Abstract Not Provided / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / The dissertation addresses two interrelated questions through a reading of works by Emmanuel Levinas and Simone Weil: (1) what justification is there for the reality of ethics since the Shoah, and (2) what does the vulnerability of the person and of ethics imply about the nature of human subjectivity and its witness to atrocity? The thesis argued is that vulnerability is the one quality that best defines human existence at every level of experience, hence that ethics requires constant active preservation. After introducing Levinas and Weil through their ideas of substitution and decreation, respectively, we consider how their tolerance of contradiction defines a decreative hermeneutics, or self-abdicative interpretation of the world. Further preliminaries justify Levinas’s use of value judgments in philosophical arguments and review the relation of his and Weil’s thought to Heidegger’s philosophy, to Nelson Goodman’s notion of worldmaking, and to the problem of evil. Through Levinas’s controversial notion of persecution, the method of decreative phenomenology is developed as an approach to ethical problems that explicitly seeks to preserve the alterity of the other person. Applications include Levinas’s idea of subjectivity as expiation, the status of testimonial literature on atrocity, and the present-day totalizing legacy of the concentration camps. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

<p> The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the critique of the Old Testament which is found in the writings of Simone Weil (l909-43). The critique will be examined both for its account of the history and literature of Ancient Israel and also for its criticisms of the concept of God and the form of religion which are found in the Old Testament. The critique will be investigated and assessed in the academic fields within which it falls, namely Old Testament scholarship, the study of the Ancient Near East, and the comparative and philosophical study of world religion as a whole. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

My thesis focuses on demonstrating the limits of the human development approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. While both offer excellent criticisms of the problems inherent in economic- or income-centered approaches to development, the framework of freedoms and capabilities from which they argue is too limited in identifying responsibilities and obligations to others. Thus, their approaches cannot sufficiently be used to transform the economic, social, and political structures that have caused and maintain the social justice issues they seek to address. In order to achieve universal recognition of the essential right of every individual to be free and able to live a life of value and human dignity, it is first necessary that people desire such recognition for others, not only themselves. Since the fulfillment of entitlements necessary for living a full and happy life essentially require institutions, governments, and numerous other socially-based public actions to secure them, the recognition of individual responsibilities and obligations is fundamental to being able to realize freedoms, rights, and capabilities. Therefore, I argue that the transformation from economic-centered to freedom- or capability-centered development processes must be grounded in responsibility and concern for others. What is needed is not an approach that is merely more of the same – freedom, liberty, rights – but instead a radical transformation of the moral and ethical values of society, which cannot be brought about without a shift, not just in the focus, but in the language of approaches to human development and social injustice.

The dissertation considers the influence of Jacques Ellul, Martin Heidegger, and Simone Weil on Grant's understanding of technology. Chapters One and Two analyze Ellul's influence on Grant, while Chapter Three examines Heidegger's influence on Grant's understanding of technology. Chapter Four examines the consequences of Grant's ambiguous evaluation of Ellul and Heidegger. Grant's unwillingness to entirely accept either account of technology leads to a tension in which aspects of Ellul 's account of technology are held simultaneously with elements of Heidegger's account. As a way to overcome the tension between these explanations, Grant becomes open to gnostic elements in Weil's theology, which manifest themselves in radical dualism and esoteric wisdom. The purpose of the dissertation is to clarify the significance of Ellul for Grant's thought. Scholars often overlook the extent of Ellul's contribution for Grant's account of technology, particularly in Grant's refinement of concepts such as technological necessity and his critique of liberal ideology. Furthermore, the dissertation seeks to reveal the pliability of Grant's account of technology, which is closely linked to Grant's theological, philosophical, and political judgments. The dissertation suggests that Grant's understanding of technology leads Grant to espouse gnostic elements from Weil's theology (such as radical dualism and esoteric wisdom) as a palliative to the arid technological necessity and moral inarticulacy of technological civilization. The dissertation challenges the scholarly orthodoxy that exists in the interpretation of Grant's work. Through a fresh reading of primary and secondary sources, the dissertation advocates an alternative approach to understanding Grant's thought. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

