Past Lecture Series

Abortion and End of Life: Islamic Medical Ethics and Muslim Women’s Life and Death Decisions
Dr. Zahra Ayubi, Associate Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College
March 4, 2026
Islamic medical ethics, as practiced and as studied, is overwhelmingly focused on men: men’s bodies, men’s ideas, men’s texts. Remedying this gap with qualitative interviews, Zahra Ayubi discusses Muslim women’s experiences and their approaches to decisions about abortion and end of life care. They navigate existential and epistemological questions as they face medical racism and sexism as well as gender insensitivity in authoritative religious discourses.

Lifegiving Hope: Virtue & Things that Matter
Dr. Kevin Hector, University of Chicago
January 30, 2024
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Word by Word: Writing, Humanity, & AI
Dr. Tal Brewer, University of Virginia
February 20, 2024
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Emotions and Moral Formation: Augustine’s Wounded Heart
Dr. Sarah Stewart-Kroeker, Princeton Theological Seminary
March 5, 2024
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What if the Truth is Bad?
Dr. Olaoluwatoni Alimi, Cornell University
April 16, 2024
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God and the Search for Happiness

Dr. Zena Hitz
September 19, 2023
Zena Hitz (PhD, Princeton) is an expert in ancient philosophy & author of Lost in Thought, and A Philosopher Looks at the Religious Life. Hitz is also a Tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis and the founder and president of the Catherine Project. Hitz writes for general audiences about freedom, education, happiness, the decline of our institutions, faith, hope, and love. Hitz’s scholarship is in classical philosophy, especially questions about law, character, friendship, and the human good.

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We will explore ‘The End of the University’: What, if anything, is the purpose or goal of the university? What should it be? Is the university headed toward closure and collapse? What does its role in and relation to economic crises, political battles, and cultural conflicts have to do with all this? Finally, how do visions of the university’s telos relate to its future – disintegration, renewal, or something else?

Why Does Racial Inequality Persist?
Dr. Glenn Loury, Brown University
September 13, 2022
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The Epistemic Commons
Dr. Hrishikesh Joshi, Bowling Green State University
October 4, 2022
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Deflection, Value-Capture, and the Permanent Crisis of the Humanities
Dr. Chad Wellmon, University of Virginia
October 25, 2022
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Liberal Learning and Love of Truth
Dr. Jennifer Frey, University of South Carolina
November 8, 2022
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The End of Moral Philosophy
Dr. Vanessa Wills, The George Washington University
November 29, 2022
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In recent years, the study of Buddhist philosophy has moved from its traditional homes in Religious and Area Studies into departments of Philosophy. This lecture series will explore the “philosophical turn” in the field through the works of some of its more influential practitioners and an exciting group of young scholars who are just entering the field. Topics will include Buddhist epistemology and the philosophy of mind, controversies with rival philosophers, and the relationship between philosophy and the path to nirvana.

The Golden Age of Philosophy in the Monastery of Vikramasila c. 1000 C.E.
Parimal Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University
Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Parks and Wholes: Madhyamaka Mereology and the Argument for Emptiness
Jan Westerhoff, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy, Oxford University
Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Candrakirti’s Insight and Santideva’s Practical Wisdom: Two Mahayana Approaches to Awakening
Amber Carpenter, Associate Professor in Humanities (Philosophy), Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Madyamaka Metaphysical Indefinitism
Alisson Aitken, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Is the Buddha’s Teaching Authoritative?
Rosanna Picascia, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Swathmore College
Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Can a Tantric Initiation Convey Knowledge?
Davey Tomlinson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University
Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Can philosophical insight change the way we live? If so, how? What are the limits of self-knowledge? How do these limits affect our choices? These questions have concerned Western philosophers since the time of Socrates and Plato. They also have been a central concern in Buddhist reflection about the nature of a good life. This series will explore these questions from different perspectives through the eyes of several talented philosophers.

