The point of departure of this thesis is derived from a modern tendency to create a dichotomy between selfless love and human flourishing. Modern attempts to liberate the human being from heteronomous oppression and the moral norms promoting this have sometimes led to the conclusion that selfless love is harmful to human flourishing. Such a conclusion has gained momentum also through modernist re-conceptualisations of the self as an autonomous but empty consciousness which must guard itself against determination by the other. In effect, significant thinkers have replaced the notion of selfless love with a call for self-assertion over against the other, as key to the individual person’s well-being. This has been matched by Christian dismissals of the individual’s pursuit of human flourishing. In the face of modern insights into the ‘desirous’ nature of the human being, modern Christian theology has equally struggled to sustain the tension between the traditional Christian notion of selfless or self-giving love and human beings’ desire to affirm themselves and to find personal fulfilment in this world. Strands of Christian theology have, for instance, affirmed a self-surrendering love at the cost of dismissing the individual’s worldly desires entirely. In this thesis, I outline this situation in modern thought and its problematic consequences. With a view to discerning whether selfless love and human flourishing can be re-connected, I then undertake close studies of the theologian Paul Tillich’s and the moral philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch’s conceptualisations of the self and of love. As I will argue, Tillich’s and Murdoch’s engagement with modern thought leads them to develop accounts of the self, which correspond with understandings of love as both selfless and conducive to human flourishing. On the basis of their thought I thus argue that selfless love and human flourishing can be understood as interdependent even today.

Since time immemorial, humankind has been concerned with freedom. This thesis introduces the most important thinkers who devoted themselves to studying freedom and who greatly influenced the perception of freedom. The thesis includes historical overview focusing on the problem of freedom mainly from theological and philosophical point of view. However, two authors in the field of psychology and sociology are mentioned as well. In existentialist philosophy, the human freedom is one of the most crucial topics, and it is presented here on the work of the writer Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the theologist Paul Tillich.

Through a focus on four rubrics: emancipatory rationality, anthropology, metaphysics and religion, the dissertation demonstrates clearly that with similar resources yet different emphases, Paul Tillich, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno uniquely structure what are largely complementary critical interpretations of a modernity which they see to be diseased, and whose subjects are unable to realize the promises of enlightenment. They shine similar lights on the 'steel-hard cage' of a modernity which they hope to overcome, and possibly to redeem, in largely compatible ways. In demonstrating this, the dissertation unearths some striking similarities shared by the three thinkers, and simultaneously reveals clear lines of dissimilarity between them in other key areas. This includes important distinctions between Adorno and Horkheimer, not only in the 1930s, but also in the 1940s, by which time they claimed to be writing with a single mind and purpose. Key similarities which will be disclosed include an initial reliance upon Hegel’s dialectical structure and Marx’s emancipatory social vision and a trenchant critique of the reifying and dehumanizing forces of capitalism. The modern subject thinks itself free but cannot achieve the liberation promised by enlightenment; instead, the subject experiences alienation and estrangement. Central shared goals include an increase in justice and the hope for not only ending barbarism and the suffering it causes, but also holding the memories of those who have died without justice alive. In a similar manner, major differences arise from common sources and hopes. The drive for transcendence takes a very different form in Tillich’s theological system than it does in the secular-Jewish longing for a hypothetical messianic moment found in the work of Adorno and Horkheimer during the period 1929-50, on which this study focuses. When the writings of Adorno, Horkheimer and Tillich are placed along side of one another, and in conversation with one another, something greater than demonstrable intellectual influence is revealed. Despite some substantial differences in methodology and assumptions, there are remarkable consonances between the types of critical social theory developed, and when read in concert, new insights into each thinker’s oeuvre become clearer and increasingly reveal a kaleidoscopic consonance.

Den här uppsatsen är en jämförande textanalys av Paul Tillichs ontologiska element och Jonna Bornemarks paktivitetsbegrepp utifrån Bornemarks beskrivning av graviditetserfarenheten i Jag är himmel och hav: en filosofisk undersökning av graviditet, liv och jagets gränser. Målet för jämförelsen är utforska deras gemensamma utgångspunkt i avgrunden som livets kreativa djupdimension. Utifrån jämförelsens resultat skissar författaren en skapelseteologi som närmar sig Catherine Kellers creatio ex profundis.

