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FALL 2024 SCHEDULE

DATE
SPEAKER / RESPONDENT
TOPIC
VIDEO
Mon Sept 9,  4:00-5:30 pm, Hemmingson Auditorium, (HEMM 004)
Geoffrey Bagwell, Philosophy, Spokane Community College


Bagwell poster

Bagwell
"Why Do We Do What We Believe to Be Bad?"

  

Common sense seems to suggest that our desires and emotions sometimes drive us to do what we believe to be bad. You may have, for instance, at least once in your life said something hurtful to someone you love out of anger knowing that it was wrong to do so. The idea that we sometimes do what we believe is bad because of our desires and our feelings has been the prevailing explanation among philosophers for centuries. Yet, it is not the only explanation; there is at least one alternative. Plato argues that all people want what is good and no one, in fact, does what he or she thinks is bad. When we do bad things, he claims, we do it out of ignorance and confusion about what is good and what is bad. Philosophers have labeled this explanation "intellectualist" and I wish to offer some reasons for thinking that this intellectualist explanation is preferable to the prevailing view of why we sometimes do what we believe is bad.

 

Dr. Geoffrey Bagwell is an instructor of philosophy at Community Colleges of Spokane -- teaching several courses including the history of philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, critical thinking, symbolic logic, and philosophy of mind. Before coming to SCC, Geoffrey was a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and held various teaching appointments before then in Pennsylvania and Maryland. He earned a B.A. from the University of Oregon; an M.A. from St John's College; and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Duquesne University. He recently presented at the Gonzaga Philosophy Department Colloquium.

 
Mon Oct 7, 7:00-8:30 pm, Wolff Auditorium (Jepson 114) Brian B. Clayton, Philosophy Emeritus, Gonzaga University

Brian Clayton

Clayton Shyamalan


" 'I See Dead People': Spiritual Quests in the Films of M. Night Shyamalan"

Cosponsored with the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute as part of their Faith, Film, & Philosophy 2024 Series, with the theme Spiritual Film Themes in a Secular Age:

https://www.gonzaga.edu/ffp2024


M. Night Shyamalan’s early films (from Wide Awake to Lady in the Water) are notable for the presence of spiritual themes such as faith, grace, and hope. While the perception of Shyamalan’s films is that they are thrillers with a twist, his most popular and successful films often raise questions of supernatural agency in the form of fate or even providence. This talk will examine these films and explore these themes in an effort to cast light on Shyamalan’s “project” in the earlier part of his career. This project certainly suggests that spiritual themes have not been “dropped out completely, in keeping with the secularism of the age.” Over against this is the apparent counterevidence of Shyamalan’s films beginning with The Happening, where spiritual themes seem notably absent. The lecture will consider this counterevidence and consider its implications for the view that Shyamalan’s oeuvre shows that there is still room for spiritual themes in popular films.

 

Brian B. Clayton (Philosophy Emeritus, Gonzaga University) taught in the Gonzaga Philosophy Department for over 30 years until his retirement in 2022. He was director of the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute from 2009 to his retirement. Clayton's academic interests include faith and reason, philosophy and film, and semiotics. He is coauthor (with Doug Kries) of Two Wings: Integrating Faith and Reason (Ignatius, 2018) and coeditor (with Richard McClelland) of The Philosophy of Clint Eastwood (University of Kentucky, 2014). Clayton was one of the public speakers for last years' Faith, Film, and Philosophy series, opening the series with his talk "It's a Wonderful Life in the Multiverse."

