DOCSLIB.ORG

Mystical and Existential Aspects of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Mystical and Existential Aspects of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus The Existential Grammar of the Good News: Truth, Epistemology and Encounter James P. Godfrey B.A (Melb), B.Theol Hons (MCD) A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Theology Melbourne College of Divinity November 2008 Abstract When a Christian notion of truth is understood as a life , rather than a fact, idea, or tenet of doctrine, the tools for delineation, or the grammar, must be revised. Existential philosophy assists in the development of a revised grammar by restoring to the concept of truth, the fact of existing. Drawing upon the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gabriel Marcel, and Søren Kierkegaard, an epistemological framework is developed that responds and reveals the fundamentally incarnate character of a Christian notion of truth. i Acknowledgments I owe a debt of gratitude for the generous support I have received from many people during the completion of this project. In particular, my supervisor, Prof Christiaan Mostert and my Associate Supervisor, Dr. Brian Scarlett have exceeded their obligations by challenging me intellectually, guiding me academically, and encouraging me emotionally. Prof Christiaan Mostert, supervisor and friend, has both challenged me to be intellectually rigorous in my theological questioning, and accompanied me through those aspects of Christian life where questions must be put aside. For this apprentice, he has been a dear Master. I am also very grateful to the staff of Dalton McCaughey Library who have been exceedingly generous in the access they have given me to research material, and shown to me a foreshadowing of the Kingdom where there will be no library fines! During much of the research and writing of this project, I lived in community within the Parish of St. Canice’s Catholic Church, Kings Cross. I owe an inexpressible debt of gratitude to the members of that parish, especially to the asylum-seekers and street people who gather around the Cross, and in particular to Fr. Steve Sinn, who made concrete for me a union of academic theology and Christian life, and guided me along this narrow path. My deepest sense of gratitude, however, is reserved for my wife, Domenique, who has and continues to show me the transformative power of steadfast love. She has been both my intellectual interlocutor, and my beloved, and has borne me two children, Joseph and William, during the writing of this thesis. In their sacred innocence, and the support and demands of my wider family, I now begin to understand what it is to experience the fullness of life . I dedicate this work to the greater glory of God. ii Preface The need for emphasizing the personal, experiential reality of Christian faith within a culture variably described as Christian, Secular, Post-Modern and Post-Christian is clearly evident. Given the popular distrust of institutional authority and the enshrinement of individual freedom, the relevance of the Good News will be heard most persuasively when it is heard personally, experientially, existentially. This movement is taking a variety of forms, including a renewed interest in Christian meditation and the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, a focus upon Christian spirituality and, within the Catholic tradition, an ongoing debate over the primacy of conscience. The hunger to engage with the realm beyond the facts, to that which exceeds the descriptive scope of doctrine and teaching, invites a revision of the scope and expectations of theological inquiry. Where previously the authority of Church Teaching could serve to provide the definitive or sufficient structure for a Christian way of life, post-institutional Western culture requires that the experiential realm of faith become a necessary feature of theological discourse. However, if theology is to be of service in the personal and experiential realm of Christian faith, that is to say, if theology can speak meaningfully of this domain, questions of theological method must be asked. To this end, an existential approach will prove most fruitful, for it generates the possibility that intellectual rigor and philosophical reflection can be meaningfully brought to bear on fundamental aspects of individual, subjective