Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture

a symposium with Jonathan Lear (University of Chicago) Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago) Lisa Ruddick (University of Chicago) Rosanna Warren (University of Chicago) Thomas Pavel,  Moderator (University of Chicago) cosponsored by the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought REGISTER HERE Many of the cultural products of the world’s civilizations have arisen out of the inner life of religious figures, poets, and philosophers, in which the roots of self-knowledge, creative imagination, or communion with God are found. Without neglecting the interior lives of ordinary people, one can cite as examples Socrates’s mystic trances, St. Teresa of Avila’s discovery of an “interior castle,”...

Jon Levenson (Harvard University) Cosponsored by the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Jewish Studies Workshop The patriarch Abraham has a central role in the self-understanding of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He is also widely considered a symbol of common ancestry, moral conviction and future unity among the three “Abrahamic” religions. This lecture will consider the distinct interpretations Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have given to the biblical narratives concerning Abraham, exploring the enduring theological divergences and agreements.

Mark Shiffman (Villanova University) cosponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop “…is there a notion of love abroad in the world which, although we do not yet realize it, renders the marriage bond intolerable in its very essence?” Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World The celebration of passionate romantic love in the modern West has its cultural roots in the courtly poetry of medieval Provence. In Love in the Western World, Denis de Rougemont argues that this poetic tradition tacitly communicates the religious vision of the Cathars, a Gnostic dualist sect that disdained marriage and the body. His thesis unfolds...