Gifford Lectures (audio)

Baroness Onora O’Neill presents a special Gifford Lecture in Memory of Professor Susan Manning (1953-2013), entitled 'From Toleration to Freedom of Expression'. This lecture is part of the University's Gifford Lecture series. For more than a century, the Gifford Lectures have enabled scholars to advance theological and philosophical thought. Recorded on 28 October 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library Hall.

Professor Steven Pinker delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity". Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been in decline over the course of history. This lecture explores how this decline could have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature. Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition, which has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the American Psychological Association, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.Recorded on Wednesday 29 May 2013 at McEwan Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion". Lecture 6: Inside the 'Planetary Boundaries': Gaia's Estate Although the resources of "paganism", New Age cults, renewed themes of Christian incarnation, and process theology offer rich mythological insights, it is not clear whether they are at the scale and sensitivity needed to face Gaia. A search for collective rituals should begin with works of art and experiments able to explore in sufficient detail the scientific and political composition of the common world. Recorded on Thursday 28 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion". Lecture 5: War of the Worlds: Humans against Earthbound In the absence of any Providence to settle matters of concern — and thus of nature, its barely disguised substitute — no peaceful resolution of Gaian conflicts can be expected. The recognition of a state of war and the designation of enmity is indispensable if a state of diplomacy is later to be reached. Under the pressure of so many apocalyptic injunctions, what is a Gaian political theology? Recorded on Tuesday 26 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion". Lecture 4: The Anthropocene and the Destruction of the Image of the Globe The paradox of what is called "globalization" is that there is no "global globe" to hold the multitude of concerns that have to be assembled to replace the "politics of nature" of former periods. What are the instruments —always local and partial— that are sensitive enough to Gaia's components for the limited technical and emotional apparatus of assembled humans? Recorded on Monday 25 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion". Lecture 3: The Puzzling Face of a Secular Gaia In spite of its reputation, Gaia is not half science and half religion. It offers a much more enigmatic set of features that redistribute agencies in all possible ways (as does this most enigmatic term "anthropocene"). Thus, it is far from clear what it means to "face Gaia". It might require us to envisage it very differently from the various divinities of the past (including those derived from nature). Recorded on Thursday 21 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion". Lecture 2: A Shift in Agency - with apologies to David Hume Once nature and the natural sciences are fully ''secularized'', it becomes possible to revisit also the category of the supernatural. Then, a different landscape opens which can be navigated through an attention to agencies and their composition. Such a freedom of movement allows the use of the rich anthropological literature to compare the ways different "collectives" manage to assemble and totalize different sets of agencies. Recorded on Tuesday 19 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Bruno Latour delivers the Gifford Lecture series entitled "Facing Gaia. A new enquiry into Natural Religion". Lecture 1: 'Once Out of Nature' - Natural Religion as a Pleonasm The set of questions around the two words "natural religion" implies that only the second word is a coded and thus a disputed category, the first one being taken for granted and uncoded. But if it can be shown that the very notion of nature is a theological construct, we might be able to shift the problem somewhat: the question becomes not to save or resurrect "natural religion", but to dispose of it by offering at last a ''secular'' version of nature and of the natural sciences. Recorded on Monday 18 February 2013 at St Cecilia's Hall, the University of Edinburgh.

Lecture 5: Getting behind noise in Christian history So far, the story has largely been about overt history: the positive utterances and actions of public Christianity. We turn now to further and more complex varieties of silence: first the phenomenon of ‘Nicodemism’, simultaneously audible to those with ears to hear, and not to be heard by others. New politic silences were caused by the fissuring of Western Christianity, through efforts to sidestep the consequent violence and persecution; a rediscovery of classical discussion of silence took place on the eve of the Reformation in the writings of Italian civic humanists, and this tradition fused with the debate about Nicodemism and the place of quiet versus overt toleration. Over the centuries, particular groups who represented the ‘Other’, some Christian, some not, have made themselves invisible simply in order to survive: crypto-Judaism and its effect on Christianity are discussed, together with examples of Christian Nicodemism, notably the Reformation ‘Family of Love’ and the growth of a distinctive gay sub-culture within nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-Catholicism. We move to those things best left unsaid in order to build identity in Christian organisations and newly-evangelised regions, and the way in which themes and dogmatic position once considered vital and central for the Christian life have been quietly abandoned without much acknowledgement of their one-time importance. We scrutinise Christian problems in dealing honestly with sexuality, with a specific example. Finally we turn to the confused reaction of Churches to shame over past sin, the example being complicity in the slave trade. Recorded Tuesday 1 May 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh. Audio version.

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood presents, "David Hume and Civil Society". David Hume's thinking was radical and thorough. This was his strength, but also a source of ammunition to his enemies. He has been interpreted as being scathingly negative in all of his conclusions - whether about morality, religion or basic epistemology. The lecture will argue that Hume has much that is positive to teach us about all of these topics. However, the main focus will be upon the nature and foundations of Civil Society, including both ethical and social insights, and their relevance to contemporary talk of 'broken' or 'fractured' society. Stewart Sutherland taught philosophy in Bangor, Wales, Stirling, and King's College London, where he held the Chair of the History and Philosophy of Religion. He was subsequently Principal of King’s College, London, Vice Chancellor of the University of London, and Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. He is a fellow of the British Academy and Past-President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Recorded 25 October 2011 at the Playfair Library, Edinburgh. Audio version.