

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but in this case drawing on distinct epistemological bases.

The fragmentation and specialization of that knowledge in the modern university has tended to silence theological or religious discussion as not relevant or pertinent to university education. The University of Notre Dame is an important exception to that trend, by naming but not shaming its theological values as central to its mission as a center of excellence in university education. In such a context, we can recover, perhaps, a role for theology that recenters the human enterprise in the search for truth on the moral and religious claims that prioritize some fields of research over others.

It would be appropriate to name this an exercise in seeking wisdom rather than simply knowledge, where wisdom is that classical sense of rediscovering the relationship between fields of study and, in theological terms, inclusive of a relationship with God. What might that wisdom look like in practice?

In the first place, theological wisdom in the university draws on education that students have already received in the context of family and community. In the Hebrew scriptures this way of learning was practical and contextual long before personified wisdom came to the fore and prior to contemporary uses of wisdom literature in theological discourse. This praxis understood as theory informed by practices is very different from utilitarian methods, which emphasize usefulness for its own sake and attempt to control knowledge, detached from other forms of knowing and contemplation. In the university setting itself, the context of students’ community life is just as important to learning as the content of their courses.

Second, theological wisdom is expressed in the Hebrew Bible in feminine categories. I am confining my discussion of wisdom to Christian theology, but this should not be taken to imply that I think that other religions have little to offer to the debates on wisdom. I focus on arguably the most dominant religious tradition in the Western world in order to show what insights this tradition might lend to the university as an institution for higher education. Christian theology has been dogged in its history by interpretations of theology that are influenced by patriarchal societies and assumptions.

Such influences also creep into a university setting in a way that is subliminal if not carefully examined. Catherine Keller, a leading feminist theologian, has drawn on the idea of emancipatory wisdom as that which best describes the future of theology in the university.21 It is wisdom that can straddle the world of the academic and ecclesial communities to which theology must give an account of itself. For Keller, wisdom, “at least as practiced in the indigenous and biblical traditions, is irredeemably implicated in the sensuous, the communal, the experiential, the metanoic, the unpredictable, the imaginal, the practical.”22 Her use here of “metanoic,” from metanoia, meaning “change of heart,” is significant as it implies transformation. This differs significantly from the coercive control of matter by the mind, which is the dominant agenda

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of modernity; rather it takes time to “let things become” and includes the social as well as the cosmological.

Theological wisdom, therefore, is not individualistic but highly relational, operating from within the social context and reaching out to the natural world as well. It has the capacity, therefore, to enlarge a student’s horizons to consider issues that are important not just to the human community, but to the community of other creatures.

Indeed, based on Proverbs 8, God could be said to create the world in love but through wisdom.23 Hence wisdom is a fundamental characteristic of the way God is perceived to create and sustain the world, perceived as a child at play, ever present with God at the dawn of existence. Yet such a theological interpretation of creation in wisdom, although grounded in a different metaphysics, does not need to be at loggerheads with cosmological and evolutionary accounts of the origin of the Earth inasmuch as they remain material accounts of origins.24 Rather, it adds to such an account a dimension that fills out an interpretation of human origins in a way that complements the voice of science. Even many evolutionary biologists are now claiming that being religious is part of what makes human beings human.

Third, a theological voice is one that needs to be heard, for without it more extreme voices start to force their way into higher education’s agenda. Such a worrying trend is only too apparent in those who wish to promote creationism, the belief that the story of Genesis is literally true and an alternative to the evolutionary account of science. While creationist science’s voice has become rather more sophisticated through the notion of intelligent design, it still seeks to provide through ideology an alternative to neo-Darwinian notions of evolutionary science. Even if many biologists believe that neo-Darwinian theory is insufficient on its own to explain all aspects of evolution, thus including now more sophisticated accounts of

Woman teaching geometry (c. 1309-1316). Public domain.

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epigenetics, behavioral inheritance, or symbolic learning, it is still accepted as a key working paradigm. It is hardly surprising that given this trend virtually all secular universities in the United States wish to keep theology out of their agendas. Yet perhaps it is for this reason that such counterreactions have found their force. For if people are inculcated into utilitarian methods of learning and thinking at universities, then a culture that is generally religious will sense some disorientation and so be more inclined to an equally narrow reaction to that utilitarianism. In other words, a narrowing of epistemology through a secularist agenda such as that expressed in university education all too easily leads to a counterreaction that is ironically a very reflection of such narrowness but now expressed in religious terms.

The narrowing of epistemology and counteraction in creationist accounts highlights the importance of a rich understanding of theological wisdom that will discourage such retreats into what seem to be apparently safe havens.

Fourth, and more radical perhaps, New Testament theological wisdom finds expression through the paradox of suffering, rather than a celebration of human wisdom, in the wisdom of the cross.25 While not doing away with the wisdom of the sages, the wisdom of the cross points to another way of being that makes most sense in the context of the Christian community. Yet could the wisdom of the cross have wider relevance as well? Certainly, it shows that a Christian image of God is one that is on the side of those who are suffering and in pain. One of the important tasks of the university is pastoral; students do not achieve in a vacuum but are enabled through their lived experiences. If such experiences are too traumatic, learning may suffer, at least temporarily. It is here that a university needs to include not just a curriculum but also provision for the pastoral needs of its students through adequate counseling and chaplaincy. Discussions of the wisdom of the cross in the Epistle to the Corinthians are also set in the context of an early Christian community in which different groups vied for authority according to different perceptions of wisdom. Instead of such rhetorical game playing, the author of the epistle encourages reflection on the wisdom of the cross. Such wisdom speaks of the need for humility rather than jockeying for positions of power through clever forms of speech. Is such a goal realistic in a university context? What would the shape of university management be like if such an approach were adopted by university presidents?

Let me end this essay with a citation from Thomas Aquinas, who viewed theology as the scientia of sacred doctrine.

In man different objects of knowledge imply different kinds of knowledge: in knowing principles he is said to have “understanding,” in knowing conclusions “science,” in knowing highest cause “wisdom,” in knowing human actions “counsel” or “prudence.” But all these things God knows by one simple knowledge. . . . Hence God’s simple knowledge may be called by all these names, provided that in using any of them of God we exclude from their meaning all that implies imperfection, and retain only what implies perfection.26

Celia Deane-Drummond Professor of Theology, Concurrent Professor in the College of Science Director, Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing Presenter at 2012 NDIAS Conference on “Conceptions of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge”

Notes 1.

William Paley, Natural Theology, or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1802] 2006); John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (1691), www.jri.org.uk/ray/wisdom/.

2.

Arguably his growing confidence in the scientific explanation was not the direct cause of his eventual loss of faith, but other personal factors such as the death of his child and his own received theological views that interpreted different forms as a result of God’s direct creative activity were hard to reconcile with his understanding of evolution by natural selection.

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3.

Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), 17.

4.

Paul Davis, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).

5.

Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (New York: Viking, 2006). In 2007, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens created a video titled Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, deliberately setting out to discredit the credibility of religious belief and the religious attacks on their science. See www.youtube. com/watch?v=MuyUz2XLp1E. 6.

Karl Barth, Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1934).

7.

A question also raised by Sarah Coakley in her recent Gifford Lectures, Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God, www.abdn.ac.uk/gifford/. There is a difference in Coakley’s approach, however, since she seems to argue for an apologetic version of natural theology based on a particular interpretation of the fifth of Aquinas’s Five Ways to God. Coakley rejects, correctly in my view, pitching theisic teleological arguments against evolutionary theories, since this smacks of a dualistic competition between God and scientific interpretations and argues, further, that to portray evolution as simply “random” is far too oversimplified. But she seems to want to not just permit but also highlight an interpretation of the fifth teleological way as an explicit argument for God’s existence (alongside other possible interpretations, such as to bolster existing revelatory faith or bring to consciousness in a believer what may be hidden from view). But in finding the fifth way lacking in light of the possibility of a purely naturalistic, evolutionary interpretation, she then proposes an argument for God’s existence through the ecstatic or excessive altruism of the saints, which, she argues, is necessarily and always outside the realm of possible scientific explanations and therefore not in competition with it. See Sarah Coakley, Lecture 5, “Teleology Reviewed: A New ‘Ethico-Teleological’ Argument for God’s Existence,” in Sacrifice Regained, 17– 19. I am arguing for something rather more modest, and more in line with Aquinas’s discussion in the Summa of the relationship between theology and the sciences, namely, a form of “natural” theologizing that is useful in order to clarify the theological task but presupposes faith in God. I am not attempting, in other words, to convince the nonbeliever or return to supposed arguments for God’s existence, but, like Coakley, I also believe that theology needs to be given a place in the public sphere.

8.

Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God, ed. S.F. Brown, trans. P. Boehner (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993), chap. 1, § 10– 12, p. 8. For further discussion of Bonaventure, see Celia Deane-Drummond, Wonder and Wisdom: Conversations in Science, Spirituality and Theology (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006), 56– 58.

9.

Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God, chap. 2, § 1, p. 11.

10.

Ibid., Prologue, § 4, p. 2. See also pp. 70– 71 for commentary.

11.

“Keynote Address of His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Opening Ceremony of the Halki Summit.” Halki Theological School, June 18, 2012. www.patriarchate.org/documents/2012halkisummit.

12.

For a full discussion of this topic, see Celia Deane-Drummond, “Joining the Dance: Ecology and Catholic Social Teaching,” New Blackfriars 93, no. 1044 (March 2012): 193– 212.

13.

John Paul II, “General Audience Address,” January 17, 2001. www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ ii/audiences/2001/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_20010117_en.html.

14.

See, e.g., Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).

15.

Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html.

16.

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 36, Prudence, trans. Thomas Gilby (Cambridge: Blackfriars, 1973), 2a2ae Q. 49.3.

17.

For more detailed discussion of the different facets of prudence, see Celia Deane-Drummond, The Ethics of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 9– 15.

18.

For more on the practical and historical limitations of ecological restoration, see Stephen T. Jackson and Richard J. Hobbs, “Ecological Restoration in the Light of Ecological History,” Science 325, no. 5940 (2009): 567; Stuart Allison, “What Do We Mean When We Talk about Ecological Restoration?” Ecological Restoration 22, no. 4 (2004): 281– 86.

19.

I have discussed this in more detail in Celia Deane-Drummond, “Wisdom Remembered: Recovering a Theological Vision for Wisdom in the Academe,” in Wisdom in the University, ed. Ronald Barnett and Nicholas Maxwell (London: Routledge, 2008), 77– 88; and “The Amnesia of Modern Universities: An Argument for Theological Wisdom in the Academe,” in Educating for Wisdom in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Darin Davis (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013).

20.

MacIntyre, Whose Justice, Which Rationality?

21.

C. Keller, “Towards an Emancipatory Wisdom,” in Theology and the University: Essays in Honor of John B. Cobb Jr, ed. D.R. Griffin and J.C. Hough (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 125– 47.

22.

Keller, “Towards Emancipatory Wisdom,” 143.

23.

A full discussion of this is outside the scope of this chapter. For more detail, see C. Deane-Drummond, Creation through Wisdom: Theology and the New Biology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000).

24.

Deane-Drummond, Wonder and Wisdom.

25.

The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, e.g., esp. 1 Cor. 1:8– 2:5.

26.

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 4, Knowledge in God, trans. Thomas Gornall (Cambridge: Blackfriars, 1964), 1a Q. 14.1.

This article is an excerpt from a chapter in Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge (UND Press), edited by Vittorio Hösle. The chapter itself is an expanded version of a paper first presented to the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study conference, “Conceptions of Truth and Unity of Knowledge,” held at the University of Notre Dame, April 12– 14, 2012. Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser contributed to the preparation of this paper.

The Allegorical Figures of Reason and Wisdom (1630), Pietro Testa.

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2015-2016 class of fellows Laura E. Bland, University of Notre Dame Graduate Student Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “Unfriendly Skies: The Comet of 1680 in the Spanish and English Empires” Laura E. Bland is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History and Philosophy of Science at the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at the University of Notre Dame. Her research examines the cultural and religious background of scientific ideas in the early modern Atlantic World. In particular, she explores how writers without scientific training understood questions about the role of God in nature, superstition, and natural order. At the broadest level, her work contributes to ongoing historical discussions of the “disenchantment of the world,” the decline of magic, and the secularization of society in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Her dissertation compares Catholic and Protestant conceptions of superstition and divine intervention in nature as they were articulated in several hundred pamphlets printed in the wake of the “Great Comet” of 1680 in Spain, England, New England, and Latin America.

Ms. Bland has presented her research at the Sixteenth Century Society, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Latin American Studies Association. In addition to participating in Notre Dame working groups in the history of science and the history of medicine, she has worked with the executive offices of the History of Science Society.

Ms. Bland was awarded the Paul G. Tobin Dissertation Fellowship by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies in 2014. She has received research support from the Nanovic Institute and the Institute for the Liberal Arts, as well as a grant from the Center for Languages and Cultures to study Dutch and undertake archival research in Belgium and the Netherlands. She has also received residential grants from the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Dibner Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology from the Huntington Library in Los Angeles.

Diego De Brasi, University of Marburg, Germany Residential Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “The Relation of Body, Mind and Soul in Lactantius’ De opificio Dei, Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio and Nemesios of Emesa’s De natura hominis” Diego De Brasi is Assistant Professor of Classical Philology / Greek at the University of Marburg and specializes in Ancient Philosophy.

His scholarship focuses on Plato’s political thought and the poetics of philosophical dialogue, Philo of Alexandria, late antique Christian anthropology and the interpretation of Platonic dialogues by modern and contemporary philosophers.

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He is the author of L’immagine di Sparta nei dialoghi platonici: il giudizio di un filosofo su una (presunta) pólis modello (2013) and has edited with Hartwin Brandt, Anika M. Auer, Johannes Brehm and Lina K. Hörl genus und generatio: Rollenerwartungen und Rollenerfüllungen im Spannungsfeld der Geschlechter und Generationen in Antike und Mittelalter (2012) and with Sabine Föllinger Anthropologie in Antike und Gegenwart: Biologische und philosophische Entwürfe vom Menschen (2015). He is the author of scholarly articles on Plato, Christian Anthropology in the 4th century AD and Judaic-Hellenistic Literature and will be the editor, together with Marko J. Fuchs, of Sophistes: Plato’s Dialogue and Heidegger’s Lectures in Marburg (1924/25).

Professor De Brasi’s research has been supported by a doctoral fellowship form the Elite Network of Bavaria, grants from the German Academic Exchange Service and from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His doctoral dissertation won the prize as best dissertation of the academic year 2010-2011 at the University of Bamberg. He has been Fellow of the Hardt Foundation in Geneva. Diego De Brasi’s research at NDIAS is supported in part by a Humboldt post-doctoral fellowship, under the umbrella of the Feodor Lynen program and supervised by Dr. Gretchen Reydams-Schils. During his stay at the University of Notre Dame he will also be affiliated with the Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy (http://www3.nd.edu/~ndwap/).

Bjarne Sode Funch, Roskilde University, Denmark Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “An Existential-Phenomenological Study of Artistic Creativity” Bjarne Sode Funch is an Associate Professor in psychological aesthetics at Roskilde University in Denmark. His scholarly interests are in the areas of psychological aesthetics, phenomenology, and existential psychology.

Much of his research is dedicated to the curatorial and educational programs at art museums.

His book The Psychology of Art Appreciation (1997) is a comprehensive review of how different schools of psychological thought have concerned themselves with the topic of art since the time of Gustav T. Fechner’s epoch-making approach to formal beauty in the 19th century until recent works by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It also offers a new existential-phenomenological theory of art appreciation. The book suggests that an aesthetic experience, as a transcendent phenomenon, contextualizes an emotion within a distinct form. It concludes that art is the optimal option for constituting fleeting emotions caused by previous or current existential circumstances. This emotional constitution contributes to existential well-being.

His most recent Danish monograph, Matissekapellet: Et jordisk paradis (2010) [The Matisse Chapel: An Earthly Paradise], is concerned with the French painter Henri Matisse and his work on a small chapel, Chapelle du Rosaire des Dominicaines de Vence, in the south of France. It focuses on four major works of art and shows how Matisse brings his own artistic force into play with Christian ideas of paradise, purity, love, and suffering. It argues that Matisse’s work on the Vence Chapel is not only a major work of art but also contributes significantly to a contemporary understanding of Christianity.

Bjarne S. Funch has written a great number of articles and other scholarly works on art appreciation and art’s importance to emotional and existential integrity, as well as articles about ethics of confrontational drama in museums, the phenomenological method in museum studies, and silence as an existential utopia among many other topics. He is currently participating in research projects on art curatorial studies at the Esbjerg Art Museum and on the aesthetic experience and the pre-reflective self at the University of Copenhagen. He regularly contributes to research networks on existential-phenomenology, interdisciplinary aesthetics, and museum studies. Dr. Funch is a member of the American Society for Aesthetics, the International Council of Museums, the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, the European Society for Aesthetics, and the Society for Existential-Phenomenology.

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2015-2016 fellows continued...

Ilana Gershon, Indiana University Residential Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “Getting a Job in the Digital Age” Ilana Gershon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University. She is interested in how new media affects highly charged social tasks, such as breaking up or hiring in the United States. She has written about how people use new media to end romantic relationships in her book The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Her current research addresses how new media affects hiring in the contemporary U.S. workplace.

She has a new edited volume, A World of Work: Imagined Manuals for Real Jobs, a collection of imagined job manuals for real jobs around the world, written for people who want to know how to be a professional wrestler in Mexico or a professional magician in Paris. She has also published No Family Is an Island: Cultural Expertise among Samoans in Diaspora, and edited special issues on topics ranging from ignorance, reflexivity, media ideologies, to the “newness” of new media. Her intellectual interests range from linguistic anthropology, science studies, media studies, legal anthropology, anthropology of democracy, and anthropology of work.

She has been a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a New Zealand Society fellow at Birkbeck College’s Center for New Zealand Studies, and received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. She has also coorganized a Mellon Sawyer Seminar on science and technology studies at Indiana University.

Kevin G. Grove, University of Cambridge, UK* (*This fall 2016, Kevin will officially join the faculty ranks at the University of Notre Dame as an Assistant Professor of Theology) Residential Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “Memory and the Whole Christ: Augustine and the Psalms” Kevin Grove is a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and he completed his Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge in 2015. He joins the NDIAS from L’Institut Catholique of Paris, where he was a post-doctoral researcher for spring semester 2015. A systematic theologian, his scholarship focuses on Christology, memory, St. Augustine, and the history and spirituality of Blessed Basil Moreau.

Grove has been invited to present his research in international contexts including England, Belgium, Poland, Malta, and France, in addition to the United States. The forthcoming publications from his research will appear from presses Ashgate, Brepols, LIT-Verlag, Verlag Friedrich Pustet, and the University of Notre Dame. Grove is also the co-editor of Basil Moreau: Essential Writings (2014) as well a regular writer of academic book reviews.

During Grove’s graduate studies, he was a member of Trinity College, Cambridge as well as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. He was the Rev. John Zahm, CSC, lecturer at the University of Portland for 2014. In addition to his academic activities, he served as Assistant Roman Catholic Chaplain to the University of Cambridge during his studies.

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Tomáš Halík, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS (Fall 2015) “Afternoon of Christianity: How Can Christian Monotheism Keep Its Identity in Global Pluralistic ‘Post-Secular’ Civilization?”

Msgr. Professor Ph.Dr. Tomáš Halík Th.D., Dr. h.c. is full professor of philosophy at Charles University in Prague (Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies), and he specializes in philosophy of religion and sociology of religion, interreligious dialogue and dialogue between believers and nonbelievers. He is also president of the Czech Christian Academy (since 1990).