Becoming a Better Person: Aristotelian Reflections
Susan Sauvé Meyer, Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
Wednesday, September 18, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video

Courage and Experiments in Selfhood: Plato, Žižek, and Herzog
Richard Eldridge, Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video

Transformative Religious Experience and Empathy for Future Selves
L. A. Paul, Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Yale University
Wednesday, October 16, 2019

From Aspiration to Engagement: The Moral Logic of the Bodhisattva Path
Jay Garfield, Doris Silbert Professor of Philosophy, Smith College
Wednesday, October 30, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video

Is the Mind a Tool?
Agnes Callard, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video

On Having Self-Knowledge while Lacking Self-Understanding
Paul Katsafanas, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Boston University
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first annual lecture series in the Institute for Philosophy and Religion, we will explore an idea that was dear to the Institute’s founders, the idea of the “Person.” The Institute grew out of the movement known as Boston Personalism, a tradition that shaped Martin Luther King, Jr. and his generation of young scholars. We will ask whether this school of metaphysical speculation and moral commitment has anything to teach us today.

James’s Barking Crab: Becoming a Person in a Mechanistic Universe
David Lamberth, Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Harvard Divinity School
Wednesday, September 19, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video

Why We Matter and Why We Are: The Value and Ontology of Persons
Marya Schectman, Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois Chicago
Wednesday, October 3, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video

Personhood and Interpretations of Embodied Cognition
Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy, University of Memphis
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video

Interdependent Personhood and Relational Ethics: A Tibetan Perspective
Sarah Jacoby, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Northwestern University
Wednesday, November 7, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video

Person and Community in the Age of Anxiety
Margarita Mooney, Associate Professor, Princeton Theological Seminary
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video

The World as Person
Randall Auxier, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Wednesday, December 5, 2018 | Watch Lecture Video

Nonself as Omnipresent Interpersonalities: Tiantai’s Four Steps for Rereading Impermanence as the Eternity of All Subjective States
Brook Ziporyn, Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought, University of Chicago Divinity School
Friday, March 29, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video

The Demise of Personalism, the Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, and the Prospects for Turning the Tide: a Plea for Analytic Personalism
Aaron Preston, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Valparaiso University
Friday, April 12, 2019 | Watch Lecture Video

Fall 2017 marks the third and final year in a three-year exploration of the theological virtues and their opposites: faith and doubt, hope and despair, love and hate. These virtues have important resonances in classical philosophy and throughout the Western tradition of philosophical and religious reflection about what it means to live a good life. This is true of faith and hope, and is even more true of love. Aristotle said that no one would choose to live without friendship. Would anyone choose to live without love? What is love? How does it develop? How is it related to happiness? How is it related to hate? These questions, and others like them, lie at the heart of religious reflection in many different traditions. This series will explore the possibility of an answer.

“Autonomy and Love in Christian Ethics”
Robert Merrihew Adams, Visiting Professor, Rutgers Center for Philosophy of Religion
Wednesday, September 20, 2017  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
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“Bhakti and Accidental Grace: Hate as Love in the Hindu Tradition”
Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School
Wednesday, October 4, 2017  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
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“Locating Love in Islamic Studies”
Marion Holmes Katz, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University
Wednesday, October 18, 2017  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
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“Making Lovers: Emmanuel Levinas and Iris Murdoch on Moral Formation”
Stephen Bush, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University
Wednesday, November 1, 2017  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
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“How to ‘Love Thy Neighbor’: Lessons from Hegel on Conflict and Reconciliation”
Molly Farneth, Assistant Professor of Religion, Haverford College
Wednesday, December 6, 2017  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
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“Other People”
Kieran Setiya, Professor of Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Friday, March 23, 2018  4 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 525

“The Happiness of Promise: Alexander Nehamas on Love and Care”
Anna F. Bialek, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis
Wednesday, March 28, 2018  5:30 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 525

“Dehumanization and its Discontents”
Paul Bloom, Brooks & Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Yale University
Friday, April 6, 2018  4 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
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Fall 2016 marks the second year in a three-year exploration of the theological virtues and their opposites: faith and doubt, hope and despair, love and hate. These virtues have important resonances in classical philosophy and throughout the Western tradition of philosophical and religious reflection about what it means to live a good life. Is it natural for human beings to have hope? Is there even a duty to have hope? What is the relationship between hope and a happy life? Is despair a necessary component of hope? These questions, and others like them, lie at the heart of religious reflection in many different traditions. This series will explore the possibility of an answer.