existence. In terms of formal academic disciplines, this thesis draws from both philosophy and theology, though its ultimate concern is theological. If it must be located, this thesis belongs within the stream of Philosophical Theology. While the claims are fundamentally Christian and explicitly theological, the discussion draws from writers of philosophy, two of whom are explicitly Christian and one ambivalently religious. Wittgenstein, though in no way a theologian, famously remarked, “I am not a religious man: but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view”.1 While I have drawn from an existential mode of philosophy that is often superficially assumed to be atheistic, the 1 Rush Rhees, ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 94. iii philosophical problems underlying existential philosophy are shown to posses an acute relevance to questions of christology and contemporary Christian discipleship. Though distinctive from popularised forms of twentieth-century French existentialism, the conjoining of existential philosophy and Christology is in perfect harmony with the thought of the so-called ‘Grandfather of Existentialism’, Søren Kierkegaard. iv Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments ii Preface iii Table of Contents v Introduction 1 PART I 5 Chapter I - A Philosophical Background to Existential Inquiry 5 Existential Traces in the Pre-Socratics 8 Plato: Leaving the Cave 12 St. Augustine 15 Blaise Pascal 17 Hegel and the Kierkegaardian Backlash 20 Chapter II - Mystical and Existential Aspects of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 25 The Limits of Explanation 30 Ascending the Philosophical Ladder 32 The Final Rung of the Philosophical Ladder 34 Throwing Away the Ladder 35 The Mode of Silence: a Distinction between Saying and Showing 38 The Face of the Mystical 43 The Mystical and the Problematic 44 The Mystical and Manifestation 48 The Ethical and the Individual 51 The Mystical and the Shadowlands of Plato’s Cave 52 An Active Silence 53 Chapter III - Existential Philosophy and Incarnation: Gabriel Marcel on Mystery, Truth and the Call to Be 62 Encountering ‘the Mystical’ 63 A Delineation of the Concept of Mystery 64 Marcel’s Notion of Mystery 66 Mystery and Personal Experience 67 Mystery as Philosophical Context 68 Revising the Philosophical Aim 69 In Search of an Appropriate Methodology: Two Modes of Reflection 71 Ontological Exigence: ‘The call to be’ 79 Incarnation 85 PART II 92 Chapter IV - Subjective Truth and Objective Uncertainty 92 A Brief Survey of the History of the Notion of Truth 95 The Final Rungs of the Philosophical Ladder 102 Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and the Ineffable Truths of Existence 104 An Ethico-Religious Notion of Truth 106 Kierkegaard and Subjective Truth 109 v The Incarnate Truth of Christian Faith 120 Chapter V - Christ and Truth: Paradox, Offence and Contemporaneity 129 A Christology of Paradox 131 The Incarnation as Absolute Paradox 133 The Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith 138 Objective Uncertainty and Objective Absurdity 140 Truth Incarnate 144 Revealing the Offence 149 Contemporaneity with Christ 154 PART III 163 Chapter VI - The Existential Grammar of the Good News: Questions of Recognition 163 Aesthetic Criticism 166 Aesthetics Viewed From a Wittgensteinian Perspective 169 A Personal Point of Departure: Existential Aspects of Aesthetic Judgments 173 A Religious Frame of Reference 178 Recognizing the Language-Game 179 And Pilate asked, “What is truth?”: The Existential Grammar of Christian Truth 183 Aspect-blindness and the Gestalt Shift 190 Chapter VII - Living the Gospel: On the Embodiment of Christian Truth 195 From Language-Games to Form of Life 197 Form of Life and Justification 200 Understanding and Encounter 204 Appropriation, Subjectivity and a Christian Notion of Truth 209 The Way of Discipleship 213 Evoking a Framework for Practice 218 Conclusion 226 Bibliography 236 vi Introduction This thesis seeks to elaborate upon the central conviction of Christian faith – that God became human − and to consider the epistemological implications that follow when this claim is understood as defining a Christian notion of ‘truth’. To this end the discussion draws upon the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gabriel Marcel, while anchoring the exploration in the key works