Date of Award

1-1-2009

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Religious and Theological Studies

First Advisor

Sandra Dixon, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Frank Seeburger, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Albert Hernandez

Keywords

Hermeneutics, Imagination, Jacob Boehme, Martin Heidegger, Sophia, Western esotericism

Abstract

This dissertation is offered as a work of original scholarship in the field of Religion and Psychological Studies (RPS). Through its hermeneutic preservation of Jacob Böhme's The Way to Christ in "conversation" with selected works of Martin Heidegger, I retrieve the question of imagination's relation to religious practice, attending to potentials for world transformations disclosed through this relationship, in order to develop a new hermeneutic option for the RPS field concerning this important question. This new hermeneutic option is developed in such a way as to ensure a subversive compatibility with psychoanalytic hermeneutics—our field's koiné—while opening to certain radical possibilities of interpretation concerning imagination, desire, religious practice, and world transformations.

In the course of the dissertation's development, issues concerning the western esoteric traditions—Christian theosophy in particular—repentance, guilt, death, new birth, resignation (Gelassenheit), contemplation, and a radical encounter with Sophia are brought to the fore for consideration. In addition, this dissertation develops its hermeneutic out of the guiding orientation of a weakening ontology that opens a way for the "return of religion" in postmodern hermeneutic discourse, as articulated by Gianni Vattimo.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

Rights holder

Mark Allen Peckler

File size

212 p.

File format

application/pdf

Language

en

Discipline

Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Philosophy

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