New Article by Edith van der Boom

Senior Member Edith van der Boom has published an article in the March 2024 issue of the International Journal of Christianity and Education (28.1) titled "Participating in God’s redemptive work: A cyclical model for learning and assessment." You can read the abstract below and access the article online via Sage Journals.

Abstract

With the goal of working towards decolonizing educational practices, this article considers the Indigenous medicine wheel as inspiration for a cyclical model for learning and assessment. Many current assessment practices highlight individual achievement rather than ongoing and relational learning. This article suggests using a Learning Wheel as a tool to engage students in conversation about learning and assessment. The purpose of assessment would be to inform students’ learning. The goal of learning would in turn equip students to be mindful of learning that engages in real-world issues to partner in God’s redemptive work.

New Book by Lambert Zuidervaart: Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth

Senior Member Emeritus Lambert Zuidervaart has published a new book on the German social philosopher Theodor Adorno, titled Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth (SUNY Press, 2024). The front cover features the image of a recent sculpture by Lambert’s wife, artist Joyce Recker, titled "Longing for the Wholly Other" (2021). 

Lambert says this book completes a project begun more than forty years ago, when he wrote, and Joyce typed, a dissertation on Adorno’s aesthetics under the supervision of Calvin Seerveld (ICS) and Johan van der Hoeven (VU Amsterdam). He talks about the background and contents to his new book in the blog post "Hope for Truth in a Post-Truth World," which is on the SUNY Press website.

Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth provides a critical and creative reconstruction of Adorno's conception of truth and shows its relevance for contemporary philosophy, art, and politics. It also rounds out the trilogy of books Lambert has published on the topic of truth since he retired in 2016. The other two books are Truth in Husserl, Heidegger, and the Frankfurt School (MIT Press, 2017) and Social Domains of Truth (Routledge, 2023). 

New Essay on Foucault and Adorno

Senior Member Emeritus Lambert Zuidervaart has published a chapter titled “Adorno, Foucault, and Feminist Theory: The Politics of Truth” in the volume Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School edited by Christine Payne and Jeremiah Morelock (Brill 2024), pp. 133-161. 

Zuidervaart first summarizes Michel Foucault’s genealogical account of disciplinary power and state biopower. Then he contrasts Foucault’s account with Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectical critique of domination and compares their understandings of how truth and power interrelate. From this comparison two challenges of relevance to feminist critical theory emerge. One is to articulate the normative implications of how truth and power interrelate. The other is to envision genuine prospects for the transformation of society as a whole. 

Lambert’s full chapter is available online. The publisher Brill will publish a hardcover version of the book in 2024.

New Book on Neo-Calvinism and the Arts

InterVarsity Press has just published a new book on Neo-Calvinism and the arts entitled: The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective, edited by Roger D. Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker. 

The volume features many contributors from the ICS community and beyond, reflecting on the thought of John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Hans Rookmaaker, and others in the tradition as they pertain to artistic practice. In particular how the Reformed tradition, in the publisher's words, "has consistently demonstrated not just a willingness but a desire to engage with all manner of cultural and artistic expressions."

The book contains chapters from Calvin Seerveld on "The Meaning of the Crucifixion: Grünewald and Perugino," from Nicholas Wolterstorff on "The Social Protest Meaning of the Graphic Art of Käthe Kollwitz," from Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin on Calvin and the arts and "Chris Ofili: Contemporary Art and the Return of Religion," from Lambert Zuidervaart on "Redemptive Art Criticism," and many more. Check out the book for yourself today.

Recent Cal Seerveld Publications

Over the last year, ICS Senior Member Emeritus Calvin Seerveld has published a few pieces on various topics that are worth your attention. If you haven't already had a chance to read these, please take a moment to check them out for yourselves:

• God Picks up the Pieces: Ecclesiastes as a Chorus of Voices (Dordt University Press, 2023). A fresh literary translation from the Hebrew of the biblical Older Testament book of Ecclesiastes, introduced and arranged as script for oral choral presentation, with comment on its meaning.
  
