The University of Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh

Prof. Kathryn Tanner - Which World?

Fri, 13 May 2016 11:11:22 GMT

Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Which World?". The sixth lecture in the series discusses how finance-dominated capitalism encourages one to relate to oneself, which in turn has a bearing on the understanding of one’s relations with others. It will consider the emphasis on individual performance and responsibility in finance-dominated capitalism, the specific forms of competition typical of wage relations and market dynamics, winner-take-all profit mechanisms and herd behaviour in financial markets, privatising tendencies in the provision of public goods and the shifting of risks on to vulnerable individuals. It will contrast these emphases with the general ways that Christianity links one’s relationship with oneself to one’s relations with others. Recorded 12 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School auditorium.

Prof. Kathryn Tanner - Another World?

Thu, 12 May 2016 12:58:22 GMT

Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Another World?". The fifth lecture in the series explores how present and future are collapsed in the evaluation of assets on secondary financial markets, and the way efforts are made, by way of derivatives and other tactics typical of finance-dominated capitalism, to limit the potentially disturbing character of an unpredictable future. The lecture will seek to establish how Christianity, to the contrary, allows for a future that, while very different from the present, does not simply compensate for the present’s failings. Recorded 10 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School auditorium.

Prof. Kathryn Tanner - Nothing but the Present

Tue, 10 May 2016 12:10:39 GMT

Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Nothing but the Present". The fourth lecture in the series investigates the causes and consequences of a preoccupation with the present in the lives of both workers and the indebted poor, and of the short-term time horizons that are characteristic of finance-dominated capitalism. It will lay out the different reasons for Christian attention to an urgent present, along with the different effects of the Christian understanding of the present. Recorded 9 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School auditorium.

Prof. Kathryn Tanner - Total Commitment

Mon, 09 May 2016 14:22:03 GMT

Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Total Commitment". The third lecture in the series explores the strategies used in finance-dominated capitalism to ensure worker compliance with company demands. It will contrast these strategies, point by point, with the way in which a person’s commitment to God is related to the person’s more mundane commitments. Recorded 5 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School auditorium.

Prof. Kathryn Tanner - Chained to the Past

Mon, 09 May 2016 14:02:53 GMT

Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Chained to the Past". The second lecture in the series considers the way in which persons, as both workers and debtors, are encouraged to relate to past decisions that constrain present action within finance-dominated capitalism. The presumed inevitability of this way of relating to the past is undercut by appealing to Christian forms of self-repudiation in conversion and to the ruptured narratives that go along with them. Recorded 3 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's George Square Lecture Theatre.

Prof. Kathryn Tanner - Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism

Mon, 09 May 2016 14:01:16 GMT

Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism". The first lecture in this series discusses the Weberian approach to the influence of Christian beliefs and practices on economic behaviour, and ties it to the sort of comparison of ‘spiritualities’ offered by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his Collège de France lectures. The lecture explores the general characteristics of finance-dominated capitalism and its culture, and outlines the basic shape of the larger argument of the series, concerning the potential for Christianity to counteract contemporary capitalist modes of control. Recorded 2 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Prof. Kathryn Tanner - Total Commitment

Mon, 09 May 2016 13:59:03 GMT

Prof. Jeremy Waldron - Hard and Heart-breaking Cases: The Profoundly Disabled As Our Human Equals

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:18:17 GMT

Professor Jeremy Waldron, University Professor at the New York University Law School, delivers the sixth in the 2015 Gifford Lecture series, entitled "Hard and Heart-breaking Cases: The Profoundly Disabled As Our Human Equals".

In this lecture, Professor Waldron explores ways of thinking about these aspects of the human condition that allow us to maintain the integrity of basic human equality.

Recorded on 5 February 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library.

