Webinar: J. Koryl (Jagiellonian University), Philosophies of Reformation: Socinian Metaphysics of Presence

URL & Registration: https://www.facebook.com/events/2661609287386596/

Centre for the Study of the Reformation (Faculty of „Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw) and Koło Kultury Staropolskiej would like to invite you to the last e-seminar in the series of lectures, presenting Polish interdisciplinary research achievements in the broadly understood religious studies.

📷8 October: Jakub Koryl (Jagiellonian University) "Philosophies of Reformation: Socinian Metaphysics of Presence"

All too often philosophical identity of reformation is being overlooked or trivialized. The aim of this seminar is to fill in such gap and discuss, as a reliable example, the metaphysical fore-structure of Socinianism. For that reason, it will take into consideration neither a doxographical matter of Socinian writings nor their doctrinal standpoint. It aims at elaborating on the way such matter and standpoint can be described at the most fundamental level. Basic metaphysical orientation of Socinianism and its system of thinking about being as such (esse, essentia, ens), instead of distinctive matter of Socinian thought, will be taken here as a vehicle for revealing such fore-structure of understanding the creation and its Creator. It is well-known to those familiar with the Socinian writings that Polish Antitrinitarians followed the common path of Western metaphysics, they used the same vocabulary as the Western classics like Plato, Aristotle or even Saint Augustine, the grandmaster of Trinitarian theology. However, the full scale of this tremendous impact on the Socinian system of thinking cannot be measured until so-called metaphysics of presence have been examined, namely the basic way of comprehending every being (including God as the supreme being) as ‘something present’. Socinian metaphysics of presence will give us therefore a big push to reach the place where Socinians got themselves unwittingly, and which can come as a complete surprise for us as well. In the long run, the aim of this seminar is to let us reconsider once again the place of Socinianism in the history of Christianity and, hopefully, to reveal a common feature of Christian theology which cannot be suppressed by any doctrinal difference.

Jakub Koryl is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University. His scientific interests cover intellectual history of Early-Modern period, exegesis of the Bible, hermeneutics, Protestant theology and German philosophy of the XXth century. He received the Prime Minister’s Award for the PhD dissertation "Erazmianizm w polskiej kulturze literackiej XVI wieku" ["Erasmianism in the Polish Literary Culture of the XVI century"].