R-3 Repository :: Browsing by Author "Wyschogrod, Edith"

Browsing by Author "Wyschogrod, Edith"

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Asho Orisha (clothing of the Orisha): Material culture as religious expression in Santeria
(1999) Clark, Mary Ann; Wyschogrod, Edith
"Asho Orisha" suggests that the objects surrounding and the items clothing the Orisha of Santeria (also known as Lucumi or Orisha religion) form chains of signifiers tied to the theological and philosophical core of the religion. It focuses on the domestic displays devotees maintain for their deities on a day-to-day basis, the altar displays (thrones) created by devotees for the anniversarie's of their initiation into the priesthood, and the body of the new initiate (the iyawo). This work traces the ways in which theological concepts from Africa are redefined and reinterpreted in the Americas so as to maintain a consistent conceptual system in a new environment. It uses a combination of participant-observation, individual interviews and photographic documentation. It includes 13 photographs of altars and clothing. The focus of this work is divided into three principle sections. Chapter 3 looks at the altars as a whole to see the ways pre-colonial African, colonial Cuban and contemporary American ideas about how one presents and approaches the holy are incorporated into these displays. Chapter 4 looks at the portions of displays devoted to six major Orisha (Obatala, Shango, Yemaya, Oshun, Ogun and Eleggua) and suggests that color forms a primary semiotic system. An analysis of color symbolism aids in the analysis of the other objects found in these displays. Chapter 5 extends this semiotic analysis to include the initiation experience and the extended liminal period of the iyawoage. Like the altar displays, the iyawo embodies the Orisha and thus functions as a mobile sacred site. The construction of the persona of the iyawo and the rules surrounding the iyawoage are fruitfully interrogated to explicate additional theological and philosophical concepts. Issues of cross-gender and cross-status dress highlight the ways that clothing serves as a symbolic system to maintain Yoruba ideas about the sacred relationships embodied in the iyawo. Chapter 6 concludes this work with a discussion of the place of Spanish terminology and Catholic imagery within the semiotic system and briefly discusses the ways in which the religious displays work as mnemonic devices.
Autochthony, promised land, and exile: Athens and Jerusalem revisited
(2006) Hood, Stephen l'Argent; Wyschogrod, Edith
The study examines three myths endemic to Western culture, autochthony (indigenousness), promised land, and exile, taking as figurative representations Athens for autochthony and Jerusalem for promised land. The myth of autochthony is found in ancient Greek literature and the myth of promised land is found in Hebrew scripture. The notion of exile is shown to be a corollary to promised land, and in opposition to autochthony. The philosophy of Martin Heidegger is shown to articulate an essential commitment to autochthony, which is explicitly contrasted to rootlessness and homelessness (what Heidegger takes to be the substance of modernity itself). The philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig is shown to prioritize Jewish exile as necessary for world redemption, a notion of exile explicitly contrasted to autochthony. Nazi Germany exemplifies the opposition of German autochthony and Jewish exile.
Being and nonbeing: The appropriation of the Greek concept of to me on in Jewish thought
(2000) Kavka, Martin T.; Wyschogrod, Edith
"Being and Nonbeing" is a historical contextualization of Emmanuel Levinas' claim that his thinking is a "meontology," centered around the concept of to me on, nonbeing. It argues that: (a) meontology refers to the interweaving of nonbeing with being, and is thus not a whole-hearted rejection of ontology, and (b) meontology opens up a thinking of the future, which medieval and modern Jewish philosophers have used to justify messianic anticipation. The first two chapters defend Levinasian meontology. Although Levinas sees meontology as rooted in the Platonic notion of the good beyond being, Levinas never addresses the question of why Plato rejects this idea in later dialogues. Plato's Sophist supports reading to me on as the other being, not the transcendent other-than-being. Thus, Emil Fackenheim rightly associates meontology with the Hegelian dialectic that Levinas associates with violence. Levinas' misreading is saved by turning to Husserl's Logical Investigations, and delineating the relationship between being and nonbeing as a non-independent one, entailing an unnamable larger whole. The other being ineluctably refers to the other-than-being. The next two chapters deal with the theme of nonbeing in Maimonides, Cohen, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. Maimonides deduces a teleological arc of existence from Greek accounts of to me on: nonbeing is recast as not-yet-being. The modernists highlight the ethical consequences of this teleology: the unveiling of the ethical core of the self which lies in correlation with the divine achieves messianic redemption. In this meontological interpretation of messianic anticipation, the Messiah is every ethically responsible Jewish individual. However, in Maimonides, Rosenzweig, and to a lesser extent Cohen, ethics risks becoming merely an instrument of messianic anticipation; only in Levinas, for whom the revelation of teleology is written on the body of the Other, does ethics bear an intrinsic goodness. The final chapter shows that the meontological slippage between the responsible Jew and the Messiah is found in a rabbinic text, Pesikta Rabbati 34, and that this text can be used to critique recent writings of Derrida.