Professor Halík is the author of many books, in which he chiefly focuses on a spiritual diagnosis of our times and the dialogue between faith and atheism. His books have been published in 14 languages and received a number of awards. His book Patience with God received the prize for the best European Theological Book 2009/10 by the decision of European Society for Catholic Theology, and in the United States of America it was named book of the month in July 2010. His book Nachtsgedanken eines Beichvaters (Night of the Confessor) was selected to be the best theological book of July 2012 in Germany, and his book Berühre die Wunden (Touch the Wounds) was selected to be the best theological book of May 2013.

He has been a visiting professor at universities including Oxford and Cambridge, and he has lectured at a number of universities and international scholarly conferences in Europe, the United States of America, Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and Southern Africa. He has read annual lectures at Harvard University (The Inaugural Greeley Lecture 2009), Cambridge University (von Huegel lecture 2005), Calvin College (January Series 2001), and Catholic University Leuven (St. Thomas Feast 2013), among others. He was appointed a member of the European board of experts (Comate des sages) of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) in Brussels (2006). He has been a member of the OSCE International Advisory Panel (since 2002).

In 1998 he was appointed a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Pope John Paul II appointed him, in 1992, Advisor to the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with Non-Believers and, in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI granted him the title of Monsignor – Honorary Prelate of His Holiness.

Tomáš Halík has received several prizes at home and abroad for literature, for services to the cause of intercultural and interreligious dialogue, and for his promotion of human rights and spiritual freedom, including the Cardinal Koenig Prize (2003) and the Romano Guardini Prize (2010), the honorary title of Man of Reconciliation (2010) for his contribution to dialogue between Christian and Jews, the 2010 Medal for intercultural and religious dialogue from the Islamic Fund, Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2012), and the Templeton Prize in 2014. Also in 2014, he received an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Erfurt (Germany).

Be sure to check out the video profile featuring Msgr.

Professor Tomáš Halík and his time at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=spOGcHVw4eY Also, while visiting our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube. com/NotreDameIAS), please be sure to subscribe!

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2015-2016 fellows continued...

Lawrence O. Hall, University of South Florida Residential Fellow at the NDIAS and Melchor Visiting Professor of Engineering (Fall 2015) “Mining ‘Big Data’ for Small and Impactful Nuggets” Lawrence O. Hall is a Distinguished University Professor and the Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida. His research interests lie in distributed machine learning, extreme data mining, bioinformatics, pattern recognition and integrating AI into image processing. The exploitation of imprecision with the use of fuzzy logic in pattern recognition, AI and learning is a research theme.

Hall has authored or co-authored over 80 publications in journals as well as many conference papers and book chapters. Recent publications have appeared in IEEE Access, Pattern Recognition, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, and the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. According to Google Scholar his research work has been cited over 12,000 times. He has received over 3M in research funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, NASA, etc.

He is a fellow of the IEEE, the AAAS, and IAPR. He received the Norbert Wiener award in 2012 from the IEEE SMC Society. In 2015 he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. He received the IEEE SMC Society Outstanding contribution award in 2008. He received an Outstanding Research achievement award from the University of South Florida in 2004. He is a past president of NAFIPS,the former vice president for membership of the SMC society, and he was the President of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics society for 2006-7.

He was the Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B, 2002-05. He served as the first Vice President for Publications of the IEEE Biometrics Council. He is currently on the IEEE Publications and Services Products Board and Chairs its Strategic Planning Committee. He also Chairs the IEEE PCC and serves as associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, International Journal of Intelligent Data Analysis, the International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence and International Journal of Approximate Reasoning. He is on the IEEE Access editorial board.

David Bentley Hart, St. Louis University Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “Mind and Nature, Soul and Machine” David Hart’s most recent appointment is as the visiting Danforth chair of St. Louis University; he has also held positions at The University of Virginia, Duke University, and Providence College. His specialties are philosophical theology, systematics, patristics, classical and continental philosophy, and Asian religion. His most recent work has concerned the genealogy of classical and Christian metaphysics, ontology, the metaphysics of the soul, and the philosophy of mind.

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Hart’s principal scholarly books are The Beauty of the Infinite (2003); The Doors of the Sea (2005); In the Aftermath (2007); Atheist Delusions (2009); and The Experience of God (2013). He has also published a popular history of Christianity (2007), a volume of short stories, and over 150 articles in such scholarly journals as Modern Theology, The Scottish Journal of Theology, and Pro Ecclesia, as well as in such trade publications as The Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, First Things, and Commonweal.

He is the winner of the 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize of the Church of England, and he has served as visiting chair both at Providence College and St. Louis University. He has also been an endowed fellow of the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton.

Mary M. Keys, University of Notre Dame Residential Fellow at the NDIAS (Spring 2016) “Pride, Politics, and Philosophy: The City of God and Augustine’s Apologia for Humility” Mary M. Keys is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, where she is also a Fellow of the Medieval Institute and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. Her research and teaching interests span a broad spectrum of political theory and history of political philosophy, with a special focus in Christianity, ethics, and political thought.

Professor Keys is the author of Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good (Cambridge University Press, 2006; paperback 2008). She is the author of articles that have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, History of Political Thought, Perspectives on Political Science, and Quaestiones Disputatae, as well as of several book chapters and book reviews. She has served as consultant or manuscript reviewer for Cambridge University Press, Northwestern University Press, The Catholic University of America Press, University of Rochester Press, Routledge Press, The Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Political Theory, Political Research Quarterly, Law and Religion, The Review of Politics, American Political Thought, Diametros, and The Thomist. Currently she serves on the editorial board of the academic monograph series Rochester Studies in Medieval Political Thought, The University of Rochester Press, and on the Faculty Advisory Board of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture.

Professor Keys’s research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Earhart Foundation, the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago, the National Association of Scholars, the Erasmus Institute, and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts of Notre Dame. She has held visiting research positions at the University of Chicago’s Martin Marty Center and at Harvard University’s Center for the Study of Constitutional Government in the Government Department. Professor Keys has received an Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Notre Dame and a Best Paper in Politics and Literature Award from the American Political Science Association. In 2012 she gave a series of invited lectures at China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and in 2014 invited lectures in Philosophy and Humanities at Emory University.

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2015-2016 fellows continued...

Henrike Moll, University of Southern California Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “Towards a Transformative Account of Human Cognition” Henrike Moll is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California who studies the early social-cognitive abilities of human infants and young children. Most of her research deals with joint attention and the origins of perspective-taking. She tries to supplement her experimental investigations with philosophical inquiries.

She is co-author of more than thirty articles, which were published in high-profile journals like Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, and Developmental Science, among others. Some of her writings have appeared in journals of philosophy such as Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie and Grazer Philosophische Studien. One of the early theoretical papers she co-authored has been cited over 2,300 times.

Throughout her post-doctoral studies, the Volkswagen Foundation funded Professor Moll’s work with the prestigious Dilthey Fellowship. In 2011, she was awarded the Young Mind and Brain Prize from the University of Turin. In the same year, she was elected a member of the Young Academy, a German science academy for junior scholars. She was also elected an external faculty member of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at HumboldtUniversity.

Jaime M. Pensado, University of Notre Dame Residential Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “Catholic Youth in Cold War Mexico” Jaime M. Pensado is Carl E. Koch Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes in contemporary Mexican history, student movements, youth culture, the sixties, and the Cold War. He is currently working on a second book project that examines Catholic Youth in Cold War Mexico.

His first book, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture during the Long Sixties (Stanford University Press, 2013) received the “Mexico History Book Prize” from the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH). His recent publications can be found in Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos; Renate Marsiske, ed., Movimientos Estudiantiles en la Historia de América Latina: Volumen IV; The Americas: A Quarterly Review of InterAmerican Cultural History, Special Issue: Latin America in the 1960s; The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth; Smith and Gillingham, eds., Dictablanda: Politics, Work and Culture in Mexico, 1938-1968; ReVista Harvard: Review of Latin America; Robert Clarke et. al., eds., New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness; and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture.

Professor Pensado’s research has received the support from the Mellon Foundation and the Latin American Studies Department at Lehigh University. At Notre Dame, he is the Co-Director of the Mexico Working Group (MWG), the Director of the Latin American Studies Program (LASP), and a fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS) and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

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Aleta Quinn, University of Pittsburgh Residential Fellow at the NDIAS (Fall 2015) “Hypotheses and Inference in Biological Systematics” Aleta Quinn graduated from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in 2015.

She is a philosopher of science with research interests in the history and philosophy of biology and the role of values in science. Her research has focused on systematics, the science that discovers biodiversity.

She has published in the Journal of Mammalogy, Mammalian Species Accounts, and Zookeys. She is co-author of “Taxonomic Revision of the Olingos (Bassaricyon), with Description of a New Species, the Olinguito” (2013). The discovery of the Olinguito received the 2014 Top 10 New Species Award from the International Institute for Species Exploration.

Her research awards include a Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship and a Provost’s Development Fund Award from the University of Pittsburgh.

Otto Santa Ana, University of California Los Angeles Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS (2015-2016) “Toward Consilience in our Accounting of Human Laughter and Humor” Otto Santa Ana is Professor in the César Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. As a critical discourse analyst, he studies how the mass media reinforces unjust social relations, from newspapers to television news to mass media humor. As a sociolinguist, he has written widely about the languages of Latinos in the classroom and the community.

His most recent monograph is Juan in a Hundred: Representation of Latinos on Network News (2013). His latest anthology (co-edited with Celeste González de Bustamante) is Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media & Provincial Politics (2012). His first edited volume, Tongue-Tied: The lives of multilingual children in U.S. public education, is used in dozens of schools of education and has received exceptional critical reviews.

His first monograph, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphoric Representations of Latinos in Contemporary Public Discourse, is often considered a definitive critical discourse analysis on the topic. He has published more than 40 articles and scholarly writings.

His two monographs have received national awards. Juan in a Hundred was awarded the 2013 Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association for the best scholarly work in political science that explores ethnic and cultural pluralism. Brown Tide Rising was awarded the American Political Science Association Best Book on Ethnic and Racial Political Ideology 2002.

He has previously received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, as well as an award from the National Endowment for Humanities.

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interview with Tomáš Halík

by Andrea Rogers

Msgr. Professor Tomáš Halík was a Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS in fall 2015, researching for his project, “Afternoon of Christianity: How Can Christian Monotheism Keep Its Identity in Global Pluralistic ‘Post-Secular’ Civilization?” Tomáš Halík is full professor of philosophy at Charles University in Prague at its Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and he specializes in philosophy of religion, sociology of religion, interreligious dialogue and dialogue between believers and nonbelievers.

Halík has been president of the Czech Christian Academy since 1990. In 1998 he was appointed a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Pope John Paul II appointed him, in 1992, Advisor to the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with NonBelievers and, in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI granted him the title of Monsignor – Honorary Prelate of His Holiness. In 2014, for his exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, he was awarded the Templeton Prize.

AR: Can you start by talking about your life’s work and what you’re specifically doing while you’re here at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study?

TH: My work, and also my project here at Notre Dame, is deeply connected with my life story. I was born in Prague, in former Czechoslovakia, when the Communists came to power, in 1948. During the hard persecution of religion in our country, I became a Christian believer and I decided to be a priest.

I studied philosophy, sociology and psychology at Charles University in Prague, which is little bit older than Notre Dame, as it was founded in 1348. But I was not allowed to enter the priest seminary, which was absolutely controlled by the secret police and by the regime, especially after the Soviet invasion of Prague, through Czechoslovakia, in 1968. So I studied theology in secret underground seminaries and lectures, which were given by important theologians, including today’s Cardinal Schönborn and Cardinal Kasper. They came to Prague as private tourists and gave lectures in the private flats. Then I was secretly ordained a priest in a private chapel of a bishop in Erfurt, in East Germany. It was so secret that even my mother was not allowed to know I was a priest.

I worked 11 years in an underground church. My official profession, my official job, at this time was as a psychotherapist with drug abusers and alcoholics in Prague.

Concurrently, I helped the Prague Archbishop Cardinal Tomášek, writing some of his letters and sermons, and he became a great symbol of the spiritual struggle with the Communist regime.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, my life radically changed. I started to teach openly as part of the theological faculty of Charles University. I founded the Czech Christian Academy, as well as the Academic Parish in Prague. I baptized in this parish more than a thousand young people these past 25 years. Additionally, I started to travel. For 20 years, I was not allowed to travel to the West, so, now that I could, I visited all continents of this planet, even Antarctica. I devoted my life to dialogue with people of different cultures and religions.

And I started to write books. I wrote my first book when I was 50. I said to myself, “The blossoms are there, the fruits must come.” So I disappear for part of every year for hermitage in Germany to write a book. I’m there absolutely alone for five weeks for meditation and for writing. My writing is a form of my meditation.

Here at Notre Dame, my project has a mysterious title, “The Afternoon of Christianity.” What do I mean by that? I think that the history of Christianity is like a day. The morning, from the beginning of Christianity until the threshold of modernity, was the time to develop the structures, the institutional structures and the doctrinal structures. Then came the noonday crisis— the confrontation with modernity, secularization, with the “death of God,” and so on. I’m deeply convinced that now Christendom and Christianity is at a threshold of a new era, of the post-modern, maybe post-secular age. But my question is are we prepared for this post-modern, post-secular age?

Vatican II was a very important step in the confrontation with modernity, as it prepared the Church for life in the secular world. But are we prepared for the post-secular world? Vatican

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II was the result of great theology of the 20th Century. Do we need new theology for the next council?

For future theology, something I think will be very important is what I call “kairology.” Kairos is the word for time, the time of opportunity. We need these hermeneutics and phenomenology of the signs of the times. Many people speak about the return of religion. But it’s not a return to the “good old-time religion”; that is over. There are new forms of religion. I think there are three very important phenomena: (1) the political role of religion, the transformation of religions in politics; (2) the so-called religious turn in post-modern philosophy, the transformation of religion, of theology, and philosophical hermeneutics; and (3) the interest in spirituality, the attempt to transform religion into spirituality. I think all these of three phenomena are important; each one is a challenge, but also a risk. My question is how should we answer these challenges?

AR: You have mentioned this ongoing and necessary conversation on the transformation of religion in society. What motivated you to make this conversation a focus of your life’s energy, and why is this conversation so important societally?

TH: When I was 20, it was in the time of the Prague Spring, and I was allowed to go for a holiday to Austria to participate in seminars, organized by the British Quakers, for young people from many countries, colleges, cultures, religions, and ways of life. We were discussing, for three weeks, about the hard issues—about poverty, about justice, about peace and war. We didn’t solve the problems of our world. But what was for me very important was that I started to see the world through the perspective of the others.

And I realized, “Oh, yes. If somebody is saying something that is different from my own view, he or she may have a different background, a different cultural context, and I must take into account this life context, cultural context, and historical context.” So it was there I started to see the world through this optic, through the perspective of the others, and it was there I decided to devote my life and my activities to the culture of dialogue. We live in a global world, and I think the great task is to transform the globalization in the culture of communication.

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and I’m very happy I have accepted it because the time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Notre Dame was the time of my life. First of all, I’ve got the time to read, to study, and to think, which is like a special gift from heaven. I haven’t such time in Prague. Also, I’ve gotten the opportunity to meet very interesting people and discuss with the scholars at Notre Dame my research. I think it’s the great idea of the Institute to invite scholars from different countries—we are people from different branches: theologians, philosophers, psychologists, even computer scientists—and to give them the opportunity to meet twice a week in seminar for the intellectual exchange of ideas. It’s very inspiring to share our ideas, the results of our work. The campus here is wonderful; the people are very nice.

So it’s a very happy and very fruitful time of my life.

AR: Earlier you spoke about the project you’re working on while a Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS. What makes the Institute a special place for you to work on that project?

TH: Especially interesting and fruitful for my research at the NDIAS was the idea to organize a colloquium, for which I got to write essays and then invite people from universities around the globe to come to Notre Dame to engage my work. We spent two and a half days in a very fruitful discussion. This discussion was transmitted online and people from five continents and 29 countries watched and participated remotely.

It was a great radiation of ideas, and I think it’s a great idea of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study to invite people from the whole world to take part in our discussion.

‘‘. . . the time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Notre Dame was the time of my life.’’

AR: What makes the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study distinctive?

TH: In the year 2014, I received the prestigious Templeton Prize, which was a great surprise and great honor for me.

Afterwards, I received an invitation from the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study to apply to be a Templeton Fellow for the next academic year. I accepted this invitation,

AR: When discussing the “Afternoon of Christianity” earlier, you posed the questions “Do we need a new theology for where we are in the development of the world today?” and “Are we prepared for a post-secular world?” When people pose these questions to themselves, what would you like them to reflect on and consider?

TH: Our country, the Czech Republic, is considered to be one of the most atheistic countries in the world. But I don’t think it’s so simple. I think in today’s world the main division is not between the believers and unbelievers but between dwellers and seekers. There are many seekers among the believers. For these people faith is not just a treasure but a way. There are also the seekers among those who consider themselves unbelievers. They very often say, “We are not religious, but spiritual.” They are seekers, and they are also the people in between believers and unbelievers, the people who struggle between faith and unbelief. It’s not a struggle between two teams like in soccer. It is a struggle in the heart

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and mind of many people inside. I think everybody is time to time confronted with the hiddenness of God, with the silence of God. And I wrote in my first book, which was translated in English, Patience with God, that we should have patience with this silence of God. I say atheists are not wrong, but they are impatient. They say, vis-à-vis the hiddenness of God, that “God does not exist, God is dead.” But I think this is the impatient answer. There are also the religious fundamentalists who are repeating again and again the old formulas. There are the religious enthusiasts, who because of their “Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!” are not able to contemplate the silent music of the hiddenness of the mystery of God. I think faith is the courage to enter the cloud of the mystery, to withstand the paradoxes of life. There are three sorts of patience with the silent God— they are faith, hope and love.

Additionally, people can consider the lives of the saints.

In the teaching of the Church, I love the teaching about saints because, in the saints, we can see the plurality of the Church and also the faith incarnated in their life stories and personalities. One finds so many different personalities in the saints. And I love also the saints that are not yet canonized.

Maybe there are some saints who are so loved by God that God does not say their names even to the Pontifical Council for Canonization. They keep their names and faces in His heart. I think the saints, the authentic Christians, are so important for the Church and for the world today. I love Mother Teresa of Calcutta, especially after I read her diaries.

She suffered with great religious doubts.

AR: How do you think we need to approach theology today in our current reality and in the stage of development that you

Photo of Tomáš Halík. Vít Luštinec, Wikipedia . CC.

referenced? What do we need today and moving into the future? As you said before, it’s not about pulling up the “good old days” from way long ago.

TH: The new idea, which I started to develop here at Notre Dame, is analogous to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council about the Church. The Church of Christ insisted in the Catholic Church. This “insisted in,” in Latin, is very difficult to translate. It means the Church of Christ is not absolutely identical to the Catholic Church. The Church of Christ, the eschatological fullness of the Church, dwells, “insisted in,” in the Catholic Church. Cardinal Kasper explained this teaching— there is also a place for other churches and for other religious communities; they also take part in the charismata and the fullness of truth, which was given through the Catholic Church

by God. I think that maybe we can also apply this idea for our faith.

God as a fullness of truth dwells, “insisted,” in the faith of the Church. But there is also place for some open questions, for dwelling in the mystery. The faith of the Church dwells in the act of faith and in the religious experience of the individual believer. There is the certainty, but beside the certainties there is also open space for some open questions or seeking. Also for some honest doubts. I think if there are not doubts about God, there are the doubts about our capacity to understand fully the mystery of God. We are communio viatorum—we are the communion of pilgrims. We are not at the goal. We are on the way.

