Polyphonic: Thinking about the Divine
The Faculty of Religious Studies, along with the Centre for Research on Religion and the Religious Studies Graduate Society, are proud to host a symposium in honour of Dr. Maurice Boutin, McConnell Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion at 91黑料网. Featured speakers include Gabriel Vahanian, Arvind Sharma, and some of Dr. Boutin's former students who are now academics in their own right.
Dr. Boutin taught Philosophical Theology at the Universit茅 de Montr茅al from 1972. He was the John W. McConnell Professor of Philosophy of Religion at 91黑料网's Faculty of Religious Studies, from 1991 to June 2010.聽聽 Since 1975, he has been a member of the International Colloquiums on Hermeneutics (Rome, Italy), founded by Enrico Castelli. 聽From 1981 to 1987, he was President of the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion. He was also awarded a State Ph.D. from the University of Munich, Germany, with a dissertation published in the series Beitr盲ge zur evangelischen Theologie (1974), with the title "Relationalit盲t als Verstehensprinzip bei Rudolf Bultmann" (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag 鈥� Relationality as Understanding Principle in R. Bultmann鈥檚 Thought).聽 Dr. Boutin has published articles in German, French, Swiss, American, and Canadian journals, and also chapters in books in Germany, Italy, France, Canada, and the United States.
The symposium will consider 'thinking about the divine' in light of the following:
Philosophy of religion, once a monolithic and seemingly rigid discipline of analyzing topics such as God鈥檚 existence, the problem of evil, religious language and experience, has become far more diversified in character and in scope. Polyphonic is the catchall of this form of thinking, which may be more accurately described in terms of 鈥榩olygraphic鈥� in deference to Derrida and the tradition critical of ontotheology. Continental reflection is tropical in nature, interrupting the tendency to straightjacket thought by the otherwise excellent heritage of the Enlightenment. The desire to siphon insight into manageable packets of information, propositions, is subverted in the name of historicality and finitude. A polyphonic, then, is variegated; it is, discontinuous, too, in the sense not of being simply erratic but of marking a break with a tradition that desires diachrony, continuity, and unification.
