Abstract Not Available.

The thesis argues that the ideological content of C. G. Jung's concept of synchronicity and particularly Jung's method of presenting synchronicity from 1928-1961 prefigure aspects of Michel Foucault's postmodern thought. Part 1 discusses issues of theory and method. Part 2 analyzes the various asides which Jung makes about synchronicity from 1928-1951, prior to his three formal works about synchronicity: "On Synchronicity" (1951); The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche (with Wolfgang Pauli, 1952); and Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1952). Part 3 analyzes these formal works about synchronicity, as well as Jung's comments on synchronicity from 1953 to the time of his death in 1961. The primary method of Parts 2 and 3 is Michel Foucault's discourse analysis, as outlined in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). Part 4 critically compares Jung's concept of synchronicity to Foucault's later understanding of discourse theory, as described in Power/Knowledge (1972). This comparison explores the truth claims forwarded by each theorist among the analytical categories of knowledge, power, and subjectivity. I conclude that the concept of synchronicity and Jung's presentation of synchronicity prefigure a postmodern approach to theory and practice. Jung and Foucault both posit the ideas of (1) an intimate connection between the internal image and the external world (2) acausality and discontinuity (3) the relativity of truth, and (4) the fallacy of "objectivity." But Jung's contradictory belief in a transhistorical, absolute dimension to the self differs from Foucault's view that subjectivity is relative to the social discourses and discursive practices which create it. I also infer that Jung purposely legitimizes synchronicity with a postmodern style of argumentation because he is aware of the need to implement a "new" truth in an unreceptive social environment. The idea of the relativity of space and time which is explicit to synchronicity is not widespread and, in fact, quite foreign to the weltanschauung of the early to middle twentieth century--particularly in Jung's field of medicine. Regarding the heuristic value of synchronicity, several theorists use the concept to advance ideas about (1) the paranormal and (2) an anticipated paradigm shift of global consciousness, characterized by beliefs about the relativity of space and time and particularly by the idea that all thoughts, actions, and objects are essentially interconnected.

Le sujet de cette these est l'intervention de l'inconnu dans la vie personnelle examinee a travers les temoignages de differents penseurs de notre tradition occidentale (Socrate, Apulee, Julien, Augustin). On discute ici de leur consensus a propos de la facon dont quelque chose d'autre que l'homme s'adresse intimement a ce dernier au fil de sa destinee. On parle de leur reconnaissance transculturelle d'un agencement exceptionnel de phenomenes a la fois physiques, psychiques et spirituels qu'ils atribuent, chacun suivant sa culture et sa religion, a la manifestation d'une realite independante et paradoxalement inconnaissable en elle-meme. Premierement, on delimite l'enquete par rapport a la theologie, aux sciences religieuses et aux philosophies de la religion en general. Deuxiemement, on verifie la validite d'une criteriologie de ce discernement et l'on montre qu'elle s'avere identique chez les penseurs etudies. Troisiemement, on corrobore le contenu de cette criteriologie a l'aide des avis d'une serie d'autres penseurs occidentaux grecs, latins et chretiens, dont Platon, Aristote, Clement d'Alexandrie, Jamblique, Macrobe, Pseudo-Denys, Thomas d'Aquin, etc. Quatriemement, on etablit la pertinence et l'originalite de cette contribution epistemologique par des comparaisons avec les points de vue de specialistes tels que Festugiere, Bultmann, Barth, Tillich, Otto, Dodds, Hick, Hoffman. Enfin, en appendice, on ajoute d'autres comparaisons avec des auteurs comme Husserl, Dumery, Marion, Urs von Balthasar, Bouyer, etc. En somme, la these reunit pour la premiere fois les conditions d'experience reelles a partir desquelles maints sages du passe disaient qu'une realite autre qu'humaine pouvait intervenir au cours de notre existence. Elle explique les composantes de ce "scheme de reconnaissance", lequel n'avait pas encore ete etudie sous cette forme en philsophie. Ce faisant, elle relativise nombre d'opinions qui circulent toujours a ce sujet et degage l'importance de certains facteurs irrationnels, involontaires, intransmissibles et gratuits qui se trouvent aussi a l'origine historique de l'impulsion a philosopher.