  
• a very short chapter on "knowing" in a recent popular publication of Square Halo Books: Ordinary Saints, Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God, edited by Ned Bustard (Baltimore: Maryland, 2023), 71-74.
  
  
• "Missing in Action," Pro Rege, Fine Arts faculty issue (51:2, December 2022), 45-52. An article about Genevan Psalms 51 and 89.

Two New Volumes from Senior Member Neal DeRoo

Senior Member Neal DeRoo recently co-edited two new volumes on the philosophy of gratitude and of liturgy. Click on the titles below to read more about each volume and find out how to get a copy of your own. 

Philosophies of Liturgy: Explorations of Embodied Religious Practice

Edited by J. Aaron Simmons, Bruce Ellis Benson, Neal DeRoo. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. 

Neal also authored chapter 9, titled: “Material Spirituality and the Expressive Nature of Liturgy.”

Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious

Edited by Joshua Lee Harris, Kirk Lougheed, Neal DeRoo. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

This volume also features chapters by ICS alums Joshua Lee Harris and Ethan Vanderleek.

Jim Olthuis Book Reviewed by Brian Walsh

On September 25, Brian Walsh published a book review of ICS Senior Member Emeritus Jim Olthuis' book Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love in the Christian Courier. Here is a brief excerpt from Brian's review: 

What does it mean if we rethink our theology, our Christian practice, and indeed, the very cosmos, from the perspective of love? What happens to doctrines like God’s omnipotence (all powerful), immutability (never changing), omniscience (all knowing), and sovereignty (in total control), if we begin with love? What happens to Christian ethics if the touchstone isn’t absolute law, but a dynamic relationship forged in love? How does such an understanding that all things are generated, sustained and directed to love change our view of the very nature of things?

Read the rest of the review for yourself in the Christian Courier or on their website at https://www.christiancourier.ca/put-on-your-dancing-shoes/.

Sep. 29 Book Launch: 15th Anniversary Edition of Beyond Homelessness

On Friday, September 29th, the Sanctuary community in Toronto will be hosting the book launch of the 15th anniversary edition of Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian Walsh.

There will be live music, refreshments provided, and a book-signing and short presentation by co-author Brian Walsh. Books will be available on site for purchase! 

When?

Friday, September 29

7:00-9:00pm

Where?

Sanctuary

25 Charles Street E.

Toronto, ON

Want to hear more about the book? 

Brian was a recent guest on an episode of Alan Graham's podcast Gospel Con Carne. Have a listen to the conversation here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://mlf.org/a-conversation-with-beyond-homelessness-author-brian-walsh/.

May 6: Join Us for the Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love Book Launch!

Mark your calendars for Saturday, May 6th, 2-4pm EST, when we'll gather for a long-awaited celebration of ICS Senior Member Emeritus Jim Olthuis' latest book: Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love: A Theopoetics of Gift and Call, Risk and Promise (Wipf and Stock, 2022)!

This event will feature a panel discussion on topics arising from Jim's book, and ICS Senior Member Bob Sweetman will be moderating. An in-person reception will follow the discussion time. 

The panel discussion portion of this event will be hybrid, so please email cprse@icscanada.edu to RSVP and mention whether you plan to attend in person or online. 

- - -

Book blurb from the publisher's website: 

In the twenty-first century, amid globalized violence, rising demagogues, and the climate emergency, contemporary philosophers and theologians have begun to debate a fundamental question: Is our reality the result of the overflowing, ever-present creativity of Love, or the symptom of a traumatic rupture at the heart of all things? Drawing on decades of research in postmodern philosophy and experience as a psychotherapist, James H. Olthuis wades into this discussion to propose a radical ontology of Love without metaphysics. In dialogue with philosophers like John D. Caputo, Slavoj Žižek, Luce Irigaray, and others, Olthuis explores issues from divine sovereignty and the problem of evil to trauma and social ethics. Experience in therapeutic work informs these investigations, rooting them in journeys with individuals on the path to healing. Olthuis makes the bold claim that while trauma, pain, and suffering are significant parts of our human lives, nevertheless Love is with us to the very end. Creation is a gift that comes with a call to make something of it ourselves, a risky task we must take on with the promise that Love will win. We are all dancing in the wild spaces of Love: ex amore, cum amore, ad amorem.

