In this thesis I argue that the constructive philosophical project of Jean-Luc Marion offers a new way of thinking the analogical relation between God and the human person. I particularly examine his concept of the saturated phenomenon in order to show how we might construct the relation between incommensurable terms (God and the human being) without requiring a similitude to mediate the relation. I argue that for Marion God's transcendence is understood as what he describes as "impossibility" and that his immanence is understood through Augustine's interior intimo meo, the God more intimate to me than I am too myself. I demonstrate that radical immanence is God's transcendence insofar as the event of the impossible precedes the being-possibility correlation of metaphysics. Thus I develop the relation of God and the human being as a coincidence of opposites more than an analogy: the infinite distance of radical alterity becomes a belonging together of the human being with God. As a consequence of this analysis, I develop a new concept of relation, which I call "hyperbolic relation." If similitude always threatens to abolish the alterity of the terms of the relation (as was Barth's objection to the analogia entis), in this case, alterity is maintained not by removing relation but by increasing it to the level of hyperbole. Like Marion's God who is "without Being," this analogy is "without similitude" by means of excess. The concept of God that I develop (impossible as intimate and vice versa) will consequently lead to a deepening of the concept of the human person through the transfiguration that saturation precipitates within the concept of relation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2008. / Title from title screen (viewed February 23, 2009) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of Studies in Religion, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2008; thesis submitted 2007. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Few philosophers, today, are doing more than simple recognition of Levinass debt to phenomenology when a thorough explication of how phenomenological methodology impacts Levinass work is needed. This dissertation is the needed discussion of methodology that has been so absent in Levinas as well as in so many of his interpreters. The purpose, herein, is to synthesize Levinass work, explicating it in terms of transcendental methodology, the result of which reveals Levinass claims to be more defensible when understood in these terms than when the full rigor of this methodology is not properly grasped. First, to connect Levinas to transcendental phenomenology a correct perspective of the phenomenological tradition is needed. I argue that phenomenology is a methodology that discloses those horizons that condition experience such that appearance takes on meaning. I further argue that it is important to see this disclosure as something open-ended and ongoing rather than a method capable of fully revealing a final telos. Levinas fits into this methodology by providing the ethical as just such a horizonal condition, while his constant returning to this theme highlights the need to keep reworking the description of its meaningful impact on experience. Second, I defend Levinas from those who claim his work cannot be phenomenological, based on what they see as an implied Jewish tradition informing his description. I argue that what must be understood is that Levinass reference to God, Biblical stories, and Jewish wisdom impose an unsettling language that is introduced to replace traditional phenomenological language that does not always allow for the goals phenomenology sets for itself. This imposition does not use the Jewish tradition to make his argument but as a vocabulary far better at describing the ethical condition than what is commonly used in phenomenology. The final step of explication involves the actual application of the methodology, now understood aright, to Levinass claims about the other, the self, and the ethical. The result is that once we understand the ethical as the infinite originative horizon out of which the conscious ego emerges, later interpretations of Levinas will be able to successfully move beyond his work.

Much neglected is Heidegger's latter work in favor of the fundamental ontology of Being and Time. Consequentially, conceptions of Heidegger's question of Being are oftentimes misconceived. Currently three main models have been proposed: (1) existential phenomenology, exemplified by Joseph Langan in the 1950s; (2) the popular thought of Being model in the 1960s as developed by William Richardson; (3) and in counter distinction to these unified models Joseph Kockelmans offers in the 1970s the many ways model, touting the end of systems. These misconstruals have spawned much Heideggerian dialogue, and in recent years, has had its effect upon Western continental scholarship from structuralism to post-structuralism. <br>Rather than usual conceptual models, this dissertation proposes a new model of Heideggerian scholarship seen through the lens of "Being as Saying." Neither mystical nor incomprehensible Heidegger's; unique linguistic turn negotiates the inadequacies of modern conceptions of the subject, object and cognition. Through a careful reading of Heidegger's work from 1949-1976, I trace Heidegger's utter reliance upon language as the way-making of Being, "Sprache als Be-wëgen." More originary than ordinary language, Heidegger's Being as Saying arises from Nietzsche's insights on nihilism. For Heidegger Being is no-thing, and as such reveals itself as unconcealment. We hear it as a deep, unsettling silence. From Being's two-fold character of concealing and revealing and humanity's subsequent discomfit, we derive all forms of communication, including thought and logic, even our world as a response to, and evasion from this pervasive silence. <br>Most notably Heidegger unseats the preeminent stature of thought and subject, only to reincorporate them within language. To achieve this he develops notions of Ereignis and Geviert, at once simple and complex, by which Being manifests itself, no longer through Dasein as prime discloser, but through a crossing of four regions. What emerges is a dynamic gathering-as-separated dialogue, a far richer, relational understanding of the world and the person. Heidegger's new way can best be described as a phenomenology of the inapparent, wherein Being and humanity are in a relational dialogue of unconcealing and revealing. With this insight we can reengage the Western philosophical tradition meditatively. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / Philosophy / PhD / Dissertation

