Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / Is it possible for a finite thing to mediate an infinite God? Would it not be as futile as a hand trying to grasp the entire earth, or a seashell to contain the ocean? A finite thing is by definition limited, and thus its attempt to reveal an infinite God seems to lead immediately to two possible outcomes: (a) idolatry, where the finite fails to adequately capture God, where mediator becomes imposter, and (b) iconoclasm, which recognizes the inevitable failure of mediation and seeks to avoid or destroy any further attempts to carry it out. While taking different courses of action, their opposition reveals a deeper unity: both posit an implicit competition between the infinite God and finite reality. And yet most religions still claim mediation of God is possible. How do they avoid this impasse? To explore this possibility of mediation, I turn to the things themselves, focusing on the particular case of the icon. As something to be looked at, touched, or kissed, the icon reminds us how deeply rooted we are in the senses we prefer to take for granted, and cuts short any attempts to “spirit away” the finite limitations of human existence. The Introduction contextualizes this first problem, but upon turning to the icon in Chapter 1 a second problem immediately arises. What is an icon, and how do we approach it? Aesthetics, history, patristics, and contemporary theology have a legitimate claim on its identity, but also suffer from significant blind spots. By untangling the lines of these debates, I show that two questions critical to my inquiry remain without a satisfactory answer: 1) What is an image, and how does it mediate the truth in what it shows? 2) What would it mean for God to “show” himself? I argue that phenomenology will serve as a productive way forward on both these fronts. Chapter 2 uses the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer to address the first of these questions with a hermeneutic phenomenology of the image. Chapter 3 addresses the second in dialogue with Jean-Luc Marion. Although Marion does engage with the question of the painted icon in several places, the “icon” for Marion is not primarily a question of images, but of the unique way that God shows himself. When combined with Gadamer’s aesthetics this will offer the launching point for my phenomenological analysis of the icon in Chapters 4 and 5. The icon is something to be seen, but also something to be touched and kissed. It is a kind of representational art, with a unique style and clearly defined content, but also embedded in a practice of substitutional prayer and shared with a liturgical community. I show how each of these dimensions of meaningful mediation arises within ordinary human experience and how its structure changes as it is extended in prayer. Chapter 6 closes the inquiry by drawing these particular results into a final and general model of “iconic mediation.” This begins to explain how a finite thing in its limitations and particularities can mediate an infinite God, but only once we have exposed and subverted the layers of iconoclasm implicit in the original question. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / Is it possible for a finite thing to mediate an infinite God? Would it not be as futile as a hand trying to grasp the entire earth, or a seashell to contain the ocean? A finite thing is by definition limited, and thus its attempt to reveal an infinite God seems to lead immediately to two possible outcomes: (a) idolatry, where the finite fails to adequately capture God, where mediator becomes imposter, and (b) iconoclasm, which recognizes the inevitable failure of mediation and seeks to avoid or destroy any further attempts to carry it out. While taking different courses of action, their opposition reveals a deeper unity: both posit an implicit competition between the infinite God and finite reality. And yet most religions still claim mediation of God is possible. How do they avoid this impasse? To explore this possibility of mediation, I turn to the things themselves, focusing on the particular case of the icon. As something to be looked at, touched, or kissed, the icon reminds us how deeply rooted we are in the senses we prefer to take for granted, and cuts short any attempts to “spirit away” the finite limitations of human existence. The Introduction contextualizes this first problem, but upon turning to the icon in Chapter 1 a second problem immediately arises. What is an icon, and how do we approach it? Aesthetics, history, patristics, and contemporary theology have a legitimate claim on its identity, but also suffer from significant blind spots. By untangling the lines of these debates, I show that two questions critical to my inquiry remain without a satisfactory answer: 1) What is an image, and how does it mediate the truth in what it shows? 2) What would it mean for God to “show” himself? I argue that phenomenology will serve as a productive way forward on both these fronts. Chapter 2 uses the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer to address the first of these questions with a hermeneutic phenomenology of the image. Chapter 3 addresses the second in dialogue with Jean-Luc Marion. Although Marion does engage with the question of the painted icon in several places, the “icon” for Marion is not primarily a question of images, but of the unique way that God shows himself. When combined with Gadamer’s aesthetics this will offer the launching point for my phenomenological analysis of the icon in Chapters 4 and 5. The icon is something to be seen, but also something to be touched and kissed. It is a kind of representational art, with a unique style and clearly defined content, but also embedded in a practice of substitutional prayer and shared with a liturgical community. I show how each of these dimensions of meaningful mediation arises within ordinary human experience and how its structure changes as it is extended in prayer. Chapter 6 closes the inquiry by drawing these particular results into a final and general model of “iconic mediation.” This begins to explain how a finite thing in its limitations and particularities can mediate an infinite God, but only once we have exposed and subverted the layers of iconoclasm implicit in the original question. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This thesis examines a recent shift in attention to the auditory present in a strand of post-1999 contemporary European film and philosophy. It argues that noise, defined predominantly as unpleasant or unidentifiable sound, has been harnessed by particular filmmakers as a means to tune our attention to different bodies sounding in our environment. Yet while the ear is an organ we perceive to be open, it could always be receiving more. This limit to our audition is a limit the filmmakers examined here productively engage with in ways that raise questions about the politics and ethics of listening to different bodies. The thesis takes Jean-Luc Nancy's articulation of the listening body, what he calls the corps sonore, to posit a theory of a 'cinematic corps sonore' where the boundaries between on-screen bodies, medium and spectator are dissolved in the mutual vibratory soundings that characterise the state of being 'all ears'. In doing so, the thesis offers a revision of the haptic framework that has dominated recent sensuous theories of film as well as applications of Nancy's thought to film in the inter-discipline of film philosophy. The analysis proceeds via close readings of individual films to consider how noise tunes us to different bodies and the specific issues raised in doing so in ways that resonate beyond the philosophical limits of Nancy's corps sonore. Chapter one examines the 'unlistenable' in the work of Catherine Breillat and Gaspar Noé. It revises accounts of the supposed 'unwatchability' of Breillat and Noé's cinema by examining their respective appeals to volume and frequency, revealing both the possibility of intimacy and the risk of vulnerability that the corps sonore poses. Chapter two takes the corps sonore to the question of national borders and social bodies by bringing post-colonial theorist Édouard Glissant's concept of the écho-monde to Tony Gatlif's Exils (2004) and Arnaud des Pallières' Adieu (2004). It argues that both filmmakers appeal to the migratory properties of noise to think through questions of identity, relation and the different degrees of belonging that sound inscribes. The final chapter asks whether cinema constitutes a site that allows for an amplification of the nonhuman. Attention is given both to the practice of Foley and to the use of Foley in Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009) and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio (2012) to show how a non-coincidence between body and sound figures cinema as a place of resonance, animated by the scattered structure of dynamic relations between things that Foley brings about. Yet the chapter also casts doubt over the possibility of noise indicating something outside of human world-projection and as such, disrupts the otherwise increasingly prehensile attention that I argue filmmakers have been able to pay to the body through the auditory.

Diss.--Marburg, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 397-415.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Uninversité de Paris, 1920. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-254).

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2008. / Abstract. Description based on Microfiche version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-56).

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: Barry Allen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves195-203). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis ( M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of History. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/01/14). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.) --University of Toledo, 2008. / Typescript. "Submitted as partial fulfillments of the requirements for The Master of Arts in Philosophy." "A thesis entitled"--at head of title. Bibliography: leaves 105-108.