I think that Vatican II did not condemn any heresy but there was a heresy that was practically condemned. It was the heresy of triumphalism. The Church is traditionally divided into three forms: (1) Ecclesia Militans, the Church on this earth and history; (2) Ecclesia Penitens, the Church in Purgatory; and (3) Ecclesia Triumphans, the victorious Church, the saints in heaven. I think there must always be this eschatological differentiation between the Ecclesia Militans and the Ecclesia Triumphans. If we are not able to distinguish between the two, when the Ecclesia Militans, the Church on this earth, is considered to be the Ecclesia Triumphans already, then it is the beginning of the militans religion. I think this distinction is very important, and I think we should make the distinction also in our religious knowledge between the fullness of truth and between our capacities to understand it. There must also be a place for open questions and even for critical doubts. I think faith and doubts are like two sisters. They need each other. Faith, without the critical questions, could lead to fundamentalism, fanaticism. But also, doubts, if they are not able to doubt about themself, could lead to bitterness, cynicism, and so on. Faith and doubt in our existence here in time, in this history under these cultural conditions, need this dialect, this inner dialogue. *** Andrea Rogers is the President of Grass Roots Media. For more information on Tomáš Halík and his work, please visit ndias.nd.edu.

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Photo on left of St. VitusA Cathedral by Andreas Praefcke, Wikipedia . CC. Photo on Right of Empire state building and NYC skyline by Jiuguang Wang, Wikipedia. CC.

the afternoon of Christianity: Church and theology for a post-secular age

by Tomáš Halík

Carl Gustav Jung used the metaphor of the day to describe the development of the human personality in the course of a lifetime. The morning of life (youth) is a time for building the external structures of personality. During the midpoint of life a noonday crisis emerges. This crisis can take the form of shock or loss of previous certainties (such as a crisis in one’s marriage or occupation, financial or health problems, etc.) or exhaustion and a general malaise (a burn-out syndrome). The noontime crisis is also an opportunity for a major change, a chance to tackle the tasks of life’s afternoon, and to move from outward considerations to the depths.

Jung’s metaphor of the day can be applied to the history of Christianity. Christianity’s long history up to the beginning of modernity represented its morning—a time for building institutions and doctrinal structures. Then, in the West, a noonday crisis occurred as Christianity clashed with modernity, with secularization and a popular belief in “the death of God” characteristic of this ongoing phase. This crisis will continue until such a time as it will be understood as an opportunity,

a path to maturity, a turning-point moment, turning away from external structures to the very core of Christianity. Out of the theological and sociological crisis of modern Western Christianity (its noonday crisis) its members can seek the path to a deeper, more credible and mature form of church, theology and spirituality, its afternoon of Christianity.

While I have focused on the situation of the Catholic Church principally in Central and Eastern Europe, the operable question to be addressed is whether this analysis could also be useful to interpreting developments and needs in other parts in the world. The more global need is underscored by the findings of many contemporary sociologists who argue that the period of secularization is over, that “God is back,” and that we live now in a post-secular age. However, a number of key questions include: 1. Is the postmodern, global, pluralistic society truly postsecular?

2. Is the contemporary return to religion a signal of an emerging new era of Christianity?

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(L to R): William Barbieri (CUA), William Cavanaugh (DePaul), and Tomáš Halík during Templeton colloquium session.

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3. If #2 (on prior page) is true, which God “is back”? What type of religion has returned? Is the Christianity of the new era a “resurrected Christianity,” transformed as was the resurrected Christ? Should we expect another God? An important question to be raised is whether the Christianity of this return to religion amounts to superficial emotional religion on the contemporary religious market or fundamentalism, a conservative nostalgia for pre-modern Christendom, militant religion, calling for crusades against modernity as the culture of death, or something else. An analysis of the Church suggests that three different types of the return to religion are occurring within Christianity. First, there is an increasing role of religion in politics. Second, there has been a “religious turn” in postmodern philosophy and a new concept of God in postmodern theology. Third, there is an increasing interest in spirituality. However, each of these types is subject to variations and nuances.

Secularization: A Divorce of Christianity from Religion?

We theologians should perhaps distinguish between secularization (the cultural revolution of the modern age) and secularism (the ideological interpretation of secularization).

Secularization is neither the end of Christianity nor the end of religion. Rather it is the end of the Christian religion or Christianity as a religion. Secularization prompts a divorce of Christianity from religion. If we use the word religion in the sense of an integrating force in society (i.e. the thing that integrates society is its religion), then Christianity is no longer a religion, at least not the religion of Europe; rather, it is assuming a new cultural form and role.

Historically, the West’s religion (in the sense of the integrating force and common language) proved to be science.

Later, during the Romantic period, it was supplanted with culture, particularly art, then the nationalist cult of the nation, followed later by the political religions of the twentieth century. Today’s religion is most likely the capitalist economy,

the mass media, and the market in information, with the latter being, perhaps, the principal commodity of our present age. In the West, the media fulfills a number of roles that were previously performed by historical religions, chiefly Christianity. Media interprets the world, offers common symbols and great narratives, and is the arbiter of truth and importance, influencing the way people think and live.

The post-Enlightenment period represents a critical change in the role and relevance of Western Christianity due to the decline of religion as the broad, integrative force of society. Western Christianity, divided between Catholic and Protestant views, was then also compelled to confront other religions in other parts of the world. In the course of the late modern era Christianity became one of the world views (Weltanschauungen) and has also sought to ensure its favorable acceptance within society. These developments cast Christianity into a unique role, as it were, confronting critical questions about itself and its relationship to daily life: (1) Was Christianity to be the guardian of a certain cultural tradition?

(2) In its role, was it a source of expertise and wisdom on ethical issues? (3) Was it limited to being a spiritual source of religious experience? (4) Was it relegated to serving as an aesthetic accessory? (5) Was it to be shaped according to the political vision of the socially-oriented political left or the political ideology of the conservative right? (6) Was it to remain solely an institution for the social and charitable care of the poor, ill, and disabled?

It is important to reiterate that secularization and the emergence of secular society are not the end of Christianity but rather represent an opportunity for the absorption of Christianity into modern culture and civilization. Christianity— the religion of the Incarnation—was actually almost always syncretic; it was incorporated into various cultures. There was always some earlier cultural and religious context that Christianity entered into, thus creating the different varieties of Christianity with their own specific spiritual, theological and liturgical differences. Absorption of Christianity in current society has become so thorough as to be virtually invisible.

Many political ideals of the modern era, from the slogans of the French Revolution to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and hopes for a just future or a future society of abundance, are secularized forms of classical concepts of Christian theology. The modern age has gone much further towards fulfilling many Christian values and ideals (including Saint Paul’s appeals for an end to the barriers and inequalities between cultures, nations, sexes and social classes) than did Christendom, the Christian Europe of the Middle Ages.

Secular culture contains far more Christianity than the protagonists of secular humanism are willing to admit, yet we are scarcely aware of the Christian nature of absorbed Christianity. The Christianity that we experience today is not pure—it is profoundly interfused with the secular culture of the West. The current nature of absorbed Christianity raises a critical question about next steps in modern society and

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whether there is a “via media,” or middle ground, between nostalgic traditionalism and cheap uncritical conformism with modernity. If so, what is it? Every change in civilization’s paradigms requires recontextualisation and this is generally a lengthy and dramatic process of seeking new forms and a new style. Christianity currently stands on the threshold of another of its historical metamorphoses.

The crisis of the Church affords the Church to look inward and to be self-reflective regarding its role and relevance in the modern world. The practical question of whether the Church reflected sufficiently on the questions prompted by modernity must also be taken up with some focus on the spiritual development of Christianity during this period of crisis: did the Church reflect also on “God’s hiddenness” within these developments and what were the calls to the faithful amid the changes caused by modernity? The Church’s encounter with the “Secular Age” has been a hard lesson but, in many ways, useful, offering the Church the opportunity to purify itself from triumphalism and to liberate theology and spirituality from a superficial concept of God. At its foundational level, contemporary Christianity must be prepared and honest when asking if it is ready to turn to the deeper understanding of the Christian faith.

The Return of Religion as Threat: Do We Need a New Political Theology as an Answer to Religious Fundamentalism and Extremism?

The return to religion in the modern period has, unfortunately, been accompanied by a dark side that includes fundamentalism, extremism, and terrorism. Modern Christianity must confront the causes of these phenomena as well as develop strategies on how to overcome them.

Ironically, religion in the modern period also provides the corrective to its dark side when it assumes its role as an instrument of peace and reconciliation. In many parts of the world, the Catholic Church played an important historical

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‘‘. . . secularization and the emergence of secular society are not the end of Christianity but rather represent an opportunity for the absorption of Christianity into modern culture and civilization.’’ role in nonviolent transitions from authoritarian regimes to democracy. Yet, this process was, in many ways, left incomplete; after the fall of totalitarian regimes a process of reconciliation is critical in order to heal the deep wounds and divisions of the past and to foster the moral, spiritual and cultural recovery of the nation. Important agents of change at this stage include faith based communities.

Within modern society, the Catholic Church occupies a unique role as mediator in the ongoing, often-conflicted transitions and dialogue between the world of Islam and the secular West due to the many interests and ideas that it shares with both sides. However, the service as mediator in a modern dialogue is not undertaken by the Church without risk. The often contentious relationship between religion and politics has been understood for some time as having been resolved. The operable model today is one of “separation between church and state.” Yet, this model is contextual and its importance was generally applied at a time when the state exercised a monopoly over politics and the Church exercised its own monopoly over religion. That time has passed. The continuing process of globalization has created a new cultural context in which modern society has to reconceptualize the relationship between politics and religion. The Church must take up several critical questions, including: (1) Does contemporary political theology offer a competent analysis and an adequate response to recent changes to the political role of religion? and (2) Does modern society require a new political theology?

Return of Religion as Opportunity: Postmodern Philosophy and Theology for a Post-Secular Age New intellectual impulses in postmodern thought have provoked many new questions worthy of further examination and analysis, especially questions that address philosophical and theological ideas and paradigms. The Church’s inquiry might begin most productively by first posing whether the William Cavanaugh (DePaul) Presenting at session with (FRONT LEFT) Cyril O’Regan (ND) AND (FRONT CENTER) Tomáš Halík

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religious turn in postmodern philosophy, from Levinas and Ricoeur to Luc Marion, Vattimo, Caputo and Kearney, is a sign of a transition from the secular age to a post-secular age, that is, its transition from its noonday crisis to the afternoon of Christianity. Subsequent questions about sources and methods follow and include: (1) Which “new concept of God” can offer a postmetaphysical style of thinking?

(2) Can a “secular theology” (from Bonhoeffer to Vattimo) help the Church better understand the signs of the time (or are these dead ends for Christian theology)?

(3) Is radical theology a proper antidote to secularism?

(4) Does the “linguistic turn” in philosophy (Wittgenstein) and “analytical theology” support the renewal of religious language? and (5) Can the concept of “anatheism”—to believe again, after a secular crisis (Kearney)—serve as an inspirational impulse for deeper and more mature faith?

This relationship between ideas and change cannot be discounted. The reforms of Vatican II were the fruits of the new theology then emerging in France and Germany. In the modern period several additional considerations for the Church include what type of theology could support the reforms of Pope Francis and how academic theology could influence the faith and life of believers.

A Church for “Seekers”: The Need for Changes in Ecclesiology, Spirituality, and Pastoral Theology Churches in the future may find themselves continuing to operate within an increasingly pluralistic cultural milieu and, as a result, characterized by greater internal pluralism.

In the future we may find there are more ways of being a Christian than those with which we have become accustomed.

(Casanova).

A principal social distinction in the West today is not the division of believers and nonbelievers but the division between dwellers, or parishioners, and seekers (Wutnow). Of concern to the Church is the development in the West whereby the number of dwellers is decreasing while the number of seekers is rapidly increasing. Even within these groups, though, some additional distinctions emerge and require explanation. Seekers among believers are those for whom faith is not a treasure of final truths, but rather a spiritual way while seekers among nonbelievers are “spiritual but not religious,” and seekers occupying a middle ground between believers and nonbelievers are simul fidelis et infidelis. Seekers are not fully identified with organized religion, with the teaching and regular practice of institutional churches. In this sense, these seekers may be thought of as “the new Zaccheuses.”

The two predominant morning-time activities of the Church have been targeted at dwellers. Traditional pastoral activity has typically focused inward, on the ranks of practicing believers and traditional missions have sought to broaden

those ranks. One of the salient features of the afternoon of Christianity, in contrast to the morning of its history, will most likely be a greater detachment from existing institutional and doctrinal structures, and a concomitant emphasis on a third path for the Church’s action in addition to classical pastoral or missionary activity. That third path is accompanying seekers.

This third path, focusing on seekers, does not consist of efforts to convert (unlike missionary activity) but to travel part of the journey together in dialogue. The principal goal of this accompaniment is not to push the seekers back into already existing structures of the Church but, through mutual dialogue, to enrich and to enlarge the existing structures so as to integrate the experiences in the treasure of faith. The greater understanding that ensues also enables the Church to open wide its treasures of spirituality to those who seek and in ways that are most relevant to the seekers’ journeys. (For example, in a period when spirituality is so popular, Christian mysticism offers a distinctive appeal to those who seek more profound spiritual relationships.)

The new theology of liberation should integrate not only the perspective of the socially marginalized, that is, people on the edge of society but also the perspective of people on the edge of the Church. As faith and doubt have a mutually dependent relationship, so, too, do seekers and dwellers need each other. In their well-known debate in Munich in 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas came to the conclusion that self-critical Christianity and self-critical secular humanism needed each other in order to rectify each other’s one-sidedness. The greater exchange between dwellers and seekers also serves the Church, enabling it to read the signs of the times with greater accuracy and nuance and better preparing the Church for the afternoon of Christianity.

If accompanying and dialogue are to be appreciated as a fully-fledged service to the Church, of equal value to missionary activity, this must presuppose a radical shift in ecclesiology. The church’s self-reflection in the future will most likely give rise to a broader concept of ecumenism and catholicity. With greater reflection and analysis, the Church enables itself to understand even better its full role and relevance in a complex and rapidly changing modern world. As noted by Orthodox theologian Evdokimov: “We know where the Church is, but we don’t know where she isn’t.” As the Church confronts its current noontime crisis and contemplates its future, the need for this reexamination becomes manifest.

The radical changes proposed here in ecclesiology as well as in spirituality and pastoral practice are necessary if the afternoon of Christianity is to be a productive time for the Church and Christianity in the West.

Msgr. Dr. Tomáš Halík Professor of Philosophy, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic Fall 2015 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS

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In the above photos, taken November 16-17, 2015, faculty and graduate student scholars participate in Msgr. Dr. Tomáš Halík’s Templeton Colloquium at the NDIAS based upon his research project, “Afternoon of Christianity: Church and Theology for a Post-Secular Age.”

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an introduction to a fellow’s book project and Templeton Colloquium at the NDIAS

mind, soul, world: consciousness in nature

by David Bentley Hart The essay that follows , which introudces David Bentley Hart’s book project while a Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, is a modestly revised version of what was disseminated prior to the start of his March 2016 Templeton Colloquium at the NDIAS of the same name.

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he occasion of this essay is a book project and colloquium on the nature of consciousness and the metaphysics of the soul; and project and colloquium alike have been financed by the Templeton Foundation (through NDIAS), as one of many subventions for research on “the place of mind within nature.” As far as that designation goes, however, one of my aims is to invert its terms and argue that the mystery of consciousness is better approached by an inquiry into the place of nature within mind. The conclusion toward which I am working is, quite frankly, one of “theistic idealism” (using that phrase in as generously compendious a way as possible). My overarching argument is that consistently physicalist emergentist accounts of the origins of consciousness invariably fail; that scrupulous reflection on the nature of consciousness yields a picture to which certain classical understandings of the soul (Western and Eastern) are far better suited than is any kind of materialist reductionism; that these understandings of the soul inevitably entail a concept of the soul as having its ground and end in infinite divine mind, and as indeed being essentially an instance of restricted participation in the unrestricted consciousness of

God; that the irreducibly transcendental orientation of intentional consciousness becomes intelligible only when seen in light of this transcendent reality; and that ultimately, perhaps, it is necessary to conclude that consciousness and being are inseparable, because in God they perfectly coincide. That, at least, is the grand design; but the discrete steps by which it will unfold will be fairly modest to begin with, and I hope sufficiently rigorous throughout.

I. The Problems with a Materialist Reduction of Consciousness I should first note that, when I speak of “consciousness,” I mean more or less the entirety of mental life. Quite often, philosophy of mind, especially in Anglophone scholarship, limits the term to the issue of mental qualia or phenomenal subjectivity, usually under the assumption that if this—the one true “hard question”—can be satisfactorily resolved, every other question will prove easily amenable to a mechanical or functional or genetic explanation. To me, this seems exorbitantly wrong. At least, from a truly physicalist perspective, no less baffling than qualitative awareness is the semeiotic structure of human thought (which seems impossible to reduce to something like computational algorithms); or the qualitative abyss between the logical sequences of rational thinking and the electrochemical sequences of neurology; or the mind’s capacity for abstraction; or the necessarily prior presence of thought’s transcendental conditions within every moment of empirical experience; or the unified field of awareness, which seems to arise from an indivisible subjective simplicity; or (perhaps the problem of problems) mental intentionality. And I do not even have any clear sense which of these problems are the more basic or original. For instance, I am not sure it is coherent to think of phenomenal qualia as subsisting in anything other than an always already intentional act of the mind (is there ever such a thing as a phenomenon without form?)

Top: David Hart Engaging with colloquium presenters. Facing Page: A Lifetime of Looking, David Plunkert.

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Of course, as inheritors of a picture of reality shaped by the mechanistic metaphysics of early modernity, many theorists of mind face an altogether preposterous dilemma when they attempt to make sense of the reality of intentional consciousness. Within the mechanical narrative, matter is mindless mass, and physical causality mindless force, and so the appearance of causal powers in, say, conceptual abstractions or volitions or purposes creates a theoretical problem that seems to allow of only two possible solutions: either some version of Cartesian dualism (in which the body is a machine centrally operated by the immaterial homunculus of the “soul”) or a thoroughgoing mechanical monism (in which mind or “soul” is an emergent result or epiphenomenon of unguided physical events). And naturally many materialist philosophers or neuroscientists assume that, if they can only dispose of the Cartesian soul once and for all, they will have by default established the supremacy of the physicalist position; and assume also that to accomplish this they need only find instances in which the brain operates without immediately conscious supervision on the part of any purely rational and cognizant agency within—moments when the homunculus appears to be asleep at the controls—for then they will have proved that everything, mind included, is only a form of mechanism after all, and no Wonderful Wizard is to be found on the other side of the screen pulling the levers. But the mechanistic paradigms within which they operate condemn them to an inescapable choice: if they are not to believe in a ghost mysteriously animating a machine then they must make themselves believe in a machine miraculously generating a ghost.

II. Can Consciousness Evolve or Emerge from Matter?

Both in philosophy of mind (probably as an evasion) and in the cognitive sciences (usually by inadvertence) the problem of providing a coherent structural account of consciousness in physicalist terms is often addressed by an attempt to devise a plausible genetic account of the origins of consciousness, either evolutionary or physiological. But obviously such accounts, in addition to being incorrigibly conjectural, are largely irrelevant to the problem. Attempts at the rational reconstruction of consciousness from a material basis generally yield theories regarding correlations between brain events and mental acts, but no plausible causal narrative to mediate between the correlates; or yield theories about integrated “information” that tacitly and inexplicably conflate subjective awareness and objective data; or yield some other set of theories at a tangent from the actual dilemma. And all too often an evolutionary narrative is invoked as the sole explanation of how the third-person objectivity of material events could invert itself in the first-person vantage of conscious mind. But, of course, a structural paradox cannot be resolved by a genetic narrative; the problem can at best be deferred to some earlier episode in the tale, in the hope that eventually it will disappear from view altogether in the mists of the epic or mythic prehistory of the species. And the matter is certainly made no clearer by talk of “emergent properties” in complex organisms that are “irreducible” to the properties of those organisms’ constituent parts. While it is true that complex wholes typically possess properties different

‘‘I suspect there is no greater difficulty for a physicalist account of consciousness than intentionality. According to the mechanical narrative . . . nature is intrinsically devoid of final causality.