Social Domains of Truth Publication and Book Launch

ICS is pleased to announce the publication of Social Domains of Truth: Science, Politics, Art, and Religion (Routledge, 2023) by Lambert Zuidervaart, ICS Senior Member Emeritus in Philosophy. Lambert considers this book a culmination of his life’s work; he has dedicated it to the memory of his friend and mentor Hendrik Hart.

Truth, Lambert argues, includes factual truth, but it is more than that. Truth as a whole involves our following societal principles such as solidarity and justice and fostering the interconnected flourishing of all creatures. This process comes to expression in distinct social domains, not only in science but also in politics, art, and religion. Anyone who cares about the future of truth in today’s society will want to read this pathbreaking book. More details can be found at the publisher’s website.

ICS supporters in West Michigan will have a chance to greet Lambert during a book launch on Friday, March 24, 3:00 pm EST, at the University Club, room DEV107C, in the DeVos Center on the downtown PEW Campus of Grand Valley State University (GVSU). This event is hosted by the GVSU Philosophy Department and co-sponsored by Friends of ICS and the Philosophy Department at Calvin University. To begin, Lambert will give a lecture titled “Truth and Politics: Arendt, Foucault, and the Truth of Politics.” A reception and book signing will follow. A summary of Lambert’s lecture is posted on the GVSU Philosophy Colloquium Series webpage. 

The event will be recorded, and anyone unable to attend can join the live stream at https://gvsu-edu.zoom.us/j/99263991812?pwd=ZS9jb0hSVWFOK0w0RWw4cHpNVWZIdz09. 

Studies in the Sacred Page: A New Volume Edited by Bob Sweetman

This past November, ICS Senior Member Bob Sweetman and Henrietta Leyser (Emeritus Fellow, St. Peter's College, Oxford University) co-edited a Festschrift in honour of Lesley Smith (Harris Manchester College, Oxford University) entitled Studies in the Sacred Page: Encounters with Medieval Manuscripts, Texts, and Exegesis.  

This beautiful collection of essays is published by the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies Publications and looks at the emergence and development of the Scriptures as university textbook beginning in the late eleventh and early twelfth century. It examines that emergence and development from the point of view of what the surviving material witnesses to that transformation can tell us. According to the publisher's website:

This volume of twelve essays aims to honour the career and scholarship of Lesley Smith. The first section begins with two witnesses to Lesley’s excellence as teacher and culminates with an appreciation of her as a scholar. The second section explores the scholarly terrain in which Lesley has made her most signal contributions: the material and cultural sites and artefacts within and by which the Christian Scriptures emerged as a field of theoretical inquiry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The third and final section explores Latin Christian use of scriptural inquiry and understanding so as to engage scholarly and religious traditions outside those of the Latin Church.

You can find more information about the volume--including a a fuller summary, table of contents, and how to order a copy for yourself--on the PIMS Publications website. 

Forthcoming: Transforming Vision 40th Anniversary Republication

J. Richard Middleton has signed a contract with InterVarsity Press to do a complete rewrite of The Transforming Vision (IVP), which he coauthored with Brian Walsh in 1984. Richard is an ICS-VU PhD graduate (2005) and is currently Professor Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan University. He has been teaching a signature course on a Christian worldview over the past forty years (most recently called, “Being in the Story,” at Northeastern Seminary). The rewrite of Transforming Vision aims to deepen the original book’s biblical analysis and extend its cultural analysis. 

The new book is tentatively titled, Shaped by God’s Story: Christian Worldview in a Global Key (IVP Academic) and the aim is for the book to come out sometime in 2024, around the time of the 40th anniversary of the original publication.

