Professor Avron Kulak teaches in the Department of Humanities, the Graduate Program in Humanities, and the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and philosophy in modern European thought. He is particularly interested in exploring the ways in which religion and philosophy are dialogically interconnected – how reason has a faithful core and faith a self-critical rationality – and how the ethical underpinnings of their interconnection provide an essential framework for addressing thinkers from Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant through to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Derrida.

Research Interests

Approach to Teaching

In teaching courses on the relationships among faith, reason, and atheism, on the one hand, and among religious, philosophical, and literary narrative, on the other hand, Professor Kulak views the classroom as a place to engage – to learn about – the very process of learning. He thus makes central to the courses that he teaches the study of the hermeneutical principles and values that readers not only find in but also bring to the text. Because the classroom itself comprises a diverse community, he finds an interdisciplinary approach to learning indispensable, insofar as it provides students and teacher alike with the opportunity to think through the relationships among divergent discourses by posing the question of whether each embraces the values that foster and sustain difference.

Current Courses

Professor Avron Kulak teaches in the Department of Humanities, the Graduate Program in Humanities, and the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and philosophy in modern European thought. He is particularly interested in exploring the ways in which religion and philosophy are dialogically interconnected – how reason has a faithful core and faith a self-critical rationality – and how the ethical underpinnings of their interconnection provide an essential framework for addressing thinkers from Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant through to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Derrida.

Research
Professor Avron Kulak teaches in the Department of Humanities, the Graduate Program in Humanities, and the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought. In both his teaching and his research he focuses on the relationship between religion and philosophy in modern European thought. He is particularly interested in exploring the ways in which religion and philosophy are dialogically interconnected – how reason has a faithful core and faith a self-critical rationality – and how the ethical underpinnings of their interconnection provide an essential framework for addressing thinkers from Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant through to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Derrida. Overall, he endeavors to explore how modern hermeneutics is comprised by the ethical implications of the idea that faith and reason exist only insofar as they are each constituted through the other.

Teaching
In teaching courses on the relationships among faith, reason, and atheism, on the one hand, and among religious, philosophical, and literary narrative, on the other hand, Professor Kulak views the classroom as a place to engage – to learn about – the very process of learning. He thus makes central to the courses that he teaches the study of the hermeneutical principles and values that readers not only find in but also bring to the text. Because the classroom itself comprises a diverse community, he finds an interdisciplinary approach to learning indispensable, insofar as it provides students and teacher alike with the opportunity to think through the relationship between divergent discourses by posing the question of whether each embraces the values that foster and sustain difference.

Service
Professor Kulak finds the opportunity to contribute to the process of collegial governance to be a true privilege. As a faculty member at York he has served on committees in the Department of Humanities, as well as in the Graduate Programs in Humanities and in Social and Political Thought. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Kierkegaard, Religion, and Culture Group in the American Academy of Religion.

Degrees

Research Interests

Approach to Teaching

In teaching courses on the relationships among faith, reason, and atheism, on the one hand, and among religious, philosophical, and literary narrative, on the other hand, Professor Kulak views the classroom as a place to engage – to learn about – the very process of learning. He thus makes central to the courses that he teaches the study of the hermeneutical principles and values that readers not only find in but also bring to the text. Because the classroom itself comprises a diverse community, he finds an interdisciplinary approach to learning indispensable, insofar as it provides students and teacher alike with the opportunity to think through the relationships among divergent discourses by posing the question of whether each embraces the values that foster and sustain difference.

Current Courses