Please join us for the following talk!
“Future Humanities”
Robert Gibbs
Director, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto
Centre for Studies in Religion and Society Visiting Fellow, University of Victoria
Monday 8 September, 4.00-5.00 pm
Clearihue A 127
Reception to follow
“Future Humanities” Abstract: Despite rumours to the contrary, the humanities have an important future, and further they explore the future and help produce the future of our society. I will raise questions about the humanities in three broad areas, questions to provoke a deepening of our thinking about the future humanities. The first question is How will we read (and write) in the future? By contrasting the development of the humanist page in the early modern period with the preceding commentary page, we will gain some dialectical distance for interpreting the new digital ‘pages’ on our ‘desktops’. The second question is Why does humanities research belong in the university? By looking back to the 19th C debates at the founding of the University of Berlin, we will get some insight into what role educating students has in advancing humanities research. The third question is, What will be the distinctive role of the humanities in relation to the rest of the university? We can contrast a view of philosophy as legislative for all sciences with a notion that the conflict between faculties is inherent and beneficial for the university. Such questioning directs inquiry to the future, most of all embodied in our students.
Biography: Robert Gibbs is Inaugural Director of the Jackman Humanities Institute and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. His current work is located on the borderlines of Philosophy and Religion, with a comparative and historical focus on Law and Ethics. He has worked on Ethics in relation to the modern Jewish philosophical tradition and has numerous publications in this and in related fields in continental philosophy, including two books, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas and Why Ethics? Signs of Responsibilities. He has taught in the Philosophy departments at the University of Toronto and St. Louis University, and in the Religion Departments at Princeton University and (affiliated) at the University of Toronto. He is cross-appointed to the University of Toronto departments of French,German, Religion, and the Centre for Jewish Studies.
He has had research grants for projects on Messianic Epistemology, and the Rule of Law, and his current research grant supports a project on Reason and Authority: Islamic and Jewish Legal Reasoning. This inter-disciplinary work has led to collaboration with various other humanities departments, as well as with the Faculty of Law. He is President of the International Rosenzweig Society, and serves on various academic advisory boards and journal editorial boards. He is a member of the Advisory Board of CHCI (Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes), and was a member of the Humanities Initiative Steering Committee for CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research). He is a member of the Governing Council of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).