Dissertation Abstract
The Human Experience of
Resistance,
Difficulty and Aporia: Its Yield for Thought
by
Jared Jenisch
Degree: Ph.D.
Year: 2002
Pages: 00390
Institution:
Advisor: Major Professor Ray L. Hart
Source: DAI, 62, no. 04A (2002): p. 1464
Standard
No: ISBN: 0-493-20207-2
As the formulation of a philosophical anthropology,
this dissertation essays a contribution toward resolution of the time-honored
question, what is human being? The anthropology is broached
through an account of the phenomena of resistance, difficulty and aporia
(irresolvable difficulties) in general experience, language-use, art, and
thinking. These phenomena are made the foundation of a series of
epistemological reflections emphasizing the play of traction and
intractability, opacity and fecundity, which they offer. It is argued that the
traditional categories of "flesh" and "spirit" should be,
if retained, reversed in metaphorical implication. It is held that human beings
are essentially incomplete, always in movement toward their own completion, and
that they fail to coincide with themselves in a number of ways. The referent of
the word "self" is the pragmatic and proleptic (anticipatory) unity
of the human being.
The encounter between human
incompletion and the field of otherness onto which it opens involves two basic
moments, epistemological or otherwise, which are here called the genetic and
the kenotic. The first is the teleological projection out of incompletion, the
second is the t born of the encounter with otherness. Each offers claims of
value. It is suggested that truth (at least in regard to matters human), like
human identity itself, is settled pragmatically and proleptically, and,
ultimately, in accord with criteria of human flourishing.
Inspirations and sources
throughout include Charles Sanders Peirce, Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ray L. Hart, Geoffrey Hill, Lucien Richard, Stanley Rosen,
George Steiner, Michel Meyer, Stephen David Ross, John Macmurray, Hilary Putnam
and Charles Taylor.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY OFPHILOSOPHY
THEOLOGY
Accession
No: AAI3010450
Provider: OCLC
Database: Dissertations