[pt] Mística e corporeidade: experiência, ética e práxis em Simone Weil caracteriza-se por um trabalho de pesquisa que se desenvolve a partir da experiência mística corpórea da filósofa de Paris, Simone Weil, que viveu uma experiência práxis místico-ética unitária em seu corpo e alma. Essa experiência se intensificou ao sentir-se tomada por Cristo em sua própria carne. Demonstraremos essa experiência a partir de sua linguagem místico-erótica, que a faz entregar-se inteiramente ao Outro. Sua espera (en attente) pelo encontro com Deus, ou melhor, ser encontrada por Ele, permite uma vida de configuração ao corpo de Cristo, a partir da proximidade com a ética Paulina, solidarizando-se em sua própria carne com as dores da humanidade, assimcomo Cristo, que entregou seu corpo para todos, culminando na verdadeira experiência eucarística: dar-se em comida e bebida para os demais. De início, nosso estudo fundamenta-se em diversas áreas do saber como sociologia, psicologia e filosofia para discorrermos sobre a temática do corpo na contemporaneidade. Terá seu portoseguro na teologia. Em seguida, nossa reflexão será realizada à luz da experiência de Simone Weil. Identificamos essa experiência mística em duas linhas de reflexão. A primeira O corpo que sofre, incontinente e resistente; e a segunda, O corpo que ama, como sensibilidade para amar e vibrar. No último passo apresentaremos sinais de uma mística erótica apostólica de configuração ao corpo do Cristo a partir de Simone Weil que aponte caminhos para se viver a mística hoje. / [en] Mystique and embodiment: experience, ethics and praxis of Simone Weil is a research whose starting point is the mystical experience of the body according to the French philosopher Simone Weil, who had a mystical-ethical experience in praxis, merging her body and soul. Such experience was intensified when the philosopher felt as if Christ was inside her body. This experience will be demonstrated through its mystic-erotic language, which leads her to give herself up entirely to the Other. Her wait (en attente) for God, or in other words, her wait to be found by God, allowed her to have a life guided by the body of Christ, beginning with her closeness to the Pauline ethics, and showing her solidarity with the miseries of the human race, as the same as Christ did – He gave his body to everybody, which was in the end the real eucharistic experience: to give yourself as food and drink to the others. Initially, this study is based on many different areas, such as sociology, psychology and philosophy, so that we can discuss about the contemporary view of body. Our safe haven will be Theology. Afterwards, this research will be carried out in the light of Simone Weil s experience, which we reflected upon from two different perspectives – the first one the body that suffers, frail and resilient, and the second one The body that loves, with sensibility to love and to vibrate. Finally, signs of an apostolic erotic mystique to configure the body of Christ will be presented regarding Simone Weil as a starting point, since she has developed ways to live the mystique nowadays.

The thesis explores the variety of dialogue in the work of American poetess Louise Glück (*1943). It also points out three options for crossing over the aesthetics of absence. The analysis concerns mainly poems included in the collection The Wild Iris (1992), but it also takes in consideration Gluck's other poetical books such as Averno (2006) and Meadowlands (1996). After naming the nodes which make the contact in the collections, the thesis surpasses the field of literature for creating the dialogue with the aesthetics of absence according to German composer Heiner Goebbels (*1952), with the negative theology of French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) and with the absence of the other in the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916). This interdisciplinary dialog seeks to describes one of the major tendencies of Gluck's poetry, which is the ghostly possibility of encountering with otherness