“Religious Practices and the Formation of Subjects”
Kevin Schilbrack, Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy & Religion, Appalachian State University
With Responses by
Thomas A. Lewis, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University
and
Elizabeth Pritchard, Associate Professor of Religion, Bowdoin College
Wednesday, September 21, 2016  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Video of this lecture is available here.

“Hope in the Anthropocene: Moral Psychology and Collective Action”
Andrew Chignell, Associate Professor in the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, and Co-Director of the Cornell-Notre-Dame multi-disciplinary project on “Hope and Optimism”
Friday, October 7, 2016  4 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Video of this lecture is available here.

“The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory after Hegel”
Robyn Marasco, Associate Professor of Political Science, Hunter College
Wednesday, October 19, 2016  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Video of this lecture is available here.

“Radical Hope, Despair, and Time: Three Responses to Nietzsche”
Ryan Coyne, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Divinity School
Wednesday, November 16, 2016  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Video of this lecture is available here.

“Dionysus: The Hope of Beauty”
Mark Jordan, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School
Wednesday, November 30, 2016  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Apocalypticism,” a panel discussion
Jamel Velji, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Claremont McKenna College
Michael Pregill, Internlocutor in the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations and coordinator of the Mizan digital scholarship initiative
April Hughes, Assistant Professor of Religion, Boston University
David Frankfurter, William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture, Boston University
Thursday, March 23, 2017  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Hope, Despair, and the Blues”
Brita Heimarck, Associate Professor of Music, Boston University
Jason McCool, Ph.D Candidate, Boston University
Victor Coelho, Professor of Music, Boston University
Joseph Winters, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Duke University
Followed by a FREE performance by Kaz Hawkins at:
Bill’s Bar
5 Lansdowne St., Boston
7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 31, 2017  1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Video of Prof. Winters’s lecture is available here.

“Dante’s Divine Comedy: from Despair to Hope to Glory”
Peter Hawkins, Professor of Religion and Literature, Yale Divinity School
Wednesday, April 12, 2017  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Video of this lecture is available here.

Fall 2015 marks the beginning of a three-part series on the theological virtues and their opposites–faith and doubt, hope and despair, and love and hate. While these virtues are part of Christian reflection about a good life, they have important resonances in classical philosophy and in other religious traditions. This year’s lecture series begins with a consideration of faith and doubt in the tradition of virtue ethics, then takes up faith, doubt and their analogues in modern Jewish philosophy, contemporary Buddhism, modern literature, and Islam. The series ends with a study of Soren Kierkegaard who, for many people, represents the classic exploration of faith and doubt in modern theology. The series continues in the spring semester with lectures on the films of Robert Bresson and the teaching of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Can there be faith without doubt, or is doubt necessary for faith? This question lies at the heart of religious reflection in many different traditions. These lectures will explore the possibility of an answer.

“Faith (and Doubt?) Among the Virtues”
Jennifer Herdt, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Yale Divinity School
Wednesday, September 16, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Click here to view the video!

“Belief and Unbelief: A Straussian Perspective”
Michael Zank, Professor of Religion, Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University
Wednesday, September 30, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Click here to view the video!

“The Buddhist Journey from Ethics to Religion, and Back”
Dale Wright, David B. and Mary H. Gamble Professor in Religion, Occidental College
Wednesday, October 14, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Click here to view the video!

“’The Quality of Its Doubt’: T.S. Eliot on Tennyson”
Christopher Ricks, William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities, Director of the Editorial Institute, Boston University
Wednesday, October 28, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Click here to view the video!

“Faith, Doubt, and the Future of Islam”
Charles Kimball, Presidential Professor and Director of Religious Studies, University of Oklahoma
Wednesday, November 11, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Click here to view the video!

“Kierkegaard on Doubt, Faith, and Uncertainty”
C. Stephen Evans, University Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities, Baylor University
Wednesday, December 9, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Click here to view the video!

“The Devil Probably: Death and Despair in the Late Films of Robert Bresson”
James Quandt, Senior Programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque and frequent contributor to Artforum International
Wednesday, March 2, 2016  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Krishna’s Instruction in the Bhagavad Gita: Many Doubts, One Faith”
Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School
Wednesday, March 23, 2016  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Click here to view the video!