Prof. Jeremy Waldron - Human Dignity and Our Relation to God

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 13:46:24 GMT

Professor Jeremy Waldron, University Professor at the New York University Law School, delivers the fifth in the 2015 Gifford Lecture series, entitled "Human Dignity and Our Relation to God". In this lecture Professor Waldron will relate our intimations about a transcendent basis for human equality to the work that was done in the previous lectures about the basic logic of the position. Recorded on 3 February 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library

Prof. Jeremy Waldron - A Load-bearing Idea: The Work of Human Equality

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 13:46:08 GMT

Professor Jeremy Waldron, University Professor at the New York University Law School, delivers the fourth in the 2015 Gifford Lecture series, entitled "A Load-bearing Idea: The Work of Human Equality".

Defending basic equality is not just a matter of ‘coming up with’ some suitably shaped property that all humans share. The description must be relevant to the work that basic equality has to do. That work is comprehensive and foundational, across all aspects of morality.

Recorded on 2 February 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library.

Prof. Jeremy Waldron - Looking for a Range Property: Hobbes, Kant, and Rawls

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 14:17:07 GMT

Professor Jeremy Waldron, University Professor at the New York University Law School, delivers the third in the 2015 Gifford Lecture series, entitled "Looking for a Range Property: Hobbes, Kant, and Rawls".

In 'A Theory of Justice' Rawls introduced the idea of a 'range property' - a sort of threshold-based approach to the significance of variations in a certain range. Professor Waldron explores this idea, which Hobbes and Kant also implicitly relied on.

Recorded on 29 January 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library.

Prof. Jeremy Waldron - Everyone To Count For One

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 14:31:37 GMT

Professor Jeremy Waldron, University Professor at the New York University Law School, delivers the second in the 2015 Gifford Lecture series, entitled "Everyone To Count For One - The Logic of Basic Equality".

In this lecture, Professor Waldron will distinguish basic equality from various normative positions - both egalitarian and non-egalitarian - that are built up on it.

Professor Waldron will seek to make sense of Jeremy Bentham’s maxim. That maxim, 'Everyone to count for one', is tantalizingly close to tautological: for what exactly does 'no one [counts] for more than one' rule out? And is basic equality just a negative position, denying significance to certain kinds of descriptive inequality? Or is it an affirmative position based on the positive significance of certain descriptive properties?

Recorded on 27 January 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library.

Prof. Jeremy Waldron - More Than Merely Equal Consideration

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 10:58:36 GMT

Professor Jeremy Waldron, University Professor at the New York University Law School, delivers the first in the 2015 Gifford Lecture series, entitled "More Than Merely Equal Consideration, - the Rev. Hastings Rashdall"

In 1907, an Anglican clergyman teaching at New College, Oxford elaborated a theory of human inequality in Volume 1 of his book, The Theory of Good and Evil: A Treatise on Moral Philosophy.

Hastings’ theory is highly offensive to modern ears: for it is a form of philosophical racism.

But we will examine it — first, because it gives us a very clear picture of the position that basic equality has to deny; and second, because it hints at insidious ways in which rejections of basic equality might be revived.

Recorded on 26 January 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library.

Justice Catherine O'Regan - 'What is Caesar's?' Adjudicating Faith in Modern Constitutional Democracies

Thu, 22 May 2014 11:01:29 GMT

Justice Catherine O’Regan, former judge to the South African Constitutional Court and chairperson of the United Nations Internal Justice Council, delivers the University of Edinburgh's 2014 Gifford Lecture.

Courts in constitutional democracies face tough questions in developing a principled jurisprudence for the adjudication of claims based on faith.

This lecture considers some of the recent jurisprudence from Europe, North America, India and South Africa and discuss key questions including whether it is possible to identify a principled basis for the adjudication of claims based on faith, whether cross-jurisdictional learning is possible and proper and whether different social, political and religious contexts should and do make a difference to answering these questions.

This lecture was recorded on Monday 19 May, at the University of Edinburgh's St Cecilia's Hall.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth - Can Truth be Spoken?

