Ce travail est consacré à la conception de l’être humain qui se dessine discrètement dans les deux premiers ouvrages du philosophe français Maurice Merleau-Ponty, à savoir La Structure du comportement (1942) et Phénoménologie de la perception (1945). Le premier ouvrage, qui adopte la perspective des sciences empiriques de l’homme (psychologie, biologie, psychopathologie) et le second ouvrage, qui revendique un point de vue phénoménologique, visent conjointement à mettre en échec les paramètres métaphysiques et épistémologiques hérités de la tradition cartésienne et à révéler l’irréductibilité de notre être-au-monde. L’anthropologie philosophique qui en découle en est une de l’« ambiguïté », laquelle se perçoit le mieux dans une perspective temporelle. / This work is dedicated to the conception of the human being that is discreetly outlined in the first two works of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, namely "The Structure of Behavior" (1942) and "Phenomenology of Perception" (1945). The first work, which adopts the perspective of empirical sciences of man (psychology, biology, psychopathology), and the second work, which claims a phenomenological point of view, both aim to challenge the metaphysical and epistemological parameters inherited from the Cartesian tradition, and to reveal the irreducibility of our being-in-the-world. The resulting philosophical anthropology is one of "ambiguity," which is best perceived from a temporal perspective.

This philosophical, anthropological study within a fundamental agogic perspective, employed an existential phenomenological approach to find out what adulthood is, fundamentally. Adulthood as being-ethical, is a more adequate description than chronological, biological, psychological and sociological descriptions of adulthood. Finding out what being-ethical is, required investigating what it means to be human. Only humans exist, and must participate effectively in agogic-dialogic relationships to alleviate existential yearning and experience dignifiedness. A code of effective agogy is presented. This code is the basis for a universal, fundamental code of ethics which transcends particular moral codes and professional codes of ethics. The words "ethicals", "ethicalness" and "ethicality" are employed to name, respectively, individual requirements in the code; acting according to the code; and the inescapable interrelatedness of experiencing dignifiedness and adhering to ethicals. Detailed explanations are given of what it means to respond fundamentally ethically. Adultness, humanness and ethicalness are different perceptions of the same continuum. All humans, whether aware of it or not, have an unattainable ideal of perfect humanness, to which they must perennially progress in order to experience dignifiedness, and humanness entails perennially becoming more human. Since no human can become perfectly human, the ideal of perfect humanness can be called "God". This means that the code of humanness is also the code of Godliness and the word "spiritual" is used to distinguish fundamental God from religious Gods. Spiritual responsibility is the interrelatedness of being-questioning and being-questioned. Ultimately, a person's humanness is assessed against the ideal of perfect humanness, by his or her own spiritual conscience. Humanity is the interrelatedness of the realities of existentiality, agogicality, ethicality, and spirituality and humanness is the inseparability of the continua of existentialness, ethicalness, agogicalness and spiritualness. A detailed existential-ethical description of education is given. The thesis ends with a post-scientific view of what essentially agogic orientated (educative) teaching is, and four recommendations are offered to enhance the effectiveness of agogy in teaching and learning institutions. Despite an extensive and radical study, it is acknowledged that the mystery that is humanity, can never be totally revealed. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Philosophy of Education)

Revelation is God's Word addressed to the human being and so speaks of God in relation to the person and the world. Revelation can therefore only be fully understood, proclaimed and lived through an encounter with the world and its conceptions. To understand the evolution of human consciousness and the creation of the soul, we look to the sources of revelation (scripture and tradition) in dialogue with secular anthropology. The latter's paradigm of development and growth is not foreign to the former's understanding of conversion and growth in grace . The image of God, which characterises the human person, is shown to be an emergent likeness, which is created and drawn to its fullness by God. This accounts for Pius XII' s insistence that the soul is created immediately by God, who is responsible for the physical dynamics that bring forth consciousness and the personal dynamics that empower the human soul to develop. / Philosophy Practical &Systematic Theology / M.Th (Systematic Theology)