This year’s Institute series explores some of the most challenging and troubling questions in the contemporary philosophy of religion. These include the possibility of religion without God, “naturalized” or scientific views of religion, religious diversity, and contemporary responses to the challenge of modernity. The series begins in the “recent past” with the legacy of the Enlightenment and the critical traditions associated with the works of Sigmund Freud and William James. Then the series expands to include some of the most lively and eloquent contemporary voices in the philosophical study of religion, on topics such as a scientific view of spirituality, philosophical poetics, Indian and Chinese views of ultimate reality, the death of religion, and ambiguities in the nature of God.

“Psychoanalysis and the Monotheistic Origins of Modern Science”
Kenneth Reinhard, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Director of the Program in Experimental Critical Theory, University of California at Los Angeles
Wednesday, September 17, 2014  6 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Can Philosophy Help Us Understand Religion?”
Michael Zank, Professor of Religion, Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University
Wednesday, October 1, 2014  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“William James Revisited: Pragmatic Approaches to Religion”
David Lamberth, Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Harvard Divinity School
Wednesday, October 15, 2014  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“A Philosophical Framework for Interpreting the Future of Religion and Spirituality”
Wesley J. Wildman, Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics, Boston University School of Theology
Wednesday, October 29, 2014  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Poetics of the Sacred”
Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy, Boston College
Wednesday, November 12, 2014  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“The Seduction of Daoist Philosophy: What Was Lost on the Way to Understanding the Daoist Religion?”
James Robson, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Wednesday, December 3, 2014  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Religion Without God: An Indian Perspective”
Parimal G. Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Chair of the Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University
Wednesday, February 25, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University College of Arts and Sciences
685-725 Commonwealth Ave, Room 224

“The Nature of Love and Forgiveness:  Richard Swinburne’s Theory of Atonement”
Eleonore Stump, Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University
Wednesday, March 25, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Deconstruction and A Religion of the Future”
John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus
Syracuse University
Wednesday, April 8, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“God and the Ambivalence of Being”
The Leroy and Rita Rouner Memorial Lecture
Jean-Luc Marion, Andrew Thomas & Grace McNichols Greeley Visiting Professor, University of Chicago
Thursday, April 23, 2015  5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 St. Mary’s Street, Ninth Floor

This year’s Institute series will explore important philosophical, religious, and literary aspects of suffering. From recent public debate about physician-assisted suicide and other end-of-life choices to new academic research on topics such as social suffering and the effects of trauma, there is much to prompt contemporary philosophical reflection about the nature and meaning of human suffering. In this year’s series, individual lectures will focus on topics such as the phenomenology of pain, trauma, and waiting; the relationship between suffering and ethical theory; and the expressive connection between suffering and artistic and narrative forms of representation. This year’s roster of speakers will include notable experts in areas such as the philosophy of religion, bioethics, literary theory, and narrative medicine.

“Physician-Assisted Suicide and End-of-Life Issues”
Dan W. Brock, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical Ethics, Harvard Medical School
Wednesday, October 2, 2013, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325
Commentator: Irina Meketa, Department of Philosophy, Boston University

“Susan Sontag and the Representation of Suffering”
Ann Jurecic, Department of English, Rutgers University
Wednesday, October 16, 2013, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Gratuitous Evils and Organic Unities”
Dean Zimmerman, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University
Wednesday, October 30, 2013, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“Social Suffering and Caregiving: The Ground of Moral Life”
Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University and Professor of Medical Anthropology in Global Health and Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Wednesday, November 6, 2013, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“‘As One, in Suff’ring All, That Suffers Nothing’: on Hamlet ”
Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor, The New School
Wednesday, November 20, 2013, 5 p.m.
Boston University, The Castle, 225 Bay State Road

“The Afterlife of Trauma Theory”
Shelly Rambo, School of Theology, Boston University
Wednesday, December 4, 2013, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 325

“The Problem of Suffering and the Desires of the Heart”
The Leroy and Rita Rouner Memorial Lecture
Eleonore Stump, Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy,
Saint Louis University
Wednesday, March 25, 2015, 5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Ninth Floor

“W. H. Auden on History and Silence”
Susannah Gottlieb, Department of English, Northwestern University
Wednesday, March 26, 2014, 5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Ninth Floor

The lecture series will offer an interdisciplinary examination of the relation between aesthetic and other forms of value in the modern world, including the nature of beauty and sublimity, the rise and fall of aesthetics as a discipline, and the claims of the“end” of art (including the consequences—philosophical, religious or otherwise—that might follow from such claims).

