Description
Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language".
Lecture 3: No Last Words: Language as Unfinished Business
Intelligent life has something to do with knowing what to do next, and how to 'go on'. The focus of knowledge is not necessarily the would-be final, or exhaustive, system. We can learn something about the nature of knowing if we think about the sorts of knowledge involved in physical crafts, where a good and credible performance makes ever new performances possible.
This also reminds us of the significance of our having learned our language from others and of our developing our thinking through exchange and not simply soliloquy. We speak in the hope of recognition. And our language carries in it a moment of radical trust in the meaningfulness of what we 'exchange' as well as an awareness of how we are all answerable to what is not only the aggregate of what we all know already.
Again, the notion of 'unconditioned intelligent energy' comes into focus.
Recorded 7 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's New College.
Professor Jeffrey Stout, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Religion since Cicero". It is the first lecture in the series 'Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King’.
The term 'religion' has roots in Ancient Rome. It can be used...
Published 05/02/17
Professor Richard English delivers a Gifford Lecture entitled 'Nationalism, Terrorism and Religion'.
Between them, nationalism, terrorism and religion have substantially shaped the modern world. From the First World War to the 9/11 Wars, from the politics of Empire to the process of...
Published 03/07/17