HALL:

Speaker: Stewart-Kroeker S.

With attention to Augustine and Foucault, this panel examines the political and ethical potential of strands of ancient theology, philosophy, and ethics. In recent interpretations, Augustine has been marked as a proto -liberal, -conservative, and -neoconservative. Two of the panel's papers explore more agonistic possibilities in his theology, one in conversation with Chantal Mouffe and her account of the common good and the other in conversation with feminist and queer concerns. The third paper treats Foucault's discussions of ancient philosophy and religion. It understands his late work as appropriating an ethics and spirituality "as a way of life" in the work of ancient philosophers, and argues against readings of late Foucault that would see him as turning apolitical or neoliberal.