Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / The idea of moral action seems to contain a paradox. On the one hand, it seems that in performing such an act one is obligated, bound to the act by something external. On the other hand, it seems that such an act must be freely chosen in the sense that the act must be done for its own sake. The source of the moral act therefore seems to be located both within and without the self. I refer to this as the problem of moral motivation. This dissertation proposes to clarify the nature of moral motivation in the context of a phenomenological investigation of the feeling of guilt, one informed by various thinkers, but particularly by the work of Paul Ricoeur. The rationale behind this proposal can be grasped by observing the confrontation between Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. Kant’s moral philosophy answers the problem of moral motivation by identifying freedom with the determination of the will by the moral law. A crucial aspect of his argument for this identification is his appeal to the experience of respect for the moral law. This feeling, which Kant describes as the incentive of morality, is a feeling of humiliation before reason, but is at the same time the ennobling sense of one’s autonomy. Nietzsche places this liaison between morality and freedom under stern scrutiny, arguing that the two notions are antithetical to one another. In effect, Nietzsche’s attack implies that moral motivation is a chimera. Guilt does not signify the power of the good to motivate one to do right for its own sake. Moral action is better interpreted as the exertion of power: justice is the advantage of the stronger. Provoked by this confrontation, the dissertation argues that the phenomenology of guilt does not permit us to reduce it entirely to internalized aggression and self-deception. Rather, the self-deceptive and manipulative emotional phenomenon that Nietzsche calls bad conscience can be distinguished from guilt per se. The central task of the work is to explicate the distinctive structure of the latter for the sake of two purposes: 1) by distinguishing guilt from bad conscience, to defend the possibility of moral motivation, and 2) to clarify that possibility in terms of its apparently paradoxical relation to the structure of the self. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / What does the word of the cross mean for philosophical anthropology? That is my question in this dissertation, which undertakes a philosophical engagement with a word that is both a scandal and folly for philosophical wisdom. My task is to give a hermeneutical description of what I call the cruciform self, and to examine the significance of the cross for several key themes of philosophical anthropology. Because my focus is thematic, I engage with several interlocutors--most prominently Paul Ricoeur and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but also Luther, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Levinas, and Charles Taylor. Given the pronounced theological aspects of this project, a recurring theme is the relation between philosophy and faith, reason and revelation. The word of the cross interrogates anthropology as well as philosophy, and so I present a hermeneutics of the cruciform self as well as a distinctly cruciform philosophy. Chapter 1 outlines the hermeneutical turn in philosophical anthropology, and argues that the self is constituted in being addressed by an external word. Chapter 2 then draws on Luther's theology of the cross to sketch an ontology of justification by faith, in which the self is constituted by eschatological possibility rather than achieved actuality, and stands outside of itself with its identity in another, in promise rather than presence. Chapter 3 interprets sin and evil according to the image of incurvature--i.e., the self curved in on itself, cut off from its true relations to God, others, and itself. Chapter 4 then argues that this incurvature must be broken open by an external word. There I draw on Bonhoeffer's phenomenological christology, which identifies this word as Christ, the Counter-Logos who reverses the intentionality and interrogation of the immanent human logos. The chapters in Part II then use Bonhoeffer's account of the ultimate and the penultimate to show how the word of the cross refigures philosophical thinking about the concreteness and continuity of faith (Ch.5), human capability, agency, and ethical responsibility (Ch.6), reflexivity, self-understanding, and intentionality (Ch.7), and the tension between faith and religion (Ch.8). / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

A dissertação procura compreender os conceitos de ética, pessoa e educação em Paul Ricoeur. Trata-se de compreender como podemos enfrentar a crise que afeta a civilização contemporânea a partir de alguns escritos deste autor. A pesquisa é de caráter bibliográfico, com enfoque hermenêutico. Trata-se de um estudo de natureza qualitativa e interpretativa acerca de conceitos referenciais do autor, os quais nos ajudam a entender o significado da ética, da moral, da sabedoria prática, da educação política e da pessoa/subjetividade para a educação. A ética de Ricoeur consiste em viver bem com e para os outros em instituições justas e isso nos desafia a pensar a educação em seu significado social, político e subjetivo/pessoal. A ética relaciona-se ao que é estimado como bom, e a moral restringe-se ao que se impõe como obrigatório. A sabedoria prática consiste precisamente em que o sujeito autônomo invente o comportamento apropriado à singularidade de cada caso. A pessoa, nestes termos, pode ser entendida como uma subjetividade autônoma, capaz de falar, de agir, de narrar e de ser responsável por si e pelo mundo (outro): uma pessoa responsável por aquilo que faz e pelo futuro. Assim, trata-se de uma educação que respeite a pessoa e que se paute pela ética e pela justiça, derivando suas implicações para uma vida civilizatória. Trata-se, portanto, de uma educação que respeite o eu, o outro e as instituições justas. Neste sentido, a tarefa do educador político para Ricoeur consiste em ajudar a pensar como combater o consumismo, e a construir um projeto para a civilização, buscando um amparo na tradição para iluminar o presente. / 72 f.

The main topic of the thesis is the temporal dimension of aesthetic experience in its relation to memory and imagination. The initial approach to the topic is the concept of relationship between time and narrative of Paul Ricoeur, primarily contained in his three volume book entitled Time and Narrative. Gradually, the specificity of the time experience will be investigated, as well as operations of memory and imagination in narrative fiction. Attention is focused on a narrative as means to designate a coherent whole, respectively a meaningful concatenation of events. The main relationship explored is the interaction between the world of work and the lived world. The functionality of theoretical views is presented on the work of French director Chris Marker, especially on his two films La Jetée (1962) and Sans Soleil (1982).

