Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / By the 20th century the Confessions had become a “classic” of western civilization, yet it seems to elude any easy explanation and categorization. While scholars of Late Antiquity puzzled over the nature, structure, and meaning of the work, a parallel reception was occurring by some of the most original thinkers across both traditions of Contemporary philosophy, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Karl Jaspers, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean Louis Chrétien and Stanley Cavell. This study will focus on four of these thinkers, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Ricoeur and Marion, and the ways that the Confessions has influenced their attempts to address fundamental questions on subjects ranging from time and memory to history and hermeneutics, evil and the will, the self and personal identity, language and narrative, conversion, skepticism and materialism, God and onto- theology, and ultimately the very practice of philosophy itself, its autobiographical and especially its confessional character. In turn, this study also asks whether the engagements of these highly original contemporary philosophers can uncover new dimensions of this highly original work that has been read and interpreted throughout a centuries-long history of reception. The hermeneutic wager is that the past illumines the present philosophical terrain, but also that present insights allow us to read a classic text of the past with new understanding. This study will benefit from the interconnected nature of the problems that these writers confront, in their “family resemblance” of shared affinities and marked differences. Chapter One, “Scholarly Engagements: A Problematic Classic,” introduces some of the key interpretive problems which arose in the course of a century of scholarly engagements, including occasion, veracity, composition, and sources of Saint Augustine’s Confessions. Chapter Two “The Early Wittgenstein: Tractatus, Testimony and Confession” discusses the confessional philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the deep affinities he shared with Saint Augustine in his life and his first major work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), despite its reception and use as a foundational for Logical Empiricism and its spirited offspring. Chapter Three: “The Later Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations as Philosophical Confession” discusses the influence of Saint Augustine on Wittgenstein’s second major work, the Philosophical Investigations (1953), which uses a quotation from the Confessions as a point of departure for his own philosophical confession of errors and temptations. Chapter Four “Saint Augustine and Gadamer: Hermeneutic Anticipations and Affinities” discusses the hermeneutical insights of Saint Augustine, through the ways he encountered or struggled with texts in the Confessions, as well as through his idea of the “inner word” which would be for Gadamer the foundation of a philosophical hermeneutics. Chapter Five, “Ricoeur: Sin, Time, Memory, and Narrative” discusses Ricoeur’s engagement with Saint Augustine on the question of evil as well as his appropriation of the Augustinian aporia of time from the Confessions as pivotal for his narrative turn. Chapter Six, “Jean-Luc Marion’s Confessions” lays out Marion’s phenomenological unfolding of the Confessions beyond and before metaphysics, offering his reading of six dimensions of the inaccessibility of the self explored by Saint Augustine in the Confessions. This study will conclude by highlighting the themes that have suggested themselves across the many readings of this classic text. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Presented as the author's Thesis--Umeå University, Sweden. / Includes bibliographical references ((p. 203-213)).

Parliamentary talk, despite its central place in politics, has not been the focus of many qualitative studies. The present study investigates how parliamentary talk emerges in a dialogue between different arguments in the parliament. At the same time, this is a study of politics, of how human interaction gives birth to laws that regulate life in two contemporary democracies, Slovakia and Poland. It provides a close-reading of two political debates: on the state language in Slovakia and on gender parity in Poland. This study draws on hermeneutic and semiotic thinkers such as Gadamer, Bakhtin and Lotman to elaborate a dialogical understanding of language that can provide the basis for a method of textual analysis. The dialogical understanding of language emphasises that text and talk must be studied in the context of an interaction. The unit of analysis is a pair of utterances, a question and an answer. Until an utterance has been interpreted, it carries only the potential of meaning; its meaning is materialised by the responses it receives. The study further argues that conversation analysis and its tools can usefully be applied to the study of political debate. The method provides for the analysis of the dynamics between micro-scale interaction in the parliament and the macro-scale dynamics of culture. These dynamics assume two different forms that Lotman termed as “translation” and “explosion”. The study shows that parliamentary debate is characterised by a constantly evolving topic of discussion, namely that the meaning of the bill at the start of the debate and at the end of the debate are really two different bills. This is not because the content of the bill has undergone changes, but because in the course of the debate, the bill has generated new cultural connections. Casting a vote in support of the bill does not approve just the bill itself but a whole set of interconnected political, social and cultural values—what Lotman approached as the semiosphere. This study suggests Lotman’s cultural semiotics can provide for “imperfect hermeneutics” that is sensitive to the dynamic and contested nature of tradition in politics whilst acknowledging the inevitability of culture in mediating political talk.