Figuring philosophy of religion: Reflection on art and its significance for Continental philosophy of religion
(2004) Boynton, Eric Edward; Wyschogrod, Edith
This study maintains that philosophical reflection on religion can avoid consigning the significance of religion to the secret of faith or sacrificing its significance at the threshold of intelligibility. Such reflection involves the unsettling of a traditionally respected heterogeneity between faith and knowledge---an unsettling announced by recent Continental philosophers yet still lacking rigorous exploration. Specifically in the context of the debates describing contemporary Continental philosophy of religion, an argument is needed to clear the space for thinking the interpenetration of faith and knowledge by becoming aware of the hyperbole that plagues these debates beholden to an inflated alterity. The task of this study, then, is to pull back from hyperbolic claims that have rendered the religious amazing in order to clear the space to think through this amazement as it finds expression. The effort to witness this possibility inhering in the Continental reflection on religion finds motivation in the recent reconsiderations of the phenomenon of art. The engagement with the artwork as enigmatic, possessing significance beyond the confines of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics, presents a model for thinking through the alterity of religious themes and phenomena. Pushing the philosophy of art to respond to the recent theological preoccupation with alterity offers a model for consideration of otherness in Continental philosophy of religion. Harnessing the kind of reflection suited to the artwork, I criticize and back away from the more enthusiastic, overstated, and indefensible claims of postmodern philosophy and theology---claims of either extracting the "'pure' and proper possibility" of religion or ones insisting upon a theological surpassing of critical or reductive philosophical thought.
Gray matters: An interdisciplinary approach to understanding the experience of Alzheimer's disease
(2003) Kutac, Julie Elizabeth; Wyschogrod, Edith
Since the latter half of the twentieth century, the number of people with Alzheimer's disease has grown to epidemic proportions. My project investigates the cognitive devastation of Alzheimer's disease from several perspectives. I first outline some medical models of Alzheimer's disease, incorporating Richard Dawkins' selfish gene theory. Next, I explore the linguistic experience of the patient. I study Arthur W. Frank's analysis of patient narratives and Elaine Scarry's theory of torture to explore the way in which Alzheimer's disease tortures the patient, stealing the patient's ability to speak and deconstructing the world of the patient. Finally, I think about the way in which Alzheimer's disease can support and challenge themes in Martin Heidegger's philosophy. In diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, the person experiences a conflation of fear and angst. I explore Heidegger's philosophy as it relates to the experience of the patient who shows no ability to function in-the-world, yet exists corporeally.
Marks of the beast: "Left Behind" and the internalization of evil in American evangelical prophecy fiction
(2004) Shuck, Glenn William; Wyschogrod, Edith
Despite the remarkable economic prosperity of the 1990's, Americans purchased enormous numbers of evangelical prophecy novels that specialized in depictions of impending destruction. This phenomenon might appear counterintuitive, as the New Economy, driven by rapid technological development, materially enhanced the lives of many. The economic expansion, however, also revealed cultural fissures indicating deeper concerns about the self and the possibility of its absorption into the technological matrix. Evangelical prophecy writers responded with texts that while deceptively banal, nevertheless made the incomprehensible aspects of the emerging global culture appear familiar to their readers, depicting a world in which humans could regain responsibility over their futures. The Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins has emerged as the most popular exemplar of the genre in part due to its ability to address post-Cold War themes among a readership less interested in external threats. While Left Behind uses the same symbols as its predecessors, impugning globalization, multinational capital, and the cultural changes consistent with late modernity, its emphasis shifts towards the perceived effects of such developments upon evangelical identity. As the webs of relationships that bind the world together tighten, the novels speak to the anxieties of many evangelicals who feel their identity threatened. Most critically, the novels break with a history of resignation and inaction, proposing a means of resistance against the forces of globalization. The overarching response in Left Behind, however, is more problematic than those advocated by previous novelists, both for evangelicals and others in North American culture. Faced with the twin dangers of isolationism and over-accommodation, the novels suggest different possibilities. The first foregrounds faith, and accepts the ambiguity inherent in contemporary life, while the second, more dominant theme advocates a drive for security and certainty that ultimately incorporates the logic of the Beast culture evangelicals seek to resist, further endangering evangelical identity while increasing tensions with non-evangelicals.
