Professor Stephen Pattison's Gifford Lectures on
Professor Stephen Pattison's Gifford Lectures on
Professor Stephen Pattison's Gifford Lectures on
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Mad<strong>on</strong>na with eight singing angels<br />
Synopsis of <str<strong>on</strong>g>Lectures</str<strong>on</strong>g><br />
Lecture 1: Ordinary blindness<br />
In this lecture, <str<strong>on</strong>g>Professor</str<strong>on</strong>g> Pattis<strong>on</strong> introduces himself and his topic, outlining<br />
how a practical theologian approaches c<strong>on</strong>temporary beliefs and practices<br />
associated with sight and seeing. After outlining the main argument of the<br />
lecture series, he will begin to explore some of the culturally inflected<br />
assumpti<strong>on</strong>s and practices that Westerners adopt towards sight, particularly<br />
c<strong>on</strong>sidering the nature of ‘normal’ distant, ocular visi<strong>on</strong>. This is a ‘scopic<br />
regime’ (set of ideas and practices) that helps to render visual artefacts<br />
distant and of little pers<strong>on</strong>al or moral c<strong>on</strong>cern. Comm<strong>on</strong>sensically, we tend<br />
to misunderstand and overvalue the apparently aut<strong>on</strong>omous sense of<br />
sight. However, Westerners live in a regime of ‘ordinary blindness’ in which<br />
there is much to see, but little is related to.<br />
Lecture 2: Touching sight