Our world is a world of technology, and technology is part of what has made human beings so adept at survival. Yet, the 21st century has seen a new type of technology that is unlike anything ever seen before. This new information technology is known as social media (including such things as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.), and it has the power to influence our very being. However, we are seemingly uncritical and unconcerned about social media in relation to society. This project attempts to analyze social media and its relationship to human beings from an ontological standpoint. I do so by exploring both the ontic and the ontological aspects of social media. In order to do so, I use a method of hermeneutical inquiry and phenomenological exploration. By using the works of several different thinkers, I attempt to get at the essence of the relationship between humans and social media. First, using the works of Martin Heidegger, I argue that there is an ethical dimension contained within the concept of authenticity. Then, using the works of psychologists, phenomenologists, and cognitive scientists, I show that social media has just as much control over us as we think we have over it. Lastly, I return to Heidegger's work in order to understand what the very essence of social media is, and I then explain what our relationship to social media ought to be in order to live authentically. In doing so, I attempt to explain how we can gain a free relation to social media in order to establish the ways in which it can be most helpful to us.

The thesis Merleau-Ponty's Use of Painting Experience for Critique of Perception discusses the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his contribution to perception of corporeality and the body, and especially to use of perception in the area of arts, based on the idea that the truthfulness of the object of our perception is not identical with its real image. The aim of the thesis is to outline the issue of living encounter of subject and object of perception. Besides that, it describes the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty's precursors, namely of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, whose work served to him as a source of inspiration. The second objective of the thesis is to describe life and work of the French painter Paul Cézanne, whose art and specific world view inspired Merleau-Ponty's essay named Eye and Mind. The crucial influences on Paul Cézanne's life and artistic evolution were his unbalanced nature, reactions of the society to his work, and the scenery of Provence, the region where he spent major part of his life. The thesis also compares Cézanne's work with some artistic movements, among them impressionism, which he first followed and later abandoned to be able to create purely on the basis of a careful study of nature and his environment, which he attempted to imitate accurately in his...

Zugl.: Darmstadt, Techn. Univ., Diss. u.d.T.: Faust, Wolfgang: Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney 2006. / Title from electronic thesis (viewed 31/5/10)

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Doctoral dissertations: Philosophy of Education and Hermeneutics of the Chorismos Author: Zbyněk Zicha ABSTRACT: The dissertation addresses two areas of philosophical thinking, philosophy of education and an area of thinking of chorismos. The task of this dissertation is to indicate the possibility of rethinking their mutual concurrence. The work explores the philosophy of education as idiosyncratic ground of thought capable of receiving inspiration coming from thinking of chorismos. The author was inspired by interpretations of chorismos written with regard to Jan Patocka's thinking. The dissertation starts with an opening (the first chapter.) and with an introduction to problems (2nd ch.). The next chapter focuses on searching for the the meaning, essence and basic opportunities of philosophy of education (3rd ch.) that is followed by preliminary inquiry of hermeneutics of chorismos in relation to the philosophy of education (4th). There is a key section reflecting on the importance of hermeneutics of chorismos for philosophy of education (4.4) in the 4th chapter. Hermeneutics of chorismos is not perceived not only as an interpretation of chorismos, but foremostly as a philosophical inquiry of essential problems of philosophy and philosophy of education thought with regard to problem of chorismos. The...