Upcoming Courses
PL 742 Graduate: Hermeneutics and Narrativity
This seminar explores the hermeneutic philosophy of narrative as it relates to questions of memory, history, fiction and human identity. Though based largely on the later work of Paul Riceour, Time and Narrative and Memory, History, and Forgetting, the seminar will also look at recent debates on holocaust/genocide testimonies and questions of repressed memory in trauma and therapy. The seminar invites presentations from students.
Current Courses:
PL 702 Graduate: Hermeneutics of Religion
This seminar explores recent debates in continental philosophy of religion about the 'God who comes after metaphysics'. Beginning with the phenomenological approach of Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas, the course will proceed to a discussion of more recent retrievals of the God question in hermeneutics and deconstruction--Ricoeur, Derrida, Caputo, Marion. Key issues explored include the critique of omnipotence, God as possible/impossible, theism/atheism/posttheism and the question of interreligious dialogue and pluralism. The seminar invites class presentations from students.
PL 518 Philosophy of Imagination
Beginning with Biblical and Greek accounts of images and image-making, this course explores three main paradigm shifts in the western history of imagination: (1) the ancient paradigm of the Mirror (Plato to Augustine); (2) the modern paradigm of the Lamp (Kant to Sartre); (3) the postmodern paradigm of the circular Looking Glass (Lacan to Derrida). The course will conclude with a critical evaluation of the political and ethical functions of imagination in our contemporary civilization of cyber fantasy, simulation and spectacle.
Past Courses:
PL 512 Philosophy of Existence
An introduction to the work of some key existentialist thinkers from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to such twentieth century philosophers as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Ricoeur
Pl 518 Philosophy of Imagination
Beginning with Biblical and Greek accounts of images and image-making, this course explores three main paradigm shifts in the western history of imagination: (1) the ancient paradigm of the Mirror (Plato to Augustine); (2) the modern paradigm of the Lamp (Kant to Sartre); (3) the postmodern paradigm of the circular Looking Glass (Lacan to Derrida). The course will conclude with a critical evaluation of the political and ethical functions of imagination in our contemporary civilization of cyber fantasy, simulation and spectacle.
PL 712 Phenomenology of the Image
This course will explore the revolutionary contributions made to our philosophical understanding of the image and imaging by such thinkers as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard. It will also look at the radical critiques leveled against the phenomenological approach by structuralism and deconstruction. Pl 783 Divine Desire
This seminar investigates the importance of two formative texts on the relationship between eros and the divine – The Song of Songs and Plato’s Symposium. The seminar follows the long and influential list of philosophical readings of these texts from the Church Fathers (Origin, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor) and mystics (Bernard of Clairvaux, John of the Cross) down to the contemporary readings of Ricoeur and LaCoque (hermeneutics), Levinas and Derrida (deconstruction) and Kristeva (psychoanalysis).
Useful Links:
Boston College Philosophy Department
Boston College Libraries
University College Dublin Philosophy Department
University College Dublin Library |