2025 IARPT Conference

Dark Naturalism: Suffering, Death, and Grief in a Wholly Natural World

Place: Harrisonburg, VA
Dates: June 16-19, 2025
Program Chairs: Michael Hogue and Daniel Ott
Local Host: Daniel Ott
Location:
St. Stephen’s United Church of Christ
358 Main St., Harrisonburg, VA 22801
Conference Hotel:
Hotel Madison
710 S. Main Street, Harrisonburg, VA 22801
Click here to book at the group rate ($110 per night)
Intellectual Autobiography TBD
Plenary Lectures:
Monica Coleman
Demian Wheeler
Joseph Winters

The Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought (IARPT) is pleased to announce its 2025 meeting, which will be held in Harrisonburg, VA, on June 16-19, 2025. The theme of the meeting is Dark Naturalism: Suffering, Death, and Grief in a Wholly Natural World. Keynote and plenary speakers will be announced in the coming months.

The theme of the 2025 IARPT meeting is Dark Naturalism: Suffering, Death, and Grief in a Wholly Natural World. Central to this theme are questions about the meanings and experiences of suffering, death, and grief in a world without a supernatural God. Such a view of the world need not exclude the transcendent, sacred, holy, divine, or the good, beautiful, and true. With that expansiveness in mind, this conference calls for submissions that engage suffering, illness, death, grief, and adjacent concepts and experiences from theological and philosophical perspectives that presume a wholly natural world (however narrowly or widely, thinly or deeply the “natural” is defined). Questions papers could address include (but are not limited to):

What is life’s meaning and death’s significance in a wholly natural world? To what extent are the value of life and the inevitability of death interrelated in a wholly natural world, and what existential values or meanings can be drawn from such interrelatedness? How can pragmatic naturalist, process naturalist, or adjacent traditions address the psychological and cultural dynamics of the “denial of death” (see, for example, Ernst Becker)?
What practices or rituals, existing or imagined, are appropriate to naturalistic views of death? What might wholly naturalistic mourning rituals look like?
What can naturalistic philosophies and theologies contribute to the ethics and politics of aging?
What resources can pragmatic naturalist, process naturalist, or related perspectives offer to an ethics of suffering and death? How can such perspectives contribute to our understanding of and interventions within the social determinants of illness, suffering, and death?
How can pragmatic naturalist, process naturalist, or related perspectives enable new ways of understanding and responding to mental illness therapies, addiction disorders, and addiction recovery?
How might naturalistic perspectives inform our understandings and experiences of grief and grievability? How should we understand the work of grief and mourning in pragmatic, naturalistic, and / or process perspective?
How do or should the finitude of the world and the precarity of life inform our moral values, principles, and ways of life? How does moral worth or standing depend, or not, on the finitude of the subject of worth or standing? What role does the relative grievability of various forms of life play in how we account for the value of those lives?
What is the place of tragedy in pragmatism, naturalism, or process thought? Do these traditions make sufficient room for the tragic? What distinctive resources might these traditions provide for conceptualizing tragedy in meaningfully new ways?
Does the concept of evil make sense in a wholly natural world? Is there a need for a theodicy in such a world?
Can the concept of an “afterlife” have meaning in a naturalistic view of the world?
What does it mean for a wholly natural world to be overly humanized (e.g., the Anthropocene), and are distinctions between moral and natural evil still meaningful in such a world?
What resources do naturalist, pragmatist, process, and adjacent traditions offer to our understanding of death, loss, grief, and mourning?
Additional topics might include treatments of social death, system death, structural injustice, war, melancholy, illness, bad moods, soul sickness, nihilism, or work on moral emotions such as guilt, shame, disgust, or terror.

These questions and potential paper topics are suggestive, not exhaustive. Proposals on related questions are also welcome. Moreover, as always, we will consider proposals related to the intellectual traditions of particular interest to IARPT (e.g., empiricism, naturalism, pragmatism, process philosophy, and liberal theology).

While IARPT meetings have traditionally been structured around paper readings of approximately twenty minutes and a few longer invited keynote lectures, we invite creative approaches to conference sessions. Proposals for panels, debates, discussions, fishbowls, etc. are highly encouraged.

Proposals should contain a descriptive title and a brief (no more than 500 words) but informative and readable description of the paper to be presented, with some indication of why the proposer considers the paper to be an important contribution. Proposals should also include a brief (150-word) biographical sketch of their authors.

Applicants should also note that the conference is in-person and we are committed to maintaining the collegiality that IARPT meetings are known for. For this reason, we are not accepting proposals for papers to be delivered remotely or virtually.

All proposals should be sent in Word format to the program chairs: Michael Hogue (mhogue@meadville.edu) and Dan Ott (daniel.ott@emu.edu). The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2025.

Potential funding for travel and lodging is available in the form of the W. Creighton Peden Scholarship; please click here for more information, and please indicate your interest in this option upon the submission of your proposal.

Download the call for papers here.

The conference schedule will be posted here once finalized.

Click here for more information about the meeting in Harrisonburg, VA, including air and ground travel information, as well as information about the conference hotel and meeting venue.

This page will be updated as new information becomes available, so please check back as the conference approaches.