Thesis (doctoral)--Freiburg im Breisgau, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [245]-253) and indexes.

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This paper addresses the question about what role typography plays in the interpretation of a text. From three different handbooks in typography arguments are gathered and categorized in to three categories: roman types, san serif and others. Interviews with people from the graphic design area are also a part of the paper and are accounted for in the discussion part of the paper. Areas of theory are a broad hermeneutic view based on Hans-Georg Gadamers thoughts, which have sub categories such as: Michel Foucault’s theory about discourses, John Swales genre theory and Anders Björkvall’s thoughts on typography and multi-modal texts. The result of the paper is that all typography, even the one often called the invisible typography, is interpreted by the reader who gathers it’s pre-knowledge from genre, history, culture and discourses. This means that typography plays an important role in the interpretation of a text. Key words: typography, interpretation, hermeneutic, Hans- Georg Gadamer, discourse, Michel Foucault, genre analysis, John Swales, Multi- modal, Anders Björkvall, semiotic. / Denna uppsats behandlar frågan om vilken roll typografin spelar för tolkningen av en text. Från tre olika handböcker i typografi samlas argument in och kategoriseras i tre kategorier: antikva, sanserif och övriga. Även intervjuer med personer yrkesverksamma i det grafiska fältet genomförs och redovisas sedan i diskussionen. Teoretisk utgångspunkt hämtas från Hans-Georg Gadamers tankar om hermeneutik, på vilken följande underkategorier av teorier följer: Michel Foucaults diskursteori, John Swales genreteori och Anders Björkvalls tankar om typografi och multimodala texter. Resultatet pekar mot att all typografi, även den som ofta kallas för den osynliga typografin, tolkas av mottagaren som i sin tur samlat sina förkunskaper från genre, historia, kultur och diskurs. Detta innebär att typografi spelar en viktig roll i tolkningen av en text. Nyckelord: typografi, tolkning, hermeneutik, Hans-Georg Gadamer, diskurs, Michel Foucault, genreanalys, Johan Swales, multimodalitet, Anders Björkvall, semiotik.

The need for Registered Nurses (RNs) in the long-term care of older people is being questioned, particularly in the context of nursing shortages, while suggestions for 'professionalising' Care Assistant (CA) roles are emerging. Despite ongoing debates about the importance of their work, research has so far been unable to provide an evidence-base for the outcomes of the work of either RNs or CAs in UK care homes. Using a multi-method interpretive approach, adopting a structure-process-outcome framework and grounded in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, this qualitative research sought to illuminate the distinct contributions made by RNs and CAs to outcomes for older people in care homes. RNs and CAs from around the UK contributed 'significant' examples of their work for Phase 1 of the study and Phase 2 comprised researcher fieldwork (observation, interviews and documentary analysis) in three care homes around England. Participants included RNs, CAs, older residents, relatives, home managers and professionals working in the homes. The findings offer a rich and detailed analysis of the realities of the work, much of which takes place 'behind closed doors' and has been described to a limited extent in the literature. They suggest that the CAs' daily support helps residents to function and to feel valued, and that close, reciprocal, family-type relationships develop. The health knowledge and clinical expertise of good RNs is critical in determining residents' health outcomes, particularly in the long-term, and RNs' 24-hour 'perceptual presence' can make life or death differences in acute or emergency situations. RNs also influence the environment, atmosphere and quality of care in the home. In the context of the literature, the findings offer new insights into the role and contribution of RNs and CAs, the outcomes of their work and the priorities of residents. The study produced new models of RN and CA roles in care homes, encompassing dimensions not previously acknowledged in the literature or their job descriptions, and a new framework within which the outcomes of care for older people could be evaluated. The research offers a positive image of work with older people in independent sector care homes.

