Previous Years' Course Catalogues

This course will focus on two of Ricoeur's essay collections, From Text to Action and Figuring the Sacred. Students will explore the general shape of Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology, including such themes as textual interpretation, action, explanation, understanding, ideology, and utopia.

This course will focus on two of Ricoeur?s essay collections, From Text to Action and Figuring the Sacred. Students will explore the general shape of Ricoeur?s hermeneutical phenomenology, including such themes as textual interpretation, action, explanation, understanding, ideology, and utopia.

This course will focus on two of Ricoeur's essay collections, From Text to Action and Figuring the Sacred. Students will explore the general shape of Ricoeur?s hermeneutical phenomenology, including such themes as textual interpretation, action, explanation, understanding, ideology, and utopia.

This course will focus on two of Ricoeur's essay collections, From Text to Action and Figuring the Sacred. Students will explore the general shape of Ricoeur's hermeneutical phenomenology, including such themes as textual interpretation, action, explanation, understanding, ideology, and utopia.

The notion of a "social imaginary" -the way people come to understand their social surroundings by way of images, stories, and legends-has come to play a key role in Charles Taylor's thought. This is especially true of his most recent book, A Secular Age, in which Taylor attempts to trace the historical development of Western secularism as we experience it today. This seminar will be devoted to an in-depth study of this intellectual tour de force. Through this study, seminar participants will also consider what role Taylor's Roman Catholic religious commitment plays in his thought, as well as the role a religiously-informed "social imaginary" might play in a luralized global society that is deeply impacted by, but also largely at odds with, the particular social imaginary of Western modernity.

A study of Kearney's trilogy Philosophy at the Limit as well as his recent Anatheism, focusing on his exploration of that "frontier zone where narratives flourish and abound." Participants will examine Kearney's attempt to sketch a narrative eschatology that draws on the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Ricoeur.

A study of Kearney's trilogy Philosophy at the Limit as well as his recent Anatheism, focusing on his exploration of that "frontier zone where narratives flourish and abound." Participants will examine Kearney's attempt to sketch a narrative eschatology that draws on the work of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Ricoeur.

This seminar will examine the role intersubjectivity plays in Hannah Arendt.

This seminar will examine the role intersubjectivity plays in Hannah Arendt.

In our culture, "apocalypse" typically refers to a cataclysmic, catastrophic ending, real or imagined. Often this meaning, in which fear eclipses hope, is traced back to the biblical tradition. But what if the book from which we derive the term, i.e. the "Apocalypse" or "Revelation" of John, refers less to the end of the world than to a transition between the two Ages? What if that transition is characterized as double-edged: as both 'the death throes of the old world order' and 'the birthpangs of the new creation'? Attentive to the nature of apocalyptic discourse, this course will seek to develop a key area of systematic theology by exploring the topics of death, judgment, heaven, and hell-the 'four last things' of traditional eschatology-as they are portrayed in the book of Revelation. In allowing lntertexual and intratextual webs of meaning to emerge, we will pay special attention to the way in which Old Testament echoes, together with the book's own symbolic coherence and narrative logic, can open up new avenues for exegesis, and for theological reflection. The topic of Final Judgment will be a special focus. How is this to be conceived in the light of the apocalyptic transition? If the first reference to Babylon in the biblicaJ canon, the Babel narrative of Gen 11 , refers to a judgment that does not bring history to an end but opens It up once again to the dissemination motif of Gen 1 :28, is it possible to detect a parallel 'judgment unto salvation' theme in the final book of the New Testament? Our discussions will explore the interface between biblical studies, the "theological Interpretation of Scripture," and contemporary eschatology.

In our culture, "apocalypse" typically refers to a cataclysmic, catastrophic ending, real or imagined. Often this meaning, in which fear eclipses hope, is traced back to the biblical tradition. But what if the book from which we derive the term, i.e. the "Apocalypse" or "Revelation" of John, refers less to the end of the world than to a transition between the two Ages? What if that transition is characterized as double-edged: as both 'the death throes of the old world order' and 'the birthpangs of the new creation'? Attentive to the nature of apocalyptic discourse, this course will seek to develop a key area of systematic theology by exploring the topics of death, judgment, heaven, and hell-the 'four last things' of traditional eschatology-as they are portrayed in the book of Revelation. In allowing lntertexual and intratextual webs of meaning to emerge, we will pay special attention to the way in which Old Testament echoes, together with the book's own symbolic coherence and narrative logic, can open up new avenues for exegesis, and for theological reflection. The topic of Final Judgment will be a special focus. How is this to be conceived in the light of the apocalyptic transition? If the first reference to Babylon in the biblicaJ canon, the Babel narrative of Gen 11 , refers to a judgment that does not bring history to an end but opens It up once again to the dissemination motif of Gen 1 :28, is it possible to detect a parallel 'judgment unto salvation' theme in the final book of the New Testament? Our discussions will explore the interface between biblical studies, the "theological Interpretation of Scripture," and contemporary eschatology.

In our culture, "apocalypse" typically refers to a cataclysmic, catastrophic ending, real or imagined. Often this meaning, in which fear eclipses hope, is traced back to the biblical tradition. But what if the book from which we derive the term, i.e. the "Apocalypse"-or "Revelation"-of John, refers less to the end of the world than to a transition between the two Ages? What if that transition is characterized as double-edged: as both 'the death throes of the old world order' and 'the birthpangs of the new creation'? Attentive to the nature of apocalyptic discourse, this course will seek to develop a key area of systematic theology by exploring the topics of death, judgment, heaven, and hell-the 'four last things' of traditional eschatology-as they are portrayed in the book of Revelation. In allowing lntertexual and intratextual webs of meaning to emerge, we will pay special attention to the way in which Old Testament echoes, together with the book's own symbolic coherence and narrative logic, can open up new avenues for exegesis, and for theological reflection. The topic of Final Judgment will be a special focus. How is this to be conceived in the light of the apocalyptic transition? If the first reference to Babylon in the biblicaJ canon, the Babel narrative of Gen 11 , refers to a judgment that does not bring history to an end but opens It up once again to the dissemination motif of Gen 1 :28, is it possible to detect a parallel 'judgment unto salvation' theme in the final book of the New Testament? Our discussions will explore the interface between biblical studies, the "theological Interpretation of Scripture," and contemporary eschatology. Familiarity with New Testament Greek is an advantage but is not a prerequisite.