The Transforming Vision arose out of worldview courses sponsored by ICS, which were then taught through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship on university campuses in Southern Ontario. The book met a need among Christians in academia and has since been used in hundreds of courses on Christian college and university campuses, both in North America and overseas. It has been translated into five languages (Korean, French, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese).

Based on the popularity of the book in Korean and Indonesian translations (with new editions published in the past decade), Richard has also been invited to be the keynote speaker, giving two talks on a Christian worldview, at the upcoming International Network for Christian Higher Education (INCHE) conference for Asia and Oceania, at Handong Global University, Pohan, South Korea on June 20–22, 2023.

October 27 - Zuidervaart Festschrift Celebration

Update: This is now a hybrid event, so you may attend either virtually or in person. Please send cprse@icscanada.edu an email to receive the Zoom link if you'd like to join the event online. 

Almost two years after the publication of the second volume of ICS’s Currents in Reformational Thought book series, Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Scholarly and Artistic Comment on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart, we are finally ready to celebrate this splendid collection of essays! 

Join us on Thursday, October 27th, 2022, as we gather in person to celebrate the contribution of ICS Senior Member Emeritus Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart to the tradition of Reformational Philosophy and reflect on the diverse contributions made to this festschrift in Dr. Zuidervaart’s honour. The event will feature a presentation on the book and a panel discussion, followed by a light reception. 

When?

Thursday October 27th, 2022 at 3:00 - 5:30pm

Where?

Regis College, University of Toronto (100 Wellesley St. West)

Book presentation and panel discussion – St. Joseph Chapel 

Reception - Christie Mansion

Please RSVP to cprse@icscanada.edu if you would like to attend this event in honour of Dr. Zuidervaart in person or if you would like to be sent the Zoom link to participate virtually.

Forthcoming Anthology on Existential Gratitude by Harris, DeRoo & Lougheed

A new anthology entitled Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious will be published by Bloomsbury in March 2023, and is currently available for preorder on the publisher's website. 

The volume is edited by ICS alums and The King's University professors Joshua Lee Harris and Neal DeRoo, and Kirk Lougheed of LCC International University, Lithuania / University of Pretoria, South Africa. Harris was awarded a research grant in the fall of 2021 to study the psychological, philosophical, and theological dimensions of gratitude. That original grant has since fed into a symposium on the topic, articles, podcast interviews, and most recently, the forthcoming publication of this collection of essays. You can read more about this volume below.

Publisher's Description

Existential gratitude—gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole—is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural, and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time.

A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character.

Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analyzing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism, and theology.

Table of Contents

Introduction 
Joshua Lee Harris (The King's University, Canada), Kirk Lougheed (LCC International University, Lithuania /University of Pretoria, South Africa) and Neal DeRoo (The King's University, Canada)

Part I. Gratitude in Human Life

1. Grounding Existential Gratitude: A Social Form Account 
Joshua Harris (The King's University, Canada) 

 

2. Gratitude and Resentment: A Tale of Two Weddings
Graham Oppy (Monash University, Australia) 

 

3. Gratitude and the Human Vocation
Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University, USA)

 

Part II. Gratitude and Existence

4. Generous Existence? Gift, Giving, and Gratitude in Contemporary Phenomenology
Christina Gschwandter (Fordham University, USA) 

 

5. Analogia Gratiae: Creation, Existence, and Gift in the Christian Metaphysics of Erich Przywara

Eric Mabry (St. Mary's Seminary and University, USA) 

 

6. Gratitude for Life-Force in African Philosophy  

Thaddeus Metz (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

 

Part III. Gratitude and the Divine

7. The Dilemma of Gratitude

Michael Almeida (University of Texas at San Antonio, USA)

8. Is Gratitude Necessary? Avicenna on Existential Dependence

Catherine Peters (Loyola Marymount University, USA)

9. Do we Owe Gratitude to God for Our Existence?

Kirk Lougheed (University of Pretoria, South Africa) 

 

10. Thank You: William Desmond's Ethic of Gratitude and Personal God
Ethan Vanderleek (Marquette University, USA)

 

Shattering Silos: New Book on Knowledge from Lambert Zuidervaart

Lambert Zuidervaart, ICS Senior Member Emeritus in Philosophy, has published a new book of essays in reformational philosophy titled Shattering Silos: Reimagining Knowledge, Politics, and Social Critique (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). 