Public-meaning originalists contend that judges properly interpret the Constitution only when they discover and apply its “original public meaning”—how the public understood the Constitution at the time it was adopted. Public-meaning originalism is premised on the “fixation thesis”—the meaning of any constitutional text is fixed when it is adopted. Concerns of the present, therefore, cannot affect constitutional meaning. Public meaning originalists acknowledge that the search for the fixed original meaning is not always successful, but it is always ontologically “there” to be found, even if epistemologically we sometimes fail to find it. The fixation thesis underwrites the powerful rhetoric of fidelity originalists deploy against nonoriginalists. Originalists insist that judges who interpret the Constitution using nonoriginalist approaches are “making up” constitutional meaning. But if original public meaning does not exist in the past as a fact which present interpreters can objectively retrieve, public-meaning originalists are equally guilty of “making it up.” The public-meaning enterprise thus rises or falls with its ontological claim that original public meaning is a fact in the past which anyone from the present can recover and apply without altering its objective character. Most public-meaning originalists have ignored the philosophical hermeneutic thesis that any investigation of the past is also shaped by the perspective of the interpreter in the present; the meaning of any text is mutually constituted by past and present. In this view, meaning does not exist in the past as a fact, but is created by the very interpretive effort to find it. Only two public-meaning originalists have defended the fixation thesis against this critique. Keith Whittington rejected it outright in his early work, while Lawrence Solum recently argued its compatibility with fixation. Both arguments fail. “Fixed constitutional meaning” and the other purported objectivities in which public-meaning originalists wrap their theory are no less touched by interpretive subjectivity than the theories new originalists attack. Like all human inquiries into proper action in particular situations, constitutional interpretation is necessarily affected by particularities of the judge, the issue before her, and their relation to constitutional history and contemporary constitutional imperatives. None of this is subject to adjudication by a priori rule or objective method, as public-meaning originalists imagine.No one is “faithfully” interpreting the Constitution in the way public-meaning originalists imagine. Everyone is doing the same interpretive thing, trying to connect the exigencies of the present with a document more than two centuries in force. The fixation thesis is false.

Ce mémoire s'inscrit dans la méthode de praxéologie pastorale. Il analyse en qua-tre temps la mise en œuvre d'une exposition picturale qui oppose une figure alié-nante (conventionnelle et doucereuse) de Jésus à une vision trash (c'est à dire sub-versive et provocante) qui se veut plus fidèle à l'évangile. Le premier temps (ob-servation), qui présente le premier projet d'exposition ainsi que ses sources d'inspi-ration (personnelle, culturelle et artistique), amène à cerner deux problématique : la question de la vérité et l'orientation subversive (trash) du Jésus des évangiles. Le deuxième temps (interprétation) creuse tout d'abord la question de la vérité avec Hans Georg Gadamer, ce qui pousse à dépasser l'affirmation violente de la vérité du premier projet d'exposition pour le réorienter dans une perspective de questionnement. Par ailleurs, un modèle de dynamique trash permet de fonder la figure subversive et provocante de Jésus dans une relecture des évangiles, d’où un troisième temps (intervention) : l’amendement du premier projet d'exposition. En guise de conclusion, le quatrième temps (prospective) exporte des pointes de ré-flexion au-delà de l'interprétation concrète, à savoir au plan des questions de l'art et du public, du deuil de la vérité, de la dynamique trash et de la foi. / This dissertation is in line with what we call praxéologie pastorale. It analyses, in four cycles, the implementation of an exhibition which opposes an alienating fig-ure of Jesus (smooth and conventional) to a trash vision of him (in other words subversive and provocative), if we are to be faithful to the Bible's inscriptions. The first cycle (observation), which presents the first exhibition project as well as the inspiring sources (personal, cultural and artistic), brings us to surround two prob-lematics: the question of the truthfulness and the subversive orientation (trash) of the Bible's image of Jesus. The second cycle (interpretation) questions the truth with Hans Georg Gadamer, which brings us to surpass the violent affirmation of the truth of the first exposition project to reorient it into that of a questioning per-spective. Furthermore, an example of the trash dynamic allows us to base the sub-versive and provocative figure of Jesus by rereading the Bible; hence the third cycle (intervention): the amendment of the first exhibition project. In conclusion, the fourth cycle (prospective) pushes the reflection beyond the concrete interpreta-tion, namely, in regard to the arts and the public, the grief of the truth, the trash dynamic and the faith.