Princeton Project in Philosophy &
Religion
Upcoming Events
3PR Conference on Philosophy, Religion, and Love
May 11-12, 2024
The Princeton Project in Philosophy & Religion (3PR) will host a conference on "Philosophy, Religion, and Love” on May 11-12, 2024 at Princeton.
Confirmed speakers include:
- Fannie Bialek (Washington University in St. Louis)
- Tim Jackson (Emory University/Princeton University)
- Ryan Preston-Roedder (Occidental College)
- Quinn White (Harvard University)
We invite submissions of 500-word abstracts of papers on any topic in philosophy of religion broadly construed, with priority given to papers on the theme of love.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- the relationship between love and attention
- love/grace within alienated or fraught relationships
- the connection between love and various religious and existential commitments
- the concept of love in the history of philosophy or theology
- the bearing of various kinds of standards (including morality, epistemic normativity, fittingness) on love
Abstracts should be anonymized for blind review and submitted by March 15 to pppr@princeton.edu. Each session will involve a paper presentation of 30 minutes followed by 30 mins of Q&A. Notification of acceptance can be expected by March 20.
Recurring Events
3PR Working Group
We run a Working Group every week, where 3PR members present either works-in-progress for feedback or reading pieces for discussion. In Spring 2024 we are meeting on Monday afternoons, 1:30-3:00pm. Intended for Princeton affiliates only.
Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion
&
Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion
Joint Colloquium
TBD (updates to follow)
Past Events
Talk by Jakob Huber
January 31, 2024
We are pleased to host a talk by Jakob Huber, head of the research group "Democratic Hope" at FU Berlin, on Wednesday January 31st at 12:00-1:20pm in Laura Wooten Hall, Room 301. Lunch will be served. The title and abstract of Dr. Huber's paper are below.
Title: Imaginative Hope
Abstract: While political philosophers often assume that we need to imagine a better future in order to hope for it, philosophers of hope doubt that hope and imagination are constitutively intertwined. In order to solve this puzzle, the article introduces a particular kind of hope in which we imaginatively inhabit a desired future. Combining insights from the philosophy of hope and of imagination, I unpack what imaginative hope is and why it is particularly significant in political contexts. I contend that in cases where we pursue a goal the realization of which requires collective action over a long time-scale (as it is paradigmatically the case in politics), the imagination has the potential to bolster the practical value of hope, i.e., its power to guide and sustain our agency.
A Colloquium on Immanuel Kant's
On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy (1791)
Dates: December 1-2, 2023
Location: Princeton University
December 1st - Nassau Inn, Senior Room
8:30am-9 Coffee
9 - 10:15 Courtney Fugate (FSU), “Theodicy from Leibniz to Kant”
10:20 - 11:35 Jacqueline Mariña (Purdue), “On the Validity of Kant’s Response to Leibniz”
11:35 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:45 John Hare (Yale), “On Artistic and Moral Wisdom in the Theodicy”
2:45-3:05 Coffee Break
3:05 - 4:20 Susan Shell (Boston College), “Kant's Political Theodicy”
4:25 - 5:40 Lawrence Pasternack (OSU), “Practical Reason and the Problem of Evil”
December 2nd - Laura Wooten Hall, Room 201
8:30am-9 Coffee
9 - 10:15 George Huxford, “Theodicy and the pre-Critical Kant”
10:20 - 11:35 Shterna Friedman (Harvard), “Theodicy, Cosmodicy, and the Threat of
Systemic Injustice”
11:35 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:45 Melissa Zinkin (SUNY), “From the Third Critique to the Theodicy:
Counterpurposiveness in Kant's Account of Theodicy & the Sublime”
2:50 - 4:05 Pablo Muchnik (Emerson), “Judging the Inner Judge: Kant on the
Infallibility of Conscience in the Theodicy Essay”
4:05 - 4:30 Coffee Break
4:30 - 5:45 Andrew Chignell (Princeton) and Scott Ferguson, “Faith,
Counterpurposiveness, and Negative Wisdom”
For Further Information Please Contact Andrew Chignell (Chignell@princeton.edu)
Princeton Project of Philosophy and Religion 2023 Conference
