As the title suggests, this essay is a postmodern and autobiographical analysis of the three detectives in Paul Auster´s widely acclaimed 1987 novel The New York Trilogy. The focus of this study is centred on a comparison between the three detectives, but also on tracking when and why the detectives devolve into madness. Moreover, it links their descent into madness to the postmodern condition. In postmodernity with its’ incredulity toward Metanarratives’ lives are shaped by chance rather than by causality. In addition, the traditional reliable tools of analysis and reason widely associated with the well-known literary detectives in the era of enlightenment, such as Sherlock Holmes or Dupin, are of little use. All of this is also aggravated by an unforgiving and painful never-ending postmodern present that leaves the detectives with little chance to catch their breath, recover their balance or sanity while being overwhelmed by their disruptive postmodern objects. Consequently, the three detectives are essentially all humiliated and stripped bare of their professional and personal identities with catastrophic results. Hence, if the three detectives start out with a reasonable confidence in their own abilities, their investigations lead them with no exceptions to a point where they are unable to distinguish reality from their postmodern paranoia and madness. And in the meantime, no crime is resolved and no social order restored. The autobiographical back drop of the three detectives and protagonists in the three novellas is the author´s own life in the late seventies and early eighties. In that sense the three protagonists all illustrate the parallel lives the author could have had, if chance and trivial every day decisions had not turned Auster´s life around, at certain critical junctures during the darkest moments of his life in connection with the painful divorce from his first wife.

Marie Ogden's Home of Truth colony—a religious community that was located in southern Utah during the 1930s and 40s—was part of a segment of the American religious landscape that has largely been overlooked. As such, her movement points to a significant gap in the historiography of American religion. In addition to documenting the history of this obscure community, I situate Marie Ogden as part of what I call the early new age of American religion, an underdeveloped part of the broader categories of metaphysical religion or Western esotericism. This thesis also points to several other overlooked figures from the same era, suggesting several avenues for further study.

[pt] Esta tese pretende abordar a teoria da religião do filósofo e sociólogo alemão Jürgen Habermas (1929 –) em uma sociedade considerada pós-secular em que o Estado seja neutro, isto é, secular e plural diante das diversas visões de mundo. Habermas parte da reviravolta linguística pragmática pós-metafísica do século XX, dos jogos de linguagem do L. Wittgenstein tardio até a transformação semiótica da filosofia de Kant no a priori da comunidade transcendental de comunicação de K.-O. Apel, passando pelo caminho da linguagem em M. Heidegger, pela hermenêutica de H. G. Gadamer e a teoria dos atos de fala de J. Austin. Herdeiro desse arcabouço teórico, Habermas filia-se a ética do discurso, a partir da pragmática universal com a teoria do agir comunicativo. Os princípios da moralidade e da universalização da ética do discurso são repensados na teoria discursiva do direito e da democracia, a partir dos modelos normativos do liberalismo e do republicanismo, em que os direitos humanos e a soberania popular são entendidos como cooriginários no modelo da democracia deliberativa ou procedimental. Ora, é nesse modelo de um estado liberal, e assim secular, que é normatizada a vida de uma sociedade pós-secular, onde a religião persiste, apesar de seu entorno secular. Para que a religião possa existir no seu entorno secular, é preciso que crentes e não crentes travem um diálogo tolerante de aprendizagem mútua. Mas qual o papel que a religião ainda pode ter nessa sociedade? De que forma a filosofia ainda pode pensar Deus hoje? A defesa que se faz aqui, principalmente a partir da última obra de Habermas – Pensamento pós-metafísico II – é a de uma filosofia, de posicionamento agnóstico e metodologicamente ateu, que tomando por base Kant dialoga com a teologia contemporânea. É reconstruída, por Habermas, uma filosofia da religião de Kant, tendo como fundamento o contributo moral que a filosofia e a teologia, podem deixar para o conceito de uma sociedade moderna e da solidariedade anamnética. Essa filosofia da religião, que está presente no pensamento de Habermas não se dá a partir de provas ontológicas ou cosmológicas da existência de Deus, mas na fundamentação da exigência do dever moral, uma “fé moral”, uma filosofia da religião da boa conduta de vida, no dizer de G. Sala e J. A. Estrada. Somente assim poderíamos chamar Habermas de filósofo da religião. / [en] This thesis intends to approach the theory of religion of the German philosopher and sociologist Jurgen Habermas (1929 –) in a society considered post-secular in which the state is neutral, that is, secular and plural before the different world views. Habermas starts from the twentieth-century pragmatic, post-metaphysical linguistic turn, of L. Wittgenstein s late language games and the semiotic transformation of Kant s philosophy into the a priori of transcendental community of communication of K. O. Apel, going through on the way to language, by M. Heidegger, through the hermeneutics of H.G. Gadamer and the theory of speech acts from J. Austin. Heir to this theoretical framework, Habermas joins the discourse ethics, from universal pragmatics with the theory of communicative action. The principles of morality and universalization of discourse ethics are rethought in the discursive theory of law and democracy, based on the normative models of liberalism and republicanism, in which human rights and popular sovereignty are understood as co-originating in the model of deliberative or procedural democracy. Now, it is in this model of a liberal state, and thus secular, that the life of a post-secular society is normalized, where religion persists despite its secular surroundings. In order that religion exists in its secular environment, believers and non-believers must engage in a tolerant dialogue of mutual learning. But what role can religion still play in this society? How can philosophy think about God today? The defense made here, mainly from Habermas last work – Postmetaphysical Thinking II – is that of a philosophy, with an agnostic and methodologically atheist position, which, based on Kant, dialogues with contemporary theology. t is reconstructed by Habermas, a philosophy of religion by Kant, based on the moral contribution that philosophy and theology can leave for the concept of a modern society and anamnestic solidarity. This philosophy of religion, which is present in Habermas thought, is not based on ontological or cosmological proofs of the existence of God, but on the grounds of the requirement of moral duty, a moral faith, a philosophy of religion of good conduct of life, in the words of G. Sala and J. A. Estrada. Only then, we could call Habermas a philosopher of religion.