And yet mental intentionality is not only irreducibly teleological; it is nothing but teleology.”

in kind from those possessed by their parts, those differences must still logically be reducible to those ingredient properties. Otherwise, an appeal to emergence would not be conspicuously different from an appeal to magic.

III. Intentionality and the Transcendental Ends of Consciousness As I say, I suspect there is no greater difficulty for a physicalist account of consciousness than intentionality.

According to the mechanical narrative, at any rate, nature is intrinsically devoid of final causality. And yet mental intentionality is not only irreducibly teleological; it is nothing but teleology.

The physical reality that impinges upon our organs of perception is just a limitless ocean of causal sequences.

Our intentionality, by contrast, is limited, “aspectual,” meaningful, and integrated. It is the mind’s always active capacity for “aboutness,” that essential purposiveness by which it thinks, desires, believes, means, represents, wills, imagines, or orients itself towards a specific end, present in every act of the conscious mind. It is what allows for conscious meaning, for references to or propositions about or representations of anything. In all consciousness, the intending mind invests perception with meaning by directing itself towards a certain determinate content of experience.

Physical reality, however, according to

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the mechanistic picture, is intrinsically devoid of purpose, determinacy, or meaning; it is not directed towards any ends at all, it has no final causes, it cannot intend anything.

My interest in intentionality, however, goes beyond the apparent mechanical anomaly it represents. It is the axis upon which my larger argument will turn, and in fact turn about from a critical analysis of philosophy of mind to a constructive metaphysical proposal. I am especially interested in what I take to be the irreducibly transcendental structure of every intentional act of the mind: not only the mind’s orientation toward specific finite ends, but also its always prior orientation toward fully

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transcendental terms in whose light those more limited ends become available to thought and desire. And I mean “transcendental” in its classical and mediaeval, not merely Kantian, acceptation: not merely the regulative a priori conditions of all experience (which then also set the limits of metaphysical conjecture at the boundaries of the empirical), but truth, goodness, beauty, being, the one (which lie objectively beyond the bounds of nature, and only thus give nature to reflection). A scrupulous phenomenology of consciousness is enough to show that consciousness is not merely a passive reflection of reality “out there,” but a dynamic movement of the mind toward the real. The world is intelligible to us because we reach out towards it, or reach beyond it, coming to know the endless diversity of particular things within the embrace of a more general and abstract yearning for a knowledge of truth as such, and by way of an aboriginal inclination of the mind towards reality as a comprehensible whole. Knowledge is born out of a natural longing for the ideal intelligibility of all things, a final infinite horizon of knowledge that is nothing less than the whole of being. Even our most ordinary acts of cognition organize and take hold of the world because the intellect has a certain natural compulsion that exceeds the individual objects of awareness. All concretely limited aspirations of the rational will are sustained within formally limitless aspirations: no finite end is ever desirable in itself, but only by reference to that final transcendental end in whose light that finite object can be recognized and judged.

Moreover, this vocation of the mind to absolute ends is no more a simple psychological state than the unity of consciousness is a simple condition of psychological integrity; in both cases, what is at issue is a transcendental condition of thought, which is logically prior to the finite identity and impulses of the ego. The vanishing point of the mind’s inner coherence and simplicity is met by the vanishing point of the world’s highest values; the gaze of the apperceptive “I” within is turned towards a transcendental “that” forever beyond; and mental experience, of the self or of the world, takes shape in the relation between these two “extra-natural” poles. The rational mind is able to know the world as a whole because it has always already, in its intentions, exceeded the world. Consciousness contains nature, as a complete and cogent reality, because it has always gone beyond nature, and can understand and judge because it is obedient to absolute values that appear as concrete realities nowhere within the physical order. By their transcendence of all finite conditions, they give us a world. And even the empirical self, the psychological individual, is itself only part of nature as it occurs in the interval between these transcendental poles.

IV. The Classical Metaphysics of the Soul As I have said, most debates in philosophy of mind over the logical solvency of a physicalist account of mind, as well as most neuroscientific theories regarding Above: Janet Soskice (Cambridge). Top of Page: Cyril O’Regan And Ken Garcia (ND). Top of Facing page: Anna bonta moreland (Villanova) with Brad Gregory and Don Stelluto (ND).

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the relation of the brain to mental activity, are conducted in terms of the relative plausibility of either a materialist monism or a Cartesian dualism (any idealism is entirely ruled out in advance, however, on the grounds that, well, no one thinks that way anymore, and what we do now must by definition be more advanced than what they did then). As it happens, I am not interested in producing a merely genealogical—and so largely elegiac—treatment of the rise of the modern picture of the self, as either a ghost or a ghostly algorithm. Descartes is not even the villain of the tale for me; rather, he was the first thinker clearly to recognize that, if we start from a truly mechanistic vision of the material order, devoid of eminent causes (formal or final), then it is not merely rational intellect that seems to constitute something exceptional or even alien within nature, but rather the whole of mental existence, from the faintest glimmer of qualitative consciousness to the most refined abstractions of speculative reason. While it is regrettable that he adopted the mechanical narrative quite as credulously as he did, and was willing to consign even animals to the realm of unconscious mechanism, still Descartes properly recognized that the modern picture of material nature simply fails in its own terms to account for the possibility of consciousness (phenomenal, intentional, and unified) as such.

Things were, of course, much simpler for the best thinkers of antiquity or the Middle Ages, before body and soul had been divorced from one another—the former reduced to an intrinsically mindless mechanism, the latter to an intrinsically

‘‘Of course, it is an old metaphysical puzzle whether being and consciousness are entirely severable concepts: whether it is even coherent to imagine that something could exist in such a manner that it could not be perceived or thought about in any way at all, not even by itself, even in principle—in what sense would it be distinct from absolute nothingness?’’ disembodied rational substance—and then forced to work out their differences under terms of settlement dictated by an unsympathetic metaphysical court.

Certainly neither Platonists, nor Aristotelians, nor Stoics, nor any of the Christian metaphysicians of late antiquity or the Middle Ages could have conceived of matter as something independent of “spirit,” to which spirit was something simply superadded in living beings. Certainly none of them thought of either the body or the cosmos as a machine merely organized by a rational force from beyond itself, inasmuch as they were disposed to see matter as being always already informed by indwelling rational causes, and thus open to—and in fact directed towards—mind.

Nor could Platonists or Aristotelians or Christians really conceive of spirit as being immaterial in a privative sense, in the way that a vacuum is not aerial or a vapor not a solid, rather than as being more substantial, more actual, more “supereminently” real than matter, belonging properly to that prior and pervasive reality in which matter had to participate to be anything at all. The quandaries produced by early modern dualism, then—the notorious “interaction problem,” for example—simply did not exist, because no school conceived of the interaction between soul and body as a purely extrinsic physical alliance between two disparate kinds of substance.

The material order is only, one might say, an ontologically diminished or constricted effect of the fuller actuality of the spiritual order. Not even Platonic tradition

(despite the tendency of contemporary Anglophone philosophers to equate it with Cartesianism) regarded the soul as a pure intellect presiding over the automaton of the body; rather, it conceived of the soul as the body’s life, spiritual and organic at once, comprising the appetites and passions no less than rational intellect; and saw the body as a material reflection of a rational and ideal order. Matter, for the most part, was not conceived of as simply the inert and opaque matter of mechanistic thought; rather, it was seen as a mirror of eternal splendors and verities, truly (if defectively) predisposed to the light of spirit. And, of course, for pagans, Hellenistic Jews, and Christians alike, the soul was the source and immanent entelechy of corporeal life, encompassing every dimension of human existence: animal functions and abstract intellect, sensation and reason, emotion and ratiocination, flesh and spirit, natural aptitude and supernatural longing.

In any event, it would be well if those engaged in contemporary debates were better acquainted with the vast conceptual difference of premodern concepts of soul and intellect from the Cartesian model they know (or almost know). In my book, I shall devote considerable space to Aristotelian, Platonic (or Neoplatonic), and even Stoic understandings of the mind, and of its relation not only to corporeal life but to the indwelling rationality of the cosmos and the “noetic” or “intelligible” nature of God, as well as to Christian, Jewish, and Muslim revisions thereof.

(I shall also draw on a great number of Asian sources, vide infra). Again, I would not presume to suggest how the colloquium participants should approach the matter; but, for myself, I am working toward a formulation along the lines of: the soul, from any number of classical vantages, ultimately coincides conceptually with existence itself; it is convertible with the very act of being. Or, rather: there is no such thing as the act of existence apart from the act of consciousness.

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V. Eastern Contributions to the Understanding of Consciousness

In part, my use of Asian sources in the book is simply an accident of biography, and reflects my earlier training in Asian religious and philosophical traditions, as well as my continued interest over the years. But in greater part it is the result of my conviction that certain philosophical and spiritual schools in the East provide remarkably rich materials for deeper reflections upon the mystery of consciousness, the structure of consciousness as an act, the relations between the “psychological” or “empirical” self and consciousness itself, the relation between mind and reality, and the relation between mind and God. At present, for what it is worth, I see my book as in many ways—albeit distinctive ways—affirming the Mahavakyas of the Upanishads: ayam ātmā brahma, tat tvam asi, prajñānam brahma...even aham brahmāsmi.

(Though it is worth noting that my predilections and readings are much more vishishtadvaitin than advaitin, and that I generally distrust Vedanta unleavened by a sufficient amount of Bhakti; I am a Christian, after all.) And much of my reading at the moment concerns the relation of Atman to Jiva, and of either to both Brahman and Jagat, in the thought of Śankara, subsequent advaita thinkers (I lean much more toward Vivaraṇa than toward Bhāmatī schools, at least as a general rule), Ramanuja, and various Yogācāra Buddhist thinkers; I am especially interested in understandings of Atman as pure reflexive consciousness, prior to individuation of any kind, in both Vedantic and certain Yogācārin sources (I am thinking of Kamalaśila, who quite unproblematically uses “atman” in that sense—though I suppose he might also be considered as much an exponent of Madhyamika as Yogācāra). But, again,

Colloquium participants converse over coffee between sessions.

my current research is not the issue; my larger interest is in the discovery within consciousness of a ground in Atman that is not the psychological self but an original participation in the divine mind, Brahman, in which all lives and moves and has its being. Which leads me to:

VI. The Soul and the Whole of Being Here I must be as concise and synoptic as possible, so as to avoid attempting to lay out a very long argument. Take (or ignore) these remarks as vague gestures in the direction of my project.

If, as I have said, the whole of what we call nature is what we know as the interval between two transcendental realities—the apperceptive unity of intentional consciousness and the teleological universality of being as total intelligibility— then the natural order comes to pass for us between two poles that cannot be fitted within the naturalist picture. The logical and ontological priority of neither admits of a materialist dissolution, and yet the material order is constituted as an intelligible totality by the relation between them. The continuum of nature is broken open at both ends, so to speak. Not only is metaphysical conjecture beyond the empirical licit here; it is the very structure of thought, the primordial shape of all empirical knowledge. The phenomenal is already “metaphysical”; the very possibility of “nature” is a “super-natural” dispensation. Moreover, if (speaking gnoseologically) the foundation of intuition and conception is the necessary relation of intentional consciousness to the whole of being as its final end, it is only rational to ask whether this ordo cognoscendi is an inversion of the ordo essendi, a glimpse of (speaking ontologically) transcendent being as the source and ground of consciousness: to ask, that is, whether the transcendental structure of thought necessarily opens out upon the transcendent fullness of being.

Of course, it is an old metaphysical puzzle whether being and consciousness are entirely severable concepts: whether it is even coherent to imagine that something could exist in such a manner that it could not be perceived or thought about in any way at all, not even by itself, even in principle—in what sense would it be distinct from absolute nothingness? At the very least, it certainly seems reasonable to say that being is manifestation, that real subsistence is revelation, that to exist is to be perceptible, conceivable, knowable, and that to exist fully is to be manifest to consciousness. Certainly the phenomenal world we inhabit—the reality we find represented or reflected in or informing our thoughts, in which intensities and densities and durations and successions are arranged in such magnificently complex but diverse order—exists only as an “artifact” of intentional consciousness.

But I shall also argue that there is almost certainly a point at which being and

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intelligibility become conceptually indistinguishable. If nothing else, it is only as an intelligible order, as a coherent phenomenon (sensible or intellectual), that anything is anything at all, whether an elementary particle or a universe; perhaps it is true that only what could in principle be known can in actuality exist. So, at any rate, we have to believe. The rational desire to know the truth of things, in every sphere, is sustained by a tacit faith in some kind of ultimate coincidence or convertibility between being and consciousness. The natural orientation of the mind towards a horizon of total intelligibility requires us to venture our time, our hopes, our labors, and our contentions on the assumption that rational thought and coherent order are two sides of a single reality, or at least somehow naturally fitted to one another.

If we believe that the structure of reality can truly be mirrored in the structure of our thinking, then we must also believe that there is an ideal or purely intelligible dimension of reality that really corresponds to the categories and concepts that allow us to understand the world. There is such a wonderful transparency of the world to thought, and a wonderful power of thought to interpret reality coherently through forms and principles of an entirely noetic nature, that we cannot help but believe that being in itself is pure intelligibility.

If none of this is an illusion, and if in fact world and mind really are open to one another in this way, then perhaps for just this reason we should accord a certain causal priority to mind over matter in our picture of reality. If the materialist understanding of nature were correct, it would be difficult enough to account for the existence of consciousness; but it would be far more difficult to say how consciousness, in all its exorbitant difference from the purposeless welter of physical causality, could actually capture the truth of physical reality in the exquisite trammels of its concepts. Yet it certainly seems that, in abstracting experience into various kinds of ideal content—formal, mathematical, moral, aesthetic, and so on—the mind really does extract knowledge from what would otherwise be nothing but meaningless brute events. In fact, reality becomes more intelligible to us the more we are able to abstract it into concepts, and to arrange it under categories, and then to arrange our concepts under ever simpler, more comprehensive, more unconditioned concepts, always ascending towards the simplest and most capacious concept our minds can reach. To say that something has become entirely

Paul Griffiths Engaging Colloquium participants.

intelligible to us is to say that we have an idea of it that can be understood according to the simplest abstract laws and that leaves no empirical or conceptual remainder behind. This being so, it makes perfect sense that so many ancient and mediaeval philosophers appear to have assumed that the ideal dimension of things, their intrinsic intelligibility, was not only a property of their existence, but in some sense was identical with existence itself. What is an idea, however, other than the expression of a rational intentionality? And how, therefore, could being be pure intelligibility if it were not also pure intelligence? At least, Bernard Lonergan’s long, involved argument that the “unrestricted intelligibility” of reality leads thought to God as the one “unrestricted act of understanding,” is one I find convincing better than half the time. As the mind moves towards an ever more comprehensive and “supereminent” grasp of reality, it necessarily moves towards an ideal level of reality at which intelligibility and intelligence are no longer distinguishable. The mind can be a true mirror of objective reality because we assume that objective reality is already a mirror of mind. The

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Colloquium session with paul Griffiths and John Milbank about to commence.

ascent towards ever greater knowledge is, if only tacitly and contre coeur, an ascent towards an ultimate encounter with limitless consciousness, limitless reason, a transcendent reality where being and knowledge are always already one and the same, and so inalienable from one another.

I can also admit that I am largely persuaded by Karl Rahner’s claim that the transcendental experience present in all “categorical” or finite experience is implicitly an experience of the infinite, of the final horizon of all intentionality as nothing less than the divine fullness of being. I would be content to say that all consciousness, at least structurally, is a relation to God as end, or even that teleologically the mind is God, insofar as it strives not only toward, but necessarily to become, infinite consciousness of infinite being. (That, incidentally, is one of the principal senses in which I shall attempt to affirm the Mahavakyas in my book.)

My guiding conviction is that the most scrupulous phenomenology of the act of consciousness itself, reducing consciousness both to its origin and its end—all that precedes and exceeds the empirical, all that founds and elicits consciousness, the whole movement of thought in which the phenomenal world

of things subsists—ultimately leads in either case to the same place, the same simplicity; that which is most within and that which is most beyond: God knowing God, in which all finite consciousness participates as a restricted instance of that unrestricted act.

In any event, again, this is only a survey of my preoccupations, lacking in both clarifying details and clarifying orderliness; it is not a suggested program for the discussions ahead. I can only say, in parting, that I know where my argument in the book will end (mostly in the company of the mystics).

If indeed to exist is to be manifest—to be intelligible and perceptible—and if to exist fully is to be consciously known, then God, as infinite being, is also an act of infinite knowledge. He is in himself the absolute unity of consciousness and being, and so in the realm of contingent things is the source of the fittedness of consciousness and being each to the other, the one ontological reality of reason as it exists both in thought and in the structure of the universe. Thus, when one looks inward, towards that vanishing point of unity that makes the whole of mental life possible, one looks—as all contemplative traditions insist—toward the source and ground of the mind, the simplicity of God, the one ground of both consciousness and being. More inward to consciousness than consciousness itself is that “scintilla dei” or “Fünklein Gottes” that imparts life and truth to the soul, Sufism’s sirr-ul-asrar (secret of secrets) or divine indwelling at the heart of the soul, the Atman or nous or what have you; and the mind’s interior journey towards its own wellspring brings it to a place where it finds itself utterly dependent upon the sublime simplicity of God’s knowledge of all things in his knowledge of himself. And thus also, when one looks outward, towards the world, one looks towards that same source, that same unity of being and intelligibility. So, whether one looks outward or inward, the soul looks upon the soul; or, to say the same thing from the opposite angle, being looks upon being; and thus—in either case—one encounters God in his self-disclosure.

David Bentley Hart 2015-2016 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS

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student feature:

what kind of thing are human beings?

by Sean Costello ‘16

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n this article I consider “What kind of thing are we human beings?” (van Inwagen 224) and, after rejecting the two most popular modern propositions, i.e., physicalism and Cartesian dualism, ultimately suggest that the best answer we may be able to give is that we are a composite of minds and bodies in an Aristotelian hylomorphic sense. While no response, classical or contemporary, to the posed question has been without its shortcomings, and consequent objections, it is my contention that Aristotle’s hylomorphism hypothesis is, at least at this time—as it has likely been for the previous two millennia—the most acceptable of the responses given to this enduring metaphysical question.

I begin by presenting physicalism, the most popular modern answer to the question of what we are (Bourget and Chalmers). I proceed to raise a substantial difficulty that physicalism faces, namely the argument from the unity of consciousness or the immaterial “I.”1 I then conclude that this apparent unity is real and is inherently non-material and explain that none of the popular physicalist responses—specifically, the denial of consciousness (either completely or as a unity) or the various suggestions on how material can come together to create a unified consciousness (which include analogies to proprioception, explicitly computational models, and arguments from property dualism)—adequately address this objection. Due to physicalism’s inability to satisfactorily refute said objection, I suggest we then turn our attention to dualism, specifically Cartesian interactionist dualism, as it is the most common alternative answer given today to the inquiry “What kind of thing are we?” However, I demonstrate that, while able to overcome one part of the critical argument against interaction, that is, the argument from physical laws of conservation, Cartesian dualism ultimately fails to respond to the second part of this argument, i.e., the argument from operation (specifically how does interaction occur?). Owing to this shortcoming, I ultimately suggest that we, instead, turn to Aristotle’s conception of hylomorphism and recommend this as the answer to the kind of thing that human beings are, showing how it can survive the critiques against both physicalism and Cartesian dualism. However, I recognize that Aristotle’s theory has its own obstacles to overcome—namely the “mindsoul problem” and the resistance of modern science to positing final and formal causes2—and, as such, assert that our acceptance of this doctrine must be tentative.