Philosophy, Religion, and Existential Commitment
March 30 and 31, 2023
Keynotes:
Clare Carlisle (King's College London)
Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers University)
Participants:
Alexander Barrientos (University of Utah)
Claudine Davidshofer (High Point University)
Jessica Flanigan (University of Richmond)
Stephen Grimm (Fordham University)
Jacob Hesse (Ruhr Universität Bochum)
Itay Melamed (Cornell University)
Noam Oren (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Z Quanbeck (UNC Chapel Hill)
Jaclyn Rekis (University of Western Ontario)
Jonathan Rutledge (Harvard University)
Seyma Yazici (Ankara University)
Jizhang Yi (University of Toronto, St. George)
Jacob Zellmer (UC San Diego)
Princeton Project of Philosophy and Religion &
Center for Culture, Society, and Religion Workshop
"Mind and Representation: Approaches from German Idealist and Buddhist Philosophies"
February 17, 2023
Location: Louis A. Simpson Building, Room 144
Start time: 8:30 AM
For more information, please contact: aenglert@princeton.edu
Participants:
Allison Aitken (Columbia University)
Eyal Aviv (Georgetown University)
Mavis Biss (Loyola University Maryland)
Leah Kalmanson (University of North Texas)
Andrew Chignell (Princeton University)
Mario D'Amato (Rollins College)
Douglas Duckworth (Temple University)
Alexander Englert (Princeton University)
Jonathan Gold (Princeton University)
James Kreines (Claremont McKenna College)
Graham Priest (CUNY Graduate Center)
Marcela Garcia Romero (Loyola Marymount University)
William Waldron (Middlebury College)
3PR Islamic Philosophy Reading Group
Fall 2022
We will be reading Ibn Sīnā, al-Ghazālī, and possibly Ibn Rushd on the question of personal identity and the mind/body problem. Depending how things progress, at the end of the semester we may also read selections from the correspondence between Miskawayh and al-Tawhidi.
Philosophy in Islamic thought spans many geographic areas and time periods, and its study calls for collaboration between philosophers, philologists, historians, and scholars of religion along with academics in Islamic thought and intellectual history. This interdisciplinary reading group is open to students, researchers, and faculty in philosophy, near eastern studies, history, religion, the humanities, and anyone interested in Islamic philosophy. Our goal is to foster a learning community to explore broader questions in Islamic philosophy that challenge, interest, or confuse us. No prior background is presumed, and all are welcome. The reading group is informal and collegial and everyone is welcome to drop in as often, or not, as they may.
Schedule
Sep 27 – JRR 301
01 – al-Ghazālī, Iḥyā, K. al-ʿilm. On the Intellect.
02 – al-Ghazālī, Iḥyā, K. ʿajāʾib al-qalb. Defining the Soul, Spirit, Heart and Intellect.
03 – Ibn Sīnā, K. al-Shifāʾ. The Existence of the Soul and It’s Faculties
Oct 11 – JRR 397
04 – Ibn Sīnā, K. al-Shifāʾ. Immateriality, Temporality, Incorruptibility of the soul. The Active Intellect.
Oct 25 – JRR 397
05 – al-Ghazālī, Tahāfuṭ, Prefaces, Contents, and Conclusion
06 – al-Ghazālī, Iqtiṣād. Probing in Philosophy and the Methods of Proof.
07 – al-Ghazālī, Tahāfuṭ XVI – Celestial souls and the particulars of the world
Nov 1 – TBC
08 – al-Ghazālī, Tahāfuṭ XVIII – The human soul, materiality, and the body
09 – al-Ghazālī, Tahāfuṭ XIX – Incorruptibility of the human soul.
Nov 15 – JRR 397
10 – Ibn Rushd, Ṭahāfut al-Ṭahāfut, Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Discussions.
Nov 22 – TBC
Guest speaker: Reza Pourjavady (IAS): “The Reception of Averroes in the Islamic East.”
https://www.ias.edu/scholars/reza-pourjavady
Dec 6 – JRR 397
11 – The Philosopher Responds – Miskawayh’s replies to al-Tawhidi, Selections.
3PR Second Philosophy of Religion Incubator
May 25th-27th 2022
Virtual
The Incubator was held virtually (Zoom) on May 25-27. 2022. The Incubator was held in conjunction with the 3PR Incubator Conference on Philosophy in the Islamic World.
Full program available here.
3PR Incubator Conference: "Philosophy in the Islamic World"
May 25th-26th 2022
Virtual
The Philosophy in the Islamic World Incubator was held virtually (Zoom) on May 25-26th, 2022. We had a diverse range of papers and held a joint session with the Philosophy of Religion incubator on May 26th.