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[pt] Peter Eisenman intempestivamente advertiu que a doutrina modernista da relação entre forma e função não fez mais do que fazer perdurar um discurso inalterado há 500 anos. Para reparar tal equívoco ele preconiza romper com a função como principio fundador e considerar a representação uma falsa autoridade que sugere algum tipo de relação verdadeira entre o objeto arquitetônico e o que ele significa. À vista disso, Eisenman investiga a ideia de presença e a representação da presença, como repressores de novos significados e decreta a imprescindibilidade do reconhecimento completo da metafísica: a ideia de presença e a presença da ausência. Para alcançar esse deslocamento Eisenman elabora uma arquitetura outra produzida como texto no lugar de uma arquitetura como imagem, que intenciona romper com a dialética metafísica e seus pares de oposição através de uma exploração do entre. O texto nunca permite um único significado. Para suscitar tamanha ambivalência Eisenman vai recorrer a dois termos: O Arabesco e o Grotesco, evocando com essas duas palavras todo um sistema de conceitos e metodologias que conduziram sincronicamente o seu trabalho e o seu pensamento. Essa dissertação pretende demonstrar o potencial notável que viabilizou o arabesco e o grotesco se tornarem texto, rompimento de oposições e hieraquia de valores, esvaziamento de signos, turvarmento de fronteiras e sistemas classificatórios convencionais e, principalmente, explorar a poética. Validando, assim, que eles são o próprio deslocamento da metafísica arquitetônica. / [en] Peter Eisenman has untimely warned that the modernist doctrine of the relation between form and function has only lasted a speech unchanged 500 years ago. To repair this misconception it is necessary to break with function as the founding principle and to regard representation as a false authority that suggests a kind of true and exact relationship between the architectural object and what it means. In doing so, Eisenman investigates the idea of presence and the representation of presence, as repressors of other interpretations and new meanings, and decrees the indispensability of the complete recognition of metaphysics: the idea of presence and the presence of absence. To achieve this displacement Eisenman elaborates an other architecture produced as a text rather than an architecture as an image, which intends to break with metaphysical dialectics and its opposition peers through an exploration of the between. The text never allows a single meaning. To arouse such ambivalence Eisenman will use two terms: The Arabesque and the Grotesque, evoking with these two words a whole system of concepts and methodologies that synchronously conducted his work and his thinking. This dissertation intends to demonstrate the extraordinary potential that allowed the arabesque and the grotesque to become text, breaking of oppositions and hierarchy of values, emptying of signs, blurring of boundaries and conventional classificatory systems and, above all, exploring the poetic. Validating, therefore, that they are the very displacement of architectural metaphysics.

