<p> In his 1978 lectures at the College de France, <i>Security Territory Population</i>, Michel Foucault shifts his analysis of power by arguing for pastoral power as both the prelude to governmentality and as the decisive moment in the constitution of the Western subject. If the history of the Christian pastorate involves "the entire history of procedures of human individualization in the West (184)," then, Foucault argues, there has never been a revolt against pastoral power because such a revolt would be a revolt against the constitution of the self, that is to say against self-consciousness. If the revolt against pastoral power is a revolt against self-consciousness, then I argue that the psychagogic-spiritual, as opposed to rhetorical-theological, practices of religious conversion may be where counter-conducts (already understood to be subsumed within Christian pastoral power) may also overwhelm the Christian pastorate. In his conversion to Christianity Augustine employs techniques that are `overwhelming' to pastoral power, but are never actually an attempt to overcome pastoral power. In the specific experiences recalled by Augustine in his Confessions, through the various non-discrete phases of his conversion he takes up what Foucault calls counter-conducts. Through asceticism (especially in the author's struggle with conscupience); through the establishment of a new religious community (as a Manichean catechumen) through mysticism (in the doctrine of `inner illumination)'; through the exegesis of scripture (significantly in the voluntary reading of Romans 13:12-14 prior to becoming a catechumen of the Christian Church); and through eschatological belief (specifically in the a-millennial conception of the return of Christ), Augustine, author of the Confessions, emerges as a convert to Christianity. Towards Foucault's call for genealogies of pastoral power and towards the call of philosophy understood as ethico-poetic praxes of Eros captured in the phrase epimeleia heatou, this thesis will investigate Augustine of Hippo's conversion to Christianity as an enactment of Foucault's `counter-conducts.' I will argue, through exegesis of Augustine's Confessions, that this parrhesiatic document is simultaneously a narrative of psychagogic practices which reflects Augustine's profound ascesis towards Christian subjectivation as well as a document of the counter-conducts that overwhelm Christian pastoral power while never revolting against it. As a result of his pluralistic and deeply personal approach towards conversion, Augustine's recorded experiences exemplify how `new' technologies (or at least new modalities of old technologies) are established within the Christian pastorate. It is in and through the event of his conversion that Augustine also emerges as a leader of the orthodox Church and simultaneously as an instigator for later revolts against it--arguably, for example, as an inspiration for the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. If there can be no revolution against pastoral power because it is always instituting, circumscribing, and subsuming new forms of resistance on its own, then perhaps we can best understand where counter-conducts are most dangerous to the practices of power by understanding where some practices actually fail to resist power-effects, while simultaneously transforming power-relations.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 7, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-07, Section: A, page: 2733. Adviser: Frederick Beiser.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 11, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-01, Section: A, page: 0202. Chair: Paul Vincent Spade.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2008. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 1 février 2007). In ProQuest dissertations and theses. Publié aussi en version papier.

<p> Classical, scientific, and Abrahamic origin stories of knowledge establish grounds. Upon excavating these grounds, this dissertation has found repeated and entangled emphases on isolation related to a materially grounded cosmology. The core evidence for this position comes from their comparable displays of the psyche/mind/soul/spirit&rsquo;s entry into and/or imprisonment within body, the symbolic restraint of Classical and Abrahamic progenitors with stone, and the initiation of philosophy&mdash;according to Aristotle&mdash;with a theory of materialism. Symbolic interpretations of the religious myths are supported by commentary from within the respective traditions. </p><p> Following a consideration of the existential implications of a material ground and (fundamentally) isolated self-image, the work considers mythic liberations of progenitors from stone and Einstein&rsquo;s liberation of scientific traditions from material reductionism. As Einstein&rsquo;s labors included an integration of wave dynamics into the way matter is seen, Herakles&rsquo; and Christ&rsquo;s liberations of Prometheus and Adam are actuated by symbolic fluids. Later, their transcendence and atonement(s) are actuated by fluid. As is shown, Classical, Christian, and scientific knowledge narratives all contain reactions to a material ground of being contingent with the integration/imbibing of waves/fluids. The primary examples for this include the hydra-blood that freed Prometheus from stone and Herakles from life, the nectar of immortality he drank upon his death, the wine-blood of Christ that freed Adam from stone and his followers from mortality, and the form of waves and fields Einstein added to the theoretical particle. </p><p> This dissertation argues that the reason fluids have played such integral roles in the historical and symbolic transcendence of material/embodied isolation and Classical atoms (isolated matter) is because&mdash;unlike material particulates&mdash;fluids and waves are capable of union and harmony. My read of particle-wave duality is as a new foundation that challenges atomized cosmologies and worldviews leading many towards a vision of self as estranged from other. My final argument is that each of these prominent Western knowledge traditions present stories that follow a meta-narrative arc defined by an initial commitment to a materially grounded cosmology that is later enhanced&mdash;if not healed&mdash;by theoretical waves and symbolic elixirs. </p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> Mythology, Philosophy, Science, Religion, Wave</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 23, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4347. Adviser: Paul V. Spade.

Thesis (S.T.D.)--Catholic University of America, 1933. / Bibliography: p. 133-137.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kent State University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed July 3, 2008). Advisor: Jeffrey Wattles. Keywords: social self; self-other dialectic; pure experience; I-Me; I-Thou; sunyata; kenosis; basho; absolute nothingness; George H. Mead; Nishida Kitaro; Steve Odin. Includes bibliographical references (p. 65).

The author's Habilitationsschrift--Universität Innsbruck, 1983. / Includes indexes. Bibliography: p. 393-410.

Over the past thirty years, academic dialogues on the relationships between the sciences and religions have flourished, albeit primarily within Judeo-Christian historical, theological and philosophical contexts. Can a Hindu tradition be brought into this dialogue? The Bhagavata Purana is one of the most well-known sacred texts of India, and biology, Darwinism in particular, has become one of the most spirited areas of the science and religion dialogue in academia, as well as in the popular media. This thesis examines the possibility, scope and foundational topics involved in a dialogue between Vaisnava-Hindu theology as found in the Bhāgavata, and the theoretical, philosophical and theological issues surrounding contemporary biology. To examine the possibility and scope of a Bhāgavata-science dialogue, I focus on the theological, ontological, epistemological and teleological presuppositions that each tradition bring to the study of nature, outlining the similarities and differences in their approaches. I establish the grounds for further discussion through a comparative analysis of terms such as "consciousness," "knowledge" and "goal of knowledge" as they appear in the Bhagavata and noteworthy Darwinian texts. My argument is that although prima facie the two traditions appear different in their philosophical, scientific and theological approaches, there are a number of areas of common interest and parallels, especially in their epistemologies and teleologies. In the case of genuine differences, such as their views on the ontology of consciousness, I demonstrate the possibility of reconciliation. Clarifying the conceptual differences, establishing parallels and demonstrating areas of common interests opens the possibility and widens the scope for further dialogue.