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 16:30:23 GMT

Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language".

Lecture 6: Can Truth be Spoken?

In what sense can we legitimately think about silence as a mode of knowing? We need to be cautious about using such a notion as an excuse for giving up the challenges of truthful speech.

But it is true that, if what is ultimately most important is to be attuned to the reality that we invite to 'inhabit' us, silence may be the most appropriate means of representation.

The challenge is to frame silence in order to render it meaningful; that is, as more than an absence of sound or concept. And to identify such deliberate and 'strategic' silence - in meditation, in music, but also in aspects of our habitual discourse - is to raise the question of how silence 'refers' and so puts all we say in a new, and questioning, light.

Recorded on 14 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's New College.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth - Representing Reality

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 12:50:57 GMT

Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language".

Lecture 1: Representing Reality

When we speak about the world we inhabit, we do so in terms that go well beyond simply listing the elements of what we perceive; that is, we construct schematic models, we extrapolate, we invent, and we use our imagination.

If we think harder about what is involved in representing things (rather than simply describing or replicating them), we may discern something more. We may discover that the way believers talk about God is closely linked to the ways in which what we call "ordinary" speech seeks a truthfulness that is more than simply replication. Moreover, we may understand how speech is regularly stimulated to do this in moments of linguistic crisis or disruption.

Recorded on Monday 4 November at the University of Edinburgh's New College.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth - Extreme Language: Discovery Under Pressure

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 10:16:32 GMT

Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language".

Lecture 5: Extreme Language - Discovery Under Pressure

One of the most complex aspects of our language is that we refine the patterns we create in it - by rhyme and metre and metaphor - in the confidence that through this process we will discover something about what our habitual language does not disclose.

The language of art - and in striking measure the language of innovative theoretical science too - assumes that what we perceive is more than it appears, and that it 'gives more than it has'. The processes of rediscovering ourselves through the deliberate distortions and re-workings of familiar language (as we do in poetry, prose or scientific narrative) once again suggest a significant confidence in the bare practice of speech to transform understanding and the relation with what is real.

What is encountered is essentially oriented towards something like communion or integration.

Recorded 12 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's New College.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth - Material Words: Language as Physicality

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 09:44:14 GMT

Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language".

Lecture 4: Material Words - Language as Physicality

When we analyse speech, we are not only discussing how words work. Speech also includes gesture and rhythm. As such, speech is a means not only of mapping our environment, but also of 'handling' our environment and its direct impact upon us (a point that can be illustrated with reference to studies of autistic behaviour).

When we speak we create a new material situation. Correspondingly, we cannot actually think and 'represent' the reality of material situations without assuming an intelligent or intelligible form of some sort: 'mindless' matter is a chimera.

In our physical involvement with the world, the natural order evolves a representation of itself. This observation casts some light on classical Christian reflections of the world's transparency to divine meaning - which Christians perceived as a symbolic cosmos, which was no less symbolic for being material.

Recorded 11 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's New College.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth - No Last Words: Language as Unfinished Business

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 13:38:08 GMT

Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language".

Lecture 3: No Last Words: Language as Unfinished Business

Intelligent life has something to do with knowing what to do next, and how to 'go on'. The focus of knowledge is not necessarily the would-be final, or exhaustive, system. We can learn something about the nature of knowing if we think about the sorts of knowledge involved in physical crafts, where a good and credible performance makes ever new performances possible.

This also reminds us of the significance of our having learned our language from others and of our developing our thinking through exchange and not simply soliloquy. We speak in the hope of recognition. And our language carries in it a moment of radical trust in the meaningfulness of what we 'exchange' as well as an awareness of how we are all answerable to what is not only the aggregate of what we all know already.

Again, the notion of 'unconditioned intelligent energy' comes into focus.

Recorded 7 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's New College.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth - Can We Say What We Like? Language, Freedom and Determinism

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 14:52:30 GMT

Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language".

