Ricoeur Conference on Poetics and Religion

It is killing me that I cannot go, but I felt I ought to mention here that there is an upcoming conference at Leuven on Paul Ricoeur with the theme poetics and religion. I would love to go, but simply cannot. Here is a description of the conference, pulled in its entirety from their website:

Theme

Paul Ricoeur’s investigations into the hermeneutics of text and human being, the poetic force of symbol, metaphor, and narrative are a continuous source of reflection. The hermeneutical paradigm of text and interpretation in From Text to Action, the ‘little ethics’ in Oneself as Another, the incomplete ontology with its vehemence to be completed, the recurring themes of liberty, hope, poetics, attestation, recognition… are challenging issues for theologians as well as philosophers, revealing numerous fruitful trajectories between philosophy, ethics and theology.

The international conference ‘Paul Ricoeur: Poetics and Religion’ wants to contribute to the course of interpretation that Ricoeur’s oeuvre has instigated. The conference will be dedicated to aspects of the intersection between motivation and argumentation, between conviction and critique. Our purpose is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue on Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy and its interaction with various theological disciplines.

The conference is organised around five general themes: the fundamental relation between theology and philosophy; textual, biblical and theological hermeneutics; metaphysics; ethics and morality; and practical theology.

No mention of a dealine, so I imagine there is still time to register.

If you go, tell me how it was - and if you like Ricoeur and good theology, spread the word. (Ben?)

Streetwise: Paul Ricoeur on modernity

"[Science and technology may serve and ideological function, rather than simply eclipsing the sacred.] That scientific ideal that earlier had served as an absolute measure for evaluating the overall progress of modernity has itself become problematic.

"We might cite as an example the arguments advanced by [Jurgen] Habermas that seek to tie empirical knowledge and the exploitation of nature to one limited interest, the interest in theoretically and practically controlling the human environment. Modernity then appears as the inordinate inflation of one interest at the expense of all others, especially of our interests for communication and emancipation. This leveling of the hierarchy of interests, and the one-dimensional person that results from it, are ideological phenomena to the extent that they serve to make every social agent accept the autonomous, devouring, and cancerous functioning of the industrial system given over to growth without limit or end beyond itself. Here is a consideration that may chill the zealots of modernity. And this same consideration ought to lead us to call into question the judgement modernity passes on what it makes appear as an archaism [i.e. 'the sacred']. This judgement in its turns has already begun to be judged itself. Modernity is neither a fact nor our destiny. It is henceforth an open question."

Paul Ricoeur, "Manifestation and Proclamation", in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. p. 63