Mémoire en recherche-création / Notre essai porte sur le concept d’imaginaire métaphysique chez Yves Bonnefoy et a pour objectif d’en expliquer la portée et de l’approfondir avec la notion de mélancolie telle que la conçoit Charles Baudelaire, afin de montrer que la proposition de Bonnefoy fonctionne et a sa pertinence comme clef de lecture et comme perspective nouvelle sur la littérature. En effet, si l’essai dans lequel Bonnefoy développe sa pensée est d’une assez courte portée, les thèmes et les idées qu’il regroupe traversent l’œuvre essayistique du poète et rejoignent sa conception de la poésie – que l’on sait influencée par la métaphysique, tout particulièrement plotinienne – et rejaillissent ainsi sur l’ensemble de son œuvre. C’est toutefois avec quelques poèmes de Charles Baudelaire que l’imaginaire métaphysique sera éprouvé vers la fin de l’essai, afin non seulement d’en montrer la justesse mais aussi d’élaborer l’imaginaire métaphysique de Baudelaire lui-même : le concept de Bonnefoy éclaire non seulement ce que peut la poésie, mais aussi celle que tout littéraire porte en soi. Sur cette toile de fond, l’essai-fiction s’attelle à explorer l’imaginaire métaphysique de son auteur par un dialogue soutenu avec une variété de textes, parmi lesquels une place prépondérante est accordée aux essais littéraires. Sous forme de courts textes suivis inspirés par la pratique fragmentaire prônée par le romantisme allemand, l’essai-fiction explore notamment les rapports au plein air et au paysage conçu comme vécu, le rapport à la mémoire et à l’idéalité rétroactive des souvenirs et ce qu’est le pressentiment d’avoir vu. Une part prépondérante de l’essai-fiction suit, enfin, quelques textes de l’essayiste québécois Yvon Rivard autour de ce qu’il nomme « l’expérience littéraire » et renouvelle ainsi la question de l’imaginaire métaphysique de Bonnefoy, à savoir ce que « donne à voir » la poésie et ce qui est, au fond, la marque de toute expérience créatrice. L’essai-fiction erre ainsi de sommets en vallons et aboutit à son propre « paysage métaphysique » réel, nommé la Maison devant le monde, où recommencent les vagues et s’épuise l’écriture. / Our study is about Yves Bonnefoy’s concept of metaphysical imagination and aims to explain the concept and to further develop it in light of the notion of melancholy promoted by Charles Baudelaire, with the objective of demonstrating that Bonnefoy’s concept applies to and can serve as a relevant tool for the reading and promotion of new conceptualizations in literature. While Bonnefoy’s essay within which he develops his ideas is essentially quite short and might be read as pertinent primarily to poetic musings, those same ideas that are regrouped transcend the essays of the poet and fuel his conceptualization of poetry – which we know is influenced by metaphysics, notably Plotinus’ metaphysics – as reflected in his life’s work. However, it is with a few poems by Charles Baudelaire that the concept of metaphysical imagination will be further tested, with the objective of demonstrating its functionality but also to elaborate further the poet’s own metaphysical imagination beyond its origins: Bonnefoy’s concept sheds light not only on what poetry can do, but also on what every litterary carries within his own self. Against this backdrop, our essay-fiction explores the metaphysical imagination of its author by putting it in dialogue with multiple writings, attending in particular to literary essays. Through short texts inspired by German Romanticism’s genre of the fragment, our work engages specifically with relations to the outdoors and the landscape, treated in terms of its lived experiences, the relation to memory and the retroactive ideality of memories and the having of a premonition of something or a “glimpse”. A sizable part of the text follows the works of Quebec writer Yvon Rivard revolving around what he calls the “literary experience” and so renews Bonnefoy’s metaphysical imagination’s question, which is about the “glimpse” poetry can offer and what in the end essentially characterizes creative experiences. From peaks to valleys, our work wanders and gives rise to its own yet real “metaphysical landscape”, called the House before the world, where waves renew while the writing slowly exhausts itself.