of Søren Kierkegaard, who was deeply concerned with the condition of individual existence and the demands of Christian faith. Drawing from these sources, I have attempted to develop a suitable methodology for speaking intelligently, critically and authentically of a Christian notion of truth. The theological necessity of speaking through analogy brings into discussion a reflection upon the function of criticism in aesthetic judgments. This provides the essential framework for discussing the epistemological issues that arise when speaking of a christologically grounded notion of truth. Consistent with the application of ‘existentialism’ within this discussion, the meaning of epistemology is taken in its most basic or etymological sense: as the study of the nature and grounds of knowledge, especially regarding its validity and limits. Similarly, the use of the term ontology in this discussion does not refer to any particular theory of ontology but simply to the dimension of being
Load more

Recommended publications
  • One Hundred Years of Thomism Aeterni Patris and Afterwards a Symposium
    One Hundred Years of Thomism Aeterni Patris and Afterwards A Symposium Edited By Victor B. Brezik, C.S.B, CENTER FOR THOMISTIC STUDIES University of St. Thomas Houston, Texas 77006 ~ NIHIL OBSTAT: ReverendJamesK. Contents Farge, C.S.B. Censor Deputatus INTRODUCTION . 1 IMPRIMATUR: LOOKING AT THE PAST . 5 Most Reverend John L. Morkovsky, S.T.D. A Remembrance Of Pope Leo XIII: The Encyclical Aeterni Patris, Leonard E. Boyle,O.P. 7 Bishop of Galveston-Houston Commentary, James A. Weisheipl, O.P. ..23 January 6, 1981 The Legacy Of Etienne Gilson, Armand A. Maurer,C.S.B . .28 The Legacy Of Jacques Maritain, Christian Philosopher, First Printing: April 1981 Donald A. Gallagher. .45 LOOKING AT THE PRESENT. .61 Copyright©1981 by The Center For Thomistic Studies Reflections On Christian Philosophy, All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or Ralph McInerny . .63 reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written Thomism And Today's Crisis In Moral Values, Michael permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in Bertram Crowe . .74 critical articles and reviews. For information, write to The Transcendental Thomism, A Critical Assessment, Center For Thomistic Studies, 3812 Montrose Boulevard, Robert J. Henle, S.J. 90 Houston, Texas 77006. LOOKING AT THE FUTURE. .117 Library of Congress catalog card number: 80-70377 Can St. Thomas Speak To The Modem World?, Leo Sweeney, S.J. .119 The Future Of Thomistic Metaphysics, ISBN 0-9605456-0-3 Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R. .142 EPILOGUE. .163 The New Center And The Intellectualism Of St. Thomas, Printed in the United States of America Vernon J.
    [Show full text]
  • Socratic Club Speakers and Dates from the Marion E. Wade Center
    Socratic Club Speakers and Dates - To Accompany the Stella Aldwinckle Papers Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL Name(s) Lecture Title Date Notes Prof. Krner Science and Moral Responsibility ? Dr. Mason, Prof. Demant Marxian View of Religion ? Won't Mankind outgrow Christianity in R.E. Havard, M.D. the face of the advance of science January 26, 1942 and of modern ideologies? In Socratic Dr. William Stevenson Is God a wish-fulfilment? February 2, 1942 Digest Was Christ really any more than a Stella Aldwinckle, M.A. February 9, 1942 great teacher and prophet? W. B. Merchant, M.A. and C.S. Lewis, Scepticism and Faith. February 16, 1942 M.A. Is Christianity obscurantism hindering Lord Elton February 23, 1942 social progress? Are there any valid objections to free- In Socratic Charles Williams March 2, 1942 love? Digest Dr. L. W. Grensted Is prayer auto-suggestion? March 9, 1942 Some ambiguities in the use of the D. M. MacKinnon, M.A. April 29, 1942 word 'rational.' Is it rational to believe in a 'personal' Prof. W. G. De Burgh God? (postponed until May 27 due to May 6, 1942 illness of the speaker) Rev. A. M. Farrer and Prof. R. Eisler Did Christ rise from the dead? May 13, 1942 Can science render religion In Socratic Prof. H. A. Hodges May 20, 1942 unnecessary? Digest Is it rational to believe in a 'personal' Prof. W.G. De Burgh May 27, 1942 God? Has man a special place in the Dr. R. W. Kosterlitz June 3, 1942 universe? In Socratic Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • Whence Intelligibility?
    Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I. Culture and Values, Volume 43 General Editor George F. McLean Whence Intelligibility? Edited by Louis Perron The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2014 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Box 261 Cardinal Station Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Whence intelligibility? / edited by Louis Perron. -- first [edition]. pages cm. -- (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I, Culture and values ; Volume 43) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Comprehension (Theory of knowledge) 2. Philosophy. 3. Thought and thinking. 4. Reason I. Perron, Louis, 1963- BD181.5.W44 2013 2013036848 121--dc23 CIP ISBN 978-1-56518-290-5 (pbk.) TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Louis Perron Part I: Theoretical Reason Chapter I. Wittgenstein, Form, and the Criterion of Understanding 13 Robbie Moser Chapter II. Explanation, Principle, & the Idea of God 31 Leslie Armour Chapter III. Intelligibility, Metaphor, and Conceptual Transfiguration 47 Elizabeth Trott Part II: Practical Reason Chapter IV. Maritain, Aquinas, and the Intelligibility of the 61 Natural Law David J. Klassen Chapter V. Moral Intelligibility and the Social Imaginary 81 Sheila Mason Part III: Modern Reason and Its Challenges Chapter VI. Intelligibility versus Proof: Philosophical Method 95 in Pascal and Descartes Louis Groarke Chapter VII. Modernity and Intelligibility: A Comparison of the 115 Interpretations of René Guénon and Jacques Maritain David Lea Part IV: Specific Areas of Intelligibility: Knowing God and the Human Person Chapter VIII. Maritain and Intellectual Mysticism 131 David C.
    [Show full text]
  • Appendix the Interpretive Turn in Phenomenology: a Philosophical
    Appendix The Interpretive Turn in Phenomenology: A Philosophical History* GARY BRENT MADISON1 McMaster University It is experience ... still mute which we are concerned with leading to the pure expression of its own meaning. [E]xperience is the experience of human finitude. 1 Phenomenology and the Overcoming of Metaphysics Richard Rorty has said of phenomenology that it is "a form of philosophizing whose utility continues to escape me/' and that "hermeneutic philosophy" is a "vague and unfruitful" notion.2 Remarks such as these should be of no surprisel coming as they do from someone who does not view philosophy as (as Hegel said) "serious business"-Le'l as a reasoned and principled search for the truth of things-but rather as a kind of "professional dilettantism" and whol accordinglYI sees no difference between philosophy and literary criticism. It is hard to imagine two philosophers (if that is the right term to apply to Rorty) standing in greater contrast than Richard Rorty and Edmund Husser!. Whereas in Rorty's neopragmatic view philosophy can be nothing more than a kind of "culture chat" and 1 inasmuch as it may have some relevance to actual practicel a criterionlessl unprincipled "kibitzing" and "muddling­ through/' Husserl defended phenomenology because he saw it as a means at last for making of philosophy a "rigorous science/' one moreover which would be of supreme theoretical-critical relevance to the life of humanity.3 One thing Husserl meant by his programmatic remarks on this subject in his 1911 Logos articlel "Philosophy as Rigorous Science/1'4 is that a properly • This paper is dedicated to the memory of Franz Vandenbuschel 5J.1 of the University of Louvain (Leuven)1 who forty-some years ago introduced me as a young graduate student to the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and who was killed in a collision with a train in 1990.