This thesis explores the view on symbol, body and freedom in Paul Ricoeur's and Olivier Clément's work. The aim is to analyse symbols and explore the benefits they can have for modern society, Western culture and how can these symbols influence people. This topic indirectly allows understanding of the role of tradition, rituals, narrations, myths and traditional wisdom in nowadays Western society. Furthermore, the thesis shows what influences the process of thinking, deciding and deepening one's faith. In particular, I am investigating whether in nowadays democratic and freedom supporting society one really has possibility of free choice. This reflection is to be completed on the basis of previous analysis of the symbol, body and freedom in the view of philosopher Paul Ricoeur and theologian Olivier Clément. The thesis is structured into three chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to the analysis of Ricoeur's view on this subject, in the following chapter I study Clément's theology, and in the third chapter I offer the comparison of these two. In the beginning of each chapter I introduce the life of the authors and influences that they encountered. This will reveal their philosophy and theology in better context. The conclusion summarizes the findings of previous chapters, and shows how they can...

Doctorado en filosofía con mención en estética y teoría dle arte) / Esta tesis consiste en una investigación de carácter interdisciplinario acerca de la relación entre tiempo histórico, tiempo litúrgico y tiempo musical, a partir de los planteamientos de Paul Ricoeur en Tiempo y narración y en función de una obra contemporánea chilena particular, la Misa de Chilenía “En lo humano lo divino” de Fidel Sepúlveda y Fernando Carrasco. Para ello se recurre a un marco teórico amplio y “polifónico” que, además de Ricoeur, incluye principalmente aportes filosóficos, teológicos, antropológicos, históricos, estéticos y musicológicos con el fin de explicitar las condicionantes culturales que inciden en un trabajo de esta índole, exponer los principales hitos de la reflexión sobre el tiempo musical y mostrar el rito de la misa y la música como modalidades de narración al aplicar los conceptos de trama, mimesis y transtextualidad. Sobre esta base se muestra el vínculo entre palabra y sonido musical en el caso de la configuración temporal de obras musicales vocales y se expone la articulación entre tiempo musical y otros tiempos como posibilidad de mediación temporal en tanto tiempo narrado en el caso general de la misa musical y en el caso particular de la Misa de Chilenía. El resultado de esta investigación conduce a la formulación de la noción de escucha desdoblada o escucha al cuadrado como vivencia peculiar con esta obra músicopoética, la que a su vez nos conduce a la reflexión sobre el tiempo, la música, el sentido y la identidad.

The New Evangelism, a term popularized by Paul VI and a primary concern of John Paul II, articulates the Catholic Church's reply to the appeal of the Council Fathers for renewed gospel proclamation in the modern age. Theology observes copious permutations of the New Evangelism, and these competing narratives cover a variety of perspectives. My project explores the question of the New Evangelism's meaning within United States Catholicism amidst its various interpretations by applying Paul Ricoeur's theory of narrative to this multiplicity of configurations. Ricoeur's theory actually anticipated the contemporary situation: as new interpretations challenged sedimentation, multiple reconfigurations of the Church's call to proclaim were the inevitable result, in light of story's power upon human imagination. In the reciprocal dialectic between historical consciousness and personal identity, story informs each and is informed by each--an epistemological circle which allows for multiple reconfigurations when narratives engage imagination. My application of Ricoeur's theory will indicate that theology is not about the New Evangelism so much as it is about New Evangelisms, and that the Church may embrace a breathing room for multiple voices without losing herself to the vacuum of relativism nor to the suffocation of autocracy. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Theology / PhD; / Dissertation;

This essay tries to investigate the possibility to reconstruct the concept of mimesis in Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology in Sein und Zeit. Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation of the concept of mimesis in Aristotle’s Poetics, develops a new temporal understanding of the mimetic activity, which Ricoeur in his work Time and Narrative, claims to have the possibility to overcome the aporias in the phenomenology of time. With this criticism as the background context for the present study, seeks this essay to pick up Ricoeur’s new conception of mimesis, and use that in a comparative philosophical reflection on the basic concepts in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. The main thesis in this essay is that Ricoeur’s concept of mimesis can be rethought and reconstructed as a possibility within Heidegger’s thinking.

Paul Ricœur traite la littérature dans une perspective onto-théologique. Il n'accorde pas au littéraire le statut de sujet qui sémantise le monde dans et par l'instance de discours. C'est le Verbe qui a créé et signifié le monde. <br />L'impensé de la subjectivation historique du langage se borne à discuter le sens, sans prendre en considération le mode de signifier. Ricœur ne fait pas la part du rythme où s'inscrit l'aventure à la fois personnelle et collective du dire. Selon la poétique de H. Meschonnic, la littéralité réside notamment en excès de la signifiance sur le sens. Mais pour Ricœur, elle consiste à révéler un sens de l'être prédonné et dissimulé. <br />Le rejet de l'historicité introduit un mouvement circulaire de retour à l'origine. Chaque œuvre se modèle, au demeurant, sur un texte biblique. Et l'ensemble des œuvres se décalque sur le corpus biblique. Au lieu d'interroger la littérature pour elle-même, Ricœur s'en sert pour réaffirmer ses théorèmes onto-théologiques.