Digest Week 1 Trinity Term 2026
TT26, Week 1 (26 April - 2 May)
If you have entries for the weekly Digest, please send information to admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk by midday, Tuesday the week before the event.
Notices - other Philosophy events, including those taking place elsewhere in the university and beyond
Avicenna Reading Group
Convenor: Ibrahim Safri
Date: Tuesday, 28 April, 2–3:30pm
Venue: Magdalen College, Old Law Library (Lecture Room B)
The theory of time remains one of the most complex and significant subjects of inquiry, central to both philosophical and physical discourse globally. Throughout the history of world philosophy, this concept has been continually refined, spanning Late Antiquity and Neoplatonism through to Islamic, Medieval, and Early Modern traditions. Within the global corpus of Arabic philosophy, diverse interpretations of time have emerged, shaped by three primary perspectives that influenced Islamic medieval conceptions of this theory. This reading class will focus on Avicenna's The Physics of The Healing, in which he presents various notions of time before establishing his own account.
Our objective is to engage in a profound reading of Avicenna's thesis to determine the extent to which his theory of time represents a departure from Aristotelian thought, a continuation of the Peripatetic tradition, or an innovative synthesis. We will discuss how his contributions facilitated the development of this concept within the context of global philosophy.
Text: Avicenna, The Physics of The Healing; a Parallel English-Arabic Text. Translated by: Jon McGinnis. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2009. Chapter 10: Beginning the discussion about time
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Joseph Butler Society
Speaker: Professor John Schellenberg (Mount St Vincent)
Title: Repairing Christian Doctrine: A Realist Path to Resilience
Date: Tuesday 28 April, from 8:30 pm
Venue: Large SCR, Oriel College
Further details are here: https://josephbutlersociety.weebly.com/