Winter Courses

This seminar examines the scholastic approach to the history of philosophy exemplified by Etienne Gilson against the background of its foundation in the thought of Aristotle as it was appropriated by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. It examines the role that philosophy or theology's history plays in the conceptual constructions of scholastic thinkers, and what they think is truly first and deepest in the history they so study....  [more info here]

*NOTE: This course is only available to ICS Junior Members and to students who have previously taken the course "Biblical Foundations: Narrative, Wisdom, and the Art of Interpretation" (ICS 1108AC / 2108AC ).

This is a course for new and aspiring principals and leadership teams. The course provides frameworks and tools for leadership in making the connections between the vision of a school, the budgeting process, and fundraising.

The course starts with an introduction to Henri Nouwen’s spirituality of fundraising. It continues with an introduction to the basic financial documents that a principal should be able to read. It explores the art of communicating the story told by school budgets as a necessary element of fundraising. It concludes with the processes necessary to gain competency in working with both school boards and staffs (with an emphasis on financial and advancement staff) on the financial aspects of school management.

This is a remote learning course consisting of three synchronous discussions and three virtual school visits using online video and thirteen weeks of asynchronous online interaction.... [more info here]

NOTE: A Team Audit option is available for school board members and executive leadership teams who wish to take this course together. Please email our Registrar directly at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu for more details.

This version of the “Issues in Phenomenology” course will centre on the issue of spirituality. Drawing on its German roots in Hegel and Husserl, the phenomenological notion of spirituality [geistigkeit] is understood to be a (perhaps THE) constitutive factor in all human social activity. The course will look at the introduction of this notion of spirituality in Hegel and its crucial re-development in Husserlian phenomenology. It will then trace the development of that term through Derrida’s reading of Heidegger in Of Spirit and into Michel Henry’s use of spirit in his notion of a “barbaristic” culture that he finds to be currently dominant in Western culture. We will end by examining the implications of this account of spirituality for our understanding of religion and of oppression (especially sexism and racism)....  [more info here]

*NOTE: This course is only available to ICS Junior Members and to students who have previously taken the course "Religion, Life, and Society: Reformational Philosophy" (ICS 1107AC / 2107AC ).

In the first chapter of his little book Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913-1922 (2006), Alasdair MacIntyre asks, “What would it have been in that period of German history in which Heidegger grew up, served his philosophical apprenticeship, and became the most influential of twentieth century German philosophers to have lived quite otherwise as a philosopher, to have consistently taken seriously both the implications for one’s life outside philosophy of one’s philosophical enquiries and the implications for one’s philosophy of one’s other activities?”

In this seminar we will explore the implications of philosophical inquiry for the everyday practices of philosophers as well as the implications of our everyday concerns for our philosophical practices, with particular attention to the relevance of our political circumstances for this exploration. We will do so with particular attention to the diverse examples offered by the early careers of three philosophers living through what Husserl called the ‘crisis’ of European thought and culture in the 1920s and 30s: Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, and Herman Dooyeweerd. Both in our seminar conversations and in our written papers for this seminar we will consider what we may learn for our own practices from comparing these examples.... [more info here]

* Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC.

In the middle of the 20th century, four women at the University of Oxford began careers that would revolutionize the fields of ethics and analytic philosophy. Elizabeth Anscombe, Wittgenstein’s student and translator, integrated ordinary language philosophy with Aristotelian practical reasoning. Philippa Foot defended the objectivity of morality, invented the Trolley problem, and articulated a modern account of ethical naturalism. Mary Midgley challenged reductionism and sociobiology while developing a fulsome account of our relationship to non-human animals. Iris Murdoch, through story as much as treatise, brought analytic philosophy into conversation with Continental philosophy, Eastern philosophy, and Platonic moral realism. This seminar examines the philosophy and legacy of these four women, friends, pioneers, and philosophers.... [more info here]