Comment Dire Dieu? Comment"dire" la présence de Dieu, non seulement dans le Temple, mais aussi et surtout hors de celui-ci, et la pertinence socio-anthropologique de cette présence pour un monde relativiste? Rien de très original ici même! Mais comment le faire, tout en embrassant ce monde pluraliste, et donc relativiste, telle une promesse de renouveau pour l'annonce de la"Parole"? C'est là une tout autre affaire... C'est en d'autres termes, le projet, le pari, non inclusiviste, non exclusiviste, ni même relativiste, de dire, de vivre, de manière incarnée--c'est-à-dire marqué confessionnellement--la pertinence socio-anthropologique du"divin", de"l'inconditionné", dans un ordre symbolique pluraliste où il n'y a plus de vérité absolu mis à part la vérité"qu'il n'y a pas de vérité absolu", mis à part la vérité que tout, même les moindres gestes, sont devenus objets et responsabilités de choix individuels. Projet purement théologique? Pas seulement. Car son cadre, de l'étude du religieux contemporain, l'a soutenu dans sa logique pluridisciplinaire, et la mutation épistémologique que celui-ci inaugure lui a donné de traverser les champs historique, philosophique, sociologique, voire politique et psychologique, et bien entendu, théologique. Ainsi cette thèse prospective, dans sa visée théologique de dire une Parole qui fait silence, ou encore de déployer une théologie maïeutique, une théologie du silence qui fasse"Parole" pour vivre la création non pas comme LA créature, mais comme une créature de celle-ci--promesse tant sociétale, qu'humaine, et même environnementale--a eu à traverser avec Marcel Gauchet, Peter Berger, Paul Tillich, Martin Heidegger, ou encore pour les plus important Sören Kierkegaard, une étude de la religiosité dans l'occident contemporain moderne-capitaliste-pluraliste l'amenant à faire des choix anthropo-théologiques où non seulement les gens , mais aussi tout ce qui nous environne, sont les mots avec lesquels Dieu raconte son histoire.

La présente thèse procède à une analyse archéologique des discours sur le « romantisme politique » sous la République de Weimar pour mettre en évidence que ce paradigme constitue un idéologème fondamental de l’univers intellectuel et politique de l’époque. Par le recours à une conception de la « réception » qui met entre parenthèses la fonction « auteur » il s’agit d’analyser les stratégies discursives qui se structurent autour du paradigme « romantique » entre 1918 et 1933. A partir de l’étude d’un corpus d’auteurs pour qui la référence romantique est centrale (Sigmund Rubinstein, Carl Schmitt, Hans Freyer, Othmar Spann, Karl Mannheim, Wilhelm von Schramm, Paul Tillich) ainsi que des réseaux sociaux qui s’organisent autour d’eux, il est possible d’affirmer l’existence d’une sensibilité « romantique » centrale au monde weimarien, qui transcende les oppositions politiques traditionnellement conçues comme imperméables (gauche/droite, conservateur/progressiste, nationaliste/universaliste, etc.) et qui se construit dans l’opposition fondamentale à l’individualisme matérialiste du libéralisme capitaliste. / This PhD thesis offers an archeological analysis of the discourses on « political romanticism » in the Weimar Republic. It shall endeavour to analyze the discursive patterns which revolved around the « romantic » paradigm between 1918 and 1933 by resorting to a concept of « reception » which minimizes the importance of the « author ». By studying the works of thinkers who explicitly refer to « political romanticism » (Sigmund Rubinstein, Carl Schmitt, Hans Freyer, Othmar Spann, Karl Mannheim, Wilhelm von Schramm, Paul Tillich) and the social networks they belong to one may assert the existence of a romantic « sensibility » which is at the core of the intellectual universe of the Weimar Republic, transcends political differences traditionally considered as essential (left/right, conservative/progressive, nationalist/universalist etc.) and is fundamentally opposed to the materialist individualism of capitalist liberalism.

Diploma thesis Sociology and Existentialism. Question of "Purpose" from an Existentialist Viewpoint deals with the problem of aim and purpose of sociology. First we want to doubt what we grasp as nonproblematic reception of attitudes on what sociology actually is, which is to be found especially in common sociological discourse. We want to accomplish this by challenging sociology to defend itself against what existentialism perceives as ultimate concern of human beings and by suggesting that in order to comply with this challenge sociology should become religious in Tillich's and Fromm's sense. Second we aim to conceptualize what purposeful sociology would mean and analyze how sociology has been loosing purpose. Third we aim to hint at what sociology should do in order to stay purposeful.

Zugl.: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2007

Within the field of theological aesthetics, this project assesses the divide between theological accounts of art and the re-emergence of religious imagery in modern and contemporary art. More specifically, American Protestant theologians and their accounts of visual art will be taken up as a representative set of contemporary theological inquiry in the arts. Under this category, evaluation will be made of three diverse traditions in American Protestant thought: Paul Tillich and Liberal Protestantism, Francis Schaeffer and the Neo-Calvinists, and the open evangelical accounts of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Dyrness. With respect to modern and contemporary visual art, this evaluation judges the degree to which theologians have understood the primary concepts and dominant narratives of various modernisms and postmodernisms of art since the end of the nineteenth century, recognised the watershed moments in the lineage of the twentieth century avant-garde, and acknowledged the influence of critical theory not only upon the contemporary discourse in aesthetics and art production but also in the social reception of art. In tracing the re-emergence of religious imagery in modern and contemporary art, this project takes up three diverse traditions: the Crucifixions of Francis Bacon and the memento mori art of Damien Hirst, the ‘re-enchantment’ of art in the work of Joseph Beuys, and the art of ‘False Blasphemy’ associated with lapsed Catholics like Rober Gober and Andres Serrano. By assessing what theologians have written concerning visual art and the surprising return of certain religious imagery in modern and contemporary art, this study will intimate a new way forward in a mutually beneficial dialogue for art and religious belief.