On Wednesday, February 12 at 7:00 pm, Dr. Philip Walsh will present the next topic in his series, “Thinking Out Loud: A Philosophical Perspective on Contemporary Issues.” His subject: “What is Faith? A Philosophical Inquiry.”
“What does it mean to ‘have faith’ or “be faithful” or ‘be a person of faith’?” asked Dr. Walsh, “This talk will conduct a conceptual analysis of faith. Is faith the same as belief? Does it need to be based on evidence? Is faith voluntary or is your faith, in some sense, not really up to you? Is faith necessarily religious faith? Or can there be other kinds of faith, and do all these varieties of faith have something essential in common? This talk explores these questions and more, and continues the broad theme of the relationship between philosophy and religion from the previous talk.
Dr. Walsh continued, “Philosophy is both a historical tradition and a method of rational inquiry. It begins with the idea that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ The philosopher is one who examines why we think the way we do about issues that are central to the human condition. But philosophical debates can start to sound very abstract and disconnected from our everyday lives. This lecture series aims to bring philosophy back to the public square by illuminating the continued relevance of philosophical thinking to contemporary issues that matter to us.”
Dr. Walsh is a resident of Bernardsville and a faculty member in the philosophy department at Fordham University. A graduate of Villanova University, he received his PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. His published work focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. He teaches a wide variety of courses, including “Human Nature,” “Philosophy and Popular Culture,” “Chinese Philosophy,” and “Philosophy of Technology.” Dr. Walsh is on a mission to bring philosophy out of the classroom and into the public eye. His motto comes from the great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.”
There is no charge to attend the program, but advance sign-up is requested. Click here to sign up.