Albert the Great, Meister Eckhart, and Women’s Spirituality

 This seminar examines Meister Eckhart’s mystical discourse and its conceptual configuration as a ‘contradictory monism’ against the backdrop of the “Dionysian” tradition of Albert the Great (and Thomas Aquinas) and the current efflorenscence of women’s mysticism represented by Marguerite Porete.

220409 W27
ICH5155HS L0101
Dr. Robert (Bob) Sweetman
Thursdays, 10:00am - 1:00pm
Online Synchronous

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration. 

Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Genealogical Approach to the History of Philosophy

This seminar examines that philosophical approach to the history of philosophy that travels under the name of “genealogy”.  It does so in terms of selected texts of the tradition’s to major figures: its founder, Friederich Nietzsche and the presently ubiquitous Michel Foucault. It examines the role that genealogical study of the history of philosophy has in the philosophical construction of its practitioners and what they think is truly first and deepest in the history they so study.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 120406 / 220406 W26
ICH5710*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 10am - 1pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Required Texts:

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (any edition will do)

2. Paul Rabinow ed., The Foucault Reader (New York, Pantheon, 1984)

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration. 

Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise

This seminar examines the ancient and medieval discipline of rhetoric and its practitioners’ claim that it represents a properly philosophical discourse. It does so in terms of a selection of texts drawn from the works of Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Abelard and Heloise. In the process, it explores the relationship between affectivity and discursive validity as an implication of the cultural intent of philosophy, i.e., whether historical philosophies are best thought of as a speculative sciences, arts of right living, or whether they call out to be thought of in other terms altogether.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 220407 W25
ICH5720HS L0101 / L9101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 2 - 5pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration. 

Aristotle, Aquinas and the Scholastic Approach to the History of Philosophy

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.

Dr. Bob Sweetman

ICS 120401 / 220401 W24

ICH3313H / ICH6313H L6201*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Wednesdays, 10am - 1pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 12, 2024. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

Religion, Life and Society: Reformational Philosophy

An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

Dr. Bob Sweetman

ICS 1107AC / 2107AC W23

ICT3702HS / ICT6702HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 10am - 1pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

Spiritual Exercise as Christian Philosophy from Augustine to Bonaventure

This seminar examines the notion of spiritual exercise as it evolved in Hellenic and Hellenistic philosophy to understand the emergence of ‘Christian philosophy’ as a cultural project within the Augustinian tradition of theology and spirituality, a tradition that begins in Augustine’s own writings and can be said to find its medieval high point in the work of St. Bonaventure.


Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 120402 / 220402 W23
ICH5017HS L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Thursdays, 6pm - 9pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)


Syllabus


Enrolment Notes:
To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 13, 2023. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.


*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

Individuality in the Franciscan Thought of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham

This seminar will examine the doctrine of individuality developed by the Franciscan thinkers John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham and the configuration of their thought as one or another form of metaphysical “individualism.”  It does so historically against the backdrop of both Franciscan spirituality and the contested “Aristotelianism” of their university environment. The seminar is both an illustration of the value in and a critical reappraisal of a problem-historical analysis of philosophy that centres upon philosophical accounts of our daily experience of both universality in the world, i.e., the fact that creatures come to us in kinds, and individuality, i.e., the fact that it is individual creatures that come to us in kinds.

Dr. Bob Sweetman ICS 120404 / 220404 W22

ICH5151HS L0101* Remote (Online Synchronous) Thursdays, 2pm - 5pm ET (MWS, MA, PhD) Syllabus Enrolment Notes: To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations. *Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

Religion, Life, and Society: Reformational Philosophy

An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

Dr. Bob Sweetman

ICS 1107AC / 2107AC W22

ICT3702HS / ICT6702HS L0101*

Remote (Online Synchronous)

Tuesdays, 2pm - 5pm ET

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes:

To register for this course, email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Last date to register January 14, 2022. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration.