The concept of compassion has recently held a controversial role in political thought. Critics have tied it with the condescension and latent self-interest of pity, while proponents have asserted it as the ethical posture from which to approach the suffering of others. This thesis looks at the role of compassion in the political sphere, arguing that political compassion involves a decentring of oneself as the primary subject of political action, looking instead to forego one’s own desire and to replace it with the desire of another. It pays particular attention to the thought of Hannah Arendt, who excludes this self-sacrificing compassion from the political sphere, due to the importance of speech to political action, and in turn, the importance of muteness to compassion. To Arendt, political speech intends to performatively bring one’s uniqueness into the world, whereas compassion performatively denies this subjectivity and is fundamentally unpolitical. She asserts that not only do public displays of compassion destroy their very value, but moreover, that a focus of compassion and suffering in the political sphere overshadows the need for cool, sober discourse between equals. I argue that, even in accepting Arendt’s definition of the political, there is space for compassion as a political labour. While Arendt asserts the need for speech and action in the political sphere, she conflates the free will involved in the plurality and uniqueness of the content of speech with the uniform, natural will to speak. Her articulations of the political realm, which require one to make oneself heard among equals, invoke at that same moment an immediate need for the labour of others foregoing their own desire to speak and act, to instead passively listen. Instead of being a realm exclusively to manifest one’s will, the political instead requires a reciprocity of desire, and its abnegation. / Graduate / 0615 / 0422 / 0681 / charlebois@u.northwestern.edu

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Andrade Martins.pdf: 1254174 bytes, checksum: f38b6c9e9239ee5ff690c54afd9a42ae (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-06-01 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Simone Weil, French philosopher of the first half of the 20th century, died young, 34 years old, but she had a deeply experience marked of the commitment with the philosophical study in the search for truth and by solidarity with the oppressed. She was faithful to her existential and philosophical purpose. She felt in her flesh the degraded suffering of existence and she felt touched by God s grace in which she found the truth and reason of love to sufferers. This suffering touches all dimensions of human existence, she called malheur. Our study is about how malheur and the grace are present in the life and thought of Simone Weil from letters and essays that she wrote and which are in the book Attente de Dieu. We tried to understand these two categories and we notice that they are concepts articulated philosophically that allow us to make a link between what Simone Weil lived and thought. Malheur and grace are worked in a conceptual and experiential form. They have in their bases the real life and the philosophical argument. We started understanding Simone s work and the elucidation of important moment of her life. After we showed the understanding of her letters and essays. We concluded that the concepts of malheur and grace are fundamental categories in the religious-philosophical thought of Simone Weil and they do a link between religious experience, philosophical knowledge and existential practice / Simone Weil, filósofa francesa de primeira metade do século XX, morreu ainda muito jovem, aos 34 anos, mas teve uma experiência profundamente marcada pelo comprometimento com o estudo filosófico na busca pela verdade e pela solidariedade com os mais oprimidos do seu tempo. Sendo fiel aos seus propósitos filosóficos e existenciais, sentiu na própria carne o sofrimento degradante da existência e, nele, sentiu ser tocada pela graça de Deus, encontrado a verdade e a razão do amor aos sofredores. Esse sofrimento que afeta todas as dimensões da existência humana, ela chamou de malheur. Nosso estudo é sobre como o malheur e a graça estão presentes na vida e no pensamento de Simone Weil a partir de cartas e opúsculos que escreveu e estão reunidos no livro Attente de Dieu. Buscamos compreender essas duas categorias e percebemos que elas são conceitos articulados filosoficamente e que permitem fazermos uma conexão entre o que viveu e pensou. Malheur e graça são trabalhados de forma experiencial e conceitual, de tal forma que eles têm por base a concretude da vida e a argumentação filosófica. O caminho seguido parte da compreensão da obra de Simone e da elucidação de importantes momentos da sua vida, depois apresentamos a compreensão das cartas e dos opúsculos. Isso permitiu chegarmos à conclusão de que os conceitos de malheur e de graça são categorias fundamentais no pensamento religioso-filosófico de Simone Weil e que elas fazem uma conexão entre experiência religiosa, conhecimento filosófico e prática existencial