Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Sacrifice – Philosophy'

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2006.
"Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 5, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 2791. Adviser: Joan Hawkins.

I identify Coleridge‘s tragic vision as his engagement with catastrophe in search of a redemptive meaning. I examine Coleridge‘s plays, critical lectures, and commentaries on Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, and I reinvestigate some of his most famous works, such as 'The Ancient Mariner' and 'Christabel'. Chapters: 1). Introduction: Romantic Tragedy and Tragic Romanticism: I establish my interpretation amidst other theorists. I assess the presence of Classical tragedy in Coleridge‘s education, and the important changes that occurred in scholarship on Greek tragedy in Britain during the Romantic period. I acknowledge the important influences of Greek, English and German tragedians. 2). Transgression and Suffering: I suggest that Coleridge intends his reader to experience suffering vicariously for the purpose of moral benefit, fulfilling the same function that he identifies in Greek tragedy. 3). Real-Life Tragedy: Coleridge interprets events around him as tragic cycles of suffering and catharsis for political purposes, suggesting that the hardships of the French Revolution, and even the deceit of an innkeeper, are exemplary misfortunes. 4). The Tragic ‘Impulse’ and Coleridge’s Forms of Incompletion: Analysing Coleridge‘s use of the excerpts from his rejected play Osorio to form new poems, I argue that this instigates lifelong patterns of reinventing doomed literary projects, with reference to such concepts as synecdoche and the fragment. 5). The Lear Vocation: Coleridge’s Tragic Stage: I challenge a popular notion that Coleridge was prejudiced against theatre by demonstrating that, in his staged dramas, Coleridge exploits as well as criticizing the conventions of the contemporary stage and calls for reform in theatres. 6). The Tragic Sage. I claim that Coleridge made lifelong efforts to establish himself as a sage, dramatizing his own hardships to enhance his authority as an advisor. From youth Coleridge depicts himself as an embattled, prophetic figure, likening himself to Cassandra. Drawing on W.B. Yeats‘s comparison to Oedipus, I examine the various techniques Coleridge employs to establish himself as a survivor of and commentator on catastrophe. 7). Failed Sacrifices and the Un-Tragic Coleridge: Finally I argue that Coleridge, having settled into orthodox Christianity, abandons the tragic philosophy, expressing fears that suffering might be in vain, and therefore that catastrophe should be avoided in reality and as a literary theme. Ironically, this point is clarified in a lecture on Aeschylus.

In this thesis I shall outline various modernist authors' arguments that collectivities (such as ethnic groups, nations, states and cultures) and subjectivities employ sacrificial violence to establish and assert their identity where identity is inescapably (?) understood in terms of the sovereignty of the collective or the post-Oedipal autonomy of the individual. To this end, violence has been posited as a historical and conceptual inevitability and is set as the default-state of human nature and politics. In recent times, protesting voices (from post-feminist, post-colonial, post-modern and the emerging human rights discourses) have begun to rigorously contest the notion of violence as the default-state. As a result, the legitimacy of sacrifice as the primary modus to an autonomous selfhood has been radically problematised. I believe that a comprehensive understanding of the nature of this crisis of identity formation , and the possibility of transcending it, is to be found in the paradigmatic shift away from Newtonian thought toward a post-Newtonian worldview. In seeking to challenge the assumption of violence-as-default, I shall translate the comprehensive sacrificial nature of collective identity and subjectivity into a complexity-based model that allowed me to make three crucial conceptual moves toward a comprehensive understanding of post-sacrificial identities that occupy an important place in a post-Newtonian world. First, it will allow me to challenge the assumptions that supported the Hobbesian myth of autonomy/sovereignty sacrificially achieved by charting the ontological shift that compels us to understand "entities" (be it a cell, an individual or a state) not in terms of autonomy but interdependence. Secondly, it provides the conceptual tools needed to understand the systemic nature of sacrificial violence by reading subjectivity violence and collectivity violence in terms of their organic self-similarity. This will equip me to comprehensively explore a postsacrificial epistemology valid for both collective identities and subjectivity. Thirdly, I propose a model of post-sacrificial identities that are created and sustained at the edge of chaos through the dynamic interplay of order and disorder that reconciles creative and destructive forces in a generative unity. I believe that this post-Newtonian reading will clear the conceptual space needed to suggest there might yet be hope for a future that does not embrace violence as default-state.

