Dr. Bowen (Ph.D. University of Aberdeen) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Core Studies at Redeemer University. She wrote her dissertation on Kierkegaard and Phenomenology under the supervision of J. Aaron Simmons and is presently writing a monograph on a Kierkegaardian Philosophical Hermeneutics of Faith in consultation with Merold Westphal as part of the Widening Horizons in Philosophical Theology project at the University of St. Andrews.
The title of Dr. Bowen's talk is: On Seeing Further than the Present: A Kierkegaardian Hermeneutic of Hope.
At first glance, Kierkegaard’s account of hope in Works of Love sounds conveniently other-worldly—the kind that abdicates the present for “the sweet by and by.” However, in this talk Dr. Bowen will show how Kierkegaard’s account of hope is hermeneutically structured in such a way that it avoids the perennial dangers of either taking us out of the world (religious escapism) or confining us to the world (pious secularism). She will argue that his deliberation on hope and his continual reference to “Eternity” should not be read through the lens of a Two Kingdom’s eschatology, but that it best accords with an eschatology of New Creation. Kierkegaardian hope, Dr. Bowen contends, is a hermeneutical virtue that discloses this world as having a future because of the Eternal’s work already in the present.
If you would like to join this event via Zoom, please email cprse@icscanada.edu to receive the link.