At present, the most popular answer to the metaphysical question that animates this piece is, by far, physicalism. In fact, in a recent survey of professional philosophers done by PhilPapers, 54.4% of the 1,803 philosophy faculty or PhD recipients polled from 99 of the leading philosophy departments in the world either accepted (33.2%) or leaned towards (21.2%)

‘‘. . . the best answer we may be able to give is that we are a composite of minds and bodies in an Aristotelian hylomorphic sense.”

physicalism, with only 28.9% accepting or leading towards non-physicalism (Bourget and Chalmers). Physicalism—or, interchangeably, materialism3—is, at its core, “the thesis that human persons are physical things,” where the term “human persons” is to be understood to mean “that which we refer to when we use the first-person-singular pronoun” “I” (van Inwagen 225). Therefore, and not surprisingly so, those who ascribe to the physicalist viewpoint deem “the kind of thing that human beings are” is a fundamentally physical thing.

The main case against physicalism is what is called the argument from the unity of consciousness, or the immaterial “I.” A form of this argument is expressed by Kant in On the Progress of Metaphysics4—though it must be noted that Kant ultimately thought that, in a transcendental sense, we could not know anything about what kind of being humans, or anything, is in itself5. Nevertheless, an argument against physicalism—free from the transcendental idealist worries that forced Kant to deny the possibility of doing true metaphysics (A247)—goes as follows: (1) It appears that (a) we have unity of consciousness and (b) that this unity of consciousness is necessary for cognition; (2) From this appearance it is the case that (a) we have unity of consciousness and (b) that this unity of consciousness is necessary for cognition; (3) If we were just material, the workings of our brain with respect to representations would be divided into various subjects and, thus, could not create a unified consciousness; (4) Therefore, our soul (or, equivalently here, mind)

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cannot be material. This line of reasoning obtains strong misgivings with respect to physicalism: If our mind is nothing but a bunch of physical parts, how does this produce the simple “I,” the unity of consciousness that it certainly seems—perhaps more certainly than anything else—that we possess?

Unsurprisingly, there have been many attempts by physicalists to respond to this problem. The first, and most ill-guided, attempt has been to deny the move from Step (1a) to Step (2a), i.e., to deny that we actually have unity of consciousness. This comes in two forms, the more extreme of which denies that we have consciousness at all and claims

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that it is just an illusion. Georges Rey claims this when he says “nothing is conscious” and “no such inner condition exists” because there is nothing that is “added by consciousness” or any “phenomena [that] is unexplained without it” (Rey 473-474). This response fails to achieve cogency of any sort as it is, to my mind and the contention of others like David Bentley Hart, given both that “consciousness is as indisputable a fact of experience as experience itself (because [it] is experience)” and that “the illusion of consciousness would have to be the consciousness of an illusion, so [its] denial [is] gibberish” (Hart 213, 210).

The second form of this is to explicitly deny the unity of consciousness.

Daniel Dennett makes this argument in his Multiple Drafts model,6 by contending that all mental activity is “accomplished in the brain by parallel, multitrack processes” (Dennett, Consciousness 111-113) where our “component modules…produce a modicum of behavioral unity, which is then enhanced by an illusion of greater unity” (“The Self” 113) that comes from the “multiple ‘drafts’ of narrative fragments…in various places in the brain” (Consciousness 113). However, this is an incoherent argument because there would have to be something to recognize this lack of unity in the components of the brain and that would be the unified consciousness that Dennett is somehow unable to find (Hart 209).

Another, more promising physicalist route of attack is to deny Step (3) and to argue that material can come together to create a unified consciousness.

The weakest way to do this is proposed by J.C.C. Smart, who suggests a model where “consciousness [is] a sort of direct monitoring by one part of my brain of other brain processes that constitute sense experiences and the like…analogous to proprioception” (Smart and Haldane 158). It is apparent here that the problem is just pushed back (i.e., how does that smaller part of your brain have unity of consciousness?) and so nothing is solved and an unacceptable infinite regress looms.

A better way to deny Step (3) is by arguing that “the brain is…composed of an unimaginably large number of electronic input/output circuits, each one a set of neurons electrically connected to others through their synapses” (Rosenberg 188) such that the conscious “self-awareness” experienced internally “comes from the system’s intricately intertwined responses to both external and internal stimuli” (Hofstadter 200). The consciousness denoted here can be considered either as: (1) a purely physical thing, in

Top of page: Aristotle. Ceiling in the Great Hall, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Djembayz. 25 june 2012. CC. Bottom LEft: Plato and aristotle (detail) from The School of Athens (1511) by raphael (1483-1520). CC.

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thinking with traditional computationalists or (2) an emergent property, in thinking with property dualists.

It seems clear that the first way, i.e., the argument from traditional computationalists that the brain is a computer and consciousness is purely physical such that by (a) setting up a computer program in the proper way, (b) consciousness might arise, is erroneous. The flaw in this reasoning has been demonstrated by Searle’s Chinese Room Experiment,7 which denies the conclusion that “the implemented program [of a computer,] by itself, is constitutive of having a mind” (Searle, Mystery 14). Searle’s argument goes as follows: “[1] programs are entirely syntactical; [2] Minds have a semantics; [3] Syntax is not the same as, nor by itself sufficient for, semantics; [Conclude] Therefore, programs are not minds” (11-12).8 This suffices for doing away with that response.

The latter argument, for consciousness as an emergent property in thinking with property dualists (i.e., those who say that both physical and mental properties exist but that the only substance that exists is physical) seems, prima facie, to be the best hope of physicalists for avoiding this trouble of the unity of consciousness. However, upon further reflection it, too, is fundamentally flawed. There is a clear sense of self-contradiction in the argument that unified “consciousness is caused by lower-level neuronal processes in the brain and is itself a feature of the brain…that emerges from certain neuronal activities” but is, nevertheless “irreducible to physical phenomena” (28, 2). The issue is that it seems that anything that arises from physical components—if the only substances in the world are physical ones—should be reducible to its attributes and, if it is not then “one is really just talking about some marvelously inexplicable transition from the undirected, mindless causality of mechanistic matter to the intentional unity of consciousness” in a way that “does not seem conspicuously better than talk of magic” (Hart 213). This response deals with both supervenience theories—wherein “phenomena in general…are supervenient on [physical] micro-processes [in the brain] and their causal roles must be explicated in terms of the fundamental micro-causal processes” on which they “are dependent” (Kim 47-48)—and more traditional epiphenomenal theories— such as those whereby “no mental event is a total or a partial cause of any physical process” though every mental event has as its total cause one or a set of physical processes” (Lachs 35).

‘‘What has been demonstrated above is that the physicalist responses to this issue are anything but overwhelming. As such, physicalism should be placed aside and the more intuitive account of what kind of thing humans are—namely a mind and body— should be taken up.’’

Therefore, since it is a general principle that we should “believe what seems to us to be true unless we have some good reason to reject it” (van Inwagen 38) and, as Leibniz says, it seems all but certain that “there is in us a true unity which corresponds to what is called ‘I’ [and] this can have no place

in artificial machines or in a simple mass of matter, however organized it may be” (Leibniz, Die Philosophischen 480), we should only abandon this belief of an immaterial, unified conscious in the face of overwhelming evidence.

What has been demonstrated above is that the physicalist responses to this issue are anything but overwhelming. As such, physicalism should be placed aside and the more intuitive account of what kind of thing humans are—namely a mind and body—should be taken up.

Now that physicalism has, for our purposes at least, been dispensed of, it is appropriate to move on and suggest dualism as an alternative answer to the metaphysical question: What kind of thing are human beings? What dualism means is just that “there are both physical and non-physical things and that human persons are among the non-physical things,” though each human person is “very intimately associated with a certain physical thing, a human organism, which is called the person’s body” (van Inwagen 225). According to the relevant concept of dualism then, the human person (i.e., the “mind”) and the human organism (i.e., the body) are two distinct substances—in the sense that a substance is “a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other [non-Divine] thing for its existence” (Descartes, “Principles,” 211)—which come together to create what we understand to be a human being. The most common concept of dualism is that of Dualistic Interactionism, most famously espoused by Descartes, where “there are a cluster of tight causal interactions linking person and body” that goes both ways such that the causation is mutual (Taliaferro 129).

I will treat Cartesian dualism, as it seems that, “for most late modern philosophers… the only options open are materialism and Cartesian dualism” (Hart 208). Yet, I argue that Cartesianism is fundamentally flawed and, as such, ought to be set aside for a better alternative. First, let us present this form of dualism so that its defects may be later exposed. Cartesian dualism is based off of the idea that, because we “clearly perceive the mind [as] a substance that thinks, apart from the body, [an] extended substance; and vice versa,” each can be thought to exist without the other and to, therefore, be two really distinct substances (Descartes, “Arguments” 75b).

Despite their differences, Descartes believes the mind and body can causally interact. He

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states that this occurs at one place in the body, namely the pineal gland, which can “be moved in various different ways by the soul” such that, when the gland moves, it “drives the surrounding spirits towards the pores of the brain, which direct them through the nerves to the muscles; and in this way the gland makes the spirits move the limbs” (“The Passions of the Soul” 340, 341).

Historically, this view has been viciously attacked by many able philosophers. The most damaging critique of Cartesianism, which I think is significant enough to merit abandoning this view as the answer to what kind of thing humans are, is the argument against interactionism. This argument comes in two parts: the argument from physical laws and the argument from operation. The first part of this critique is that dualistic interactionism would “require a violation of well-established physical conservation laws like the law of the conservation of energy and the law of the conservation of linear momentum” (van Inwagen 260). These laws seem to say that no non-physical causes could interfere with the energy or momentum of physical bodies by augmenting or reducing them. However, this critique has been demonstrated to be without force by Robin Collins, who explains that “energy conservation is not a universally applicable principle in physics and that quantum mechanics sets a precedent for interaction… without any sort of energy-momentum exchange, or even any intermediate carrier” (Collins 40).

It is the second prong of the argument against interactionism—the argument from operation—that seems to do lasting damage.

This argument, as formulated by Gottfried Leibniz goes as follows: as regards to minds and bodies, “we cannot conceive either material particles or species or immaterial qualities which can pass from one of these substances into the other” (Leibniz, “Letter to Basnage” 63) such that “there is no way to conceive that the one has any influence on the other” (“Discourse” 244b). Rephrased, the challenge is that there is no way to understand how anything from the substance of the immaterial mind could cause something in the very distinct and material substance of the body.

The Cartesian response to this argument is not sufficient, as it never answers the fundamental how question. Descartes famously

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Aristoteles, 1811. Francesco Hayez (1791-1882). Academia of Venice. Public Domain.

states that bodies do not have the intrinsic power to move themselves (Descartes, “Meditations 44a) and that, therefore—due to the General Causal Principle—minds must move bodies, with the interaction occurring in the pineal gland (“The Passions of the Soul” 341). Yet, “when it is then asked, as it inevitably is, how the mind influences the pineal gland, Descartes has no answer at all” (Richardson 25).9 As such, Cartesian dualism seems unable to respond to this difficulty and, in my opinion, should be abandoned as a theory for what kind of thing we are as human beings.

Thus, I suggest we turn to a third theory—and cling to it as the most plausible account—of what kind of thing human beings are: Aristotelian hylomorphism. This theory avoids the faults of both Cartesian dualism and physicalism and, therefore, seems to be the best account that we can give at this time. Hylomorphism, in the sense that Aristotle uses it, is the idea that “each complex item admits of a real definition, or statement of its essence, in terms of its matter, understood as physical parts or components, and its form, understood as a principle of unity” (Johnston 658). Specifically, Aristotle—while recognizing that there exists both material substance called matter (ὕλη) and immaterial substance called form (μορφή)—avoids “the notorious ‘interaction problem’ of how an immaterial reality could have an effect upon a purely thing” by not seeing the relationship between the two substances as a “purely physical extrinsic physical alliance between two disparate…and wholly independent…kinds of substance” in the Cartesian manner (Hart 168). Rather, Aristotle defines these substances in an inherently complementary way such that their interaction in an instantiation

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is intrinsic and a part of their very nature. Aristotle recognizes “matter [as] potentiality, [and] form [as] actuality” and explains substance as existing in the following senses: “(a) in the sense of matter or that which in itself is not ‘a this,’ and (b) in the sense of form or essence, which is precisely in virtue of which a thing is called ‘a this,’ and thirdly (c) in the sense of that which is compounded of both (a) and (b)” (Aristotle 412a7-10). Consequently, for Aristotle, the soul (ψυχή), which is the “actuality” (414a19) and the “form” of a “natural body having life potentially within it” (412a20-21) comes together with the matter, a “natural, organized body” (412b6), in order to create a human being, who is a substance in the third sense above—i.e., sense (c)— such that a human being is inherently a compound of both matter and form.

Therefore, under Aristotle’s conception, there is no “interaction problem” because matter is “always already informed by indwelling rational causes, and thus open to—and in fact directed toward—mind” (Hart 167). This occurs in such a way that “the soul is [the intrinsic] final cause of its body”— i.e., the “end” or “that for the sake of which” the body “does whatever it does” (Aristotle 415b15-16)—and is the intrinsic formal cause, or “essence, of the whole living body”—i.e., that which gives “actuality” to the body and makes a human what he is (415b12-14). For Aristotle there is no external, “push-pull” physical interaction that needs to occur in something like the pineal gland, as in Descartes’ view, because the relationship is purely internal between body and form. As such, the interaction critique does not damage the hylomorphist’s position.

Further, Aristotelian hylomorphism avoids the difficulty of physicalism— i.e., the unity of consciousness or immaterial “I” critique—by regarding mind, i.e., “that whereby the soul thinks and judges” as not “blended with the body” or “hav[ing] an organ” but, rather, as being the “potential…place of forms” (429a23-28). Thus, the thinking, rational part (or power10) of the soul is immaterial and, as such, is capable of being a metaphysical simple whereby unity of consciousness and the immaterial “I” are able to occur. This dispenses with the issue related to physicalism.

Accordingly, it seems that Aristotelian hylomorphism is the best way to think about the kind of thing that human beings are, though this view faces several objections of its own. First of all, if Aristotelian hylomorphism is to be deemed fully correct, it must explain what Pasnau calls the “mindsoul problem” (Pasnau 160)—namely what the relation is between the mind (which is said not to be blended with the body) and the soul (which is the form and actuality of the body). Additionally, Aristotle’s view must overcome the fact that modern science has taken “formal and final causes out of consideration altogether and confined scientific inquiry to material and efficient causes” (Hart 56). However, both of these obstacles seem surmountable, and particularly more so than the highly damaging critiques of physicalism and Cartesian dualism, though their solutions are beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore, I posit that we should, at this time, tentatively accept Aristotelian hylomorphism as the answer to the metaphysical question “What kind of thing are we human beings?” (van Inwagen 224).

Sean Costello ‘16 International Economics and Philosophy 2015-2016 Templeton Undergraduate Research Assistant for David Bentley Hart

Notes

1.

For a source of this argument, see Kant’s On the Progress of Metaphysics (Gesammelte).

2.

For an explanation of the “mind-soul problem,” see: Pasnau,Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature.

For more on the resistance of modern science to positing final and formal causes, see, for example, Hart, The Experience of God. See also Mayr, Ernst. “The Idea of Teleology.”

3.

There is, however, a sense—unimportant to our discussion—in which these terms differ.

This difference is explored by Daniel Stoljar in the “Terminology” section of his article “Physicalism” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at plato.stanford.edu/ entries/physicalism/.

4.

Kant’s argument here is as follows: “That [man] is not wholly and purely corporeal may be strictly proven, if this appearance is considered as a thing in itself, from the fact that the unity of consciousness, which must be met with in all cognition (including that of oneself) makes it impossible that representations divided among various subjects could constitute a unified thought; therefore materialism can never be used as a principle for explaining the nature of the soul” (Kant, Gesammelte 308).

5.

For instance, Kant says: “If, however, as commonly happens, we seek to extend the concept of dualism and take it in its transcendental sense, neither it nor the two counter-alternatives – [idealism and physicalism] – would have any sort of basis, since we then should have misapplied our concepts, taking the difference in the mode of representing objects, which as regards what they are in themselves, still remain unknown to us, as a difference in the things themselves” (Critique A379).

6.

“According to the Multiple Drafts model, all varieties of perception – indeed, all varieties of thought or mental activity – are accomplished in the brain by parallel, multitrack processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs. Information entering the nervous system is under continuous ‘editorial revision’” (Dennett, Consciousness 111).

7.

Searle’s thought experiment is as follows: “Imagine that you carry out the steps in a program for answering questions in a language you do not understand. I do not understand Chinese, so I imagine that I am locked in a room with a lot of boxes of Chinese symbols (the database), I get small bunches of Chinese symbols passed to me (questions in Chinese), and I look up in a rule book (the program) what I am supposed to do. I perform certain operations on the symbols in accordance with the rules (that is, I carry out the steps in the program) and give back small bunches of symbols (answers to questions) to those outside the room. I am the computer implementing a program for answering questions in Chinese, but all the same I do not understand a word of Chinese. And this is the point: if I do not understand Chinese solely on the basis of implementing

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a computer program for understanding Chinese, then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis, because no digital computer has anything I do not have” (Searle, Mystery 11).

8.

Searle defines syntax as the “rules for manipulating symbols” and calls it that in which the “program actually running consists entirely.” Further, he defines semantics as the “mental contents” that interprets and gives meaning to formal symbols. The main bite comes from the third step, which says that “merely manipulating formal symbols is not in and of itself constitutive of having semantic contents, nor is it sufficient by itself to guarantee the presence of semantic contents” (Mystery 12).

9.

Descartes’ lack of an answer to this inquiry can be exemplified in his correspondences with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. Princess Elisabeth, in a letter from 6 May 1643, asks “how the soul of a human being (it being only a thinking substance) can determine the bodily spirits, in order to bring about voluntary actions.”

Descartes’ response, from 21 May 1643, is to appeal to the “primitive notion” within us of the union of the “soul and the body together…which depends [on] the power the soul has to move the body and the body to act on the soul.” These letters can be found in Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes’ Correspondence.

It is, I believe, a defensible position to state that, under Aristotle’s conception, it is impossible for the soul to have parts such that, instead of parts, functions such as “eating,” “moving,” or “thinking” belong to powers of a unified soul. For textual evidence of this, see “De Anima” 411a26-b30, especially 411b5-18: “Some hold that the soul is divisible, and that one part thinks, another desires. If, then, its nature admits of its being divided, what can it be that holds the parts together? Surely not the body; on the contrary it seems rather to be the soul that holds the body together; at any rate when the soul departs the body disintegrates and decays. If, then, there is something else which makes the soul one, this unifying agency would have the best right to the name of soul, and we shall have to repeat for it the question: Is it one or multipartite? If it is one, why not at once admit that ‘the soul’ is one? If it has parts, once more the question must be put: What holds its parts together, and so ad infinitum?

“The question might also be raised about the parts of the soul: What is the separate role of each in relation to the body? For, if the whole soul holds together the whole body, we should expect each part of the soul to hold together a part of the body. But this seems an impossibility; it is difficult even to imagine what sort of bodily part mind will hold together, or how it will do this” (411b5-18).

This view—that the Aristotelian soul cannot have parts—also seems to be present in Victor Caston’s 1999 article “Aristotle’s Two Intellects: A Modest Proposal” in Phronesis Vol. 44, No. 3 (199-227).

Works Cited

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Aristotle. “De Anima.” The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. Trans. J.A. Smith.

New York: Modern Library, 2001.

Bourget, David and David Chalmers. The PhilPapers Survey. PhilPapers, 2009.

Caston, Victor. “Aristotle’s Two Intellects: A Modest Proposal” Phronesis 44.3 (1999): 199-227.

Collins, Robin. “Modern Physicalism and the Energy-Conservation Objection to Mind-Body Dualism.” American Philosophical Quarterly. 45.1. (2008): 31-42.

Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.

---. “The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity.” Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives.

Ed. Frank S. Kessel, Pamela M. Cole, and Dale L. Johnson. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992. 103-115.

Descartes, René. “Arguments Proving the Existence of God and the Distinction of the Soul from the Body, Arranged in Geometrical Fashion.” Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. 2nd ed. Ed. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009. 72-75.

---. “Meditations on First Philosophy.” Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources.

2nd ed. Ed. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009. 40-68.

---. “The Passions of the Soul: Part One.” The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Trans. and Ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 328-348.

---. “The Principles of Philosophy: Part One.” The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Ed. and Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 193-222.

Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes. The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes. Ed. and Trans. Lisa Shapiro. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Hart, David Bentley. The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

Hofstadter, Douglas R. “Prelude…Ant Fugue.” The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul. Ed. Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. New York, Basic Books, 2000.

149-201.

Johnston, Mark. “Hylomorphism.” The Journal of Philosophy. 103.12 (2006): 652-698.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. N. Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1929.

---. Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1902.

Kim, Jaegwon. “Causality, Identity, and Supervenience in the Mind-Body Problem.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Volume IV: Studies in Metaphysics. Ed. Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979.

31-49.

Lachs, John. Freedom and Limits. New York: Fordham University, 2014.

Leibniz, Gottfried W. Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Vol. VI. Ed. C.I. Gerhardt. Berlin: Weidman, 1875.

---. “Discourse on Metaphysics.” Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. 2nd ed. Ed. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009.

224-247.

---. “Leibniz: Letter to Basnage, Hanover, 3 January 1696.” Leibniz’s ‘New System’ and Associated Contemporary Texts. Ed. and Trans. R.S. Woolhouse and Richard Francks.

62-64.

Mayr, Ernst. “The Idea of Teleology.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 53.1 (1992): 117-135.

Pasnau, Robert. Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.

Rey, Georges “A Question about Consciousness.” The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates. Ed. Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, Güven Güzeldere. MIT Press 1997. 761-782.

Richardson, R. C. “The Scandal of Cartesian Interactionism.” Mind. 91.361. (1982): 20-37.

Rosenberg, Alex. The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Searle, John R. The Mystery of Consciousness. The New York Review of Books. New York, NY: 1997.

Smart, J.C.C. and J.J. Haldane. Atheism and Theism. 2nd ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Taliaferro, Charles. “Possibilities in Philosophy of Mind.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 57.1. (1997): 127-137. van Inwagen, Peter. Metaphysics. Boulder: Westview Press, 2015.

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2015-2016 templeton colloquia at the ndias Afternoon of Christianity: Church and Theology for a Post-Secular Age

November 16-17, 2015 led by Msgr. Dr. Tomáš Halík, Fall 2015 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, 2014 Templeton Prize Laureate and Professor of Philosophy at Charles University, Prague This colloquium brought together scholars from history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and theology to examine the crisis of modern Western Christianity and how its members can seek the path to a deeper, more credible and mature form of Church, theology and spirituality. Over 300 people from 29 countries and five continents participated.

Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature

March 14-15, 2016 led by Dr. David Bentley Hart, 2015-2016 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, Danforth Chair at St. Louis University This colloquium brought together scholars from history, philosophy, and theology to examine critical topics about consciousness including whether consciousness can evolve or emerge from matter, intentionality and the transcendental ends of consciousness, classical metaphysics of the soul, Eastern contributions to the understanding of consciousness, and the soul and the whole of being. Over 400 people from 29 countries and five continents participated.

Becoming Human: Evolutionary and Ontogenetic Stories about the Emergence of the Human Mind

March 21-22, 2016 led by Dr. Henrike Moll, 2015-2016 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California This colloquium brought together scholars from anthropology, history and philosophy of science, philosophy, and psychology to explore critical questions of the human mind, spanning topics such as the emergence of imagination, “second nature,” sentience, sociobiology, and kinship in human evolution, as well as the human-animal horizon.

Top Left: Tomáš Halík during his Templeton Colloquium; Center Right: David Bentley Hart presenting at colloquium; Center Left: Henrike Moll posing beside colloquium poster; Bottom Left: Agustín Fuentes presenting on “Imagination” for Moll’s colloquium; Bottom Right: Templeton Undergraduate Research Assistants Daniella Grover (L) and Hannah Mumber (R) conducting child study with Moll looking on.

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The Impact of Laughter and Humor in Our Past and Today’s Digitized World

April 7-8, 2016 led by Dr. Otto Santa Ana, 2015-2016 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, Professor in the César Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA This colloquium brought together scholars from anthropology, biology, communications, digital media, neuroscience, political science, psychology, and sociology to explore the origins, development, and neurology of human laughter; explore humor and laughter as deeply human expressions of imaginative cognition; and evaluate the use of laughter and humor as social and political mechanisms.

Artistic Creativity: An Existential-Phenomenological Study

April 15, 2016 led by Dr. Bjarne Sode Funch, 2015-2016 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, Associate Professor in Psychological Aesthetics at Roskilde University, Denmark This colloquium brought together visual artists, composers, writers, and scholars from history, literature, philosophy, and psychology to examine a psychological theory of aesthetics based on phenomenological studies and existential philosophy, focusing on sensation and emotion in an attempt to characterize existential origins of creativity and demonstrate art’s importance for existential integrity and mental well-being.

Top Left: Matthew Gervais (Rutgers) and Sophie Scott (UCL) presenting on “The Biology and Neurology of Laughter and Humor” during Otto Santa Ana’s Templeton Colloquium; Top Right: Blessed is the Gift of Laughter by Hazel Bowman. Center Right: Otto Santa Ana at colloquium; Bottom: Bjarne Funch (center) conversing with Margaret Garvey (L) and Maria Tomasula (R) at Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art.

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alumni fellow news Margaret Abruzzo *Margaret Abruzzo, Spring 2015 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publication: • “The Sins of Slaves and the Slaves of Sin: Toward a History of Moral Agency.”

In The Worlds of American Intellectual History, eds.

James Kloppenberg, Michael O’Brien, Joel Isaac, and Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Mark Alfano *In 2015, Mark Alfano, 2011-2012 NDIAS Fellow, was named Associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. *In the last two years Mark Alfano has been awarded the the following project grants: • “Giving from the heart: The role of the heart and the brain in virtuous motivation and integrity,” (co-PI with Christina Karns) $190,000 (2015-17).

• Congressi Stefano Franscini Fund for conference on “Moral Technology,” (co-PI with Markus Christen & Roberto Weber) 31,500 Swiss Francs (2016). *This April-May 2016, Mark has a Visiting Fellowship with Australian National University. *In July 2015, Mark Alfano gave the keynote presentation on “Mapping Human Values” at the 3rd China International Conference on Positive Psychology at Tsinghua University. *In 2015 and 2016, Mark has also given the following conference talks: • “Constructing and validating a scale of intellectual humility” (with Kathryn Iurino & Jacob Levernier).

Intellectual Humility Capstone Conference, Catalina Island, California, May 2015.

• “Factitious intellectual virtues.” Eidyn Workshop on Extended Knowledge and the Epistemology of Education, Edinburgh, April 2015.

• “Extended knowledge, the recognition heuristic, and epistemic injustice.” Eidyn Conference on Extended Knowledge, Edinburgh, April 2015.

• “Giving from the heart: The role of the heart and the brain in virtuous motivation and integrity” (with Christina Karns). Self, Motivation, and Value Conference, Marquette University, March 2015.

• “The semantic neighborhood of intellectual humility” (with Markus Christen and Brian Robinson). Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, New Orleans, April 2015.

• “Mapping Human Values” (with Andrew Higgins

and Jacob Levernier). Geo-Visualization Techniques for Librarians and eHumanities Researchers, Online Computer Library Center, Leiden, November 2015. *In 2015 and 2016, Mark has also given invited talks at the Australian National University, Canberra; Eindhoven University of Technology; Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business; Gronginen University; London Nietzsche Workshop; Macquarie University, Australia; Monash University, Australia; St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University; University of Auckland, New Zealand; University of Geneva; University of Hertfordshire; University of St. Andrews, Scotland; University of Waikato, New Zealand; University of Wellington, New Zealand; and Warwick University. *Mark Alfano is pleased to announce the following publications: +Monograph • Moral Psychology: An Introduction. Polity, 2016. +Edited Volumes • (with Fairweather, A.) Epistemic Situationism. Oxford University Press, 2016.

• “Virtues,” The Monist 99, no. 2. 2016.

• Current Controversies in Virtue Theory. Routledge, 2015. +Journal Articles • (with Robinson, B.) “Gossip as a burdened virtue.”

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (2016).

• (with Berger, J.) “Virtue, situationism, and the cognitive value of art.” The Monist 99, no. 2 (2016): 144-58.

• “Placebo effects and informed consent.” American Journal of Bioethics 15, no. 10 (2015): 3-12.

• “Response to open peer commentaries.” American Journal of Bioethics 15, no. 10 (2015): W1-W3.

• “Becoming less unreasonable: A reply to Sherman.”

Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4, no. 7 (2015): 59-62.

• “An enchanting abundance of types: Nietzsche’s modest unity of virtue thesis.” Journal of Value Inquiry 49, no. 3 (2015): 417-35.

• (with Robinson, B., & Stey, P.) “Reversing the sideeffect effect: The power of salient norms.”

Philosophical Studies 172, no. 1 (2015): 177-206.

• “How one becomes what one is called: On the relation between traits and trait-terms in Nietzsche.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 46, no. 1 (2015): 261-9. +Chapters in Edited Volumes • “A schooling in contempt: Emotions and the pathos of distance.” In Routledge Philosophy Minds: Nietzsche, ed. P. Katsafanas. Routledge, 2016.

• (with Koralus, P.) “Reasons-based moral judgment and the erotetic theory.” In Moral Inference, eds.

J.-F. Bonnefon & B. Trémolière. Psychology Press, 2016.

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• •

•

• •

•

“Epistemic situationism: An extended prolepsis.”

In Epistemic Situationism, eds. M. Alfano & A. Fairweather. Oxford University Press, 2016. (with Holden, T. & Conway, A) “Intelligence, race, and psychological testing.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, ed. N. Zack. Oxford University Press, 2016. (with Skorburg, A.) “Extended knowledge, the recognition heuristic, and epistemic injustice.”

In Extended Knowledge, eds. D. Pritchard, J. Kallestrup, O. Palermos, & A. Carter. Oxford University Press, 2016. (with Skorburg, A.) “The embedded and extended character hypotheses.” In Philosophy of the Social Mind, ed. J. Kiverstein. Routledge, 2016.

“Friendship and the structure of trust.” In From Personality to Virtue: Essays in the Psychology and Ethics of Character, eds. A. Masala & J. Webber, 186-206. Oxford University Press, 2016.

“How one becomes what one is: The case for a Nietzschean conception of character development.” In Perspectives on Character, ed.

I. Fileva, Oxford University Press, 2016.

Karl Ameriks *Congratulations Karl Ameriks, 2010-2011 NDIAS Fellow, for the great success of the conference “Agency, Persons, & Kant,” which was held in his honor April 8-9 at Notre Dame. At the proceedings, Karl delivered the concluding talk entitled, “Once Again: The End of All Things.” *Karl Ameriks was also recently promoted to Emeritus Professor of Philosophy.

Clifford Ando *Clifford Ando, Spring 2015 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: +Monographs • Religion et gouvernement dans l’Empire romain.

Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.

• Roman Social Imaginaries. Language and thought in contexts of empire. Robson Classical Lectures.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. +Edited Volumes • Citizenship and Empire in Europe, 200-1900. The Antonine Constitution after 1800 Years. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016.

• (with Jörg Rüpke) Public and Private in Ancient Mediterranean Law and Religion. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015.

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+Translations • Athanasios Rizakis, Review of Cédric Brélaz, Corpus des inscriptions grecques et latines de Philippes.

Tome II: La colonie romaine, Partie 1: La vie publique de la colonie (Études Épigraphiques, 6; Paris: École française d’Athènes, 2014). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.08.03.

• John Scheid, The Gods, the State and the Individual.

Reflections on civic religion at Rome. A translation of Les dieux, l’État et l’individu. La religion civique dans la Rome antique (Paris: Seuil, 2013).

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. +Articles and Chapters • “Triumph in the decentralized empire.” Johannes Wienand and Fabian Goldbeck, eds. Der römische Triumph in Prinzipat und Spätantike. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.

• “Fact, fiction and social reality in Roman law.” In Maksymilian del Mar and William Twining, eds., Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice, Boston: Springer, 2015. 295-323.

• “Three revolutions in government.” In Lucian Reinfandt, Stephan Prochazka and Sven Tost, eds., Official epistolography and the languages of power, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2015. 163-172.

• “Mythistory: the pre-Roman past in Latin Late Antiquity.” In Hartmut Leppin, ed., Antike Mythologie in christlichen Kontexte der Spätantike — Bilde, Räume, Texte. Millennium-Studien. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. 205-218.

• “Exemplum, analogy and precedent in Roman law.”

Michèle Lowrie and Susanne Lüdemann, eds., Between Exemplarity and Singularity: Literature, Philosophy, Law. New York: Routledge, 2015.

111-122.

• (with Anne McGinness) “In Memoriam Sabine G. MacCormack.” Journal of Jesuit Studies 2 (2015), 1-9.

• “La forme canonique de l’empire antique : le cas de l’empire romain,” Ius Politicum 14 (2015).

• “Translator’s Foreword,” in John Scheid, The Gods, the State and the Individual. Reflections on civic religion at Rome, translated by Clifford Ando.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. xi-xvii.

• “Praesentia Numinis. Part 3: Idols in context (of use).” Asdiwal 10 (2015).

• “Religiöse und politische Zugehörigkeit von Caracalla bis Theodosius.” Translated by Leif Scheuermann.

Keryx - Zeitschrift für Antike, 2015.

• “The Changing Face of Cisalpine Identity.” In Alison Cooley, ed., A Companion to Roman Italy (Oxford: Blackwell), 2015.

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Robert Audi *Robert Audi, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow, has been selected by the Muenster Philosophy Department to give the Muenster Lecture for 2016, to reply to a set of critical papers on his work at the conference that follows, and to publish the lecture with his replies to the critical studies in a volume (with Springer) containing the full set of papers. *Additionally, Robert Audi is pleased to share the following publications: +Monographs • Means, Ends, and Persons: The Meaning and Psychological Dimensions of Kant’s Humanity Formula, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. xvi + 171.

• Rational Belief: Structure, Grounds, and Intellectual Virtue. Oxford University Press, 2015 (a collection of twelve papers in epistemology, with an integrative introduction), pp. x + 281.

• Reasons, Rights, and Values. Cambridge University Press, 2015 (a collection, with an integrative introduction, of eleven papers in moral philosophy, one not previously published in English), pp. x + 301. +Articles and Chapters • “Intuition and Its Place in Ethics,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1, 1, 2015, 57-77.

• “Moral Perception Defended,” Argumenta 1, 1, 2015, 5-28.

• “On Mary Glover’s ‘Obligation and Value,’” Ethics 125, 2, 2015, 525-29.

• “Business Ethics from a Virtue-Theoretic Perspective,” in Lorraine Besser-Jones and Michael Slote, eds., The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics, New York and Oxford, 2015, 529-542.

• “Intuition, Agency Detection, and Social Coordination as Analytical and Explanatory Constructs in the Cognitive Science of Religion,” in Roger Trigg and Justin L. Barrett, eds., The Roots of Religion, Ashgate, 2015, 17-36.

• “Religious Liberty Conceived as a Human Right,” in Rowan Cruft, Matthew Liao, and Massimo Renzo, eds., Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press, 2015, 407-422.

Lewis Ayres *Lewis Ayres, 2014-2015 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the publication: • Irenaeus vs. the Valentinians: Toward a Rethinking of Patristic Exegetical Origins. Journal of Early Christian Studies 23(2): 153-187. (2015).

Elise Berman *Elise Berman, Spring 2013 NDIAS Fellow, published the following: • “Aged Culture.” Life Course Blog.

Life Course Collaborative Research Network, 8 Feb. 2016.

Paolo Bernardini *Paolo Bernardini, Spring 2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publication: • Diasporas, Dogmas, Differences: Episodes in Early Modern and Modern Christian- Jewish Relations, Newcastle upon Tyne, CSP, 2016. *In 2015, Paolo was invited as inaugural fellow at the University of Hamburg ‘s Maimonides Centre for Advanced Study, created and directed by Giuseppe Veltri. * In 2016 he collaborated, as the only Italian scholar, on the Oxford Illustrated History of the World, Oxford University Press, edited by Felipe Fernandez Armesto.

Francesco Berto *In 2016, Francesco Berto, 20102011 NDIAS Fellow, obtained from the European Research Council funding of 2,000,000 Euros for the project “The Logic of Conceivability: Modelling Rational Imagination with No-Normal Modal Logics” *Francesco is pleased to announce the following book publications: • (with M. Plebani) Ontology and Metaontology. A Contemporary Guide. London, Bloomsbury, 2015.

• (with L. Bottai) Che cos’è una contraddizione [What a contradiction]. Roma, Carocci, 2015.

Justin Biddle *Justin Biddle, Spring 2014 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: • “Inductive risk, epistemic risk, and overdiagnosis of disease.” Perspectives on Science.

24. Issue 2. 192-205. March 2016.

• “Climate skepticism and the manufacture of doubt: can dissent in science be epistemically detrimental?” European Journal for Philosophy of Science. 5. Issue 3. 261 - 278. October 2015.

• “Tragedy of the Anticommons.” Ethics, Science, Technology, and Engineering: A Global Resource. 2. 2 Ed. 572 - 572. Macmillan Reference. 2015.

• “Values in Science.” Ethics, Science, Technology, and Engineering: A Global Resource. 4. 2 Ed. 485 - 488.

Macmillan Reference. 2015.

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Martin Bloomer *W. Martin Bloomer, Spring 2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publication: • The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Ancient Education. WileyBlackwell , 2015.

Costica Bradatan *For 2016-2017, Costica Bradatan, Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow, will serve as Visiting Professor (Fulbright U.S. Scholar) at the Institut de Philosophie, Université Catholique de Lille in Lille, France. *This summer 2016, Costica will serve as a Faculty Fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. *This will be a return to India, as Costica spent last summer (2015) as a Guest Fellow at The Indian Institute for Advanced Study in Shimla, India. *Additionally, Costica Bradatan’s recent book, Dying for Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (Bloomsbury, London & New York), which came out in hardcover in 2015 and paperback in 2016, has been translated into Dutch, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Kurdish, with translations forthcoming in Turkish, and Danish.

Eric Bugyis *Eric Bugyis, Fall 2010 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow & 20132014 NDIAS Undergraduate Research Coordinator, is pleased to announce the following publications: • (with David Newheiser, eds.) Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God: Essays in Honor of Denys Turner.

Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.

• “Postsecularism as Colonialism by Other Means,” Critical Research on Religion 3 (2015): 25-40.

• Review of Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech, by Bruno Latour, in Reviews in Religion and Theology 22 (2015): 166-70.

Vanessa Davies *Vanessa Davies, Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publication: • “Observations on Antiquities in Later Contexts.” Tasha Vorderstrasse and Tanya Treptow, eds., A Cosmopolitan City: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Old Cairo. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2015.

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Thadious Davis *Thadious M. Davis, 2014-2015 Director’s Fellow at the NDIAS, is the focus of a short video profiling her research while a fellow at the NDIAS. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdPWm5Dl5ik

Annelien de Dijn *Annelien de Dijn, 2010-2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publication: • “Rousseau and Republicanism.”

Political Theory (October 9, 2015).

Michael Desch *In January 2016, Michael C. Desch, Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow, was appointed Director of the Notre Dame International Security Center. *Michael is pleased to share the following publications: • Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits? University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming 2016. (Arising out of NDIAS conf.)