    [Show full text]
  • Marquette Studies in Philosophy Andrew Tallon, Series Editor Full List by Series Number
    Marquette Studies in Philosophy Andrew Tallon, Series Editor Full List by Series Number Links go to pages for each book. To Order Please Go to “Order Books” tab on Home Page or click here 1. Harry Klocker, SJ. William of Ockham and the Divine Freedom. ISBN 0-87462-001-5. ©1996. 141 pp. Paperbound. Index. $15. First edition sold out. Second edition, reviewed, corrected and with a new Introduction. 2. Margaret Monahan Hogan. Finality and Marriage. ISBN 0-87462-600-5. 121 pp. Paperbound, $15. NOTE: See #34, below for the second revised and updated edition. 3. Gerald A. McCool, SJ. The Neo-Thomists. ISBN 0-87462-601-1. ©1994. 3rd printing, revised & corrected, 2003. Paperbound, 175 pp. $20 4. Max Scheler. Ressentiment. ISBN 0-87462-602-1.©1998. 4th printing, corrected, 2003. Paperbound. Index. New Introduction by Manfred Frings. 172 pp. $20 5. Augustine Shutte. Philosophy for Africa. ISBN 0-87462-608-0. ©1995. Paperbound. 184 pp. $20 6. Howard P. Kainz. Democracy and the ‘Kingdom of God.’ ISBN 0-87462-610-2. ©1995. Paperbound. Index. $25 7. Knud Løgstrup. Metaphysics. ISBN 0-87462-603-X. ©1995. Volume I. 400 pp. Paperbound. Formerly $40; now $20.00 ISBN 0-67462-607-2. Volume II. 400 pp. Paperbound. Formerly $40; now $20.00 8. Manfred Frings. Max Scheler. A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker. ISBN 0-87462-605-6. ©1996. Paperbound. Second edition, revised. Index. New Foreword by the author. $20 9. G. Heath King. Existence, Thought, Style: Perspectives of a Primary Relation, portrayed through the work of Søren Kierkegaard.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Alan Watts and the Academic Enterprise
    Introduction Alan Watts and the Academic Enterprise Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice As in some economies the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer, so in the overspecialized disciplines of modern scholarship the learned get more learned and the ignorant get more ignorant—until the two classes can hardly talk to each other. I have dedicated my work to an attempt to bridge that gap. —Alan Watts, 1975b, p. xx his collection of academic essays by Alan Watts serves to com- Tmemorate the centenary of his birth on the Feast of the Epiphany— January 6—in 1915. Watts was born into a middle-class family at Rowan Tree Cottage, in the village of Chislehurst, located on the outskirts of London. He was raised in the Church of England, educated at elite Anglican preparatory academies—including King’s School in Canterbury (1928–1932)—and studied at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois (1941–1944). Receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders on the Feast of the Ascension, May 18, 1944, Watts served as Episcopal priest, chaplain and theologian at Northwestern University (1944–1950), professor of comparative philosophy at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco (1951–1957), and freelance philosopher (1958–1973), including visiting scholar at Harvard University (1962–1964). He held a Master of Sacred Theology degree from Seabury-Western Seminary (1948), an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Vermont (1958), and was a Fellow of the Society for Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture. Watts integrated his Anglo-Catholic religious formation with knowledge of Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism toward resolving problems of ontological estrangement in the twentieth-century West (Morgan, 2008).
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophical Personalistic Reflection on the Body As a Contribution to Theology
    Teologia w Polsce 13,2 (2019), s. 5–26 DOI: 10.31743/twp.2019.13.2.01 Rev. José Granados* Pontificio Istituto Teologico Giovanni Paolo II Lateran University, Rome PHILOSOPHICAL PERSONALISTIC REFLECTION ON THE BODY AS A CONTRIBUTION TO THEOLOGY The article explores how Personalist Philosophy can be helpful for Theology by focusing on the concrete topic of the body. The renewed philosophical interest in the body is important for Christian Theology inasmuch as the latter is cen- tered on the concreteness of the Incarnation. The article follows Gabriel Mar- cel’s approach as a guideline to review the understanding of the body proper to Personalism. In this approach, the body is seen as the person’s relational pres- ence in the world and among others and as the openness of the person towards transcendence. The richness of this approach is explored in three important areas of dogmatic theology: Christology, Sacramentology, and the Theology of Creation. The article exemplifies the circularity between Philosophy and The- ology in the concrete topic of the body. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr tells us about his way to conversion, which went hand in hand with a search for true philosophy. After doing away with the Pythagorean master (who asked for complicated mathematical studies) and the * Rev. José Granados – professor of dogmatic theology of marriage and family at the PontificalJohn Paul II Theological Institute (Rome), where he served as the vicepresident from 2010 to 2019. He is a consultor of the Vatican Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.