Emphasising Wittgenstein's naturalism, I argue the common misconception that his later work harbours something 'relativistic'. A closer reading of Wittgenstein reveals instead a unifying picture of human life grounded upon 'primitive' (pre-linguistic) behaviours. Turning to explicitly 'religious' themes I then argue that Wittgenstein's ethicalisation of religion is also naturalistic. Thus 'man' is described as a 'ceremonial animal', and belief in the immortal soul is said to relate to an experience of 'guilt' from which one feels there is no release. More broadly, Wittgenstein's reflections lead to a conception of religiosity beyond the reparative economics of eschatological hope. At this point Levinas's own ethicalisation of religion becomes pertinent. I argue that his work is principally concerned with existential guilt, or the question: 'Do I have a right to be?'. That one exists always at the expense of another is what Levinas's thinking hinges upon, echoing throughout his analyses of language, the 'face', 'vulnerability' and 'home', and similarly orienting his characterisation of religion as 'love without reward'. However, Levinas's work is deeply anti-naturalism in that the ethical relation represents a radical 'break' from the (alleged) egoism of natural instinct. I here contend that this view of the natural is mistaken. Indeed, Levinas's central themes are more easily explicated in broadly Wittgensteinian- naturalistic terms. Thus, while Levinas provides a supplement to the ethical terrain of Wittgenstein's later work, Wittgenstein in turn offers a corrective to Levinas's 'spiritualised' humanism. Having drawn upon Derrida's work throughout my argument, in the final chapter I turn explicitly to his recent remarks on the 'gift' and 'hospitality'. For in his cautious articulation of Levinas's 'gratuitous' ethics, Derrida demonstrates, not only why it is 'impossible', but why this 'impossibility' is constitutive of ethical life and necessary if the 'scandal of good conscience' is to be resisted.

An investigation of Gikuyu social organisation, ritual and cosmology reveals that prayer and sacrifice form a central phenomenon in Gikuyu religion. Traditionally the occasion and place to perform a sacrifice were both decided upon by njama (sacrificial council of elders). Any sacrificial decision was always a corporate one. Without a corporate decision in favour of sacrifice it meant that no family, territorial or general social prayers activity would have taken place. This work is therefore concerned to demonstrate how with the erosion and change of Gikuyu social infrastructure within which corporate sacrificial and prayer decisions were made and exercised, sacrifice and prayer have been adapted in Gikuyu christianity. There were different types of prayer as well as different occasions and a variety of reasons dictating when, where and why a specific prayer was necessary. Certain prayers, mainly family or social ones had specific persons allowed to say them. Predominantly men said all public or family prayers and offered sacrifices. Prayer and sacrifice were integral aspects of each other. An effort is made to present the relation between Gikuyu traditional religion and prayer practice and Gikuyu Christianity practice of prayer. An attempt is made at a broader definition and deeper description of Gikuyu sacrifices. This is done with reference to biblical sacrifices as well as some other African societies.

The thesis develops a comprehensive account of human political ontology through the discussion of Plato, Rousseau, Lacan, Lyotard, Hugo, Conrad, Tolstoy and Nietzsche. At the heart of this account lies the dialectical struggle between an individual's need to belong and their fidelity to an intuitively recognisable, yet difficult to define good (or set of goods), that has, over the millennia, been conceptualised as, amongst other things, the form of the good, self interest, compassion, love, friendship, the event, conscience, reason and truth. Through the development of this account of human political ontology the thesis will elucidate the stakes involved in emancipatory acts, be they broad social movements or individual transformations. Its most important argument is that people almost always fail to recognise that to which they belong; the consequence of this being that they mistake the acts which function to reaffirm their belonging for acts that are indicative of their sovereign being. This phenomenon becomes particularly troubling once we recognise that the acts which function to reaffirm an individual??s belonging can depend upon the individual sacrificing both themself and others.