FFP2024_SpiritualFilmThemes Event poster
Mon Nov 4, 4:00-5:30 pm, Wolff Auditorium, Jepson (JP 114) Darian Spearman, Philosophy, Philosophy, Gonzaga University

DarianSpearman

Spearman2024Nov4Poster
Faith as Vital for Life: Anna Julia Cooper and William James on Belief

Born into slavery in 1858, Anna Julia Cooper went on to study mathematics, literature, and history at Oberlin and the Sorbonne, becoming the fourth Black American woman to earn the Ph.D. in 1911. Cooper is recognized for scholarly contributions to the foundations of Black Feminist thought in the United States, but is less known for her work on value and belief. In the essay “The Gain from a Belief” (1892), Cooper argues for the practical benefits of faith in the face of the skepticism and agnosticism she saw as pervasive in nineteenth century positivism and naturalism. The most important of these benefits is that faith grants one the vital power necessary to live a life committed to the actualization of oneself and others. Cooper’s perspective aligns well with the arguments of William James’ “The Will to Believe” (1896) concerning the legitimacy of beliefs motivated by will and passion. This talk will explore the parallels and contrasts between their views to show the value of faith for a committed and vital life.

Darian Spearman joined the Gonzaga Philosophy Department as Assistant Professor in Fall of 2022. He received a BA degree in religious studies from Carleton College in 2011 and a MA in philosophy from Southern Illinois University in 2014. A particularly valuable dimension of Spearman’s education at Southern Illinois was mentoring he received from Jesuit priest Fr. Joseph Brown; Spearman could not have guessed at the time that he would eventually teach at a Jesuit University. He completed his education with a PhD in philosophy from University of Connecticut in 2022. Spearman has a set of interconnected interests with Africana philosophy as the central core and branching out to Black collective identity, the philosophical significance of slave narratives, the importance of myth and mythic narratives, the possibility of animal-human intersubjectivity, and human connection with nature. In his spare time Spearman enjoys hiking, gaming, anime, and cooking.

 

https://www.gonzagabulletin.com/news/philosophy-professor-brings-decolonial-and-africana-thought-to-gu/article_7f99d70a-accd-11ed-98a4-0b1ac5d53228.html  

Mon Dec 2 4:00-5:30 pm, Wolff Auditorium, Jepson (JP 114) Anthony E. Clark, Chinese History / Asian Studies, Whitworth University

Clark_Anthony

Clark_JesuitsinChina_GSC2024Dec2_POSTER
“Jesuit Theater and Canonization: China, Saints, and the Western Enlightenment”

The word “China” is a sixteenth-century Western neologism derived from the name of China’s first imperial dynasty – the Qin , which was commonly Latinized in Jesuit epistolary exchange as “China.” Chinese refer to their own nation as 中國, transliterated as Zhongguo, or the “Middle Kingdom,” and thus the division between how China and the West view the “Middle Kingdom” begins with the fundamental nomenclature self-identification. The Jesuit enterprise during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties (re)presented China to the West in contours that engendered a romanticized “China” exalted by Enlightenment literati who helped inaugurate the Chinoiserie movement and new modes of intellectual discourse. By the mid-nineteenth century the West’s intellectual and aesthetic admiration for China transmuted into an arrogant disdain, and after the Opium War (1839-1842) Jesuits set themselves once again to (re)presenting China in a fashion that would “redeem” it from the pejorative assessment then dominant in the West. This work-in-progress seminar considers how the Society of Jesus served to manufacture the West’s imagination of “China” from popularizing the Western neologism for Zhonguo in the sixteenth century to the production of Jesuit drama in China that wished to refashion, indeed canonize, Chinese culture both within and beyond the Great Wall.

 

Anthony Clark (柯學斌) is Professor of Chinese history and was appointed the Edward B. Lindaman Endowed Chair in 2015. His research centers on the history of China-West (Sino-Western) cultural exchange, conflict and confluence in China, especially the intellectual, scientific, and religious missionary activities during the Qing through Republican eras (1644-1940s). His work considers Chinese historiography, religious interaction between China and the West, and confronts the history of East-West cultural re-presentation during China’s transition from empire to modern nation state. He has published a number of scholarly books on the encounter between Asia and the west, focusing particularly on Christian evangelism in China by Catholic religious orders including the Jesuits. He is also author of the book Catholicism and Buddhism: The Contrasting Lives and Teachings of Jesus and Buddha (Wipf and Stock, 2018).

 

https://anthonyeclark.squarespace.com/about