Tom Friedman, Looking Up (2015) © Tom Friedman. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.
| This project looked at aspiration as the link between human creativity and social and cultural processes of transforming and enriching life. |
This project supported the Visiting Fellowship of Günter Thomas from Ruhr-University Bochum. In collaboration with William Schweiker (Divinity), Thomas explored the place of aspirations from the vantage point of moral philosophy, religious thought, and socio-cultural analysis. The project took it as intuitively the case that one of the most profound characteristics of human beings is to seek to realize their aspirations in actual life. The experience of aspirations coming alive, really motivating thought and action, is the starting point of all social, religious, and academic creativity. The project considered aspirations as the key missing link, under-examined in current thought, between human creativity and social and cultural processes of transforming and enriching life. The project raised three fundamental questions: (1) How and under what conditions do human aspirations become powerful drivers of innovation in culture, religion, the sciences, and society?; (2) What are the conditions that endanger human aspirations from motivating thought and action for the sake of enhancing life?; and (3) How do we distinguish between aspirations that are destructive of human life from those aspirations that respect and enhance life?
Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics; also in the College
University of Chicago
William Schweiker works in the field of theological ethics. His scholarship and teaching engage theological and ethical questions attentive to global dynamics, comparative religious ethics, history of ethics, and hermeneutical philosophy. He is especially known as a visiting professor at...
Professor of Systematic Theology, Ethics and Fundamental Theology
Ruhr-University Bochum
Günter Thomas is Professor for Theology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum/Germany. He received a Doctorate in Theology from Heidelberg University and a Doctorate in Sociology from Tübingen University. His research interests are “Religion, Media and Culture,” “Medical...
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Reading list for the Living Aspirations research project at the Neubauer Collegium
Human life in all forms of communal existence can only be understood through a clear grasp of the dynamics of human aspirations. They are the missing link between human creativity and...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Reading list for the Living Aspirations research project at the Neubauer Collegium
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Human life in all forms of communal existence can only be understood through a clear grasp of the dynamics of human aspirations. They are the missing link between human creativity and...