Lecture 2: Can We Say What We Like? Language, Freedom and Determinism.

If speech is a physical act, is it ultimately something we must think of as part of a pre-determined material system? It is difficult to state this without contradiction. Indeed, once we recognise the unstable relationship between what we say and the environment we are seeking to put into words, we cannot treat speech as simply another physical process.

Further, we cannot ignore the way in which speech is 'bound' to stimuli that it does not originate (if we did, we could have no conception of what a mistake or a lie was). We use our language in order to enhance or refine our skill at living in a world that both demands understanding and invites us into the awareness of an unconditioned intelligent energy.

Recorded on 5 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's New College.

Baroness Onora O’Neill - From Toleration to Freedom of Expression

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 09:57:16 GMT

Baroness Onora O’Neill presents a special Gifford Lecture in Memory of Professor Susan Manning (1953-2013), entitled 'From Toleration to Freedom of Expression'.

This lecture is part of the University's Gifford Lecture series. For more than a century, the Gifford Lectures have enabled scholars to advance theological and philosophical thought.

Recorded on 28 October 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library Hall.

Professor Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 10:43:14 GMT

Professor Steven Pinker delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity".

Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been in decline over the course of history. This lecture explores how this decline could have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature.

Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

He conducts research on language and cognition, which has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the American Psychological Association, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Recorded on Wednesday 29 May 2013 at McEwan Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Bruno Latour - Inside the 'Planetary Boundaries': Gaia's Estate

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:54:31 GMT

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion".

Lecture 6: Inside the 'Planetary Boundaries': Gaia's Estate

Although the resources of "paganism", New Age cults, renewed themes of Christian incarnation, and process theology offer rich mythological insights, it is not clear whether they are at the scale and sensitivity needed to face Gaia. A search for collective rituals should begin with works of art and experiments able to explore in sufficient detail the scientific and political composition of the common world.

Recorded on Thursday 28 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Bruno Latour - War of the Worlds: Humans against Earthbound

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:27:00 GMT

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion".

Lecture 5: War of the Worlds: Humans against Earthbound

In the absence of any Providence to settle matters of concern — and thus of nature, its barely disguised substitute — no peaceful resolution of Gaian conflicts can be expected. The recognition of a state of war and the designation of enmity is indispensable if a state of diplomacy is later to be reached. Under the pressure of so many apocalyptic injunctions, what is a Gaian political theology?

Recorded on Tuesday 26 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Bruno Latour - The Anthropocene and the Destruction of the Image of the Globe

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:09:14 GMT

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion".

Lecture 4: The Anthropocene and the Destruction of the Image of the Globe

The paradox of what is called "globalization" is that there is no "global globe" to hold the multitude of concerns that have to be assembled to replace the "politics of nature" of former periods. What are the instruments —always local and partial— that are sensitive enough to Gaia's components for the limited technical and emotional apparatus of assembled humans?

Recorded on Monday 25 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Bruno Latour - The Puzzling Face of a Secular Gaia

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:22:48 GMT

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion".

Lecture 3: The Puzzling Face of a Secular Gaia

In spite of its reputation, Gaia is not half science and half religion. It offers a much more enigmatic set of features that redistribute agencies in all possible ways (as does this most enigmatic term "anthropocene"). Thus, it is far from clear what it means to "face Gaia". It might require us to envisage it very differently from the various divinities of the past (including those derived from nature).

Recorded on Thursday 21 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Bruno Latour - A Shift in Agency - with apologies to David Hume

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:34:02 GMT

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion".

Lecture 2: A Shift in Agency - with apologies to David Hume

Once nature and the natural sciences are fully ''secularized'', it becomes possible to revisit also the category of the supernatural. Then, a different landscape opens which can be navigated through an attention to agencies and their composition. Such a freedom of movement allows the use of the rich anthropological literature to compare the ways different "collectives" manage to assemble and totalize different sets of agencies.