Leadership in Context (Reformational Philosophy Applied)

This course will present an understanding of schooling in terms of the Reformational tradition in philosophy. It will present a Reformational reading of and orientation to the modern world in which schooling presently takes place. In the process it will examine schooling and leadership within classrooms and schools in terms of key distinctions to be kept in mind when examining that world. In other words, schooling and leadership within schooling will be placed within today’s complex social and cultural environment. That human environment will in turn be placed within a cosmos wide perspective. From this perspective the cosmos itself finds itself within the covenant by which creatures partner in love with the God who creates, upholds, and redeems the creation in the intricate dance of meaningful existence. Schooling will thereby manifest a distinct identity as an elemental building block of our contemporary socio-cultural arrangements. Its identity will relate to other societal institutions and practices to which it is connected by countless ties.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 1107AC / 2107AC S21
Blended (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)
Intensive, August 16 - 20, 2021

(MA-EL, MWS)

Syllabus

Enrolment Notes: 

Last date to register July 9, 2021. Maximum enrolment of nine (9) students. ICS reserves the right to decline registrations.

*NOTE: Approved for Area 2 of the CSTC

IDS: Meaning/Being/Knowing

“Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood.” With these enigmatic words, which form part of the introduction to his magisterial New Critique of Theoretical Thought, the neo-Calvinist philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd signals his intention to de-centre the central concern of Ontology by relativizing (which is to say thoroughly relating) the philosophical notion of Being to Meaning, even to the point of (re-)defining creation’s being as meaning—all in the conviction that this will enable us to engage in (rather than circumvent or supersede) the work of Ontology (and thus Epistemology) in a truly systematic, integrally Christian, way. Although it might seem as though Dooyeweerd is merely substituting one metaphysical idea for another, his reference to the nature of our selfhood here indicates that, for all its theoretical import for Philosophical Anthropology, this highly suggestive proposal also has profound implications for how we might both appreciate and pull upon our deepest (religious) self-knowledge, which takes shape before the face of God as we face the world. To do the work of Ontology well—to gain genuine insight into the “nature of things” and to identify the contours and coherence of the world’s general structures without undermining investigation or denaturing experience—will require that we also draw upon a pre-theoretical form of Knowing, and a spiritual grounding and hope, that will always precede and exceed our understanding.

Drs. Nik Ansell, Ron Kuipers, Bob Sweetman
ICS 2400AC W21
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Wednesdays, 10am - 1pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Rhetoric as Philosophy from Isocrates to the Age of Abelard and Heloise

This seminar examines the ancient and medieval discipline of rhetoric and its practitioners’ claim that it represents a properly philosophical discourse. It does so in terms of a selection of texts drawn from the works of Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Abelard and Heloise. In the process, it explores the relationship between affectivity and discursive validity as an implication of the cultural intent of philosophy, i.e., whether historical philosophies are best thought of as a speculative sciences, arts of right living, or whether they call out to be thought of in other terms altogether.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 220407 W21
ICH5720HS L0101 / L9101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Tuesdays, 2 - 5pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration. 

Religion, Life and Society: Reformational Philosophy

An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 1107AC / 2107AC W21
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Mondays, 8pm - 11pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

*Attention TST students: if you are interested in taking this course for credit, you must petition your college of registration to count the course credit toward your degree program.

Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Genealogical Approach to the History of Philosophy

This seminar examines that philosophical approach to the history of philosophy that travels under the name of “genealogy”.  It does so in terms of selected texts of the tradition’s to major figures: its founder, Friederich Nietzsche and the presently ubiquitous Michel Foucault.  It examines the role that genealogical study of the history of philosophy has in the philosophical construction of its practitioners and what they think is truly first and deepest in the history they so study.

Dr. Bob Sweetman
ICS 120406 / 220406 F20
ICH5710HF L0101*
Remote (Online Synchronous)
Tuesdays, 10am - 1pm

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*Attention TST students: you have to contact the ICS Registrar to complete your registration. 

Leadership in Context (Reformational Philosophy Applied)

An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought. Together these critiques provide a cosmic background to thinking about the cultural work of schooling, of pedagogy, and of leadership in classroom and schooling.

All-online 13 weeks (January 13 - April 9, 2020)

ICSD 1107AC / 2107AC W20
Dr. Bob Sweetman, and Samir Gassanov
Distance (Online)

(MA-EL)

Syllabus

Spiritual Exercise as Christian Philosophy from Augustine to Bonaventure

CANCELLED

This seminar examines the notion of spiritual exercise as it evolved in Hellenic and Hellenistic philosophy to understand the emergence of ‘Christian philosophy’ as a cultural project within the Augustinian tradition of theology and spirituality, a tradition that begins in Augustine’s own writings and can be said to find its medieval high point in the work of St. Bonaventure.