Knowledge, he argues, takes different forms in various social domains, and all are subject to political struggle. Interweaving epistemology, social criticism, and political thought, Shattering Silos offers a new way to think about truth and politics in a supposedly post-truth society. 

The book is funded in part by grants from the Reid Trust and the Andreas Center at Dordt University. It is dedicated to Nicholas Wolterstorff. 

More details can be found at the publisher’s website.

New Book by James Olthuis Added to Currents in Reformational Thought Series

Cover image by
Jordan McIntyre

A new volume in the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics' Currents in Reformational Thought book series has just been published with Wipf and Stock!

James H. Olthuis, Senior Member Emeritus in Philosophical Theology at ICS, has authored the newest title in our series: Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love: A Theopoetics of Gift and Call, Risk and Promise. This book is available directly from the Wipf and Stock website as well as other online book sellers. Here is a synopsis of Jim's book from the publisher's site:

In the twenty-first century, amid globalized violence, rising demagogues, and the climate emergency, contemporary philosophers and theologians have begun to debate a fundamental question: Is our reality the result of the overflowing, ever-present creativity of Love, or the symptom of a traumatic rupture at the heart of all things? Drawing on decades of research in postmodern philosophy and experience as a psychotherapist, James H. Olthuis wades into this discussion to propose a radical ontology of Love without metaphysics. In dialogue with philosophers like John D. Caputo, Slavoj Žižek, Luce Irigaray, and others, Olthuis explores issues from divine sovereignty and the problem of evil to trauma and social ethics. Experience in therapeutic work informs these investigations, rooting them in journeys with individuals on the path to healing. Olthuis makes the bold claim that while trauma, pain, and suffering are significant parts of our human lives, nevertheless Love is with us to the very end. Creation is a gift that comes with a call to make something of it ourselves, a risky task we must take on with the promise that Love will win. We are all dancing in the wild spaces of Love: ex amore, cum amore, ad amorem.

Endorsements for Jim's Book:

“The sheer attractive force of this meditation on the love at the heart of everything draws biblical hermeneutics, Derrida and Irigaray, trauma theory and social ethics into an irresistible theopoetics. In this wild dance of a text, Olthuis may be loving theology itself back to life.”

Catherine Keller

George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology, Drew University, The Theological School

Author of Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chances

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“Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love is everything we have come to expect from Jim Olthuis – a beautifully written, carefully argued, wide-ranging analysis of the centrality of love in our lives, a veritable philosophical hymn to love. Olthuis is a bright light in these dark days, a balm for an age of anger, rage and divisiveness in which love is an increasingly scarce commodity. We have never needed him more than now.”

John D. Caputo

Thomas J. Watson Professor Emeritus of Religion, Syracuse University

David R. Cook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Villanova University

- - -

“In every sense possible, Olthuis lives up to the subtitle of this remarkable book. This is indeed a theopoetics and must be engaged as such. Yes, of course there are erudite and close readings of the likes of Irigaray, Derrida, Žižek, Levinas and Caputo. But even here, Olthuis is dancing with these authors. There is a poetic allusiveness, imaginativity and generous empathy in these conversations. What else would we expect from a hermeneutics of love, informed and deepened by decades of psychotherapeutic practice? Having walked the path of trauma and profound brokenness, together with healing and hope, Olthuis embodies a wisdom born of tears. But tears can turn to dancing. So put on your dancing shoes when you read this book.”

Brian J. Walsh
Co-author (with Sylvia Keesmaat) of Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice

Forthcoming Volume on Irigaray from Ruthanne Crapo Kim

ICS alum Dr. Ruthanne Crapo Kim (Minneapolis Community and Technical College) has co-edited a collection engaging Luce Irigaray's work and pushing it in important new directions. The book is titled Horizons of Difference: Rethinking Space, Place, and Identity with Irigaray and is co-edited by Yvette Russell and Brenda Sharp. The book is due to be released by SUNY Press this July. 