Recorded on Tuesday 19 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Bruno Latour - 'Once Out of Nature' - Natural Religion as a Pleonasm

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:14:28 GMT

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion".

Lecture 1: 'Once Out of Nature' - Natural Religion as a Pleonasm

The set of questions around the two words "natural religion" implies that only the second word is a coded and thus a disputed category, the first one being taken for granted and uncoded. But if it can be shown that the very notion of nature is a theological construct, we might be able to shift the problem somewhat: the question becomes not to save or resurrect "natural religion", but to dispose of it by offering at last a ''secular'' version of nature and of the natural sciences.

Recorded on Monday 18 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Diarmaid MacCulloch - Getting behind noise in Christian history

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:04:19 GMT

Lecture 5: Getting behind noise in Christian history

So far, the story has largely been about overt history: the positive utterances and actions of public Christianity. We turn now to further and more complex varieties of silence: first the phenomenon of ‘Nicodemism’, simultaneously audible to those with ears to hear, and not to be heard by others. New politic silences were caused by the fissuring of Western Christianity, through efforts to sidestep the consequent violence and persecution; a rediscovery of classical discussion of silence took place on the eve of the Reformation in the writings of Italian civic humanists, and this tradition fused with the debate about Nicodemism and the place of quiet versus overt toleration.

Over the centuries, particular groups who represented the ‘Other’, some Christian, some not, have made themselves invisible simply in order to survive: crypto-Judaism and its effect on Christianity are discussed, together with examples of Christian Nicodemism, notably the Reformation ‘Family of Love’ and the growth of a distinctive gay sub-culture within nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-Catholicism.

We move to those things best left unsaid in order to build identity in Christian organisations and newly-evangelised regions, and the way in which themes and dogmatic position once considered vital and central for the Christian life have been quietly abandoned without much acknowledgement of their one-time importance. We scrutinise Christian problems in dealing honestly with sexuality, with a specific example. Finally we turn to the confused reaction of Churches to shame over past sin, the example being complicity in the slave trade.

Recorded Tuesday 1 May 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Lord Sutherland - David Hume and Civil Society

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:43:29 GMT

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood presents, "David Hume and Civil Society".

David Hume's thinking was radical and thorough. This was his strength, but also a source of ammunition to his enemies. He has been interpreted as being scathingly negative in all of his conclusions - whether about morality, religion or basic epistemology.

The lecture will argue that Hume has much that is positive to teach us about all of these topics.

However, the main focus will be upon the nature and foundations of Civil Society, including both ethical and social insights, and their relevance to contemporary talk of 'broken' or 'fractured' society.

Stewart Sutherland taught philosophy in Bangor, Wales, Stirling, and King's College London, where he held the Chair of the History and Philosophy of Religion.

He was subsequently Principal of King’s College, London, Vice Chancellor of the University of London, and Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh.

He is a fellow of the British Academy and Past-President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Recorded 25 October 2011 at the Playfair Library, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Diarmaid MacCulloch - Silence in modern and future Christianities

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:47:23 GMT

Lecture 6: Silence in modern and future Christianities

We consider the democratisation of the quest for silence in industrial society: the tangling of a secular society with the silences provided by Christian tradition, through for instance the popularity of retreats, or the observance of silence in remembrance. We see the importance of ‘whistle-blowing’ to modern Christianity, and its use of the historical discipline. We ponder the relation of agnosticism to silence; the role of music in silence and Christian understanding; the relationship between Word and Spirit in the future of Christian life.

Recorded Thursday 3 May 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

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Diarmaid MacCulloch - Silence through schism and two Reformations: 451-1500

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:43:48 GMT

Lecture 3: Silence through schism and two Reformations: 451-1500

The significance of the threeway split in Christianity after the Council of Chalcedon (451). The purposeful Chalcedonian forgetting of Evagrius Ponticus and the contribution of an anonymous theologian who took the name Dionysius the Areopagite. The role of Augustine in the Western Church: a theologian of words, not silence. The transformation in the use of silence and its function after the Carolingian expansion of Benedictine monastic life (together with the West’s discovery of pseudo-Dionysius), and the further development through the great years of Cluny Abbey.