The hypothesis of this dissertation is that an alternative notion of selfhood is emerging in disparate areas of contemporary thought. This postmodern idea of selfhood may be seen as a reaction to traditional paradigms of human agency found in western mythology and theology, rationalist philosophy and psychology, and scientific positivism. It is not properly a new notion of selfhood insofar as many of the characteristics of self that are brought forward can be found in the history of ideas such as Romanticism and Neo-platonism. This alternate notion of selfhood emerges in two distinct areas of postmodern thought: archetypal psychology and contemporary feminist scholarship in religion. A critical assessment of archetypal psychology as informed by contemporary feminist theory is a necessary outcome of this investigation into an emerging concept of self in contemporary thought. One conclusion reached is that archetypal psychology is weak in its means of accounting for the body in how it theorizes about selfhood. Nonetheless, archetypal psychology and contemporary feminist thought can be seen as characterizing contemporary ideas of selfhood as follows: it is not singular or montheistic but diverse and polytheistic; it is more than merely rational--it is also based in the imagination; it demands the re-sacralization of both the body and the material world; it denies the belief that self is separated and autonomous, advocating the perspective that self communes with and is connected to the things and beings of the world; and, finally, it is not static, but is in the process of becoming what it will.

To Gilson, St. Thomas's is preeminently the doctrine of existence. In fact, by positing esse as first in reality, St. Thomas succeeded where other philosophers failed: that by which anything was really real was unum for Plato, substance for Aristotle, essence for Avicenna. So that the fundamental problems Gilson sets out to solve are: What is it to exist? and How does man know esse? As Gilson sees it, the esse of St. Thomas is ultimate act in relation to every other act, including the form of any thing; thus the essence or substance of a thing is a potency relative to its esse. Hence esse belongs to the level of efficient cause, while essence is formal cause determining or fixing esse at some particular point of being. Within essence, form is supreme as the act of matter; but essence is merely possible until actualized by esse, so that esse is actus omnium actuum and perfectio omnium perfectionum. In short, existence is the heart of reality. This primacy of esse is at once a guarantee that any being is ontologically stable even if contingent, that essence is harmoniously related to esse, and that being is dynamic, always tending by its operations to completion. Such are the main lines of Gilson's metaphysics. As for the problem of knowing esse, Gilson draws upon Thomistic texts to develop a noetics in which man, substantial union of body and spirit, can know by his intellect immediately and spontaneously the very existence of a thing which he perceives by the senses. In some mysterious way the composite structure of beings is matched by simple apprehension (grasping essence or quiddity) and judgment (grasping esse), and this duality in both object and subject is expressed in the noun and verb or language. Esse is itself no quiddity and cannot be concept, but it is intelligible, for in judgment we determine that something is or is not, while in simple apprehension we determine the something which is. Because Thomism takes existents as its object, and posits esse as the core of reality and establishes it first in being, Gilson sums up Thomism in the word "existential." With esse as the keystone of its arch, then, Thomism has singled out the transcendent element making all things real; moreover, by knowing existing things of the concrete material world man is led to deduce Esse Pure and Infinite. Thomistic metaphysics and noetics finds a proper term only in natural theology. In teaching this existentialist view of St. Thomas, Gilson seems to provide a valid and beautiful interpretation, which has met favour from other contemporary Thomists.

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The general historical study of the works of St. Thomas under the aspect of metaphysics has for its purpose the reconstruction of Thomistic metaphysics. This thesis is a contribution to that study. In its present form it is concerned with metaphysics as a science as exposed in the Summa Contra Gentiles . The first chapter considers the texts which deal with the objects of metaphysics and show that God holds a special place in a metaphysical inquiry. Created things are studied both in themselves and with regard to their principle and end, and especially under the aspect of their perfection of being. For it is proper to metaphysics to study common or universal being, which in most cases is considered to be the perfection of finite things. Common being can, however, also be considered a perfection applicable to God and creatures. Thus, among the objects of metaphysics there are finite and infinite things. To establish an order among these objects, we turn to a study of texts which deal with our mode of acquiring knowledge, and we find that we must necessarily begin with finite sensory things. For on the knowledge of these is based our knowledge of being and the first principles of being. Therefore, finite things are first in our order of knowledge. God, however, is the most noble object of metaphysics, even if He is the last known by us. It follows, then, that at the outset of metaphysics we know the perfection of being of finite things alone, and only at the term, after proving the existence of God, are we able to see the concept of being in its full transcendality as applying to God and creatures. God is not the first known and that through which all else is known, but He is the most noble object known in metaphysics. Since the perfection of being is possessed by God and creatures, we study, in the second chapter, the analogy of being. When Aquinas employs the term of analogy, he has in mind the analogy of causal relation or attribution. But when he deals with perfections said of God and creatures, he speaks of intrinsic possession on both sides, and therefore has the elements of the analogy of proper proportionality. In the third chapter we treat of the origin of metaphysics in man. He is dependent for it upon God as he is in being and action. The function proper to metaphysics or wisdom is to order, and to do effectively, one must possess the knowledge of the last end of things. The reward of wisdom in a natural happiness. Finally, in the fourth chapter, we discuss four recent articles on metaphysics in order to bring out the differences that are to be found in the various approaches to metaphysics and to stress the need for a systematic study of the writings of Aquinas himself.

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