Summer School Workshop Information

Monday 8th June, 4.00 - 5.30 pm
Summer School Workshop 1: 'Understanding Charles Taylor'

The first of the workshops will be facilitated by Professor Ruth Abbey (University of Notre Dame, USA). This workshop will focus upon Charles Taylor's A Secular Age and will provide participants with an opportunity to engage with the core arguments of the text.

Themes that will be explored will include:

• the emergence of a secular age as a 'disenchanted' age;
• Taylor's critique of the mainstream secularisation thesis on the decline of religious belief and practice;
• Taylor's analysis of the expressive individualist character of the culture of authenticity that is increasingly dominant in the Western world.

Tuesday 9th June, 2.30 - 4.00 pm
Summer School Workshop 2: 'Taylor and the Human Person'

This workshop, facilitated by Dr. Alan J. Kearns (MDI), will address the ethical and moral implications of the concept of personhood in relation to Taylor's work.

Themes that will be explored will include:

• human agency, language and significance;
• the rise of a human and animal rights culture;
• moral sources and diverse contexts today.

Wednesday 10th June, 2.30 - 4.00 pm
Summer School Workshop 3: 'Taylor and the Enlightenment'

This workshop, facilitated by Dr. Ian Leask (MDI), will consider the philosophical implications of A Secular Age by addressing Taylor's analysis of modernity and the onset of the Enlightenment.

Themes that will be explored will include:

• the relationship between religion, belief and modernity;
• historical analysis of the roots of contemporary secular society and the 'malaises of modernity' in the light of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age;
• philosophical and theological themes in Modernity and Post-Modernity.

Thursday 11th June, 12.00 - 1.30 pm
Summer School Workshop 4: 'Taylor and the Irish Context'

This workshop, facilitated by Rev. Dr. Eoin G. Cassidy (MDI), will focus upon the implications of Taylor's work in the specifically Irish context. Additionally, the workshop will address the question of what Taylor's thought can contribute to the renewal of the Irish religious experience.

Themes that will be explored will include:

• the impact of Deism on religious practice and the bulwarks of belief in the Western world;
• theological and philosophical discourse in secular Ireland;
• the role of theology and philosophy in the public square;
• understanding Ireland as a culture that is hospitable to religious beliefs and practices.

Indicative Reading List:

Workshop facilitators will draw upon the following reading materials. Participants for credit will be expected to refer to these texts in their assignments:

• Ruth Abbey, Charles Taylor (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
• Ruth Abbey, Charles Taylor (Philosophy Now), (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001);
• Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, (California: University of California Press, 2007);
• Eoin G. Cassidy, Measuring Ireland: Discerning Values and Beliefs, (Dublin: Veritas, 2002);
• Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990);
• Jonathon Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
• Alan. J. Kearns, The Concept of Person in a World Mediated by Meaning and Constituted by Significance, (Dartford: Pneuma Springs, 2007);
• Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1981);
• Thomas Norris, A Fractured Relationship: Faith and the Crisis of Culture, (Dublin: Veritas, 2007).
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 2007);
• Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
• Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1991);
• D. Vincent Twomey, The End of Irish Catholicism?, (Dublin: Veritas, 2003).