Thesis (DPhil (Philosophy))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / The purpose of this thesis twofold: first, to develop an account of modernity as a “loss of the world” which also entails the “death” of the human as a meaningful philosophical, political or moral category, and second, to explore the possibility of recovering a sense of the world in us and with it, a sense of what it means to be human. This argument is developed by way of a sustained engagement with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt, whose analogous critiques of modernity centre on the problem of the connection between humanity and worldliness. My argument consists of three parts, each of which spans two chapters. Part one of the thesis sets out the most important aspects of Nietzsche’s and Arendt’s respective critiques of modernity. Chapter one focuses on modernity as a rupture of a philosophical, political and religious tradition within which existence in the world could be experienced as unquestionably meaningful. Following arguments developed by Nietzsche and Arendt, chapter two establishes that the loss of this tradition results in a general crisis of meaning, evaluation and authority that can be designated as “modern nihilism”. The second part of the thesis deals with what may be called the “anthropological grounds” of the critique of modernity developed in part one. To this end, chapter three focuses on Nietzsche’s portrayal of the human as “the as-yet undetermined animal” who is neither the manifestation of a subjective essence nor the product of his own hands, but who only exists in the unresolved tension between indeterminacy and determination. This is followed in chapter four by an inquiry into Arendt’s conception of “the human condition”, which in turn points to the conditionality of being human. What is clearly demonstrated in both cases is that, in so far as the predicament of modernity is incarnate in modern human beings themselves, any attempt at overcoming this predicament would somehow have to involve re-thinking or transcending our present-day humanity. The third part of the thesis examines the way in which the reconceptualisation of the human as advocated by Nietzsche and Arendt transforms our understanding of “world”. The more specific aim here is to demonstrate that both thinkers conceive of a reconciliation between self and world as a form of redemption. In chapter five I explore their respective attempts to resurrect the capacity for judgement in the aftermath of the death of God as the first step in this redemptive project, before turning to a more in-depth inquiry into the “soteriology” at work in Nietzsche’s and Arendt’s thinking in chapter six. This inquiry ultimately makes clear that there is a conflict between the Nietzschean conception of redemption as amor fati (love of fate) and Arendt’s notion of redemption as amor mundi (love of the world). I conclude the thesis by arguing that what is at stake here are two conflicting notions of reconciliation: a worldly – or political – notion of reconciliation (Arendt), and a much more radical, philosophical notion of reconciliation (Nietzsche), which ultimately does away with any boundary between self and world. However, my final conclusion is not that we face an inevitable choice between these two alternatives, but rather that the struggle between these two dispositions is necessary for an understanding of what it means to be human as well as for the world in which our humanity is formed.

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Comment les êtres, humains ou plus-qu’humains, en viennent-ils à partager leurs mouvements ? Qu’est-ce qui exauce, soutient ou empêche la confluence de leurs gestes ? Ces questions sont des questions métaphysiques (question de la comobilité des êtres), anthropologiques (question du vivre-ensemble) ou biologiques (question de la symbiose) : pour y répondre, il est de bonne méthode de lire des philosophes, des anthropologues, des biologistes. Nous avons décidé de les adresser à une pratique chorégraphique : le Contact Improvisation, une forme de danse initiée par le chorégraphe américain Steve Paxton en 1972, et où danseurs et danseuses se sautent les un-es sur les autres, entrent en contact les un-es avec les autres, roulent par terre et tombent dans les airs, considérant que la philosophie avait tout intérêt à reconnaître que danseurs et danseuses non seulement savent bouger ensemble, mais, plus important, savent s’apprendre et penser la manière dont ils bougent ensemble. / How do human and more-than-human beings come to share movements? What supports, hinders or ignites the confluence of their gestures? These questions are metaphysical (how do things coexist?), anthropological (how to live together?), and biological (how do we merge and exist symbiotically?): to answer them, our anthropo-phenomenological “philosophy of gestures” offers a reading of contemporary philosophers, anthropologists and biologists. But next to those field specialists, the investigations also led us to ask our questions to dancers and to a dance practice—Contact Improvisation, a movement form that was initiated by North American choreographer in 1972, where dancers jump at each other, enter in contact, roll on the ground and fall in the air. Our hypothesis was simple: we are in urgent need to renew our understanding of movement and specifically of our ways of moving together (with other, humans or more-than-humans), who better than dancers to lead the inquiry with?

[pt] Em suma, o objetivo desta investigação é demonstrar o caráter logodicéico da idéia de Deus e sua peculiar cosmologia, cujas ambições mais evidentes consistem na fundamentação da moral em bases sólidas, e no alcance de uma solução ao problema existencial do sentido da vida, demonstrando ainda o caráter teodicéico (e, portanto, igualmente logodicéico) da doutrina metafísica que a acompanha, nomeadamente no que concerne à natureza humana, que se supõe dotada de livre-arbítrio. Finalmente, o presente estudo demonstrará o fracasso da logodicéia da idéia monoteísta de Deus, e das teodicéias que a acompanham, em significar a experiência do mal. / [en] This thesis intends to be a mere effort of critical analysis of the idea of God as an attempt to give a metaphysical and a religious answer to the problem of the meaning, as well of certain arguments in defense of this idea. – But mainly this essay intends to investigate the failure of the theodicy in finding a solution to the problem of evil.

The thesis presents Charles Taylor's conception of liberalism where the negative concept of liberty is rooted in a positive moral ideal of authenticity. First of all, both the main motivations which led liberals to defend the pure negative concept of liberty and Taylor's claim that these motivations all depend on the atomistic ontology is examined. Later, this atomistic basis is refuted and Taylor's holistic approach is offered which relies mainly on concepts of the personal identity and of the so called strong evaluation. Following this, concept of authenticity is presented as the implicit ideal of modern identity. Authenticity is interpreted as a pluralistic moral ideal appreciating uniqueness although containing some general moral demands. The thesis also shows that such a concept of authenticity presupposes negative liberty. Finally, some political consequences of such a liberal theory are provided.

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