If you'd like to get a copy for yourself, it is available for preorder through the publisher's website. A publisher's description and table of contents follow below.

Publisher's Description

Horizons of Difference offers twelve original essays inspired by Luce Irigaray's complex, nuanced critique of Western philosophy, culture, and metaphysics, and her call to rethink our relationship to ourselves and the world through sexuate difference. Contributors engage urgent topics in a range of fields, including trans feminist theory, feminist legal theory, film studies, critical race theory, social-political theory, philosophy of religion, environmental ethics, philosophical aesthetics, and critical pedagogy. In so doing, they aim to push the scope of Irigaray's work beyond its horizon. Horizons of Difference seeks conversations that Irigaray herself has yet to fully consider and explores areas that stretch the limits of the notion of sexuate difference itself. Sexuate difference is a unifying mode of thought, bringing disparate disciplines and groups together. Yet it also resists unification in demanding that we continually rethink the basic coordinates of space, place, and identity. Ultimately, Horizons of Difference insists that the fragmented, wounded subjectivities within the dominant regime of masculine sameness can inform how we negotiate space, find place, and transform identity.

Table of Contents

Introduction 
Ruthanne Crapo Kim, Yvette Russell and Brenda Sharp

Part I: Trans Identities and Sexual Violence

Chapter 1 – Tarrying with Sexual Difference

Athena V. Colman

Chapter 2 - Rethinking Feminist Resistance to Rape: Irigaray and Erotic Transformation

Yvette Russell

Part II: Sexuate Ontology

Chapter 3 - The Conditions of Emergence: Irigaray, Primordial Wombs, and The Origins of Cellular Life

Annu Dahiya

Chapter 4 - Irigaray’s Extendable Matrix: Cosmic Expansion-Contraction and Black Hole Umbilical Cords 

MD Murtagh

Chapter 5 - Irigarayan Ontology and the Possibilities of Sexual Difference

James Sares

Part III: Divine Women

Chapter 6 - A Theology of Lips: Beyond the Wounding of Desire

Wesley N. Barker

Chapter 7 - Hailing Divine Women in Godard’s Hail Mary and Miéville’s The Book of Mary

Tessa Ashlin Nunn

Part IV: Rethinking Race and Sexual Difference

Chapter 8 - White Supremacist Miscegenation: Irigaray at the intersection of Race, Sexuality, and Patriarchy

Sabrina L. Hom

Chapter 9 - Justice in an Unjust World: The Politics of Narration in Luce Irigaray and Frank Miller’s Sin City

Mary C. Rawlinson

Part V: Environments of Relational Difference

Chapter 10 - Artificial Life, Autopoiesis, and Breath: Irigaray with Ecological Feminism and Deep Ecology

Ruthanne Crapo Kim

Chapter 11 - She Speaks in Threes: Irigaray, at the Threshold between Phenomenology and Speculative Realism in Teaching Architecture

Michael Lucas

Chapter 12 - Commonality in Breath: Reading Northern Ireland’s ‘Peace Process’ through the Material Ontologies of Irigaray and Manning

Ciara Merrick

April 4: Virtual Book Celebration with Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin

After some COVID-related delays, we're excited to be able to announce a virtual event with Dr. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin celebrating the recent publication of her book: The Philosophy of Susanne Langer: Embodied Meaning in Logic, Art and Feeling. 

Adrienne will join us on Monday, April 4, 1:30-3:30pm EDT via Zoom for a presentation on her book, responses from Dr. Rebekah Smick (ICS Senior Member in Philosophy of Arts and Culture) and Danielle Yett (ICS alumna), and a question and answer period -- all of which will be open to the public. 

Below you will find some more details about the book and Adrienne's bio. We hope to see you then!