    [Show full text]
  • Participation in Plato's Dialogues: Phaedo, Parmenides, Sophist, and Timaeus
    Binghamton University The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB) The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter 10-1983 Participation in Plato's Dialogues: Phaedo, Parmenides, Sophist, and Timaeus Leo Sweeney S.J. Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, Ancient Philosophy Commons, and the History of Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Sweeney, Leo S.J., "Participation in Plato's Dialogues: Phaedo, Parmenides, Sophist, and Timaeus" (1983). The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter. 123. https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp/123 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). It has been accepted for inclusion in The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter by an authorized administrator of The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). For more information, please contact [email protected]. ss/f>s nff.3 Participation in Plato*s Dialogues: Phaedo. Parmenides» Sophist and Timaeus Lee Sweeney» S. J. Loyola 0niversify of Chicago From the time of its first technical use by Plato* "partici­ pation" has recurred in every period of the history of Western thought· One; can gather that fact simply from checking a bibli­ ography on participation- The one I consulted consists of 81 en­ tries and is five typed pages in length. Eesides eight general studies on participation— regarding its nature and history— and one on scholasticism in general— it lists studies on the follow­ ing individual philosophers: Plato (eight studies)* Aristotle, Plotinus (d. 270 A.D.), Augustine (d.
    [Show full text]
  • Breakfast Seminar 19Th November 2016
    Breakfast Seminar 19th November 2016 Courageous and Vulnerable Hope as a Power for Change People thirst for hope. As pilgrims, we are always The breakfast seminar, presented by Prof. underway, making us in essence a hoping people, Homo Patrick Nullens, is an introduction to the upcoming masterclasses both in Viator, as French existentialist Gabriel Marcel Rotterdam and Leuven. The concepts explicated. We don’t do hope, we are hope. This need shared in this breakfast seminar are part for hope is further compounded by financial and of a broader research project that ILSE is ecological crises, as well as problems with migration and part of “Hope as an Incentive in Theological and Economic Perspective”. The project is the threat of terrorism. This quest for hope has not carried out in collaboration with the gone unnoticed. In the recent field of positive Erasmus Happiness and Economics psychology and even in economics, hope is becoming an Research Organization, part of Erasmus important topic. It is also an important factor for all our University in Rotterdam. This research project is fully funded by the leadership in society at large as well as in church. Goldschmeding Foundation In all vulnerability, hope trusts someone, even oneself (www.goldschmedingfoundation.org) and God. Hope is, similar to faith and love, a paradox: it empowers us and simultaneously makes us vulnerable. In the risky act of hope, courage and The Institute of Leadership & Social Ethics warmly invites you to a vulnerability merge together. It is as complex and breakfast seminar on ambivalent a concept as we, human beings are.
