Title TBA

• Speaker: Steve Fuller, University of Warwick, Sociology
• Location: C0.02, Institute of Advanced Study, Zeeman Building, University of Warwick [map linkLink opens in a new window]
• Time & Date: 17:30-19:00 GMT, 16 Jan 2025, Thursday Week 2, Term 2.
• Meeting Link: TBA
• Abstract
  

  TBA

Matyáš Moravec

Queens University Belfast
Philosophy
24 Oct, 2024

The Spooky Origins of Hypertime

Hypertime is a theory that postulates that time has two or more dimensions. Much of the groundwork underlying current theories of hypertime in analytic philosophy is generally attributed to discussions in the second half of the 20th century—either in connection with the objection against the passage of time or as a means to resolve problems in the philosophy of time travel. This paper demonstrates that the historical roots of hypertime extend much further back. I will demonstrate that sophisticated theories of multi-dimensional time, hitherto neglected by historians of philosophy, were developed by philosophers decades before the interest in time travel took off. These early pioneers of hypertime were working on “psychical research,” the study of psychical phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, or ghosts, widely popular towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. They developed multi-dimensional time as a tool to resolve various problems with precognition, the purported ability to see the future. I will conclude by indicating the pitfalls of neglecting this important chapter in the history of the philosophy of time.

Stephen Connelly

University of Warwick
School of Law
14 Nov, 2024

Philo on Lawfulness and Conscience

In his Allegories of the Laws, Philo of Alexandria sets himself against the Hellenistic philosophers of his time (early 1st century CE). The ‘pride’ of these philosophers, Philo claims, consists in having made pure reason the governor of the soul, and the philosopher governor of the rational city. Yet Philo’s aim is to justify his faith using the tools of Greco-Roman thought, and so, this talk will argue, rather than casting aside the prevailing ‘prideful’ conceptualisation of soul, Philo reconfigures the soul by internalising within it ethical ‘humiliation’. The paper examines a likely key source for this notion of humiliation, and follows through the consequences for Philo’s moral and legal theory.

Andrej Bukovac-Mimica

University of Helsinki / University of Zagreb
Theology
28 Nov, 2024

Religion in a Communist Setting: The Curious Case of Yugoslavia

The notion that Communist political systems aggressively suppress religious thinking and expression is a commonplace we scarcely pause to consider. While this notion may be true for the USSR, and only for certain periods of its nearly-70-year history, in reality, it is a generalization that reduces a highly complex and evolving relationship to a simple slogan. This objection especially applies to former Socialist Yugoslavia, which not only developed its particular flavour of Socialism, but also a particular relationship with its religious citizens and the institutions they belonged to.

The country itself defies most generalizations, being essentially a patchwork of peoples of various ethnicities and religious affiliations, with major segments of the population belonging to either Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim communities, along with a plethora of other minority religious groups. The two largest Christian communities, the Catholic and the Serbian Orthodox church, saw themselves, and were seen by others, as bearers of national identities. These two forms of Christianity provided the backbones of the ethno-nationalist mythologies of Serbia and Croatia that had developed during the late 19^thcentury. Therefore, the government's "ideological struggle" against religion, inspired by an effort to keep this patchwork intact, had much more to do with suppressing nationalism than religion itself. On the other hand, smaller religious communities, unrelated to national identities, were often treated quite benevolently, with some enjoying much more freedom than they had before the World War II.

In short, Yugoslavia's attitude and conduct towards religious communities was the product of complex internal and external policy considerations that evolved over time and varied across republics. Although the regime did nominally consider religion as something superfluous and archaic, that fact could be considered a consequence, rather than the cause of its strained relationship with certain religious groups.