“Real and Artificial Beauty: The Mythology of Women and Their Jewelry”
The Leroy and Rita Rouner Memorial Lecture
Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, University of Chicago
Wednesday, September 19, 5 p.m.
Boston University, The Castle, 225 Bay State Road
Moderator: M. David Eckel, Department of Religion and Director, Core Curriculum, Boston University
Commentator: Stephanie Nelson, Chair, Department of Classics, Boston University

“Rethinking Religion and Art”
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Yale University
Wednesday, October 3, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law, Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
View the video.

“Evolution, Personalism, and Art: A. F. Losev’s Aesthetics”
Oleg Bychkov, Professor of Theology, St. Bonaventure University
Wednesday, October 17, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law, Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

“On Some Relations between Religious Art and the Contemporary Artworld”
James Elkins, E. C. Chadbourne Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Wednesday, October 31, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law, Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

“Greek Gods and the Archaic Aesthetics of Life”
Stephen Halliwell, Professor of Greek, School of Classics, University of St. Andrews
Wednesday, November 7, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law, Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Commentator: Charles Griswold, Department of Philosophy, Boston University
View the video.

“Art’s Abject Other or the ‘New Cool’: Rethinking the Art/Craft Dichotomy”
Larry Shiner, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, History and Visual Arts, University of Illinois at Springfield
Wednesday, November 28, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law, Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Commentator: Franco Cirulli, Core Curriculum, Boston University
View the video.

“Beyond Aesthetics: Sacred Music as a Calling”
Gordon Graham, Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts, Princeton Theological Seminary
Wednesday, December 5, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law, Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
View the video.

Annual IPR Colloquium on the Philosophy of Religion: Levinas in His Context
A Series of Lectures by Myriam Bienenstock, Department of Philosophy, University François Rabelais at Tours (France)
Lecture 1: The French Connection, Wednesday, April 10, 5 p.m.
Lecture 2: The German Connection, Wednesday, April 17, 5 p.m.
Lecture 3: The Jewish Connection, Wednesday, April 24, 5 p.m.
Boston University
Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies
Board Room, 2nd Floor
147 Bay State Road

The institute’s 2011-2012 series explored several important facets of the contemporary relation between politics, theology, and religious thought, including the specific notions of civil religion (in the broadest sense from Rousseau to Tocqueville to Robert Bellah) and political theology (in a comparative way, as it has been reflected especially in political thinkers whose work has been influenced by the three monotheistic traditions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity).

“How to Read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address”Steven B. Smith, Department of Political Science, Yale University
Thursday, September 22, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: Michael Zank (Department of Religion, Boston University)
Respondent: Judith Swanson (Department of Political Science, Boston University)
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies
View the video.

“World-denial and World Redemption: Franz Rosenzweig’s Early Marcionism”
Benjamin Pollock, Department of Religious Studies, Michigan State University
Wednesday, October, 26, 5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center, Room 206
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Second Floor
Moderator: Michael Zank (Department of Religion, Boston University)
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies
View the video.

“Miracles in an Age of Technological Reproducibility”
Benjamin Lazier, Department of History, Reed College
Wednesday, November 16, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: Michael Zank (Department of Religion, Boston University)
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies

“The Anti-Trinitarian Sources of Liberalism”
Michael Gillespie, Department of Political Science, Duke University
Thursday, December 1, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: John Berthrong (School of Theology, Boston University)
View the video.