The conference is organized by “Building Collaborative Research Networks Across the Islamic Scholarly Tradition and Western Philosophy,” a project funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation
Full program and abstracts available here
"Heidegger and His Jewish Reception: A Conversation with Daniel Herskowitz and Ed Baring"
Co-hosted by 3PR and The Program for Judaic Studies
May 4th 2022, 4.30pm
The Program for Judaic Studies and the Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion hosted a conversation between Daniel Herskowitz (Oxford) and Ed Baring (Princeton). Taking Herskowitz’s recent book Heidegger and His Jewish Reception (CUP, 2020) as its starting point, the conversation will explore the complex and persistent Jewish engagement with one of the most important and controversial modern philosophers, Martin Heidegger.
219 Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton University, Princeton NJ.
Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion
&
Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion
Joint Colloquium
Wednesday April 27th, 4.30-6.00pm
Matthew Benton (Seattle Pacific University):
"Faith and Interpersonal Knowledge"
Abstract
Epistemology of religion in the western tradition has prioritized propositional belief, where the recent focus is largely on the rationality of such belief. Yet within monotheistic traditions, this emphasis has developed in tension with other notions which are often given non-propositional glosses: for example, recent accounts of faith and interpersonal knowledge need not reduce to, or entail, propositional belief. In this paper I develop an epistemological framework centered on the relational aspects of interpersonal knowledge. This framework makes room for two seemingly discordant notions: on the one hand, someone could believe and know that there is a God, without knowing God interpersonally; but on the other hand, someone could know and relate to God interpersonally while believing a number of false claims about God, and even without believing (under certain guises) that there is such a God. I propose an account of interpersonal faith in God which makes good on how one would relate to God as a person, how such faith can be a virtue, and how it is that, when one's faith is mature, it explains what it is to trust God in terms of how one relates to God as a person. Such an account also offers distinctive ways of understanding divine hiddenness and religious pluralism.
3PR Kierkegaard Reading Group
3PR hosted a series of Kierkegaard readings groups.
2020-2021: Either Or I & II
2021-2022: Fear and Trembling
3PR Islamic Philosophy Reading Group
2021-2022
The Islamic Philosophy Reading Group is an initiative of the project on “Building Collaborative Research Networks Across the Islamic Scholarly Tradition and Western Philosophy” based at the Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion (3PR).
Philosophy in Islamic thought spans many geographic areas and time periods, and its study calls for collaboration between philosophers, philologists, historians, and scholars of religion. This interdisciplinary reading group is open to students, researchers, and faculty in philosophy, near eastern studies, history, religion, the humanities, and anyone interested in Islamic philosophy in general.
The theme for 2021-22's Reading Group was the relationship between philosophy and religion in early Islamicate thought and the emergence of post-classical Islamic philosophy. The Fall semester focused on texts by Ibn al-‘Arabi, and Spring on Mulla Sadra. Meetings are held bi-weekly on a close reading and philosophical analysis of pre-circulated texts in English translation by seminal figures. Each semester also features special sessions by an invited speaker to facilitate our reading of challenging thinkers . Future topics will incorporate the interests of attendees.
3PR WORKSHOP
God and Infinity: Perspectives from Hegel and Kierkegaard
April 1st-2nd 2022, Princeton University
3PR hosted a two-day in-person workshop on "God and Infinity: Perspectives from Hegel and Kierkegaard" with talks by Hegel and Kierkegaard scholars.
To see the full schedule and paper titles click HERE
Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion
&
Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion
Joint Colloquium
Fall 2021
September 30th
Timothy O'Connor: "Four Theories of Divine Simplicity"
October 21st
Rebecca Chan: "How We Could Have Libertarian Free Will Even If God Were a Total Know-It-All about the Future" (co-work with Mark Balaguer)
November 11th
Alexander Pruss: "A Norm-Based Design Argument"
December 9th
Aaron Segal: "Monism and Monotheism"
Princeton Philosophy and Religion Conference
October 17th-19th, 2021
3PR's 2021 Philosophy and Religion Conference took place on October 17th-19th 2021.
Full program available for download HERE
3PR/RCPR Incubator
May 17-18, 2021
The Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion together with the Rutgers Center for Philosophy of Religion were pleased to host: The Philosophy of Religion Incubator.
