Gifford Lectures

The Gifford Lectures are four prestigious series of lectures hosted by the Scottish universities of St. Andrews , Glasgow , Aberdeen and Edinburgh . They go back to the will of the lawyer and judge Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford (1820-1887), who bequeathed these universities £ 80,000 to "promote and disseminate the study of natural theology in the broadest sense of the word". The natural theology should it be treated as a science, "without reference or rely on any special or adopted so-called supernatural revelation."

In addition to the scientific treatment of the respective topic, Gifford attached importance to its generally understandable presentation. The lectures should be published as cheaply as possible.

The lectures were established in 1888 and have been held regularly since 1942–1945, except for an interruption during the Second World War . The speakers were initially appointed for a period of two years and could be appointed two more times in the same city. This should ensure that as many different approaches as possible are discussed. It is now common to appoint an academic year.

Originally intended to teach "the whole population of Scotland", the lectures have long enjoyed a great international reputation due to the rank of the speakers appointed and the range of approaches represented. Numerous researchers from the fields of theology, philosophy, history, but also from the natural sciences, along with politicians and writers, presented considerations and theses in the context of the book, some of which became classics of their subject in the book edition.

Important speakers

In Aberdeen

James Adam (1904–06: The Religious Teachers of Greece ), Karl Barth (1936–38: The Knowledge of God and the Service of God according to the Teaching of the Reformation ), Michael Polanyi (1951–52: Personal Knowledge ), Paul Tillich (1952–54: Systematic Theology ), Raymond Aron (1965–67: On Historical Consciousness in Thought and Action ), Hannah Arendt (1973: The Life of the Mind ), Richard Swinburne (1982–84)

In Edinburgh

William James (1900–1902: The Varieties of Religious Experience ), William Warde Fowler (1909–1910), Henri Bergson (1913–1914), James George Frazer (1923–1925), Arthur Eddington (1926–1927), Alfred North Whitehead (1927–1928: Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology ), John Dewey (1928–29), Albert Schweitzer (1934–35), Reinhold Niebuhr (1938–40), Niels Bohr (1949–50), Arnold J Toynbee (1952-53), Rudolf Bultmann (1954-55), Sir John Eccles (1978-79), Iris Murdoch (1981-82), Jürgen Moltmann (1984-85), Paul Ricœur (1985-86: On Selfhood , the Question of Personal Identity , first version of Soi-même comme un autre , dt. The Self as Another ), Alasdair MacIntyre (1987-88: Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry ), Martha Nussbaum (1992-93), John Polkinghorne (1993–94), Charles Taylor (1998–99: Living in a Secular Age?, First version of A Secular Age ), David Tracy (2000–01), Michael Ignatieff (2002–03), Stephen Toulmin and Noam Chomsky (2004–05 in a series of lectures in honor of Edw ard Saids , who was designated for this and died in 2003)

In Glasgow

Friedrich Max Müller (1888–92), Arthur Balfour (1914, 1922), Samuel Alexander (1916–18), Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1959), Carl Sagan (1985), Richard Dawkins (1988), Lynne Rudder Baker (2001 ), Perry Schmidt-Leukel (2015)

In St. Andrews

Werner Heisenberg (1955–56), Walter Burkert (1988–89: Creation of the Sacred. Tracks of Biology in Early Religions , German Cults of Antiquity. Biological Foundations of Religion ), Hilary Putnam (1990–91), Arthur Peacocke ( 1992-93), Roger Penrose (1992-93), Stanley Hauerwas (2001: the grain of the universe , dt. the grain of the universe )

Web links

Gifford Lectures website , contains links to the lecture texts that are now copyright-free