Counter-currents on silence in the medieval West, and the significance of the Iconoclastic controversy, and later hesychasm, in the Byzantine world. Tensions between clerical and lay spirituality in the late medieval West.

Recorded 26 April 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Diarmaid MacCulloch - Silence transformed: the third Reformation 1500-1700

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:36:09 GMT

Lecture 4: Silence transformed: the third Reformation 1500-1700

The noisiness of Protestantism, particularly exacerbated by the end of monasticism, unsuccessfully countered in the Church of Zürich but transcended first among radical Reformers (especially Caspar Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck) and a century later by the Society of Friends. The difficulties of contemplatives in the Counter-Reformation, where activism was the characteristic of the new foundations of Jesuits and Ursulines, and the problems faced by such revivals as the Discalced Carmelites. The troubles of Madame Guyon and Quietists.

Recorded 30 April 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Diarmaid MacCulloch - Catholic Christianity and the arrival of ascetism, 100-400

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:27:39 GMT

Lecture 2: Catholic Christianity and the arrival of ascetism, 100-400

Counter-strands to silence in the early Church, encouraged by its congregational worship and cult of martyrdom, and the effect of gnostic Christianities in shaping what the emerging Catholic Church decided to emphasise or ignore.The emergence of new positive theologies of silence: negative theology and its sources in the Platonic tradition; the development of asceticism in the mainstream Church in Syria from the second century, and its possible sources: the place of silence in the development of monasticism and eremetical life in Christianity.The importance of the remaking of monasticism in Egypt; the vital role of a forgotten theologian, Evagrius Ponticus.

Recorded 24 April 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Diarmaid MacCulloch - Voices and silence in Tanakh and Christian New Testament

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:18:03 GMT

Silence in Christian History: the witness of Holmes' Dog

Lecture 1: Introduction. Voices and silence in Tanakh and Christian New Testament.

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch presents his introductory lecture in our 2012 Gifford lecture series.

He discusses a change in emphasis between the Hebrew Scripture (the Tanakh) and what Christians made of what is arguably a minority positive strand in Judaic thinking on silence; we survey the growth of a consciousness of silence, particularly in the cosmos, in Jewish religion.We seek the voice of Jesus to be heard behind the text of the New Testament, with his distinctive use of silence and silences; the place of silence in the first Christian attempts to understand the significance of Jesus Christ, and its relationship to the formation of the Church.

Recorded Monday 23 April 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Gordon Brown - The Future of Jobs and Justice

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:34:02 GMT

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown returns to his former university to give a talk on economics. The lecture argues that there is an alternative to a future of low growth and high unemployment; that the alternative is a future of jobs and justice.

Recorded 19 April 2011 at the McEwan Hall, Edinburgh.

Patricia Churchland - Morality and the Mammalian Brain

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 14:04:39 GMT

Prof Patricia Churchland's Gifford Lecture - Recorded 11 May, 2010 at St Cecelia's Hall, The University of Edinburgh.

Self-caring neural circuitry embodies self-preservation values, and these are values in the most elemental sense. Whence caring for others?

Social problem-solving, including policy-making, is probably an instance of problem-solving more generally, and draws upon the capacity, prodigious in humans, to envision consequences of a planned action. In humans, it also draws upon the capacity for improving upon current practices and technologies.

Audio version.

Terry Eagleton - The God Debate

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:59:46 GMT

Professor Terry Eagleton's Gifford Lecture - The God Debate. Recorded 1 March, 2010 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

In his lecture, Professor Eagleton asks "Why has God suddenly reappeared in intellectual debate? His lecture attempts to put these contentions in the broader political context of the so-called 'war on terror'.

