Organized by Dustin Atlas, the upcoming Affect, God, and Philosophy conference at the University of Dayton seamlessly integrates Jewish thought and philosophy into continental philosophy and theory. The program is arranged around classical, modern, political, and aesthetic affects. What follows below is from the conference program online:

This conference seeks to revisit the gods of the philosophers—from the ancient to the present—to better understand what philosophers mean when they talk about ‘God’. This conference proposes that the God of the philosophers be revisited from the perspective of affect and emotion.

What do philosophers mean when they use the word ‘God’? Pascal’s famous dictum drew the battle lines: in writing “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob – not of the philosophers and scholars,” a difference is declared, but what the difference is, or what these two gods are, remains unclear.

One question orients our investigation: What can we learn about the God of the philosophers when we look at it through the lens of affect?

Engaging both philosophy and theology, and using mysticism and aesthetics to warp the border between them, the goal is to shed new light on the affective dimensions of the philosopher’s God.

Saturday SCHEDULE

10:00AM-NOON

Classical Affects​

Emily Filler, moderator

Myrna Gabbe, “Plato on the Gods and Lamentation”

Ryan J. Johnson, “The Stoic Deus Sive Natura and Eating God”

Zachary J. Braiterman, “Dance of the Two Camps: The Rational Affects of Moses Maimonides”

​

1:30PM-3:30PM

Modern Affects

​Jenny Caplan, moderator

 Dustin Atlas, “The Relation to Mute Things: Affect at the Edge of Buber’s Philosophical Anthropology”

Liane F. Carlson, “Unnameable Desire in Schelling’s Ages of the World.”

Gail Hamner, “Herder’s Ontology of Feeling”

3:45PM-5:00PM

Keynote

Elliot Wolfson, “Jouissance and the Suffering of God: Evil and Theopoetic Desire in Boehme, Schelling, and the Kabbalah”

5:15PM-7:15PM

Political Affects

         Elliot A. Ratzman, moderator

 Biko Mandela Gray, “Wonder what God had in Mind’: Affect, Theodicy, and Whiteness”

Larisa Reznik, “‘Extorted’ Affect: Theological Realism and the Jargon of Authenticity”

Donovan Schaefer, “The Wild Experiment: Emotion, Science, and Secularism”

Sunday SCHEDULE

                                                                                                10:00AM-NOON

Aesthetic Affects

           Michael Romero, moderator​

Larisa Reznik, “‘Extorted’ Affect: Theological Realism and the Jargon of Authenticity”

Donovan Schaefer, “The Wild Experiment: Emotion, Science, and Secularism”

Mark Cauchi, “What It Feels Like When God Dies: Melancholia”

Sharday C. Mosurinjohn, “Studying Boredom-as-Spiritual-Crisis through Affect, Aesthetics and Object-Oriented Ontology”

​Lunch

NOON-1:15PM

Keynote:                                                                                  1:30PM-2:45PM

Amy Hollywood, “Recalcitrant (Women)”