'A New Humanity':
Abolition or Absolution?
with Andrew Fellows
on
Friday, December 4th at 7:30pm GMT (2:30pm EST)
Part 8 of 8 in our 'Humanity Matters: Re-enchanting Homo Sapiens' series of webinars.
If humans are in need of improvement how can this be accomplished? Should we aim to become 'posthuman' by merging with the machine, or is there a better path to our renewal?
Every major worldview has to explain human brokenness in some way. This webinar examines the various accounts offered today and asks whether they hold up under investigation. ...
As modern people, we like to think that we have got things firmly under control. We don't do well, as a rule, with those aspects of life which defy our management - the great realities which resist being tamed. Take the seasons, for example. Traditionally, the ebb and flow of...
'What is time?', asked St Augustine. 'If no one asks me I know, but if I wish to explain it, I know not'. To be human is to have a consciousness of time, including a sense of our mortality. Andrew Fellows examines what it is to live in time as...
Contemporary Western culture sees itself as broadly liberal, a value framework which has given us democracy, the rule of law, toleration, human rights and a market economy – all things to be grateful for. With the collapse of Communism, there was an air of self-congratulation. Some spoke of the ‘end...
In this session, we ask what our longings mean: where do they come from, and where do they move us? Our desires, though frequently misdirected and incomplete, provide the essential key to understanding ourselves. ...
Blaise Pascal wrote that 'man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed'. So, how is it that we know and how do we know that we know? This webinar examines how humans apprehend the world, and the light this sheds on...
The sheer range of human capacities is astonishing, even awe-inspiring. How do we account for them all? Today, we are used to explaining human talents reductively, boiling them down quickly to something more basic. This session will beat a path towards an understanding of our humanity which elevates us, even...
Joshua Kellard introduces John Eliot, the Cambridge graduate whose work as a translator and missionary visionary in 17th century New England was well ahead of his time. Jesus College, Cambridge, with its 12th Century chapel, cloistered courts and sleepy wooded surroundings, does not seem a likely springboard for a globe-trotting missionary...
Consciousness is an undeniable fact and yet a profound mystery, too. What does it mean to be conscious? And what might consciousness lead us to say about our humanity? In this webinar, we will take a closer look at our interior life and consider the wonders to which it points. ...