Michael Gazzaniga - We Are the Law (Lecture 6)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:57:48 GMT

The sixth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 22 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

Michael Gazzaniga - The Social Brain (Lecture 5)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:56:35 GMT

The fith in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 20 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

Michael Gazzaniga - Free Yet Determined and Constrained (Lecture 4)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:54:43 GMT

The fourth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 19 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

Michael Gazzaniga - The Interpreter (Lecture 3)

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:41:56 GMT

The third in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 15 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

The interpreter is the device we humans enjoy that provides us with the capacity to see the meanings behind patterns of our emotions, behavior and thoughts.

This concept is central to understanding the relationship between our brain and our strong sense of self. In a way, it is the device that liberates us from our automatic ways spelled out in Lecture 1 and 2. The interpreter constructs the sense that there is a “me” arising out of the ongoing neuronal chatter in the brain and making all of life’s moment-to-moment decisions.

Our compelling sense of being a unified self armed with volition, deployable attention and self-control is the handiwork of the interpreter, for it brings coherence to a brain that is actually a vastly parallel and distributed system. This view stands in contrast to much neuroscientific theorizing or existential musing about our unified, coherent nature.

In most models of brain and cognitive mechanism, one can identify, as Marvin Minsky once said, the box that makes all the decisions.

Yet if modern neuroscience has taught us anything, it has taught us, as I said in Lecture 2, that our brain is a highly parallel and distributed system with literally millions of decisions being made simultaneously. There is simply no place within this sort of architecture from which a single decision system could operate. Instead, this parallel processing is producing an organism that looks like a self-motivated, morally coherent, decision-making and conscious entity. Indeed, understanding how it works will emerge from understanding the workings of the interpreter and the brain that enables it.

Moreover, this understanding will allow us to rid ourselves of the homunculus problem once and for all, while, perhaps paradoxically, setting the stage for why you are to be held responsible for all of your actions.

Michael Gazzaniga - The Distributed Networks of Mind (Lecture 2)

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:41:14 GMT

The second in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 13 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Our brains are organised in such a fashion that very little of the processing, which is to say neural work, goes on in our conscious minds.

Any simple act, such as pointing to your nose, involves forming the desire to touch your nose, planning a motor response, gathering information about the location of your nose, calculating in a flash if you want to bring attention to your nose and so on.

All that information is gathered and processed and leads to the desired action, and yet little or none of it is done consciously.

Even more daunting is the fact that how the brain accomplishes such a simple task is utterly beyond scientific understanding at this point in time.

While textbooks are full of knowledge about the specific neurons involved - the areas in the brain that are active during such specific actions and even areas known to be active with intention to act - no one knows how it actually works.

Michael Gazzaniga - What We Are (Lecture 1)

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:40:45 GMT

The first in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 12 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

What do we need to know about the human brain in order to discuss the weighty questions of free will, mental causation, morals, ethics, and the law?

To understand anything from a biologic perspective we must place this effort in an evolutionary context, consider the nature of the organ that allows us to be asking these questions, and to the extent that we are able, determine how it works.

The fundamental point that emerges out of this analysis is that much complexity is built into the brain and not just passed along as accumulated cultural behavior and knowledge from one generation to the next.

It is this built-in complexity that enables us to discover the keys to how, ultimately, the mind constrains the brain and not the other way around.

We will appreciate that our automatic brains are structured complex systems with particular skill sets and that ultimately our “I” story - the story of our own personal, phenomenal consciousness - is embodied in the brain’s network systems and not in outside forces compelling the brain into action."

Diana Eck - Globalization & Religious Pluralism

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:30:42 GMT

The first in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded Monday 27 April 2009 at the University of Edinburgh.

In 1893, the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago convened under the banner of universalism. How do pluralism and globalism today stand in contrast to the spirit of universalism, and signal a new reality?