How do we design for a local community while respecting heritage and touching their hearts? We know through our minds and we understand through our hearts. Consciousness touches minds and experience touches hearts. Since phenomenology is the study of both consciousness and experience, this phenomenological architectural thesis is designed to touch both minds and hearts. Instead of replacement, we need embracement in order to root one's social identity. Only then we will elevate cultural heritage in any context, for example African. This thesis includes a case study of light followed by a 'pataphysical design proposal for Tapestry: a new library at Mzuzu University in Malawi. The library proposal is introduced through poems and visual information in the following sets: metaphysical, physical, 'pataphysical. Through the inquiry in haiku writing style, this poetry collection evaluates corners, windows, light, intensity, form. Not only we propose an exciting and unique library design, but we also discover that dignity is the key to unlocking the spirit of light in any project, regardless of its form. / Master of Architecture

[pt] Esta tese é uma reflexão sobre a possibilidade de um discurso sobre a religiosidade a partir da morte de Deus. Procurei escavar interpretações a respeito da sentença Deus está morto!, presente nos aforismos 125 e 343, de A gaia ciência, de Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) e confrontei-as com as ressonâncias desta proclamação na obra do filósofo francês Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). Sobre os sentidos interpretativos da assertiva nietzschiana, apresento três aspectos fundamentais do Deus assassinado, nomeadamente: (a) o Deus metafísico; (b) o Deus moral; (c) o Deus cristão. Os textos de Marcel analisados na tese apontam a acolhida e a ressignificação do vaticínio nietzschiano. Nessa acolhida, as noções de drama, situação, universal concreto, transcendência e intersubjetividade mereceram especial cuidado investigativo. Esta última, calcada na relação eu-tu, constitui-se como verdadeira condição de possibilidade de abertura ao outro enquanto mistério. A partir deste confronto, procurei oferecer uma síntese própria que não é nem nietzschianismo, nem marcelianismo. Uma vez que não se segue como necessário de nossa situação histórica, marcada pelo deicídio, a ilegitimidade da religião, perseverei em repensá-la, ainda que sob aspectos e configurações não usuais. Disto seguiu-se uma reinterpretação de aspectos vários, situados entre metafísica e religiosidade, bem como entre moralidade e religiosidade, o que levou a reflexão sobre alguns desdobramentos éticos e sócio-políticos aí envolvidos. / [en] The present work sets forth a discussion on the possibility of a religious speech following the death of God. It was in my interest to dig for interpretations concerning Friederich Nietzsche s (1844-1900) statement found in The Gay Science s 125th and 343th aforisms - God is dead! - and to compare them to its echoes in Gabriel Marcel s (1889-1973) works. Upon the interpretative meanings to Nietzsche s statement, I present three fundamental aspects to the murdered God, namely: (a) the metaphysical God, (b) the moral God and (c) the christian God. The Marcelian texts analyzed here point out both the reception and ressignifications of Nietzsche s prediction. In this reception, the notions of drama, situation, concrete universe, transcendence and intersubjectivity deserved a very careful analysis. The latter, based on the I-thou relationship, became a real condition for an opening towards the others as some sort of mystery. From this confrontation, I tried to offer my own synthesis that is neither akin to Nietzscheism or Marcelism. Since the ilegitimacy of religion is not a necessary fact on our days, branded by the experience of this deicide, I strived to rethink it, albeit by non usual aspects and configurations. From that followed a reinterpretation of several aspects, situated between metaphysics and religiosity, as well as between morality and religiosity, which lead to the reflexion on some of the ethical and social-political developments that lie within the discussion.

Systematic Theology, like all other disciplines, are subject to basic assumptions about its first principles, which is determinant for the way the discipline understands itself and does its work. The consequential perception the discipline has of knowledge acquisition and method of research in turn determines its interpretation of the knowledge acquired. The three areas of understanding (metaphysical assumptions, epistemological theories and ethical praxis) together form a cycle that builds the basis of a paradigm. Paradigms are continually present and are by nature developmental. The development from the macro-, to the messo-, and micro-levels in the structure of a paradigm is described through the three areas of understanding, providing a method for analysing paradigms. Using a developmental method of observation (affective awareness), analysis (ontological way of understanding), theorising (a different way of thinking) and application (ethical responsible living) suggests a fundamental reconsideration of the task of all disciplines, including systematic theology. / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / M. Th.(Systematic Theology)