Book Summary:

The Philosophy of Susanne Langer: Embodied Meaning in Logic, Art and Feeling is a presentation of the philosophy of Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) against the background of major advances in twentieth-century European and American thought. Langer is one of the most original and fertile American thinkers of the twentieth century, yet her work is still insufficiently recognized and frequently misunderstood. To illuminate the evolution and shape of Langer’s thought, this book focuses on her four most formative sources: her mentors Henry Sheffer and Alfred N. Whitehead, and the philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This reveals how her thinking was not only forged out of a critical engagement with significant intellectual traditions of her time but also anticipated many of the major developments and philosophical ‘turns’ of ours. Her original and innovative thought crosses the customary boundaries between analytic and continental philosophy, and places aesthetics not at the margins of philosophy but at its very centre.

Short Bio:

Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and a Research Associate at the Margaret Beaufort Institute in Cambridge. She works on the interface of philosophical and theological aesthetics and has taught and published widely in those areas. She is the co-author of Art and Soul: Signposts for Christians in the Arts, published by IVP in 2001.

Originally from the Netherlands, Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin studied philosophy, art history and musicology in Amsterdam - while spending her final year at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto to study with Calvin Seerveld - before moving to live and work in the UK. Between 1999 and 2007 she taught philosophical aesthetics at the graduate school the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto during which time she was also an adjunct faculty member of the Toronto School of Theology. She served as President of the Canadian Society for Aesthetics from 2005 until 2007 and subsequently as their Canadian delegate on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Aesthetics. Upon her move to the UK she worked as an independent scholar with various temporary lectureships including a one-year appointment as Teaching Fellow in Religion, Philosophy and the Arts at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College in London in 2016-2017.


She has a special interest in public and socially engaged art and is the founding curator of the travelling exhibition Art, Conflict and Remembering: the Murals of the Bogside Artists which has been hosted by several cathedrals and universities in the UK, as well as organisations promoting peace and social justice. Her book The Philosophy of Susanne Langer: Embodied Meaning in Logic, Art and Feeling was published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

* * *

Jeff Dudiak Publishes Next Book in Currents of Reformational Thought Series

The latest book in the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics' Currents in Reformational Thought book series has just been published with Wipf and Stock! 

Dr. Jeffrey Dudiak, ICS alum and Professor of Philosophy at The King's University in Edmonton, is the author of this newest title in the series: Post Truth? Facts and Faithfulness. This book is available directly from the publisher's website as well as other online book sellers. Here is a brief synopsis of the book from the publisher's site:

In Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness, Jeffrey Dudiak explores the fissures and fractures that vex our so-called "post-truth" era, searching for a deeper, dare we say truer, understanding of the cultural forces that have led North American society to become so polarized. Eschewing the kind of easy responses that trade pluralistic solidarity for tribalistic certainty, Dudiak diagnoses a deeper breakdown in social trust as the underlying issue that has everyone today scurrying for comforting, ideological cover. In this context, Dudiak reminds the reader that truth is more, and runs deeper, than simple correspondence to the facts.

PhD Graduate Shane Cudney Book Published with Pickwick

ICS graduate Shane Cudney, who successfully defended his joint ICS / Vrije Universiteit PhD dissertation in January 2021, has published this dissertation as a book with Pickwick Publications (an imprint of Wipf & Stock). The book is titled: Where the Truth Lies: Pseudonymity, Complicity, and Critique in Fear and Trembling.

The book is available in a number of formats directly from the Wipf & Stock website and other retailers. A description of Shane's book follows below:

Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, concludes that faith is "absurd" (irrational), and therefore lies beyond the scope of reason. But if we ascribe authorship ultimately to Kierkegaard, as is common practice, we must conclude that he himself is an irrationalist. Given the myriad of competing voices throughout Kierkegaard's writings, this seems highly questionable at best.If, however, we take the pseudonymous author strictly at his authorial word, it changes the shape and dynamic of the text inviting us to read it, instead, as a "thought experiment." In this way, the text demonstrates both the absurdity and sin of reason in its bid to fully grasp the mystery of faith on its own rational terms.