“Confronting Spinoza’s Theologico-political Treatise: Hermann Cohen vs. Franz Rosenzweig”
Myriam Bienenstock, Department of Philosophy, University François Rabelais at Tours (France)
Wednesday, December 7, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: Michael Zank (Department of Religion, Boston University)
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies

“On Being a Mediocre Believer in an Age of Extremities”
Charles Mathewes, Department of Religion, University of Virginia
Thursday, January 26, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: John Berthrong (School of Theology, Boston University)

“Jürgen Habermas and the Social Significance of Religion”
Peter Gordon, Department of History, Harvard University
Wednesday, February 1, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: Michael Zank (Department of Religion, Boston University)
Respondent: Hugh Baxter, Department of Philosophy and School of Law, Boston University.
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies

“American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us”
Robert Putnam, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Thursday, March 1, 6 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: Robert Hefner (Director, Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs, Boston University)
Respondent: Peter Berger (Director Emeritus, Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs, Boston University)
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs

“Political Theology and Biblical Atheism: Revisiting The Schmitt-strauss Debate in Weimar”
John McCormick, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago
Thursday, March 29, 5 p.m.
Moderator: John Berthrong (School of Theology, Boston University)
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Ninth Floor

“Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority”
Saturday, March 31, 9 a.m.–6 p.m.
IPR is one of the co-sponsors for this all-day conference, organized by Professor Kecia Ali (Department of Religion), which is also being supported by the Boston University Humanities Foundation; the Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs, the Department of Religion; the programs in Muslim Studies and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies; the New England/Maritimes Region of the American Academy of Religion; and George Mason University’s Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies. (For more information on the conference and the year-long lecture series of which it is a part, see the website at http://www.bu.edu/cura/calendar/muslim-women-and-the-challenge-of-authority/.)

“Politics, Religion and Violence: The Maccabean Wars”
Jan Assmann, Departments of History and Sociology, University of Konstanz (Germany)
Wednesday, April 4, 5 p.m.
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies
Respondent: Martin Kavka (Department of Religion, Florida State University
Moderator: Michael Zank (Department of Religion, Boston University)
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

From head scarves to school prayer, the intersection of religion and politics raises important philosophical questions. How do American and European approaches to the issues of toleration and religious freedom compare? What are the best historical and contemporary arguments for toleration in an increasingly secular society? The institute’s annual lecture and conference series for 2010–11 will offer an interdisciplinary exploration of the relation between toleration and freedom in historical and contemporary perspective, culminating with a conference in Spring 2011 on specifically American approaches to the question of toleration. The institute will also play host in Spring 2011 to the annual Boston Area Symposium on the Philosophy of Religion.

“The Secular, Secularizations, and Secularisms”
José Casanova, Department of Sociology, Georgetown University
Wednesday, September 15, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue First Floor
Respondent: Adam Seligman, Institute for Culture, Religion & World Affairs Boston University
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Institute for Philosophy & Religion and Institute for Culture, Religion & World Affairs
View the video

“Hobbes and Locke on Toleration”
Susanne Sreedhar, Department of Philosophy, Boston University
Wednesday, September 29, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue First Floor
View the video

“Beyond Tolerance: Islam and Pluralism”
Tariq Ramadan, HH Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, Oxford University
Wednesday, October 13, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Auditorium 765
Commonwealth Avenue
This event co-sponsored by Boston University’s Institute for Philosophy & Religion and Institute for Culture, Religion & World Affairs
View the video

“Charitable Hatred? The Civil State and Liberty of Conscience in Early America”
David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History, Harvard Divinity School
Wednesday, October 20, 6 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue First Floor
View the video

“Madison’s Politics of Religion Revisisted”
Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Wednesday, October 27, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
View the video

“Tolerance Under Fire”
Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, Bard College
Wednesday, November 3, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: M. David Eckel, Department of Religion, Boston University
This event co-sponsored by the Distinguished Teaching Professor Fund of the Core Curriculum
View the video

“From Augustine to Spinoza and Locke: Answering the Christian Case Against Religious Liberty”
Edwin Curley, James B. and Grace J. Nelson Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan
Wednesday, November 10, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
View the video

“Tolerance Among the Virtues”
John Bowlin, Rimmer and Ruth de Vries Associate Professor of Reformed Theology and Public Life, Princeton Theological Seminary
Wednesday, December 1, 6 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
View the video

“Toleration and Subscription: An Early Enlightenment Debate”
Knud Haakonssen, Professor of Intellectual History, Sussex Centre for Intellectual History, University of Sussex (UK)
Wednesday, December 8, 6 pm
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

