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“We Educate, They Indoctrinate” Religion and the Politics of Togetherness in Ontario Public Education
No full textReligion has had an ambiguous role in Ontario public education, having provided both the common language for social cohesion and for resistance by religious groups to what they have perceived to be a dominant, exclusive and coercive ethos. In similar ways, religious freedom and diversity have been highly prized and protected in Ontario while at the same time being sources of anxiety and social disruption. Using critical discourse analysis and critical genealogical analysis I examine the conflicted role of religion in Ontario public education through competing discourses in political rhetoric, selected government documents formulating ways of conceptualizing the role of religion in public education from 1950 to 2003 and case law between 1985 and 1997. More precisely, I examine ways in which educational, social and political goals of education have been intertwined throughout the history of Ontario public education. I show that the public school system has been a state instrument privileged to deliver public education as a way to resolve the tension between social cohesion and social diversity by delivering common civic values. One result is that challenges to the public school system are often interpreted as attacks on public education and on Ontario society, particularly when those challenges are launched by religious groups. This has meant that debates about the role of religion in public education tend to be volatile making serious dialogue about this important social issue difficult to achieve while restricting the space for religious diversity in public education.Introduction -- Literature, theory and methodology -- "The election of 2007 and the politics of togetherness" -- "Ontario's Legacy" -- "Law" -- "Education about religion" -- Conclusion
ICS 130405/230405 W15. Faithful Thinking and World Orientation: Augustine, Aquinas, Dooyeweerd, Olthuis
No full textThis course is designed to examine four examples of Christian thinking about God, self and world within a religiously heterogeneous imaginative and thought world. The effort to think integrally within and about such a world is a throughline to be followed from any point in the ongoing tradition of Christian thought. The character of the world changes inexorably but its religious heterogeneity both imaginatively and conceptually is reaffirmed in and through all such changes. What it means to think in accord with one's faith, to think faithfully, then, will change as the world in which such thinking takes place changes, but the task of negotiating faithfulness in the context of imaginative and conceptual heterogeneity continues to challenge, bless and curse by turns. Augustine, Aquinas, Dooyeweerd and Olthuis illustrate both the challenge and opportunity of such an enterprise within the context of ancient Roman, high medieval, high modern and postmodern imaginative and conceptual contexts, respectively
From Cynical Reason to Spiritual Creativity: An Exercise in Religious Anthropodicy
No full textThis thesis explores the cultural ideology of cynicism as identified and critiqued by Peter Sloterdijk, who describes cynicism as an "enlightened false consciousness" that is "universal and diffuse." As an ideology, cynicism perpetuates the conditions of unjust society, but it is impervious to criticism. Instead of further critique, the thesis suggests religious traditions can offer means of overcoming the enclosure of cynical consciousness. Chapter one outlines Sloterdijk's approach to cynicism, including its historical development. Chapter two considers cynicism as a problem of self-understanding and proposes religion reveals that human beings are malleable through practices and techniques. Chapter three looks at three such techniques--awareness, compassion, and creativity--and offers them as solutions to cynical consciousness. The thesis aims, overall, to offer a way of considering the continued relevance and possibility of religious traditions, practices, and techniques to a cynical society such that alternative self-understandings and alternative social configurations might be made possible
ICS 220507 F15. Charles Taylor and the Religious Imaginary
No full textThe notion of a "social imaginary"—the way people come to understand their social surroundings by way of images, stories, and legends—plays a key role in Charles Taylor's thought, including his magnum opus, A Secular Age. In this intellectual tour de force, Taylor attempts to trace the historical development of Western secularism as we experience it today. In doing so, he challenges the "subtraction story" which he sees animating the social imaginary of today's typical secularist. According to this story, the emergence of secularism in the West follows a linear trajectory, along which humanity slowly sheds the irrational accretions of myth, religion, and the sacred, in order to uncover a rational core of free thought and autonomous science, which may now flourish without the constraints of heteronomous religious authority. In challenging this story, Taylor offers an intriguing new understanding of Western secularism, as well as tantalizing suggestions concerning the continued social relevance a religious imaginary might have in "a secular age." This seminar will be devoted to an in-depth study of this major work, which in its relatively brief life has already become a landmark text in both the philosophy of religion as well as secularization theory. Through this study, seminar participants will also consider what role Taylor's Roman Catholic religious commitment plays in his thought, as well as the role a religiously-informed "social imaginary" might play in a pluralized global society that is deeply impacted by, but also largely at odds with, the particular social imaginary of Western modernity
ICH3758HS L0101 / ICH6758HS L0101. Grace as an Aesthetic Concept
No full textFor much of the Western art tradition, the concept of grace has been an important critical concept for its ability to capture the often elusive quality of artistic affect. Often referred to as the "je ne sais quoi" of art - that something extra that cannot be explained – grace even supplanted beauty for many writers (from Giorgio Vasari to Friedrich Schiller) as the highest artistic ideal. Often missing from modern analyses of the concept, however, are its theological foundations. This seminar style course will exam the concept of grace within its theological, philosophical, literary, and art theoretical contexts in an effort to understand both its historical significance and its potential usefulness for the philosophy of art today. We will look at a variety of texts (e.g. from Plato, Cicero, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Dante, John Calvin, Alexander Pope, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger) as well as works of art for which grace is an important and defining aesthetic concept
