2025 St. Ignatius Loyola Chair Lecture

William Rehg, S.J., has joined Fordham as the St. Ignatius Loyola Chair in the philosophy department for the 2025-2026 academic year. He is the author of Insight and Solidarity: The Discourse Ethics of Jürgen Habermas (1994) and Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas (2009). More recently, he has written on applied ethics and the role of hope in Habermas’s philosophy of religion, and he has been a member of the Consortium for Human Flourishing since 2018.

About the lecture (with a reception to follow):
Hope is becoming increasingly important in today’s world. With his 2019 history of the millennia-long dialogue between faith and reason, German philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas aims to encourage the hope that a more just and peaceful world is possible through further dialogue. William Rehg, S.J., will argue that Habermas’s vision describes a task for which Jesuit universities are especially well suited. But Habermas overlooks the ways in which climate change makes such dialogue increasingly unlikely. Is not a pessimistic outlook more realistic? That question challenges us to think more deeply about what hope in today’s world means.

Although an RSVP is not required for the lecture and reception, please direct all questions to Stephanie Adomavicius, director of communications and events for Arts and Sciences ([email protected]).