Comment l'altérité et la révélation ont-ils pénétré le discours philosophique de Hegel? Pourquoi l'altérité et la révélation ont-ils constitué un événement pour la philosophie hégélienne? Depuis quel lieu - et de quel droit et à quelle fin - l'altérité et la révélation ont-ils habité la métaphysique onto-théo-téléo-logique du spéculatif? Ces questions composent le socle de cette thèse. En retraçant le développement et l'extension du Concept spéculatif depuis les écrits de Tübingen jusqu'à la Phénoménologie de l'esprit, nous avons tenté d'approcher et de saisir l'élément intime de la pensée hégélienne depuis lequel se pense et peut se penser l'alliance entre altérité et révélation. Au coeur de cette alliance, c'est le sacrifice qui ne cesse d'oeuvrer comme la modalité propre de la compréhension et comme la mouvance absolue de la relève (aufhebung). Ainsi, dans et par le sacrifice s'ouvre le " portique " du Savoir absolu et se dévoile l'essence, le devenir et l'avenir, du penser spéculatif depuis lequel les vocables d'altérité et de révélation font, pour la philosophie hégélienne, sens. Quel avenir peut-il encore advenir dans cette réappropriation absolue de l'altérité et de la révélation? Quel avenir peut-il encore s'ouvrir dans et par cette absoluité effective du sacrifice? Celui-ci peut-être: l'insacrifiable pouvoir, c'est-à-dire, l'infinité en et pour soi-même de la nomination. Nommer l'altérité et la révélation " en et pour elles-mêmes ", c'est d'abord et avant tout, pour Hegel, sacrifier ce que représentent ces vocables en les élevant à la vérité infinie de la présence. Leur nomination comme présence est précisément l'explicitation du mouvement de l'infini oeuvrant dans le fini ou encore du fini déjà porté et transporté par l'infini; l'explicitation des conditions de possibilité et d'effectivité de l'altérité et de la révélation. Or, la question qui se pose au coeur de cette nomination spéculative, pourrait s'entendre ainsi: que reste-t-il quant à l'altérité et la révélation dans et par leur nomination absolue? C'est dire, reste-t-il ou peut-il encore rester un impensé inappropriable et innomable par le système absolu de la réappropriation et de la nomination? Un impensé autour duquel tournerait et ne cesserait de tourner - mais autrement et pas encore - le penser hégélien.

A partir d'une critique de la metaphysique de la "presence", nous avons indique l'etendue d'un champ sacrificiel qui ne se limite pas aux sacrifices du type seulement "ethnologique". A l'encontre d'un discours rationaliste qui pretend que le sacrifice est aboli, nous avons montre que dans l'exposition a autrui, et au monde, nous reproduisons encore les logiques et les economies du sacrifice. Par ailleurs, nous avons montre qu'une certaine "rationalite" determinant l'economie du sacrifice, n'etait pas etrangere a la logique de l'"ancien sacrifice", et que le sacrifice avait toujours fonctionne en se dissimulant, en se substituant aux autres sacrifices. Ce qui est sacrifie etant l'incommensurable", echappe aussi au regime d'enonces et de visibilites. La "perte irrecuperable" reste indicible et invisible
Starting with a criticism of the metaphysics of "presence", a large sacrificial domain is indicated, not limited to purely "ethnological" considerations of sacrifice. Contrary to a rationalist discourse which posits the abolishment of sacrifice, it is shown that in exposing oneself to the other, and to the world, we fall back into sacrificial logics and economics. Furthermore, it is shown that a certain "rationality" determining sacrificial economy was not foreign to the logic of "ancient sacrifice", and that sacrifice has always operated by self-dissimulation, by substitution with other sacrifices. The sacrificied being immeasurable, it also escapes the order of the utterable and the visible. The "unrecoverable loss" remains unutterable and invisible