IPR Focal Conference: “Toleration and Freedom: The American Experience in Context”
Friday, March 25, 2011, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
Participants:
Abdullah Ahmed An-Na’im, Emory University School of Law
Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School
David Hall, Harvard Divinity School
David Hollinger, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
Benjamin Kaplan, Department of History, University College, London
Erik Owens, Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, Boston College
Stuart Schwartz, Department of History, Yale University
Jay Wexler, Boston University School of Law
IPR Annual Boston Area Symposium on the Philosophy of Religion: Book Session with Mark Johnston, Author of Saving God: Religion After Idolatry
Tuesday, May 3, 2011, 3–5 p.m.
Boston University, 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room STH 525
Discussants:
Andrew Chignell (Cornell) and Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers) with a Response by Mark Johnston (Princeton)

What is the role of story or narrative in human understanding? What specific human cognitive or imaginative capacities are required for the construction and discernment of narrative patterns in our lives? The institute’s annual lecture and conference series for 2009–10 will offer an interdisciplinary exploration of the importance of philosophical and religious narrative in human self-understanding, culminating with a conference in Spring 2010 on philosophical and intellectual life-story writing. The institute will also play host in February 2010 to the Boston Area Symposium on the Philosophy of Religion.

“The Whole Story: Personal Identity, Narrative, and Biology”
Marya Schechtman, Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago
Wednesday, September 9, 5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Ninth Floor
Moderator: Richard Eldridge, Department of Philosophy, Swarthmore College

“Philosophical Insight, Emotion and Popular Fiction: The Case of Sunset Boulevard”
Noël Carroll, Department of Philosophy, The Graduate Center—City University of New York
Wednesday, September 23
Film Showing 5 p.m.
Lecture 7 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Ninth Floor
Moderator: Leland Monk, Department of English, Boston University

“Dostoevsky and the Literature of Process: What Open Time Looks Like”
Gary Saul Morson, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University
Wednesday, October 14, 5 p.m.
Boston University College of Arts & Sciences Building
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 313
Moderator: Katherine O’Connor, Department of Modern Languages & Comparative Literature, Boston University

Panel: Cross-Cultural Religious Perspectives on Narrative
Michael Puett, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Anne Monius, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University
M. David Eckel, Department of Religion, Boston University
Tuesday, October 27, 5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 Saint Mary’s Street
Moderator: John Berthrong, Associate Dean, School of Theology, Boston University

“Narrative Form and the ‘Meaning’ of a Life”
Joshua Landy, Department of French and Italian, Stanford University
Wednesday, November 4, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Respondent: Professor Will Waters, Chair, Department of Modern Languages & Comparative Literature, Boston University

“Narrative Thinking, Emotion, and Autobiographical Memory”
Peter Goldie, Department of Philosophy, University of Manchester (UK)
Wednesday, November 18, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Moderator: Charles Griswold, Department of Philosophy, Boston University

“Narrative, Anti-Narrative, and Self-Understanding”
Richard Moran, Department of Philosophy, Harvard University
Wednesday, December 9, 6 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Respondent: David Roochnik, Professor of Philosophy, Boston University

“We Live Beyond Any Tale That We Happen to Enact” [V. S. Pritchett]
Galen Strawson, Department of Philosophy, University of Reading (UK)
Wednesday, February 17, 6 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Commentator: Christopher Ricks, Editorial Institute, Boston University
Moderator: Amélie Rorty, Department of Philosophy, Boston University

IPR Annual Conference on the Philosophy of Religion: “What Is Religion?”
Friday, February 26, 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.
Boston University School of Management, Kenmore Conference Center
One Silber Way
Panel #1: David Eckel (Boston University), Moderator
Dan Arnold (Chicago) “‘Religion’ as What is Tolerable: Jayanta Bhatta and the Issue of a Philosophical Case for Pluralism”
Parimal Patil (Harvard), TBA
Panel #2: John Berthrong (Boston University), Moderator
Andrew Chignell (Cornell) “Religion as Hope”
Andrew Dole (Amherst) “Religion is about supernatural agents, and it is not (necessarily) universal”
Panel #3: Michael Zank (Boston University), Moderator
Thomas A. Lewis (Brown) “Intuition and Religion in the Kantian Aftermath”
Garth W. Green (Boston University) “In the Shadow of Kant: ‘Religion’ and ‘Theology’ in Phenomenological Philosophy of Religion”
Jennifer Herdt (Notre Dame) “Displacing the Secular: Transcendence and the Sacred”

