Faculty of Theology professor Dr. Darren Dias, OP has been awarded a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust in conjunction with Profs. Stephan van Erp, Inigo Bocken, and William Desmond of KU Leuven to work on a multi-year project entitled Metaphysics, Contemplation and the Religious Life.
The project, which will see the University of St. Michael’s College and Leuven each host a conference, includes the appointment of Dr. Jacob Benjamins to a post-doctoral position at St. Michael’s to teach and work on conference planning. The project’s work, which falls under the grant’s Widening Horizons in Philosophical Theology initiative, will run from 2022 to 2024.
The project, explains Dias, will explore the tension between metaphysics and theology using methods familiar to continental philosophy—an approach rooted in the thought of 19th- and 20th-century Western Europe—to examine the contemplative practices of the philosophical and theological schools of religious orders and congregations. The project will see scholars working in phenomenology and metaphysics, as well as systematic, mystical, and historical theology, calling on contemplative practices from within the religious schools as a way to support new, practical forms of thought in the twenty-first century.
Whereas the past century has seen a rise in a perceived disconnect between metaphysics and theology, this joint project aims to demonstrate that there exists a “metaphysics of contemplation,” which is based not in an abstract approach but grounded in historical, communal, and performative ways of encountering reality as a whole, he says.
There are broad practical applications to the project, notes Benjamins.
“We would like to demonstrate that religious orders have the resources available to enrich spiritual traditions in modern life,” he says.
The first seminar will take place at Leuven December 1 to 4, 2022, hosted by the university’s Interfaculty Centre for Catholic Thought, with a second conference at St. Michael’s March 22 to 24, 2023.