• “Technique Trumps Relevance: The Professionalization of Political Science and the Marginalization of Security Studies.” Perspectives on Politics 13, no. 2 (June 2015): 377-93. *Additionally, in the last year, Michael Desch has contributed to news outlets such as The American Conservative, The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, The Huffington Post, U.S. News & World Report, and The Washington Post.

Melissa Dinsman *Since March 2016, Melissa dinsman, 2012-2013 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, has contributed four interviews to the Los Angeles Review of Books as part of a new series exploring the role of the digital humanities as well as the digital in the humanities as it currently exists in the US academy.

The interviews have been with Franco Moretti, Alexander Galloway, Laura Mandell, and Richard Jean So. *In October, Melissa Dinsman published “An Interrupted Connection,” a book review, in the Los Angeles Review of Books on Markus Krajewski‘s World Projects: Global Information Before World War I. *Melissa Dinsman is also pleased to announce the publication of her monograph: • Modernism at the Microphone: Radio, Propaganda, and Literary Aesthetics During World War II. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

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Carsten Dutt *Carsten Dutt, Spring 2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: +Monograph • Zur Lyrik Gottfried Benns. Acht Interpretationen. Heidelberg: Winter, 2016, 185 pp. +Critical Edition • (with Eike Wolgast, eds.) Karl Jaspers: Korrespondenzen. Bd. III: Politik und Universität.

Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016, 856 pp. +Article • “Bruitistisches Krippenspiel, lautpoetische Totenklage – Hugo Balls Dadaismus als Reflexion christlicher Religion.” Hugo-Ball-Almanach N.F. 4 (2016): 17 pages.

Sabrina Ferri *Congratulations to Sabrina Ferri, Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow, for her recent promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in the Deptartment of Romance Languages and Literatures at Notre Dame. *Sabrina Ferri is pleased to announce the publication of her first book Ruins Past: Modernity in Italy, 17441836, which was recently published in the Voltaire Foundation’s series Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment.

Erwin Feyersinger *Erwin Feyersinger, 2011-2012 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the recent publication of the following book in Film and Television studies: • Metalepsis in Animation: Paradoxical Transgressions of Ontological Levels . Heidelberg: Winter, 2016.

Naomi Fisher *Congratulations to Naomi Fisher, 2014-2015 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, who is taking a position as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Clark University, starting August 2016. *Additional congratulations to Naomi Fisher for winning the 2015 North American Kant Society Herz Award. *On October 24, 2015, Naomi delivered a talk entitled “Kant on Animals” at the Midwest Study Group of the North American Kant Society at Northwestern University. *Additionally, Naomi published a book review of Kant and Rational Psychology by Corey W. Dyck in Review of Metaphysics 68 (3):651-653.

Brandon Gallaher *Brandon Gallaher, Spring 2014 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publication: • [with Christopher Hays, Julia Konstantinovsky, Richard Ounsworth and Casey Strine] When the Son of Man Didn’t Come: A Constructive Proposal Regarding the Delay of the Parousia (wholly written or collaborated on 5 of 10 chapters), (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016).

Alyssa Gillespie *Alyssa Dinega Gillespie, Fall 2014 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publication: • Marina Tsvetaeva: Po kanatu poezii, translated by Maria Malikova, edited by Anatolii Barzakh, in the series Sovremennaia zapadnaia rusistika [Contemporary Russian Studies in the West] [revised and updated Russian-language version of A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva] St. Petersburg, Russia: Institute of Russian Literature/Pushkin House, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2015.

Ethan Guagliardo *Ethan John Guagliardo, 20132014 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publication: • “The Political Atheology of George Puttenham and Fulke Greville.” Modern Philology 112 (2015): 591-614.

Douglas Hedley *Congratulations to Douglas Hedley, 2013-2014 Templton Fellow at the NDIAS, for being awarded a major AHRC grant for The Cambridge Platonists at the Origins of Enlightenment: texts, debates and reception (1650 – 1730), for which he will serve as the Principal Investigator from 2016-2019. *Additionally, Douglas Hedley is pleased to announce the publication of his book project while a Templeton Fellow: • The Iconic Imagination. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. *In honor of Douglas Hedley’s research and the book’s release, the Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät of Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster organized a two-day conference on “God in the Iconic Imagination: Spiritual Sensation in Platonism and Modern Philosophy of Religion” in April 2016, for which Douglas delivered

NDIAS Quarterly 2015 - 2016

the opening night’s keynote public lecture on “The Elusive Imagination and Spiritual Sensation.” *It is also significant to note that this past September 2015, Douglas Hedley returned to the NDIAS to deliver a tremendous seminar presentation and public lecture, entitled “The Iconic Imagination: Images of the End?”

Jessica Hellmann *Congratulations to Jessica Hellmann, 2011-2012 NDIAS Fellow, for her appointment as the Director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, as well as the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Bennett Chair in Excellence in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior in Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences in summer 2015. *Jessica Hellmann is also pleased to announce the following publications: +Articles and Chapters • Beever, E. A., J. O’Leary, C. Mengelt, J. M. West, S. Julius, N. Green, D. Magness, L. Petes, B. Stein, A. B. Nicotra, J. J. Hellmann, A. L. Robertson, M. D. Staudinger, A. A. Rosenberg, E. Babij, J. Brennan, G. W. Schuurman, and G. E. Hoffmann. 2016.

Improving conservation outcomes with a new paradigm for understanding species’ fundamental and realized adaptive capacity. Conservation Letters 9: 131-137.

• Javeline, D., J. J. Hellmann, J. S. McLachlan, D. F. Sax, M. W. Schwartz, and R. Castro Cornejo. 2015.

Expert opinion on extinction risk and climate change adaptation for biodiversity. Elementa 3.

• Prior, K., T. H. Q. Powell, A. L. Joseph, and J. J. Hellmann. 2015. Insights from community ecology into the role of enemy release in causing invasion success: the importance of native enemy effects. Biological Invasions 17: 1283-1297.

• Derby-Lewis, A., R. K. Mosely, K. R. Hall, and J. J. Hellmann. 2015. Conservation of urban biodiversity under climate change: climate-smart management for Chicago green spaces. Page 277-296 In Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation. Leal, W., ed. Springer, New York NY. • Conry, P., A. Sharma, M. J. Potosnak, L. S. Leo, E. Bensman, J. J. Hellmann, and H. J. S. Fernando.

2015. Chicago’s heat island and climate change: bridging the scales via dynamical downscaling.

Journal of Applied Meterology and Climatology 54: 1430-1448. +Report • National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (co-authors: Merritts, D. J., B. Barrett, F. S. Chapin, H. D. Dorms, C. Groves, K. Haddad,

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J. Hellmann, L. Maguire, P. W. Mote, J. A. O’Leary, R. Rubin, D. Strickland, E. Toman, C. Mengelt, D. Policansky, S. Karras, H. Coleman, and J. Briscoe).

2015. A Review of the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2015. doi:10.17226/21829.

Slavica Jakelić *Slavica Jakelić, Fall 2011 NDIAS Fellow, spent the spring 2016 semester as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, working on her forthcoming book, The Practice of Religious and Secular Humanisms. Her appointment is supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. *While a Visiting Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute, Slavica Jakelić participated in a joint panel discussion in January 2016 on, “Why is Islamophobia on the Rise in Europe?” *Additionally, Slavica Jakelić has contributed recently to the Contending Modernities Blog about Catholic, Muslim, and Secular interaction in the modern world: http://blogs.nd.edu/contendingmodernities/.

Maxim Kantor *Maxim Kantor, Spring 2015 Director’s Fellow at the NDIAS, recently published the following books: • Feu rouge - Roman cathédrale. Paris: Louison Editions, 2016. (Translation by Yves Gauthier; Foreword

by Eric Naulleau.) [French translation of Red Light - Roman cathedral, Kantor’s novel originally published in Russian in 2013.]

• Complete Robin Ballads in Russian. Moscow: AST Publishing House, 2015. (Includes 40 Robin of Sherwood ballads translated into Russian, commented on, and illustrated by Maxim Kantor; edited by Vadim Erlichman.) *In summer 2015, Maxim Kantor was featured on the Notre Dame homepage in a short video profile and articleentitled, “The Art of Truth” (http://www.nd.edu/ features/maxim-kantor/).

Scott Kenworthy *Scott M. Kenworthy, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publicatio: • “Gregory L. Freeze: Historian of the Orthodox Church in Modern Russia.” In Church and Society in Modern Russia, ed. Manfred Hildermeier and Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, 211-229. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015.

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Philipp Koralus *Philipp Koralus, 2010-2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the publication of a chapter in an edited volume: • (with Alfano, M.) “Reasons-basedmoral judgment and the erotetic theory.” In Moral Inference, eds.

J.-F. Bonnefon & B. Trémolière. Psychology Press, 2016.

David Lantigua *Congratulations to David M. Lantigua, 2011-2012 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, who will officially join the University of Notre Dame as an Assistant Professor of Theology this fall! *Additionally, David Lantigua is pleased to announce the following publications: • “The Image of God, Christian Rights Talk, and the School of Salamanca.” Journal of Law and Religion 31.1 (March 2016).

• “The Freedom of the Gospel: Aquinas, Subversive Natural Law, and the Spanish Wars of Religion.”

Modern Theology 31.2 (April 2015).

Ulrich Lehner *Ulrich L. Lehner, Fall 2010 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publications: • On the Road to Vatican II. German Catholic Enlightenment and Reform of the Church.

Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016.

• The Catholic Enlightenment. The Forgotten History of a Global Movement. Oxford University Press, 2016. *The time he spent as an inaugural fellow at the NDIAS strengthened Ulrich L. Lehner’s (Professor of Theology at Marquette University) desire for interdisciplinary studies. As a result, he decided to earn another Ph.D. On 8 June 2015, the Central European University in Budapest bestowed upon him the degree “Dr. phil. habil. in History”-the first habilitation [a post-doctoral degree that qualifies for a university chair] ever granted at this prestigious institution.

Vincent Lloyd *Congratulations to Vincent W. Lloyd, 2012-2013 NDIAS Fellow, who is moving to Philadelphia to take up a position as Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University!

*During the 2015-2016 academic year, Vincent Lloyd served as a Kingdon Fellow and ACLS Residential Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. *Additionally, Vincent Lloyd is pleased to announce the following book publication: • Black Natural Law: Beyond Secularism and Multiculturalism. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Jacob Mackey *Jacob L. Mackey, Spring 2013 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publication: • “New Evidence for the Epicurean Theory of the Origin of Language: Philodemus, On Poems 5 (PHerc. 403, fr. 5, col. i).” Cronache Ercolanesi 45 (2015): 67-84.

Daniel Malachuk *Daniel S. Malachuk, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: +Monograph • Two Cities: The Political Thought of American Transcendentalism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, forthcoming 2016. +Articles and Chapters • “Disinterestedness and Liberalism.” In Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates, eds. L. Behlman and A. Longmuir, 321-329. New York: Routledge, 2016.

• “Liberalism.” In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, eds. D. Felluga, P. Gilbert, and L. Hughes. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2015.

• “Transcendentalist and Gothic Intentions.” Revue Française d’Etudes Américaines, Special Issue: Whither Transcendentalism? 140 (2015) 52-64.

Jonathan Marks *Jonathan Marks, 2013-2014 Templton Fellow at the NDIAS, is pleased to announce the following publications: +Monograph • Tales of the ex-Apes: How We Think about Human Evolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). +Articles and Chapters • “Are we apes? No, we are humans.” Popanth (2015).

• (with Moss, C. R., and Fuentes, A.) “The new Hippocratics.” Anthropology Today 31, no. 4 (2015): 1-2.

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“Evolutionary Psychology Is Neither.” The Evolution Institute: This View of Life (2015).

• “The growth of biocultural thought” [Review of The Myth of Race by Robert W. Sussman, A Talent for Friendship by John Terrell, and The Creation of Inequality by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus].

Evolutionary Anthropology 24 (2015): 33-36.

• “Review of The Politics of Species, edited by Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 156 (2015): 179. *In March 2015, Jonathan Marks returned to the NDIAS to present “Who is Part of Me? The Emergence of Kinship in Human Evolution” as part of Professor Henrike Moll’s two-day Templeton Workshop entitled “Becoming Human: Evolutionary and Ontogenetic Stories about the Emergence of the Human Mind.”

•

Elisabeth Mégier *Elisabeth Mégier, Fall 2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: • “Le temps des âges du monde, de Saint Augustin à Hugues de Fleury (en passant par Isidore de Séville, Bède le Vénérable, Adon de Vienne et Fréculphe de Lisieux).” In Le sens du temps, actes du congrès de Lyon Septembre 2014, eds. Pascale Bourgain/Jean-Yves Tillette, Droz.

Genève, 2016.

• “Jesus Christ, a protagonist of Anglo-Norman history? or history and theology in Orderic Vitalis’ historia ecclesiastica.” In Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, eds. Charles Rozier, Dan Roach, Elisabeth van Houts, Giles E.M. Gasper.

Boydell and Brewer, 2016.

Susannah Monta *Susannah Brietz Monta, 20142015 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publication: • A Fig for Fortune by Anthony Copley: A Catholic response to The Faerie Queene. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016.

Vittorio Montemaggi *Congratulations to Vittorio Montemaggi, Spring 2013 NDIAS Fellow, for his recent promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in the Deptartment of Romance Languages and Literatures at Notre Dame.

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*Over the course of the academic year, Vittorio Montemaggi had the privilege to give many talks on Dante, including: • “Truth, Language, Love: Reading Dante Theologically.” Poetry as Theology: New Theoretical Approaches to Dante Workshop, The Newberry Library, Chicago, February 26, 2016.

• “Encountering Mercy: Dante, Mary, and Us.” Dante, Mercy & the Beauty of the Human Person: Journey with Dante from Lent to Easter series, Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame, February 11, 2016.

• “Smiles and severed heads: echoes of Florentine religious culture at the heart of the theology of the Commedia.” Dante and Late Medieval Florence Conference, University of Leeds, December 5, 2015. *Additionally, Vittorio Montemaggi is pleased to announce the following publications: +Monograph • Reading Dante’s Commedia as Theology: Divinity Realized in Human Encounter (Oxford University Press, 2016). +Chapters • “How to Say ‘Thank You’: Reflecting on the Work of Primo Levi.” In Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God, ed. Eric Bugyis and David Newheiser.

University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.

• “The Bliss and Abyss of Freedom: Hope, Personhood and Particularity.” In Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy: Volume 1, ed. George Corbett and Heather Webb. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015.

Hildegund Müller *Hildegund Müller, Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow, was recently featured in a profile by Notre Dame Research, entitled, “Tracing the Words of an Ancient Preacher”: http://research.nd.edu/news/66916tracing-the-words-of-an-ancient-preacher/.

James Nolan *James Nolan, Spring 2013 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publication: • What They Saw in America: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G. K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

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Mark Noll *Mark A. Noll, Spring 2015 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publication: • In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783. Oxford University Press, 2015. *This book was featured in this year’s Seminar in American Religion at the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. *On March 26, Mark Noll delivered the keynote address at the spring 2016 meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA), with his talk titled “Catholic Opinion Concerning Protestant Responsibility for the Civil War.” *Also of note, Mark Noll was recently promoted to Emeritus Professor of History.

Atalia Omer *Atalia Omer, Fall 2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: +Edited Volume • (with R. Scott Appleby and David Little) The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding.

Oxford University Press, 2015. +Articles and Chapters • “Hitmazrehut or Becoming of the East: Re-Orienting Israeli Sociology.” Critical Sociology (2015).

• “Nationalism and the Comparative Study of Religious Ethics: Future Trajectories.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 98.3 (2015): 322-353.

• “Modernist Despite Themselves? The Limits of Critique as an Instrument of Change.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83.1 (March 2015): 27-71.

• “The Cry of the Forgotten Stones: A Palestinian Liberation Theology & the Limits of a Theology for the Oppressed as a Peacebuilding Method.”

Journal of Religious Ethics 43.2 (2015): 369-407.

• “Toward a Polycentric Approach to Conflict Transformation.” In Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics, eds. Sumner Twiss and Rodney Petersen, 252-279. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

• “Religion, Nationalism, and Solidarity Activism.”

In The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, eds. Atalia Omer, R. Scott Appleby, and David Little. Oxford University Press, 2015.

• “Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding: Synthetic Remarks.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, eds. Atalia Omer, R.

Scott Appleby, and David Little. Oxford University Press, 2015.

• “Preface” (with R. Scott Appleby and David Little).

In The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, eds. Atalia Omer, R. Scott Appleby, and David Little. Oxford University Press, 2015. +Blog Post and Book Review • “‘When I see them, I see us’: Symbolisms, Analogies, and Cross-Movement Solidarity.” In Mobilizing Ideas published on 2 November 2015 available here: http://mobilizingideas.wordpress. com/2015/11/03/when-i-see-them-i-see-ussymbolisms-analogies-and-cross-movementsolidarity/.

• “Michael Walzer: The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions: (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv, 172.).”

The Review of Politics 77, no. 4: 705-708. *Over the 2015-2016 academic year, Atalia Omer has given the following invited lectures and addresses: • “Refiguring Jewish American Identity through Palestine Solidarity.” Naftulin Lecture, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, January 22, 2016.

• “Religion, Conflict, and the Practice of Peacebuilding.” Clemson Humanities Road Scholars Lecture Series, Clemson University, October 3, 2015. *Atalia Omer has also given the following conference presentations: • “The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding edited by Atalia Omer, Scott Appleby, and David Little: A Book Panel.” Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, March 2016.

• “The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding edited by Atalia Omer, Scott Appleby, and David Little: A Book Panel.” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, November 2015.

• “How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks About Religion, Nationalism, and Justice: Roundtable Debate of Atalia Omer’s When Peace Is Not Enough.”

Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, November 2015.

• “Beyond Freedom and Violence: Interpretative Methods in the Study of Religion and Politics.”

Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San-Francisco, CA, September 2015.

Richard Oosterhoff *Richard J. Oosterhoff, 20122013 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, is pleased to announce the following

NDIAS Quarterly 2015 - 2016

publication: • “A Book, a Pen, and the Sphere: Reading Sacrobosco in the Renaissance.” Histories of Universities 28, no. 2 (2015): 1-54.

Gladden Pappin *Gladden Pappin, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: • “Review of Pope Benedict XVI’s Legal Thought: A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law, ed. by Marta Cartabia and Andrea Simoncini.”

Perspectives on Political Science 45, no. 2 (2016): 144-146.

• “Lives of the Saints. Review of The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, by Walter Isaacson.” University Bookman, Feb. 1, 2015.

• “The New (Old) Characteristics of Posthuman Politics.” Comunicazioni sociali, n.s., 37, no. 3 (2015): 283-292.

• “Pierre Manent: Introduction.” Contemporary Thinkers (2015).

• “Toward a Political Theology—Approaches and Destinations. Review of The Mighty and the Almighty: An Essay in Political Theology, by Nicholas Wolterstorff.” Journal of Law and Religion 30, no. 3 (2015): 18-20.

• “Toward Dystopia. Review of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, by Nick Bostrom.” First Things, no. 249 (January 2015): 55-56.

• “Rights, Moral Theology and Politics in Jean Gerson.”

History of Political Thought 36, no. 2 (2015): 234-261.

• “Humanity Without Politics. Review of Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic,

by Pierre Manent.” Modern Age (2015).

Gabriel Paquette *Gabriel Paquette, Spring 2012 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: • Editor, Special Issue: “Liberalism in the Early Nineteenth-century Iberian World.”

History of European Ideas (2015).

• “Romantic Liberalism in Spain and Portugal, c. 18251850,” Historical Journal 58:2 (2015).

• “Colonial Societies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750, vol. II, ed.

H.M. Scott, 280-306. Oxford University Press, 2015.

