On Thursday 21st May, 5.15pm - 7.00pm, Prof. Joel Rasmussen will present an introduction to Guardini’s Der Gegensatz (1925), offering English-speaking audiences a clear account of its method and its critique of reason in relation to human experience.
The lecture begins by outlining Guardini’s distinctive “enantiological” method, before turning to what he calls the “epistemological problem of the concrete”: how the lived experience of being human can be known in a genuinely philosophical or “scientific” way. Rejecting the opposing extremes of rationalism—where experience is reduced to abstract concepts—and intuitionism—where it is left at the level of inarticulate feeling—Guardini proposes instead a “critique of concrete reason.”
At the heart of this approach is a disciplined, four-step spiritual exercise. By holding opposing polarities in tension and ultimately “letting go,” this method seeks to arrive at a form of “scientifically formed insight” into the unity of human existence.
Joel Rasmussen is Associate Professor of Theology and Concurrent Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA). He is formerly Professor of Historical and Philosophical Theology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield College, and is currently an Associate Fellow of Campion Hall.
Booking is now open. Both in-person and online attendance options are available. You can reserve your place by registering via the link below.