The goal of the incubator was to help bring ideas from early development to paper form and to help authors bring their ideas to fruition. For the full program please see below.
Day 1: Session A
9.30 AM-10.15 AM
Bob Beddor (National University of Singapore)
and Simon Goldstein (Australian Catholic University)
10.20 AM-11.05 AM
“God’s Terrible Commands and Impossible Worlds”
Frederick Choo (Nanyang Technological University)
11.10 AM-11.55 AM
Emily McCarty (St. Louis University)
12.00 PM-12.45 PM
Peter van Elswyk (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
12.45 PM-1.45 PM: LUNCH BREAK
1.45 PM-2.30 PM
“The Anthropology of Religious Experience”
Wes Skolits (University of Oxford)
2.35 PM-3.20 PM
“The Problem of Nomological Harmony”
Brad Saad (Rutgers University-New Brunswick)
3.25 PM-4.10 PM
“Design in Reduction: The Case of Quantum Mechanics”
Christopher Weaver (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
4.15 PM-5.00 PM
“The Genetic Determinants of Religiosity and their Epistemic Implications”
Wade Munroe (University of Michigan)
5.05 PM-5.50 PM
“A Transcendental Bayesian Argument for a First Cause”
Nevin Climenhaga (Australian Catholic University)
Day 1: Session B
9.30 AM-10.15 AM
“Sin as a Harm to Relationships”
Mike Ashfield (University of Southern California)
10.20 AM-11.05 AM
Amy Seymour (Fordham University)
11.10 AM-11.55 AM
“Why Heaven Helps: The Relevance of an Everlasting Afterlife to the Problem of Evil”
Chris Hauser (University of Scranton)
12.00 PM-12.45 PM
“The Sufficiency of Origins and the Resurrection of the Body”
John Keller (St. Jospeh's University)
12.45 PM-1.45 PM: LUNCH BREAK
1.45 PM-2.30 PM
“The Kalam Argument Without Temporal Beginnings”
Soufiane Hamri (University of Birmingham)
2.35 PM-3.20 PM
“Wang Daiyu 0n the Three Ultimates: an Islamic Makeover”
Qiu Lin (Duke University)
3.25 PM-4.10 PM
“How to be Free from Oneself: Lessons from Chan Buddhism”
Li Kang (Washington and Lee University)
4.15 PM-5.00 PM
“Islamic Philosophical Theology and Perfect Being Reasoning”
Kamal Ahmed (Princeton University)
5.05 PM-5.50 PM
Andrei Buckareff (Marist College)Link:
Parallel Sessions Day 1: May 17th
Day 2: Session A
9.30 AM-10.15 AM
“How Does Foreknowledge Explain Non-Freedom?”
Patrick Todd (University of Edinburgh)
10.20 AM-11.05 AM
“How to get Past the Problem of God’s Omniscience”
Marco Hausman (LMU-Munich)
11.10 AM-11.55 AM
“Indeterministically Grounding the Molinist Conditionals”
Kenneth Pearce (Trinity College-Dublin)
12.00 PM-12.45 PM
Dre Rusavuk (University of Birmingham)
12.45 PM-1.45 PM: LUNCH BREAK
1.45 PM-2.30 PM
“There is No Highest Attainable Good”
David Vander Laan (Westmont College)
2.35 PM-3.20 PM
“The Epistemic Axiology of Theism”
Elizabeth Jackson (Ryerson University)
3.25 PM-4.10 PM
Austen McDougal (Stanford University)
4.15 PM-5.00 PM
“Mental Disorder Transforms Faith”
Kate Finley (Hope College)
5.05 PM-5.50 PM
Beau Madison Mount (Konstanz)
Day 2: Session B
9.30 AM-10.15 AM
“Kant and the Devil (Argument) You Don’t Know”
Alexander Englert (Princeton University)
10.20 AM-11.05 AM
“God is Not an Object!: Objectification and Analytic Theology”
Jonathan Jacobs (St. Louis University)
11.10 AM -11.55 AM
“Images of the Divine: Inherence-Pantheism and Expressive-Pantheism in Leibniz’s Early Thought”
Gastòn Robert (Adolph Ibáñez University)
12.00 PM-12.45 PM
“Neither Necessitarianism Nor Sheer Will: Leibniz on Divine Wisdom and Freedom”
Juan Garcia (Wingate University)
1245 PM-145 PM: LUNCH BREAK
1.45 PM-2.30 PM
“Effective Altruism, Disaster Prevention, and the Possibility of Hell”
Eric Sampson (Georgetown)
2.35 PM-3.20 PM
“The Objects of Knowledge: Human and Divine”
Fabio Lampert (Greifswald) and
John Waldrop (Notre Dame)
3.25 PM-4.10 PM
“Perceptual Learning and Religious Experience”
Andrew Payne (St. Joseph's University)
4.15 PM-5.00 PM
“Why Calvinists Should be One-Boxers”
Katie Elliott (University of California-Los Angeles)
5.05 PM-5.50 PM
Jaeha Woo (Claremont School of Theology)
Parallel Sessions Day 2: May 18th
Princeton Symposium
on the Philosophy of Religion
May 14th, 2021, 4.00pm-6.00pm
The Princeton Symposium on the Philosophy of Religion took place with 3PR's directors Andrew Chignell and Lara Buchak. They were joined by friends of the project Hans Halvorson and Gabriel Citron.