While the phenomenon of globalization clearly relates to economics and politics, to environmental and security concerns, how has it altered our religious consciousness, our religious life?

What ethical questions are at the forefront of globalization?

How have immigrants created new kinds of diasporas?

How has the Internet destabilized borders of all kinds, including religious and national borders?

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Diana Eck - The Civic Perspective: Citizens, Nations, and the Challenges of Religious Pluralism

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:30:23 GMT

The second in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 28 April 2009 at The University of Edinburgh.

Multireligious societies have long been a historical reality in some parts of the world.

Today, however, there are many recently-multireligious societies, especially in the west, where people of different faiths live in close proximity and struggle with religious difference as citizens of a common society.

What are the challenges to the common "we" in the context of religious difference?

What does religious pluralism mean for nations with large majorities and insecure minorities?

What do "nations" mean in a world in which the movement of people and ideas is constant, with migrations that are not one-way, but back-and-forth, as people participate in the life and aspirations of more than one society?

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Diana Eck - The New Cosmopolis: Cities and the Realities of Religious Pluralism

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:29:22 GMT

The third in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded on 30 April 2009 at The University of Edinburgh.

Cities are the focal point of religious pluralism, for in cities the cultures and traditions of the world are concentrated. They are, as Lewis Mumford put it, "energy converted into culture."

The term "cosmopolis" has long signaled the world-city, and indeed some of the great cities of the world have had a cosmopolitan texture for many centuries. Today, however, the number of new cosmopolitan cities has grown exponentially.

While London, New York, and Mumbai may still be the great examples of world-cities, Leeds, Detroit, Boston, and Toronto also concentrate the energies of complex cultures.

Even smaller cities, like Fremont, California, have significant Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist populations.

What critical challenges have cities faced as they become more religiously and culturally diverse? How have these challenges been faced, negotiated?

What new forms of city life are emerging?

What new forms of religious life, including rapidly growing interfaith initiatives, are emerging in the urban environment?

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Diana Eck - Religious Views of Religious Pluralism I

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:29:06 GMT

The fourth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 4 May 2009 at The University of Edinburgh.

Religious diversity poses questions that are not only global, national, and civic, but also theological.

In 1910, the World Conference on Mission convened in Edinburgh and addressed the world's religions from the standpoint of Christian missions.

Today, as people encounter neighbors of other faiths, face to face, and as communications enable people of every faith to know those of other faiths, what new theological questions do we and others pose about our own faith?

How is the "truth" of each tradition challenged in the face of other faiths and truth claims?

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are increasingly referred to as the "Abrahamic" faiths, indicating a common prophetic ancestor in the figure of Abraham. Abrahamic dialogue is on the rise. What assessment do we have of these dialogues?

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Diana Eck - Religious Views of Religious Pluralism II

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:28:45 GMT

The fifth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 5 May 2009 at The University of Edinburgh.

Looking more broadly, the religious traditions of the Indic world have distinctive views on religions, on the diversity of religions and the engagements we would call pluralism.

Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim communities have lived in complex relationship with one another, with distinctiveness as well as common discourse.

Discussions of pluralism and its relation to secularism are lively in these traditions today.

How do some of today's thinkers and spiritual leaders articulate the dilemmas of religious "truth" and the religious other?

How do they relate their Asian traditions to the globalization of religion?

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Diana Eck - The Pluralism Within

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:26:51 GMT

The final in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 7 May 2009 at The University of Edinburgh.

Religious pluralism is not only a fact of global and local encounter of religious communities, but it is increasingly part of the lives of people in many parts of the world who identify with more than one religious tradition.

The phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is part of families in which parents affiliate with different religious communities; it is part of the inner landscape of students and seekers who find significant meaning and direction for their own lives not only in their tradition of birth, but in other traditions and spiritualities.

How is this fluid border-crossing transforming the "religions," so often thought of as separate?

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