Professor Richard BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI participated in a conference at the University of Haifa

On 4-6 January 2015, Professor Richard BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI, Chairholder of the EP Geremek Chair of European Civilization at the Natolin (Warsaw) campus of the College of Europe, participated in a conference on "Enlightenment beyond Radicalism: Reasserting the Role of Faith in the European Enlightenment", held at the University of Haifa, in Israel.

                    

His paper, titled "Between Enlightenment and Catholicism: On Enlightened Catholicism and Catholic Enlightenment" argued against the tendency of scholars to invent ever new sub-divisions of the "Religious Enlightenment" while at the same time claiming ever more figures and stances for their own preferred label.

               

To bring greater precision to discussions of the relationship between Catholicism and Enlightenment, he proposed a spectrum of positions, between "Radical Enlightenment" and "Counter-Enlightenment", centred on the semantic distinction between "Enlightened Catholicism" and "Catholic Enlightenment". He has published a fuller version of his argument in Polish in the periodical Wiek Oświecenia.