Ce travail entendait examiner le fonctionnement de la sainteté dans la théologie politique biblique juive, et ce en se servant de la méthodologie sociologique (au sens large) à l'étude de la politique. L'objet de notre recherche n'est pas l'action de la Divinité, mais les actions des hommes qui agissent à partir d'une certaine représentation de la Divinité et de leurs relations face à elle. Notre étude a montré que la conception de la sainteté, telle qu'elle fut appréhendée dans la recherche (chez Durkheim, Otto, Eliade, James, Underhill, Zehner, Comstock, Berger) ne permet pas d'expliquer la sainteté biblique. En effet, ces savants partagent tous l'axiome d'une séparation de la sainteté et du profane, ainsi que l'idée que le message religieux vise à transférer la sainteté, qui se limite elle-même, vers le profane, et ainsi à exercer ses effets sur ce qui l'entoure. Toutefois, comme l'a indiqué Dan, cette conception échoue à rendre compte de la pensée biblique parce que dans sa nature, la réalité ne se divise pas en deux domaines séparés, le profane et le saint. Notre étude a indiqué que l'idée de sainteté biblique dérive de l'idée d'alliance. Celle-ci, représentant le système des relations entre le transcendant et l'immanent, donne son impulsion à la dimension du politique, et reflète l'exigence adressée au peuple d'Israël de fonder une Histoire théocentrique sanctifiant l'espace public. La sainteté, qui est imposée à l'individu, s'inscrit dans le cadre d'une finalité à l'échelle collective exigeant tant de l'individu que du collectif un travail morale sur soi. Elle comprend une série de présuppositions philosophiques, qui concernent les relations matière-esprit et le rôle du libre choix. La finalité de la sainteté n'est donc pas individuelle, mais collective: elle est destinée à "produire" la sainteté collective d'une nation politique. Cette nation possède, selon le récit biblique, une finalité d'existence universelle. Ce travail contribue à mieux comprendre la philosophie politique biblique, et la place de la sainteté collective ainsi que ses effets sur les cérémonies, les institutions et la Constitution. Notre recherche aide également à mieux appréhender la notion de sainteté dans la mesure où la Bible oppose l'impureté à la sainteté et à la pureté, en elles-mêmes deux notions distinctes, tandis que le profane n'y joue qu'un rôle secondaire
This research has examined the function of the concept of Holiness in biblical political theology, by using methodology from the fields of sociology (in its broadest sense) to study politics. The topic of this research is not the activity of God, but rather the activity of human beings in their relationship with the Divine. The research revealed that the concept of Holiness (in the thoughts of: Durkheim, Otto, Eliade, James, Underhill, Zehner, Comstock, Berger) does not fully explain Holiness is it appears in the Bible. These thinkers and authors share common assumptions that divided the Holy from the secular, and then posit that the Holy seeks to influence the secular, and the Gospel aims to bring the Holy toward the secular. However, as pointed out by Dan, their formulations do not reflect clearly the biblical thought because, in the Bible, reality does not split into two sections: Holy and secular. The concept of Holiness in the Bible, as this research has shown, emerges from the notion of covenant—i.e., reflecting a promised relationship between the transcendental and the immanent, stimulating the political realm, and animating a demand from "Am Israel" to establish theocentric history that consecrates the public space. This Holiness expects and demands intensive work by the individual as well as the collective to advance the understanding and practice of morals to the standards of the Holy. The biblical concept of Holiness includes a series of philosophical assumptions regarding the relationship between matter and spirit and the role of human free choice, but it is not purposed toward individual aims; rather, it establishes as the purpose of existence the creation of collective Holiness; first, nationally, and ultimately, universally. This paper contributes to the understanding of biblical political philosophy, and to a better grasp of the concept of collective Holiness, its place and its implications upon rituals, institutions and the Constitution. The research also contributes to the understanding of the concept of Holiness by examining the use of the term in the Bible, and pointing out that Impurity is the opposing term to both Purity and Holiness, and that all three of these terms have meaning separate and apart from what is considered to be within the concept of secular