    [Show full text]
  • Josef Seifert Philosophizing with Plato About the Reality and Immortality Of
    JJosefosef SSeiferteifert Philosophizing with Plato about the Reality and Immortality of the Human Soul Philosophical arguments for the immortality of the soul which appeal to our reason have been developed throughout the history of philosophy. But while we do have some impressive fragments of the Presocratics on the human soul, a systematic philosophical investigation into the soul and its immortality begins with, and, at least in ancient philosophy, also culminates in, Plato1. I shall try to summarize the most signifi cant Platonic arguments for the immortality of the soul, but not in a merely historical way but in an effort to philosophize with Plato about being itself, searching for what is valid in his arguments and for what is true in their premises and trying to point out some of their weaknesses and strengths. In other words, my ultimate purpose in this paper is to seek the truth about the soul and its immortality. Some of the arguments Plato develops for the immortality of the soul are simultaneously arguments for its existence, and of these some are good arguments for the reality of the soul but not good, or at least very insuffi cient, arguments for its immortality. I shall also consider some of the objections raised against the belief in immortality by Ludwig Feuerbach and others, trying to support the valid Platonic arguments for the immortality of the soul by new reasons put forward against these objections2. Moreover, at the risk that my opinion that there is a philosophia perennis in the sense of the valid contributions of philosophers of all schools and times might be considered ahistorical, I will show that the deepest though less developed reasons for the Platonic teaching on the immortality of the soul are personalistic arguments very much comparable to those presented by Max Scheler, Gabriel Marcel, Dietrich von Hildebrand and others in the last century3.
    [Show full text]
  • Masterarbeit / Master's Thesis
    MASTERARBEIT / MASTER’S THESIS Titel der Masterarbeit / Title of the Master‘s Thesis An Exposition of Edith Stein’s Inquiry into the Meaning of Being verfasst von / submitted by Dr. Jose Conrado Estafia, PhL, MA, MA, SThB, AB angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (MA) Wien, 2018 / Vienna 2018 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 066 795 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Masterstudium Theologische Spezialisierungen / degree programme as it appears on Advanced Theological Studies the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Uni.-Prof. MMMag. DDr. Kurt Appel TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword 2 Introduction 4 Chapter One: From Phenomenology to Christian Philosophy: A Short Look at Edith Stein’s Journey 12 1. Her Way to Phenomenology 13 2. Her Way to the Catholic Faith 24 3. Her Way to Christian Philosophy 29 Chapter Two: Inquiry into the Meaning of Being 34 1. The Doctrine of Act and Potency 35 2. The Fact of Our Own Being 39 3. Temporality as a Progress of Actuality 42 4. The Experience of Capability 43 5. Being Human as Transitory 47 6. The Pure Ego 49 7. Received Being as Dependent of Eternal Being 55 Summary, Conclusion, and Recommendations 62 Bibliography 68 Abstract (English) 79 (Deutsch) 79 Curriculum Vitae 81 FOREWORD A Carmelite nun once suggested that I should be writing a thesis on Edith Stein for my licentiate and master’s degree in philosophy. That was the first time I heard of Edith Stein. I followed her suggestion, only to find out how few were the sources on this Catholic woman philosopher in Manila, both in the Dominican-run University of Santo Tomas (UST) and in the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pledge of Future Glory
    The Pledge of Future Glory The Eschatological Dimension of The Eucharist: A Systematic Exploration Submitted by Paul Vu Chi Hy SSS, BTheol. , M.A. (Fordham) A Thesis Submitted in total Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Theology Faculty of Arts and Sciences Australian Catholic University Research Services Locked Bag 4115, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065 Australia Date of Submission 17 March 2004 Statement of Sources This thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. Signed: _____________________________ Dated: ______________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS Thesis Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Chapter 1 Introduction: Eucharist and Eschatology 1 1.1 The significance of this study . 3 1.2 The state of the question and of contemporary scholarship regarding Eucharist and eschatology 5 1.3 Scope and method of approach 16 1.4 A hopeful contribution 18 Chapter 2 The Impact of Philosophy: A Current Philosophical- 22 Phenomenological Context for Eucharistic Eschatology 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Gabriel Marcel: The existential attitude of hope 2.2.1 The phenomenology of the experience of hope 24 2.2.2 The relation to Christian hope 28 2.2.3 Eucharistic perspective 30 2.2.4 Eschatological perspective 34 2.3 Ernst Bloch: A hopeful ontology of the future 36 2.3.1 The anthropological structure of hope 37 2.3.2 A new eschatology of religion 41 2.3.3 Revealed utopia and Eucharistic hope 43 2.4 Robyn Horner,
    [Show full text]