ICS 220402 W20
ICH5017HS L0101*
Dr. Bob Sweetman
Thursdays, 9:30am – 12:30pm
Location: ICS Learning Studio, Knox College

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*TST students have to register with ICS Registrar to complete registration. ICS reserves the right to decline late registrations due to limited space.

CANCELLED

IDS: Naming the Divine Within and Without

With close attention to seminal, pre-modern Christian thinkers such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Thomas Aquinas and in close conversation with contemporary scholars such as Clouser, Cupitt, McFague, Moltmann, and Rorty, along with key resources from the arts, literature, and popular culture, this course will explore some of the ways in which a traditional understanding of transcendence and immanence, rooted in the extremely influential notion of the analogia entis, has been maintained, modified, challenged, and reconceived since the advent of: the “linguistic turn,” the much-heralded “end of metaphysics,” and the alleged peril (and promise!) of a “post-truth” era. Is there a biblically oriented way of departing from (the ghost of) Perfect Being notions in theology and philosophy? Can we develop a view of transcendence and immanence that is not overly tied to spatial metaphors (“transcendence and beyond”)? Is mysticism the antidote to metaphysics? What grounds our privileged, centring, or root metaphors? Might a post-or-non-realist view of truth help us reconnect with our faith, and vice-versa? Are there key non-academic (re)sources that can speak to us as we negotiate these and other questions?

ICS 2400AC W20
Drs. Nik Ansell, Robert (Bob) Sweetman
Tuesdays, 1:45pm - 4:45pm
Location: ICS Learning Studio, Knox College

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Aristotle, Aquinas and the Scholastic Approach to the History of Philosophy

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.

ICS 220401 F19
ICH3313HF L0101 / ICH6313HF L0101*
Dr. Bob Sweetman
Thursdays, 9:30am - 12:30pm
Location: Classroom 2, Knox College
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*TST students have to register with ICS Registrar to complete registration. ICS reserves the right to decline late registrations due to limited space.

Religion, Life and Society: Reformational Philosophy

An exploration of central issues in philosophy, as addressed by Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and the “Amsterdam School” of neoCalvinian thought. The course tests the relevance of this tradition for recent developments in Western philosophy. Special attention is given to critiques of foundationalism, metaphysics, and modernity within reformational philosophy and in other schools of thought.

ICS 1107AC/2107AC F19
ICT3702HF L0101 / ICT6702HF L0101*
Dr. Bob Sweetman
Wednesdays, 9:30am – 12:30pm
Location: ICS Learning Studio, Knox College

(MWS, MA, PhD)

Syllabus


*TST students have to register with ICS Registrar to complete registration. ICS reserves the right to decline late registrations due to limited space.

IDS - Order, Wonder, Love: Reflections on the (True) Origin and End of Philosophy

This course will examine the triangulation of wonder, order, and love via reflections on the origin and end of philosophy. In so doing it picks up on the theme of order and love that became so important in the Winter 2018 IDS on the Legacy of Seerveld, Hart, and Olthuis, adding to order and love, reflections on wonder both as it functions within contemporary continental thought and within Reformational perspective.

*Note the course starts on January 14, 2019

ICS 2400AC W19
Drs. Nik Ansell, Robert (Bob) Sweetman
Tuesdays, 1:45pm - 4:45pm
Location: ICS Learning Studio, Knox College

(MA, PhD)

Syllabus

Albert the Great, Meister Eckhart, and Women’s Spirituality

This seminar examines Meister Eckhart’s mystical discourse and its conceptual configuration as a ‘contradictory monism’ against the backdrop of the “Dionysian” tradition of Albert the Great (and Thomas Aquinas) and the current efflorenscence of women’s mysticism represented by Marguerite Porete.

ICS 220409 W19
ICH5155HS L0101
Dr. Robert (Bob) Sweetman
Wednesdays, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Classroom 2, Knox College
(MA, PhD)

Syllabus