Your Inner Self Is Not Inside You

CTS Talks presents:

Your Inner Self is Not Inside You

JOSE FRANCISCO MORALES TORRES, PH.D. (HE/HIS/EL)

Associate Professor of Comparative Theology & Philosophy – Chicago Theological Seminary

We are a mystery to ourselves. For millennia, philosophers, poets, and prophets have wrestled with one enduring question: what does it mean to be human—and why does it matter? Questions of identity and meaning remain unsettled. We are often told to look “inside” ourselves to discover our true identity—our spirit, our soul. But what if we’re looking in the wrong direction? What if, to encounter our deepest self, we must not turn inward but outward? What if the self is not hidden within, but formed at the boundary between ourselves and the world? This CTS Talk offers a new way of thinking about self-discovery—not as inward excavation, but as something that emerges in relation, encounter, and connection. In doing so, it also opens up new possibilities for social and political empowerment, challenging the -isms and phobias that divide us by reimagining the self as fundamentally shaped through our shared, relational world.

This CTS Talks presentation will be followed by a reception for attendees.

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