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Apr
06
Thursday
Apr
06
Thu
Community :: Lecture also Education :: Miscellaneous Education
"Self-Alienation" with Professor Ingolf Dalferth
7:00 PM
Carroll College, Trinity Hall Lounge
Description:
Silicon Valley and the tech industry tend to assume that the world would be a better place without humans as we know them. "Upgrades" to the human person are beginning to be developed that will allow us to take "more control" over our lives, live longer, and with greater "success." In this talk, however, Professor Ingolf Dalferth, the Danforth Chair of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, will argue that so long as we seek to understand ourselves merely in terms of activity, self-control, or our own autonomy, we miss the existential interplay of passivity and activity at the very core of our existence and, in the process, cast ourselves into a state of self-alienation. Ironically, in our strivings for self-possession and self-control, the likes of which are reflected in Silicon Valley's pursuit of bio-hacks and human "upgrades," we enact the very self-alienation we're trying to overcome, which will inevitably end in disaster.

Ingolf Dalferth is currently the Danforth Chair of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate Univertsity, but his credentials extend far beyond that Chairship. Recently, Professor Dalferth retired from directing the Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zrich, continuing to be esteemed in an Emeritus position there. He has also held notable positions at the University of Tbingen among other elite institutions and interestingly directed Der Stifft, the famous institution in Germany where Hegel, Holderlin, and Schelling met and developed some of their incipient ideas.

Dalferth's publications are manifold, reflecting his desirability as a world-renown author and lecturer on issues of philosophical and religious importance. He is one of the most notable theologians in contemporary Europe and is making his name in within US circles through the translation of his many books and his presiding over important institutes, such as the Society for the Philosophy of Religion. He is, in many regards, a philosopher's philosopher but with the capacity to speak in clear and understandable terms to all.
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Age Group: Adults
Venue: Carroll College, Trinity Hall Lounge
Address: 1150 Learning Street HELENA, MT 59601
Phone: 447-4300

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