99 leaves printed on single pages, preliminary pages and numberd pages 1-87. Includes bibliography. Digitized at 600 dpi grayscale to pdf format (OCR), using a Bizhub 250 Konica Minolta Scanner.
Thesis (MPhil (Philosophy))--University of Stellenbosch, 2000.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Death is a universal phenomenon and each culture develops its own ways of coping with it. The reaction of people to death also involves a complex network of relationships. To appreciate their responses to this phenomenon requires an understanding of the socio-cultural context in which these responses occur because they influence the individual's responses to issues of life and death. In the African context and indeed in the Zulu culture, death is a continuation of life in the world hereafter. The deceased renews his relationship with his ancestral relatives. Various rites and ceremonies are performed to mark his reunion with his ancestral relatives. For the living, the rites and ceremonies mark a passage from one phase of life to another requiring some readjustment. The belief in the existence of life after death also affects the nature of these rites and ceremonies, the social definition of bereavement and the condition of human hope. The belief in the existence of the ancestors forms an integral part African religion and its importance cannot be over-estimated. This belief flows from the strong belief in the continuation of life after death, and the influence the deceased have on the lives of their living relatives. The contact between the living and the living dead is established and maintained by making offerings and sacrifices to the ancestors. The ancestors, therefore, become intermediaries with God at the apex and man at the bottom of the hierarchical structure. However, for the non-African, the relationship seems to indicate the non-existence of God and the worshipping of the ancestors. Women play a pivotal role in issues of life and death, because African people recognize their dependence and the procreative abilities of women to reconstitute and to extend the family affected by the death of one of its members.Social change and Westernisation have affected the way the African people view death. Social changes have been tacked onto tradition. A contemporary trend is to observe the traditional and Christian rites when death has occurred. The deceased is then buried in accordance with Christian, as well as traditional rites. The belief in the survival of some element of human personality is a matter of belief and faith. It lessens the pain and sorrow that is felt upon the death of a loved one by giving the believer hope that one day he will be reunited with his loved one and thereby easing the fear and anxiety of death. Thus, the purpose of this investigation is to critically analyse the African perception of death and its implications with special reference to the Zulu people. The objective is to expose the complexities, diversities and the symbolism of death. The essence is to demystify the African perception of death and to indicate that the perception of death is not necessarily unique to African people in general and to the Zulu people in particular. Other groups like Christians have perceptions of death particularly with regard to the world hereafter. The aim of the investigation of the topic is to reveal some of the underlying cultural beliefs in death, enhance those beliefs that are beneficial to society and discard those that are anachronistic. Since culture is dynamic, not everything about African tradition will be transmitted to the future generation; there is bound to be cultural exchange.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die dood is 'n universele fenomeen en elke kultuur ontwikkel sy eie manier om daarmee om te gaan. Mense se reaksie op die dood geskied binne 'n komplekse netwerk van verhoudinge. Om mense se reaksie op hierdie fenomeen te begryp, is 'n verstaan van die sosio-kulturele konteks nodig waarin hierdie reaksies plaasvind, aangesien dit die individu se reaksie op lewe en dood beinvloed. In die Afrika-konteks en ook in die Zulu-kultuur word die dood beskou as die kontinuasie van lewe in die hiermamaals. Die oorledene hernu sy verhouding met sy voorouers. Verskeie rituele en seremonies vind plaas om hierdie gebeurtenis te identifiseer. Vir die oorlewendes is die rituele en seremonies die oorgang van een lewensfase na 'n ander en vereis dus 'n mate van aanpassing. Die geloof in die lewe na die dood beinvloed die aard van hierdie rituele en seremonies, die sosiale defenisie van rou en die toestand van menslike hoop. Die geloof in die bestaan van die voorvaders vorm 'n integrale deel van Afrika-religie en die belangrikheid daarvan kan nie oorskat word nie. Die geloof vloei voort uit die sterk geloof in die hiermamaals en die geloof aan die invloed wat oorledenes op hulle lewende nasate het. Die kontak tussen die lewendes en die lewende oorledenes word daargestel en onderhou deur offerandes aan die voorvaders. Die voorvaders word dus gesien as intermediere skakel in 'n hierargie met God aan die bokant en die mens aan die onderkant. Maar, vir nie-Afrikane, dui hierdie struktuur op die nie-bestaan van God en die aanbidding van die voorvaders. Vroue speel 'n deurslaggewende rol in kwessies van lewe en dood aangeslen Afrikane hul afhanklikheid besef van vroue se voortplantingsbekwaamhede om die famile wat deur die dood geaffekteer is te herkonstitueer en te vergroot. Sosiale veranderinge en verwestering affekteer Afrikane se houding teenoor die dood. Sosiale veranderinge is bo-oor tradisie geplaas. 'n Hedendaagse neiging is om Christelike sowel as tradisionele rituele na te volg na 'n sterfte. Die oorledene word begrawe in ooreenstemming met sowel tradisionele as Christelike praktyke. Die geloof in die oorlewing van elemente van die menslike persoon is 'n kwessie van geloof. Dit verminder die pyn en lyding na die afsterwe van 'n geliefde deur aan die gelowige oorlewende die hoop van 'n herontmoeting te bied - en verminder dus die vrees en angs wat met die dood gepaard gaan. Dus is die doel van hierdie ondersoek om 'n kritiese analise te maak van die Afrika-siening van die dood en die implikasies daarvan, met spesiale verwysing na die Zulu-nasie. Daar word probeer om die kompleksiteite, verskeidenhede en simbolisme van die dood aan te toon. Die essensie hiervan is om die Afrika-houding teenoor die dood te de-mistifiseer en te wys dat die siening van die dood nie noodwendig uniek van Afrikane in die algemeen en spesifiek van die Zoeloes is nie. Ander groepe soos Christene het beskouinge oor die dood met spesifieke verwysing na die hiernamaals. Die doel van die ondersoek is om sekere onderliggende kulturele oortuiginge aangaande die dood te onthul, om die beskouinge wat voordelig is, te versterk en om die anachronistiese beskouinge aan die kaak te stel en so te diskrediteer. Aangesien kultuur dinamies is, sal nie alles wat betref die Afrika-tradisie oorgedra word aan toekomstige generasies nie; daar sal noodwendig kulturele interaksie wees.