For more information and abstracts click HERE
3PR Debate: Good God, Bad World?
April 29th, 2021
4.30pm-6.00pm (ET)
Can we rationally believe in the existence of an all-powerful and all-good God in the face of horrendous evils and suffering? Is it acceptable to believe that such a God permits human beings (and other animals) to suffer for the sake of some greater good? What if we would prefer not to suffer? Can we fairly apply human moral principles to a divinity? Are there other ways to understand and explain this apparent paradox?
3PR hosted a discussion between two philosophers on these perplexing questions, and share your views. James Sterba – an atheistic philosopher and professor at Notre Dame and Daniel Rubio – a theistic philosopher and postdoctoral researcher at Princeton.
Princeton Project in Philosophy and Religion
&
Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion
Joint Colloquium
Spring 2021
January 29th
Mark C. Murphy: “Owing God Worship”
February 19th
Terence Cuneo:
“Blessing Things”
March 12th
Anne Jeffrey and
Thomas M. Ward:
“One Goodness, Many Goodnesses, and the Divine Idea Imitation Theory”
April 22nd
Paul Franks:
"Infinity, Contraction, and Normative Empowerment: Towards a Philosophical Construal of a Kabbalistic Concept"
3PR Virtual Panel: Religion in the Modern University
March 24th, 2021
The PPPR hosted the virtual panel "Religion in the Modern University" with Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale) reflecting on his recent Religion in the University (2019). This book draws on authors ranging from Max Weber and John Locke to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Charles Taylor to argue that religious orientations and voices do have a home in modern academic discussion. It also offers a sketch of what that home should look like. He was joined by panelists Eddie S. Glaude (Princeton), Zena Hitz (St. John’s College) and Jeffrey L. Stout (Princeton) to discuss religion's place in the university today. The panel was chaired by the PPPR’s director Andrew Chignell.
Thank you to everyone who joined us!
3PR Inaugural Conference
Part 1
October 30th-31st, 2020
The first part of our inaugural conference took place on October 30-31 2020. Click here for the program.
3PR Islamic Philosophy Reading Group
Before their departure for Arizona, Sarah Aronowitz and Reza Hadisi ran an Islamic Philosophy Reading Group.
3PR Reading Group
Robert M. Adams, What Is and What Is in Itself
The PPPR's first reading group covered Robert M. Adams's book manuscript: What Is and What Is In Itself.
Princeton Project in Philosophy & Religion
Book Symposium and Conference on:
"Post-Classical Islamic Philosophy: New Directions"
Thursday, May 18, 2023
9:00 AM - 5:45 PM
Location: Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building, Room JRR A17
Open and free to the public with registration (links below)
For a full schedule, click here.
Register to attend in-person at Princeton: https://tinyurl.com/mrfu82at
Register to attend online on Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/2keeu6r9
Princeton Project in Philosophy & Religion's
Mark Johnston
Henry Putnam Professor of Philosophy
will be giving
Cambridge University's Faculty of Divinity
2023 Stanton Lectures
How Did Evil Come Into the World?
(A New Conception of Resurrection, Creation, Evil and Redemption)
Four Lectures will be held on:
May 15, 17, 22, & 24, 2023
5-7pm UK Time/12.00-2pm US time
The lectures will all be held virtually.
Open and free to the public with registration (links below)
For a full schedule, click here.
Register to attend online on Zoom is via Eventbrite at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-stanton-lectures-2023-tickets-590149602347