IPR Focal Conference on Philosophical and Intellectual Biography, Autobiography and Memoir: A Fortieth Anniversary Celebration of the Institute
Friday, March 19, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Boston University Castle
225 Bay State Road
Participants:
Charles Capper, Department of History, Boston University
Desmond Clarke, Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University College, Cork (Ireland)
Aaron Garrett, Department of Philosophy, Boston University
Manfred Kuehn, Department of Philosophy, Boston University
Anthony LaVopa, Emeritus, Department of History, North Carolina State University
David Lyons, Department of Philosophy and School of Law, Boston University
Ray Monk, Department of Philosophy, University of Southampton (UK)
Steven Nadler, Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Sylvia Nasar, School of Journalism, Columbia University
Amélie Rorty, Department of Philosophy, Boston University

The institute’s main annual lecture and conference series for 2008–09 will focus on the topic of “Justice in Conflict—Justice in Peace.” This series will gather a diverse group of scholars and leaders to focus on the question of how reconciliation emerges from conflict, to analyze the moral and political obligations following a conflict, and to suggest ways in which philosophical and religious thought may help guide decision-making.
The nature of social, ethical and religious reconciliation will be explored in this series from a number of important perspectives. Some of our speakers have been concerned with the philosophical analysis of concepts like forgiveness and atonement; others have pursued research more directly on the religious conceptions of peace and toleration. Particular points of focus will include the notions of moral reconstruction following conflict, the institutional structure of efforts at “truth and reconciliation,” as well as the ongoing development of “just war” theory to incorporate not only its traditional concerns with the justice of the cause of war (jus ad bellum) and how it is justly conducted (jus in bello) but also with the moral obligations concerned with the period following a conflict (jus post bellum).
A hallmark of this year’s series will be a focal conference on reconciliation, moral obligation and moral reconstruction in the wake of conflict (March 20–21, 2009). This conference will offer the opportunity for the interconnection of theoretical perspectives with the policy experience of those who have had direct involvement with important post-conflictual situations (Bosnia, South Africa, Israel/Palestine). In addition to its series on “Justice in Conflict—Justice in Peace,” the institute will also play host to the second annual Boston Area Symposium on the Philosophy of Religion.

“Justice After War: Who Believes What? and Why?”
Brian Orend, University of Waterloo
Wednesday, September 24, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

“The Iraq War: ‘Fishing with a Golden Net’?”
Dan Caldwell, Pepperdine University
Wednesday, October 15, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

“The Status and Standing of Just War Theory”
Bryan Hehir, Harvard Kennedy School
Tuesday, November 4, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

“Jus Post Bellum and Dilemmas of Individual Criminal Responsibility”
Carsten Stahn, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University
Tuesday, November 18, 5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Room 211

“War and Poetry”: An Evening of Readings, Analysis, and Discussion
James Winn, Boston University
Tuesday, December 2, 7–9 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

“A World Government: Is It Possible? Is It Needed?”
Predrag Cicovacki, College of the Holy Cross
Wednesday, January 21, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

The Leroy Rouner Memorial Lecture
Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago
Wednesday, March 4, 5 p.m.
Boston University School of Law Barristers Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor

IPR Focal Conference on Reconciliation, Moral Obligation, and Moral Reconstruction in the Wake of Conflict
Friday, March 20–Saturday March 21, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room
8 Saint Mary’s Street, Ninth Floor
Participants:
Andrew Bacevich, Boston University
Anat Biletzki, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv
Claudia Card, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ehud Eiran, Brandeis University, Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Nir Eisikovits, Suffolk University
Charles Griswold, Boston University
William Long, Georgia Institute of Technology
Alice MacLachlan, York University
Padraig O’Malley, University of Massachusetts at Boston
Abdulaziz Sachedina, University of Virginia
Margaret Urban Walker, Arizona State University
Ajume Wingo, University of Colorado