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Bharat Ranganathan *Congratulations to Bharat Ranganathan, 2013-2014 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, who will start a visiting assistant professorship at the University of Evansville this fall. *Bharat presented two papers, “On the Limits of the Ethnographic Turn” and “Atrocity and Intelligibility in the Study of Religion” at 2015 November’s AAR Conference. *Additionally, Bharat Ranganathan is please to announce that his paper, “Mahmood, Liberalism, and Agency,” is forthcoming in Soundings. *From May 31 to June 17, 2016 Bharat Ranganathan is participating in the University of Virginia’s NEH Summer Institute on “Problems of the Study of Religion.”

Mark Roche *Mark Roche, 2012-2013 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: • “Statische Gedichte.” Benn- Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung. Ed. Christian M. Hanna and Friederike Reents. Stuttgart: Metzler, forthcoming 2016.

• “The Rupture of the Normative and Descriptive: Two Modes of Avoiding Tragic Sacrifice in Drama and Politics.” Making Sacrifices: Visions of Sacrifice in European and American Cultures. Ed. Nicholas Brooks, Armin Eidherr, and Gregor Thuswaldner.

Vienna: New Academic Press, forthcoming 2016.

• “Die unverwechselbare Auffassung des Göttlichen in Hölderlins Hyperion.” Hölderlin Jahrbuch 39 (20142015): 66-78.

• “Idealistische Ästhetik als Option für die heutige Ästhetik und Literaturwissenschaft.” Idealismus heute: Aktuelle Perspektiven und neue Impulse.

Ed. Vittorio Hösle and Fernando Suárez Müller.

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2015: 271-289.

• “Principles and Strategies for Reforming the Core Curriculum at a Catholic College or University.”

Journal of Catholic Higher Education 34 (2015): 59-76. *Additionally, Mark Roche has recently delivered the following talks: • “Making the Case for the Liberal Arts.” Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts, April 2016; earlier version given at Benedictine College, Atchison, Kansas, October 2015.

• “Religion and Intellectuals.” University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, October 2015.

• “The Ugly and Christianity.” German Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., October, 2015.

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Scott Shackelford *Congratulations to Scott Shackelford, Fall 2013 NDIAS Fellow, for winning the 2015 Elinor Ostrom Award for Collective Governance of Common Resources, Junior Scholar Category. *Additionally Scott Shackelford won the 2015 Sauvain Undergraduate Teaching Award (recognizing excellence in teaching philosophy and techniques for tenure-track faculty) and the 2015 Elvin S. Eyster Teaching Scholar Award (recognizing excellence in the creation, utilization, and dissemination of knowledge that enhances the teaching and learning process). *Additionally, Scott Shackelford is pleased to announce the following publications: • (with Zachary Bohm) “Securing North American Critical Infrastructure: A Comparative Case Study in Cybersecurity Regulation.” Canada-U.S. Law Journal 40 (forthcoming 2016).

• (with Scott Russell) “Bottoms Up: A Comparison of Voluntary Cybersecurity Frameworks.” UC Davis Business Law Journal (forthcoming 2016).

• “Businesses and Cyber Peace: We Need You!” Business Horizons (2016).

• (with Timothy Fort) “Sustainable Cybersecurity: Applying Lessons from the Green Movement to Managing Cyber Attacks.” University of Illinois Law Review (2016).

• (with Andraz Kastelic) “Toward a State-Centric Cyber Peace?: Analyzing the Role of National Cybersecurity Strategies in Enhancing Global Cybersecurity.” New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy (2016).

• (with Amanda Craig and Janine Hiller) “Proactive Cybersecurity: A Comparative Industry and Regulatory Analysis.” American Business Law Journal 18 52, no. 4 (2015): 721-787.

• (with Anjanette Raymond) “Jury Glasses: Wearable Technology and its Role in Crowdsourcing Justice.”

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution 17, no. 1 (2015): 115-153.

• (with Andrew Proia, Amanda Craig, & Brenton Martell) “Toward a Global Cybersecurity Standard of Care?: Exploring the Implications of the 2014 Cybersecurity Framework on Shaping Reasonable National and International Cybersecurity Practices.” Texas International Law Journal 50, no. 2 (2015): 303-353.

• (with Eric Richards & Abbey Stemler) “Rhetoric Versus Reality: U.S. Resistance to Global Trade Rules and the Implications for Cybersecurity and Internet Governance.” Minnesota Journal of

•

•

•

•

International Law 24, no. 2 (2015): 159-173. (with Scott Russell) “Risky Business: Lessons for Mitigating Cyber Attacks from the International Insurance Law on Piracy.” Minnesota Journal of International Law Online 24 (2015). (with Scott Russell) “Above the Cloud: Enhancing Cybersecurity in the Aerospace Sector.” Florida International University Law Review 10, no. 2 (2015): 635-667.

“Gauging a Global Cybersecurity Market Failure: The Use of National Cybersecurity Strategies to Mitigate the Economic Impact of Cyber Attacks.”

In Economics of National Cyber Security Strategies, ed. Pascal Brangetto. NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, 2015.

“Defining Cybersecurity Due Diligence Under International Law: Lessons from the Private Sector.” In Ethics and Policies for Cyber Warfare, ed.

Mariarosaria Taddeo. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Daniel Sportiello *Daniel john Sportiello, 20142015 NDIAS Graduate Student Fellow, spent the 2015-2016 academic year as a Lecturer in Philosophy at Santa Clara University.

Vasileios Syros *Vasileios Syros, Spring 2012 NDIAS Fellow, has been awarded the Maurice Amado Foundation Fellowship at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for the 2016-2017 academic year, where he will research the political ramifications of expanding Jewish political thought. *Vasileios Syros is also still continuing his work as the Principal Investigator for the research project “Political Power in the European and Islamic Worlds” (2014–18).

Allie Tichenor *Kimba allie tichenor, 2014-2015 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following book publication: • Religious Crisis and Civic Transformation: How Conflicts over Gender and Sexuality Changed the West German Catholic Church.

Brandeis University Press, Series: Gender, Culture, Religion, and Law, 2016. *On January 9, 2016, Allie Tichenor delivered the paper, “Gender Politics and the New Christendom: The 1994

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2015-2016 fellow news Cairo Population Conference” at the American Historical Association meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

Alexis Torrance *Alexis Torrance, Fall 2010 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: • “‘Seeking Salvation’: Jonathan Edwards and Nicholas Cabasilas on the life in Christ.” In The Ecumenical Edwards, ed. K. C. Strobel. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015.

• “Barsanuphius, John, and Dorotheos on Scripture: Voices from the Desert in Sixth Century Gaza.” In What is the Bible?, eds. S. Danckaert and M. Baker.

Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015.

• “Atonement in the Ascetic Fathers.” In On the Tree of the Cross: The Patristic Doctrine of Atonement, eds.

S. Danckaert and N. Marinides. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015.

• “Les inédits de Georges Florovsky dans les archives de l’Université de Princeton.” In Actes du colloque international à l’occasion du 30e anniversaire de la mort du P. Georges Florovsky, ed. J. van Rossum.

2015.

Andrea Turpin *Andrea L. Turpin, 2010-2011 NDIAS Fellow, is pleased to announce the following publications: +Monograph • A New Moral Vision: Gender, Religion, and the Changing Purposes of American Higher Education, 1837-1917.

Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2016. +Review Essay • “The Many Purposes of American Higher Education.”

Reviews in American History 44 (March 2016): 77-84. *For the 2015-2016 academic year, Andrea Turpin was awarded a travel grant for the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.

James VanderKam *James C. VanderKam, Spring 2014 NDIAS Fellow, was recently promoted to Emeritus Professor of Theology.

Joseph Wawrykow *Joseph P. Wawrykow, Fall 2011 NDIAS Fellow, was recently promoted to full Professor of Theology.

Diego De Brasi *While at the NDIAS, Diego De Brasi, 2015-2016 NDIAS Fellow, has been awarded the William M. Calder III Fellowship by the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which is awarded each year to a young, highly qualified German Feodor Lynen Fellow or US Humboldt Research Fellow to pursue research related to classical antiquity or to its reception in medieval and modern times.

Kevin Grove *Kevin G. Grove, 2015-2016 NDIAS Fellow, will join Notre Dame this fall as an Assistant Professor of Theology.

Tomáš Halík *Tomáš Halík, Fall 2015 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, is pleased to share the following publication: • I Want You to Be: On the God of Love.

University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming 2016.

Lawrence Hall *Lawrence O. Hall, Fall 2015 NDIAS Fellow and Melchor Visiting Professor of Engineering, is pleased to share the following article & conference papers: • E. Rajmadhan, S. Fefilatyev, M. Shreve, K. Kramer, L.O. Hall, D.B. Goldgof, R. Kasturi: Active cleaning of label noise. Pattern Recognition 51: 463-480 (2016).

• A. Chakeri, L.O. Hall: Large Data Clustering Using Quadratic Programming: A Comprehensive Quantitative Analysis. ICDM 2015: 806-813.

• B. Chaudhury, D.B. Goldgof, L.O. Hall, R.A. Gatenby, R.J. Gillies, J.S. Drukteinis: Correlation Based Random Subspace Ensembles for Predicting Number of Axillary Lymph Node Metastases in Breast DCE-MRI Tumors. SMC 2015: 2164-2169.

• H. Zhou, D.B. Goldgof, S.H. Hawkins, L. Wei, Y. Liu, D.C. Creighton, R.J. Gillies, L.O. Hall, S. Nahavandi: A Robust Approach for Automated Lung Segmentation in Thoracic CT. SMC 2015: 2267-2272.

• H. Farhidzadeh, D.B. Goldgof, L.O. Hall, R.A. Gatenby, R.J. Gillies, M. Raghavan: Texture Feature Analysis to Predict Metastatic and Necrotic Soft Tissue Sarcomas. SMC 2015: 2798-2802.

Aleta Quinn *Aleta Quinn, Fall 2015 NDIAS Fellow, has been appointed Ahmanson Postdoctoral Instructor in Philosophy of Science at the California Institute of Technology.

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Book projects of 2013-2014 Templeton Fellows at the NDIAS

publication showcase Tales of the Ex-Apes:

How We Think about Human Evolution

W

by Jonathan Marks

hat do we think about when we think about human evolution? With his characteristic wit and wisdom, anthropologist Jonathan Marks, 20132014 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, explores our scientific narrative of human origins—the study of evolution—and examines its cultural elements and theoretical foundations. In the process, he situates human evolution within a general anthropological framework and presents it as a special case of kinship and mythology.

Tales of the Ex-Apes (University of California Press, 2015) argues that human evolution has incorporated the emergence of social relations and cultural histories that are unprecedented in the apes and thus cannot be reduced to purely biological properties and processes.

Marks shows that human evolution has involved the transformation from biological to biocultural evolution.

Over tens of thousands of years, new social roles have co-evolved with new technologies and symbolic meanings to produce the human species, in the absence of significant biological evolution. We are biocultural creatures, Marks argues, fully comprehensible by recourse to neither our real ape ancestry nor our imaginary cultureless biology.

I

The Iconic Imagination

by Douglas Hedley

s it merely an accident of English etymology that ‘imagination’ is cognate with ‘image’? Despite the iconoclasm shared to a greater or lesser extent by all Abrahamic faiths, theism tends to assert a link between beauty, goodness and truth, all of which are viewed as Divine attributes. Douglas Hedley, 2013-2014 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS, argues that religious ideas can be presented in a sensory form, especially in aesthetic works.

Drawing explicitly on a Platonic metaphysics of the image as a bearer of transcendence, The Iconic Imagination (Bloomsbury, 2016) shows the singular capacity and power of images to represent the transcendent in the traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. In opposition to cold abstraction and narrow asceticism, Hedley shows that the image furnishes a vision of the eternal through the visible and temporal.

For more information on Douglas Hedley or Jonathan Marks, visit ndias.nd.edu. For more on Marks’s Tales of the Ex-Apes, visit University of California Press (http:// www.ucpress.edu/9780520285811). For more on Hedley’s The Iconic Imagination, visit Bloomsbury Press (http://www.bloomsbury.com/9781441172174/).

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Books featured in seminars and public lectures at the NDIAS during the 2015-2016 academic year Reason in a Dark Time:

Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed -- and What It Means for Our Future

by Dale Jamieson, Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy and Chair of the Environmental Studies Department at New York University In Reason in a Dark Time (Oxford University Press, 2015), philosopher Dale Jamieson explains what climate change is, why we have failed to stop it, and why it still matters what we do. Centered in philosophy, the volume also treats the scientific, historical, economic, and political dimensions of climate change. Our failure to prevent or even to respond significantly to climate change, Jamieson argues, reflects the impoverishment of our systems of practical reason, the paralysis of our politics, and the limits of our cognitive and affective capacities. The climate change that is underway is remaking the world in such a way that familiar comforts, places, and ways of life will disappear in years or decades rather than centuries. On October 1 &2, 2015 the NDIAS hosted a public lecture with Dale Jamieson, as well as both faculty and student book seminars focusing on Reason in a Dark Time (http://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780199337668).

Christian Human Rights

by Samuel Moyn, Professor of Law and History at Harvard University In Christian Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Samuel Moyn asserts that the rise of human rights after World War II was prefigured and inspired by a defense of the dignity of the human person that first arose in Christian churches and religious thought in the years just prior to the outbreak of the war. The Roman Catholic Church and transatlantic Protestant circles dominated the public discussion of the new principles in what became the last European golden age for the Christian faith. At the same time, West European governments after World War II, particularly in the ascendant Christian Democratic parties, became more tolerant of public expressions of religious piety. Human rights rose to public prominence in the space opened up by these dual developments of the early Cold War. On February 1 &2, 2016 the NDIAS hosted a public lecture with Samuel Moyn, as well as both faculty and student book seminars focusing on Christian Human Rights (http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1716.html).

A Foot in the River:

Why Our Lives Change - and the Limits of Evolution

by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, William P. Reynolds Professor of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame In A Foot in the River (Oxford University Press, 2015), historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto sifts through the evidence and offers some radical answers to these very big questions about the human species and its history - and speculates on what these answers might mean for our future.

Combining insights from a huge range of disciplines, including history, biology, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, sociology, ethology, zoology, primatology, psychology, linguistics, the cognitive sciences, and even business studies, he argues that culture is exempt from evolution.

Ultimately, no environmental conditions, no genetic legacy, no predictable patterns, no scientific laws determine our behaviour. We can consequently make and remake our world in the freedom of unconstrained imaginations. On April 22, 2016 the NDIAS hosted, with Felipe FernandezArmesto, a seminar on this book (http://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780198744429).

The Territories of Science and Religion

by Peter Harrison, Australian Laureate Fellow and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia In The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Peter Harrison dismantles what we think we know about the two categories of science and religion, then puts it all back together again in a provocative, productive new way. By tracing the history of these concepts for the first time in parallel, he illuminates alternative boundaries and little-known relations between them—thereby making it possible for us to learn from their true history, and see other possible ways that scientific study and the religious life might relate to, influence, and mutually enrich each other. On April 25 &26, 2016 the NDIAS hosted a public lecture with Peter Harrison entitled “Religious Origins in Modern Science?” as well as both faculty and student book seminars focusing on The Territories of Science and Religion (http://www.press.uchicago. edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo19108877.html).

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fellows’ books published 2015-2016

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fellows’ books with UND Press 2015-2016 Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God:

Essays in Honor of Denys Turner Edited by Eric Bugyis, Fall 2010 Graduate Student Fellow and 2013-2014 Undergraduate Research Coordinator at the NDIAS, and David Newheiser

For more information on this book, please visit: http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P03186.

Vico’s New Science of the Intersubjective World

by Vittorio Hösle, founding Director of the NDIAS (2008-2013) For more information on this book, please visit: http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P03258.

Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena Professors or Pundits?

Edited by Michael C. Desch, Fall 2012 NDIAS Fellow

This book, arising out of a conference by the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, addresses many of the fundamental questions on the current state of public intellectuals, including the roles they occupy and their responsibilities to society and the academy.

What is a public intellectual? Where are they to be found? What accounts for the lament today that public intellectuals are either few in number or, worse, irrelevant? While there is a small literature on the role of public intellectuals, it is organized around various thinkers rather than focusing on different countries or the unique opportunities and challenges inherent in varied disciplines or professions. In Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena, Michael C. Desch has gathered a group of contributors to offer a timely and farreaching reassessment of the role of public intellectuals in a variety of Western and nonWestern settings. The contributors delineate the centrality of historical consciousness, philosophical self-understanding, and ethical imperatives for any intelligentsia who presume to speak the truth to power. For more information on this book, please visit: http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P03256.

I Want You to Be

On the God of Love

by Tomáš Halík, Fall 2015 Templeton Fellow at the NDIAS In his two previous books translated into English, Patience with God and Night of the Confessor, best-selling Czech author and theologian Tomáš Halík focused on the relationship between faith and hope. Now, in I Want You to Be, Halík examines the connection between faith and love, meditating on a statement attributed to St. Augustine—amo, volo ut sis, “I love you: I want you to be”—and its importance for contemporary Christian practice. Halík suggests that because God is not an object, love for him must be expressed through love of human beings. He calls for Christians to avoid isolating themselves from secular modernity and recommends instead that they embrace an active and loving engagement with nonbelievers through acts of servitude.

At the same time, Halík critiques the drive for mere material success and suggests that love must become more than a private virtue in contemporary society. I Want You to Be considers the future of Western society, with its strong division between Christian and secular traditions, and recommends that Christians think of themselves as partners with nonbelievers. For more information on this book, please visit: http://undpress.nd.edu/ books/P03186.

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One Year Later, We Remember the Passing of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. (1917-2015)

REPOSE

by Grant Osborn For Gael, my oldest I was set to take you before light rose to meet Father Ted’s body, walk the line, see the fresh outpouring of breath that plumes in ripe winter of cigars in tribute like the one at the grotto leaning on an iron ring as if a pencil in a cup left by the angel who wrote his name in votive lights. How could I translate these three letters to you my son, how they pop and cut even at dawn, how they stir and dance as stars, constellating glowworms, a feverish jot and flicker of love notes on wind that jigsaws, gathers to greet the congregation? Could you not yet three grasp the vision: why we pray to our heroes and saints, our watchful ancestors who catch me, the top of my crown, duck beneath a golden vault, tread lightly through a river of white tents, and dip my fingers into the font before building a cross on my brow and chest, an unfinished star, with quick-motion of my hand; why we save the best linens, silks and stitchwork for beautifying our costumes, a mystery like keeping a vacated chrysalis comfortable; why we herd by the thousands for him, the finest among us, to witness the paradox of his face—a serene absence where logos used to reside. Now utterly changed by this opening of spirit, was some part incorruptible? I have stories for you but few answers. You will have others to walk the line for but not yet. Stay asleep, enjoy its visions and sweetness while you can. The rest will take care of itself.

May we remain forever in your debt

Nonprofit Org. US Postage Paid Notre Dame, IN 46556 Permit No. 10 Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study 1124 Flanner Hall University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 ndias.nd.edu

Spring 2016 NDIAS Class 1st row (L to R): Monica Solomon, Bjarne Sode Funch, Teresa Kennedy, Hannah Mumber, Carolyn Sherman; 2nd row: Otto Santa Ana, Donald Stelluto, Anne Kuster, Katharine Janes, Daniella Grover; 3rd row: Nicholas Bonneau, Mary Keys, Ilana Gershon, Henrike Moll, Laura Bland, Grant Osborn; 4th row: Patrick Corry, Daniel Barabasi, Diego De Brasi, David Bentley Hart, Arnaud Bacye; fifth row: Kevin Grove, CSC, Jaime Pensado, Brad Gregory. (Sean Costello, Colin Devine, McKenzie Hightower, Antonia Schreier, and Jonathan Vandenburgh not available for photo)