This thesis’ task is to reinterpret Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will, hermeneutics, and study of metaphor from a perspective that speaks to what his early work conceptualized as a poetics of freedom. Poetics, for Ricoeur, becomes a mode of expression capable of representing and illuminating what he considers the essential paradox of our human condition: a will that is both free and bound, “set free as freedom and responsible in its very deliverance.” A poetics of freedom, Ricoeur conceptualized in the beginning of his career, would be a mediation through which we perceive a tensional reconciliation of our conflicted natures, “a linguistic register suitable for speaking of liberated freedom and liberated man in his existential concreteness and totality.” Ricoeur, however, never developed the poetics of freedom beyond its original conceptualization. Through an interpretive analysis of Ricoeur's work, I reorient his later works on metaphor and hermeneutics towards the concerns that dominated the philosophy of the will and the existential philosophy to which it belongs. This study of Ricoeur’s philosophy of being occurs in discourse with a poetic text, Dante’s Commedia. The Commedia, I argue, is a text whose poetry explicitly and implicitly discloses the importance of hermeneutics and poetics in the arrival at self-understanding. The correlations that arise between its aesthetic discourse and Ricoeur’s contemporary perspective illuminate what I consider to be at the core of the philosophy of being: a primordial tension of selfhood conceptualized in terms of the dialectical relations that arise between freedom and nature, between objectivity and subjectivity, and between perspective and meaning; or in Dante’s terms, between my life and la nostra vita (our life).

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-110).

M.A. dissertation, University of Hong Kong, 1976.

This study investigates the ideas and conceptions underlying the religious, political and socio-economic principles governing landholding in the Hebrew Bible in relation to the system of land-tenure among the Akan people of Ghana. The Asante as a social unit is used to represent the entire Akan group as a microcosm of the world picture. The primary thrust of the thesis is that the Hebrew Bible reflects some basic conceptions of land which can be compared and contrasted with a contemporary socio-economic system of land administration for implications of land-tenure and use. The Hebrew Bible presents three main types of land ownership: 1) divine ownership of land, a basic theological assertion that land belongs to Yahweh absolutely and that all others, including Israel are God's tenants; 2) communal ownership of land based on the segmentary patrilineage system whereby the tribes and families hold land in trust for members of the community; 3) private ownership of land, an innovation developed as a result of social change. The Asante traditional belief also accepts the principle of divine ownership of land, but while it attributes creation to God, it also affirms that land basically belongs to the ancestors who pass it on to the present and future generations of the society. The other two types of land-tenure, communal and private, are represented in the Asante social system, though with some differences. Stool, lineage and family heads hold land in trust, but on fiduciary basis in the sense of holding both a proprietary and beneficiary interest in the land of which they are custodians. But the corporate matrilineage group is the basic socio-economic factor as far as traditional landholding in Asante is concerned.

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This thesis constructs a theological interpretation of Ex 16 through the use of a method designed in light of contemporary hermeneutical discussion, in dialogue with current approaches to biblical texts (especially current approaches to OT narrative texts), in response to the perceived nature of Ex 16, and with a desire to provide some indication of Ex 16's significance for Jewish and Christian faith. This thesis begins with an analysis of Ex 16's manna and quail narrative from the perspective of four of the motifs which it contains (i.e., murmuring, testing, divine provision, and sabbath observance). It then creates and analyzes a wider pentateuchal narrative context appropriate for the study of Ex 16. The study of that wider context reveals a narrative flow that is sufficiently unified to convey a meaningful and compelling message and, as a result, that narrative flow is able to inform and enrich the interpretation of its constituent narratives; that ability is utilized to generate an enhanced theological reading of Ex 16.Although this thesis does not respond to all of the issues relevant to the current uncertainty with regard to biblical studies in general and pentateuchal studies in specific, ' it is one partial response to that uncertainty. It seeks to demonstrate that a detailed shady of a biblical text which is sensitive to the structure and the nature of that text in its canonical form and which is sensitive to the ability of that text's wider canonical context to define and enrich that text's message has the potential to create a valid theological interpretation of that text.

Drawing inspiration from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, this project seeks to incorporate the oxymetaphor, digital photography and photo manipulation into considerations of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. By considering the potential of an earthly site of transition (the cemetery) in relation to Dante's divine spaces, these images consider certain contradictions existing between the cemetery as a manifestation of waiting, permanence, and decay, and its associations with temporality and transition. The cemetery is therefore an oxymoron. It suggests both a beginning and an end; growth and decay; a place of closure and a pace of transition. Although Heaven, Hell and Purgatory have distinct characteristics in these images, there are commonalities between their layered treatments and iconography that unify them as a whole.

Drawing inspiration from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, this project seeks to incorporate the oxymetaphor, digital photography and photo manipulation into considerations of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. By considering the potential of an earthly site of transition (the cemetery) in relation to Dante's divine spaces, these images consider certain contradictions existing between the cemetery as a manifestation of waiting, permanence, and decay, and its associations with temporality and transition. The cemetery is therefore an oxymoron. It suggests both a beginning and an end; growth and decay; a place of closure and a pace of transition. Although Heaven, Hell and Purgatory have distinct characteristics in these images, there are commonalities between their layered treatments and iconography that unify them as a whole.

Thesis (B. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1954. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-71).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1991. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-147).