Monday, January 05, 2015

Gloucestershire Philosophical Society talk this Wednesday.. ‘Buddhism and Fetish...’

There is a new GPS programme up at http://www.glosphilsoc.co.uk/whatson.html  - and the first of these is me talking on a topic related to Buddhism:

January 7th (2015), HC203, FCH Campus: All Welcome..

Dr. David Webster (University of Gloucestershire) will be speaking on the topic of ‘Buddhism and Fetish: How the Western academic world must be more than a bystander to the 21st. Century’s Emerging Buddhisms.’

On first glance religious Orientalism seems to be the European intellectual fetish that refuses to die, to take the post-colonial discourse to heart. In the case of Buddhism, it seems steadfastly fixed and unlikely to shift. Certain recent developments are instructive in demonstrating and understanding this. The talk will use these developments as a case study in exploring the relationship between scholarship and ethics.

Dr. Webster is Subject Group Leader for Religious, Philosophical and Historical Studies at the University. He has studied Philosophy, Hinduism and Buddhist thought in addition to scholarly works on ‘Buddhism and desire’, the nature of belief, and other topics in Buddhist studies and the Philosophy of Religion. He has written about the blues and death in religions. He published Dispirited, Zero Books, in 2012. David conducts interviews found on http://philosvids.wordpress.com. He is also involved in the TAROSA (teaching across religions in South Asia) project, and has a strong interest in e-learning.

No comments:

Post a Comment