Les œuvres de Georges Bataille touchent à presque tout le domaine des sciences humaines, mais ne se rattachent jamais en propre à aucune de celles-ci. Une inquiétude étrange l’empêche de s’établir dans un espace cohérent, l’espace achevé et clos de la voix unique. D’où vient cette inquiétude, par quoi perpétuellement se distancent l’une de l’autre sa pensée et son écriture, sa parole et son objet ? En quoi consiste cette dynamique implosive qui à la fois interrompt l’écriture bataillienne et commande sa prolifération, en deçà même d’une apparente audace interdisciplinaire ou d’une contestation des disciplines ? Telles sont les questions qui nous accompagneront dans la présente étude, et nous permettront de mettre au jour un parcours singulier, depuis le premier roman de Bataille jusqu’à la trilogie de La Somme athéologique, parcours jalonné de différents sites, où chaque fois la pensée de notre auteur se met en rapport avec des lieux insituables, inaccessibles à l’appréhension de la connaissance. Une première partie de notre travail, centrée sur l’Histoire de l’œil, la revue Documents et Le Bleu du ciel, situe la pensée du premier Bataille dans son rapport à un dehors irréductible qui lui donne sa structure. Notre étude met alors au jour la difficulté particulière qu’il y a pour Bataille à trouver le lieu commun susceptible de lui faire partager son écriture avec le temps qui lui donne naissance. Notre deuxième partie traite de certains textes à nos yeux fondamentaux datant de la période de la deuxième guerre mondiale, dans lesquels se font jour des tentatives variées et mouvementées de donner lieu à la communication avec les autres. L’espace-temps exceptionnel de la guerre informe ce développement de la pensée de Bataille, en constituant à la fois un fonds ontologique qu’il partage avec les autres, et le moment critique où sa pensée se penche profondément vers le motif du sacrifice. Mais en marge de ce faste sacrificiel, nous décèlerons un autre chemin vers une éthique bataillienne de la communication fondée sur la pensée de l’immanence, sur le lieu ouvert des êtres égaux
The works of Georges Bataille affect almost all the fields of the humanities but never relate to any of them. A strange worry prevents him from putting himself in a consistent space, the completed and confined one of a single voice. Where does this worry come from? Why are his thoughts and writings, his words and object, constantly distanced from one another ? What is this implosive dynamic, which interrupts Bataille’s writing and controls its spread, even beyond an obvious interdisciplinary boldness or challenge of disciplines? These are the questions that will be tackled in this study. They will allow us to highlight a single journey from Bataille’s first novel to the trilogy of Summa Atheologica, a story full of different settings where each time our author’s thought process puts himself in touch with unlocatable places, inaccessible to the apprehension of knowledge. The first part of our work, based on the Story of the Eye, the magazine Documents, and Blue of Noon, relates the author’s thinking to an irreducible exterior that gives it its structure. Our study then brings to light the special difficulty that Bataille has in finding commonalities between his writing and the times he lived in. The second part deals with some fundamental texts from the period of the Second World War, in which varied and eventful attempts to communicate with others are highlighted. The exceptional space-time of war gives more details about Bataille’s thought, constituting at the same time an ontological fund that he shares with others and the critical moment when his thought leans deeply towards the motif of sacrifice. However, on the sidelines of this sacrificial splendor, we find another way of understanding Bataille’s ethic of communication based on the theory of immanence and on the open place of equal beings

