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The Philosophical Society of England Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London
WC1
2.30 p.m. in The Bertrand Russell Library,
Conway Hall
The Varieties of Philosophical
Experience:
If you look back to nineteenth-century
debates about religion, you may well find them strangely familiar, with
much talk of the sciences of Evolution and Neurology as the gravediggers
of traditional belief. The American philosopher William James -- who was
also a naturalist, a psychologist, and a convinced Darwinist -- made a
remarkable contribution to the debate in his 1901 Gifford Lectures on the
Varieties of Religious Experience, using scientific premises to vindicate
what he called a 'right to believe'. In this talk Jonathan Rée will
argue that when it comes to the problem of religion, no one was ever smarter
than William James.
A lecture by Jonathan
Ree
Jonathan Rée is a philosopher, writer, and historian. He gave up a career as a university lecturer in order, he says, to have more time to think, but he continues to lecture widely and to participate in television and radio broadcasts. His interests and writings range from continental philosophy to African philosophy and from literature to science, and he spends much time working at various ways of reconnecting philosophical debate with historical inquiry. He is the author of more than a dozen books and also writes for the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, the Independent, Prospect, Radical Philosophy and the New Humanist as well as taking part in television and radio broadcasts. All welcome
A meeting of the Philosophical Society of England's Council takes place before the talk at 1.30 pm. All members of the Society are welcome to attend this as well as the lecture, which is open to everyone. |