Espen Hammer, Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, will discuss his book After the Death of God: Secularization as a Philosophical Challenge from Kant to Nietzsche. He will be joined by Donavan Shaefer (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, UPenn), Jeffrey Green (Professor of Political Science, UPenn & Andrea Mitchell Endowed Director of the Andrea Mitchell Center), Sabina Bremner (Associate Professor of Philosophy, UPenn), and Daniele Lorenzini (Associate Professor of Philosophy, UPenn). 
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About the book:

The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.
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Speaker Biography:

Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. He has previously held professorships at the University of Oslo (Norway) and University of Essex (UK), and visiting professorships at the New School for Social Research and University of Pennsylvania. He is a former Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Frankfurt. His main interests are in Kant and German Idealism, social and political philosophy, modern European philosophy, phenomenology, Critical Theory, and aesthetics.