Ce travail est une tentative de penser, avec Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), les rapports entre vie et philosophie. Après 1799 ceux-ci s’avancent en effet comme fil conducteur de l’œuvre fichtéenne. Notre hypothèse est celle-ci : la philosophie, c’est-à-dire la Doctrine de la science pour Fichte, apporte une intensification de la vie humaine, dans la mesure où l’intérêt de cette vie advient en se fondant sur la science. La philosophie est par conséquent, dans sa signification essentielle, une doctrine de la vie. Le philosopher est pour chacun un acte en lequel accomplir sa vie en son sens le plus haut.Dans cette optique, cette thèse se divise en trois parties. Dans la première partie, en suivant en détail le débat extraordinairement dense, à propos de l’héritage kantien, entre Fichte et Jacobi, nous voyons que l’origine de ce débat relève de la question de la réalité des objets extérieurs au sujet pensant. Les textes de référence de cette partie sont ainsi la Lettre ouverte de Jacobi à Fichte datée de mars 1799 et la Destination de l’homme de 1800. Ensuite, nous discutons le rapport d’interpénétration de la vie et de la philosophie, en abordant les écrits théoriques rédigés autour de 1804-1805. En introduisant dans son système la conception jacobienne de la vie, ainsi que l’idée schellingienne de l’absolu, Fichte décrit l’être comme seul vivant et inconcevable. Cette tâche, proprement fichtéenne et inévitablement difficile pour la philosophie, exige que le savoir soit reconduit à l’être et que celui-ci se déploie comme celui-là. La Doctrine de la science se comprend donc elle-même comme double chemin. Enfin, à travers les deux œuvres populaires de 1805-1806, le Caractère de l’époque actuelle et l’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse, la troisième partie montre qu’un tel enseignement de la Doctrine de la science rejoint l’enseignement du christianisme, et plus précisément celui de l’Évangile de Jean ; Fichte justifie là l’identité de sa doctrine de l’être-là et du logos du Prologue du quatrième Évangile. Seul le sacrifice de soi par l’amour vers l’être ou Dieu rend possible de réconcilier l’être-là et l’être. Cet amour réciproque, en effet, permet que l’homme et Dieu s’immergent l’un dans l’autre : « celui qui demeure dans l’amour demeure en Dieu et Dieu demeure en lui » (1 Jn 4, 16).Le plus difficile à comprendre pour la philosophie de Fichte se formule par la question suivante : comment comprendre à la fois l’immanence de l’être en l’être-là et leur rupture ? La pensée religieuse de Fichte s’avance ici sous son visage le plus propre. L’être humain se comprend lui-même en tant qu’être-là de l’être ; il voit le soi dans un rapport à l’être. Cela signifie qu’il voit à la fois son affaiblissement et l’aspiration qui le porte vers l’être. C’est en elle que l’homme se sacrifie. Dans un tel sacrifice de soi, le plus radical, l’homme n’est cependant pas supprimé, mais il est écarté de soi-même. Il se dépasse soi-même dans ce sacrifice. Or ceci n’est rien d’autre que l’intensification de son propre sens d’être. La Doctrine de la science est donc, en ce sens, la tentative de penser cette grande affirmation de soi
This work is an attempt to think, with Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), about the relationship between life and philosophy. After 1799, these came forward as the main problem of the Fichtean work. Our hypothesis is: philosophy, that is, the Science of Knowledge for Fichte, brings an intensification of human life, insofar as the interest of this life occurs on the basis of science. Philosophy is therefore, in its essential meaning, a doctrine of life. To philosophize it is for each one an act in which to accomplish his life in its highest sense.From this perspective, my PhD thesis is divided into three parts. In the first part, by following in detail the extraordinarily dense debate on the Kantian heritage between Fichte and Jacobi, we see that the origin of this debate lies in the question of the reality of objects outside the thinking subject. The reference texts in this part are Jacobi's Open Letter to Fichte dated March 1799 and the Vocation of Man (1800). Then, we discuss the interpenetration of life and philosophy, addressing the theoretical writings written around 1804-1805. By introducing the Jacobian conception of life into the system of his philosophy, as well as the Schellingian idea of the absolute, Fichte describes the being as the only living and inconceivable being. This task, which is strictly a Fichtean and inevitably difficult for philosophy, requires that knowledge be reduced to the being and the being be deployed as the knowledge. The Science of Knowledge therefore understands itself as a double path. Finally, through the two popular works of 1805-1806, the Characteristics of the Present Age and the Way towards the Blessed Life, the third part shows that Fichte’s Science of Knowledge joins Christianity, and more precisely that of the Gospel of John; Fichte justifies the identity of his doctrine of the “being there (Dasein)” and the logos of the Prologue of the fourth Gospel. Only self-sacrifice through love towards the being or God makes it possible to reconcile the being there and the being. This reciprocal love, in fact, allows man and God to immerse themselves in each other: “Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” (1 Jn 4:16).The most difficult question for Fichte's philosophy to understand is the following: how to understand both the immanence of the being in “being there” and their rupture? Fichte's religious thought shows here his own character. The human being understands himself as the being there of the being; he sees the self in a relationship with the being. This means that he sees both his weakening and the aspiration that leads him to being. It is in it that man sacrifices himself. In such a self-sacrifice, the most radical, man is not suppressed, however, but he is excluded from himself. He surpasses himself in this sacrifice. But this is nothing more than the intensification of one's own sense of being. The Science of Knowledge is, in this sense, the attempt to think about the great self-assertion of human being

This thesis examines a potential tension between Schopenhauer’s portrayal of art as a palliative measure undertaken in response to a fundamentally and necessarily painful existence, and the implicit image he sketches of the artist as suffering in order to precipitate this palliative measure. I begin by outlining Schopenhauer’s larger philosophical project in order to contextualize subsequent discussions of his aesthetics. Having laid this expository groundwork, I proceed to explore the concept of sacrifice as Schopenhauer was likely to have understood and utilized it, drawing on both textual evidence (primarily from The World as Will and Representation) and contextual evidence (given the religious, cultural, and intellectual climate at the time of its writing). This strategy of twofold exploration — that is, both textual and contextual — is deployed again in the third portion of this thesis, clarifying the role of “the artist” qua artist for Romantic Era Germans more broadly and for Schopenhauer more narrowly. In the final section, I utilize these earlier explorations to show that the artist is indeed a sacrificial figure in Schopenhauer’s work. Regardless of the fact that Schopenhauer does not confirm the artist-as-sacrificial paradigm explicitly, the claim can be made that he does — and indeed, must — tacitly accept it.

The presented philosophical-anthropological interpretation seeks to examine the issue of existential transformation and its understanding in the works of selected authors, in particular Jacques Derrida, Jan Patočka and Søren Kierkegaard. It builds upon a specific interpretation of philosophy as a source of normative images that determine the ways of man's self- understanding. From the perspective of philosophical anthropology, "being human" is the result of man's being interested in his own being. Thus it definitely cannot be considered an innate quality. Man's "humanness" is conditioned by his strive to live a truthful life. Hence, the focus of the interpretation is on the relation between the tradition and the individual sense- making as well as on the motives of death and mortality, constitution of individuality, responsability, interiority, faith and transformation.

"Citizen Canine" explores the sacrificial underpinnings of politics via a critique of the boundary between human and animal in Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato. I argue that the concept "animal" serves a functional rather than descriptive role: it is born of a sacrificial worldview that sees violence as a necessary foundation for human life, and which therefore tries to localize and contain this violence as much as possible through a system of sacrifice. I begin the dissertation with Martha Nussbaum's recent work on the "frontiers of justice," but argue that she is insufficiently attentive to the roles that animality and the rhetoric of sacrifice play in her discourse. I then examine the concept of sacrifice more thematically - using Jacques Derrida and Rene Girard among others - which justifies the move back to the Greeks to understand the specific manner in which sacrifice, human, and animal are intertwined at a crucial moment in Western history. In the Greeks we see an inception of this sacrificial concept of the political, and the movement from Homer to Aeschylus to Plato presents us with three successive attempts to understand and control cosmic violence through a sacrificial order. I contend that a similar logic continues to inform the exclusions (native/foreigner, masculine/feminine, human/nature) that mark the borders of the contemporary political community - hence my dissertation is directed both at the specific animal/human dichotomy as well as the larger question of how political identity is generated by the production, sacrifice and exclusion of marginalized communities.

Dissertation

In this work we will look at a particular example of investment and sacrifice, where investment originates in science and sacrifice in myths, but they both meet. The question is what exactly is what they are describing. Is investment and sacrifice similar or to grasp full understanding of this phenomenon we need both approaches? There can be found characteristics of rites in investment, similar structure and symbolism as well as economic incentives incorporated in the sacrifice. However investment is not perceived as rite and communication with divinity and sacrifice is not pure cost and benefit analysis. This paper tries to answer these questions and clarify the line between the two. It was Walter Benjamin who was first to notice the similarities between religion and economics and we would like to continue with the discussion. This topic is not much discussed further in literature, therefore by this paper we would like to fill the gap and contribute to the topic.

This thesis examines whether the theological method currently known as inculturation was used in the Supper Narratives of the New Testament. A methodology is set up in which texts are examined against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman, Judaic and early Christian cultures. This methodology focusses on family resemblances and analogies, rather than genealogy or causal dependence to examine the links between text and context. It also avoids claims for orthodoxy dependent on claims about origins. Engaging with the claims of writers from Schweitzer, through Jeremias and up to the present, three themes are identified: meals, sacrifice and eschatology. The manifestations of each are examined against the three cultural groups:Judaic, Graeco-Roman and early Christian. The Supper Narratives (Mk 14:12-26, Matt. 26:17-30 and Luke 22:7-23 and 1 Cor 11:17-34) are then mapped against these themes. Analogies to the cultural groups are then traced. This process leads to conclusions that the New Testament writers did use a methodology which can be identified as inculturation. It manifests itself particularly through patterns identified by anthropologists as bricolage and re-accentuation. A notable example is "sacrificialisation", in which events and items are invested with a fresh sacrificial significance. Judaic concepts (e.g., covenant and Atonement) and rituals (e.g., sacramentals and Passover) dominate the interpretations of Jesus' last meal with his disciples. This does not mean that inculturation only took place in relation to Jewish culture. Many of the concepts used (e.g., sacrifice and sacrament) share commonalities with Graeco-Roman thought which allows them to engage with such world-views. This process sees Judaic understandings used as correctives to Graeco-Roman thinking about sacraments. It also sees Jewish concepts used to address Graeco-Roman values, and give an added historical depth (antiquitas) to a comparatively recent event.
Biblical and Ancient Studies
D.Th. (New Testament)