Nanotechnology, bioethics and the techno-scientific revolution: Philosophical and ethical assessment of nanotechnology and its applications in medicine
(2006) Jotterand, Fabrice; Engelhardt, H. Tristram, Jr.; Wyschogrod, Edith
This study draws on analyses on a number of levels. First, it clarifies certain concepts often used loosely in the literature pertaining to nanotechnology. In particular, it focuses on the concept of "revolution" in order to determine whether nanotechnology is a revolution in the making or simply an evolution of scientific and technological development. I then examine the context in which nanotechnology has developed (i.e., postmodernity) and consider how the new scientific culture within the postmodern context ties the production of knowledge to the three key elements of what John Ziman calls post-academic science (i.e., transdisciplinarity; the marketability of knowledge; and the norm of utility). However, the context of postmodernity challenges the resolution of technopolitical controversies due to competing rationalities (modes of explanation) and moralities. To this end, I develop a procedural integrated approach that takes into account the consequences of postmodernity for moral theorizing and our understanding of science and technology. Other attempts have been proposed as integrated model in the field of medical ethics, i.e., principlism. However, this work shows why principlism fails as an integrated model and favors an integrated model based on H. T. Engelhardt, Jr. and Kevin Wm. Wildes' procedural ethics. Finally, I examine further philosophical and ethical implications of nanotechnology in the biomedical sciences. I argue that in order to prevent the absence of more robust reflections that characterizes bioethical reflections in contemporary debates, it is essential to create the conditions for moral substantial reflections (better integration of "trans-epistemic values" at the core of scientific research and technological development). This requires building bridges across disciplines within the natural sciences as well as between the natural sciences (nanotechnology) and the humanities social sciences. Subsequently, I raise some suggestive ethical and philosophical questions concerning the impact of these new technologies on the practice of medicine but also in relation to the use of humanized technologies that could transform our understanding of what it means to be a human being and our conception of the human body.
The play of negativity : an exploration of an apophatic discourse in Daoist philosophy and negative theology
(1995) Zhang, Ellen Ying; Wyschogrod, Edith
This dissertation is an attempt to bring Daoist philosophy and negative theology into conversation. The comparative project itself by no means suggests an identification of the Daoist "Dao" with the Christian "God," nor does it argue for a contrast between a "non-logocentric China" with a "logocentric West." However divergent China and the West may be the notion of "Dao" in Daoist philosophy and the notion of "God" in negative theology, share what I call a "gesture of negativity." My project then is a comparative study of a philosophical/theological discourse which deals with the problem of ineffability. I propose that the apophatic gesture is inevitably paradoxical when speech is deployed in order to surpass itself. I compare the notions of wang and wuwei in Daoism with the notion of Gelassenheit in negative theology, and the Daoist wu with Derrida's denegation. I argue that the play of negativity does not suggest the rejection of meanings as such; rather like many other discourses, it participates in creation, construction, and destruction of meaning within particular philosophical and theological configurations.
The reformative visions of mediumship in contemporary Taiwan
(2003) Tsai, Yi-Jia; Wyschogrod, Edith; Faubion, James D.
This thesis explores how mediums in contemporary Taiwan engage themselves in the complicated project of modernity. In 1989---around the period when the government lifted martial law---a group of mediums founded their own association. It represents a conscious self-recognition of a time-honored religious professional who strives to come to terms with modern frame of professionalization. It is also a spiritual endeavor that tries to respond to contemporary Taiwanese political and moral struggle by appealing to the traditional Chinese cultural resources and the modern educational design. This thesis investigates the theorizations of the Association and explores how its reformative vision combines the ancient Chinese mediumship with modern nationalist discourse and modern Chinese intellectuals' concern for "saving China." The intertwining of religious mission and nationalist concern is further explored by the discussion of the Association's religious practices and activities, including the Moral Maintenance Movement it promoted, the mediums' meeting for the visiting of spirits, the ritual of national protection and spiritual appeasement, and their pilgrimage to the Mainland. This thesis draws on the ideas of de Certeau about the 'writing back the outlawed voice' and argues that the Association writes itself into the official discourse kaleidoscopically, creating a new topography by rearranging available fragments. It neither reiterates the dominant discourse, nor invents a new version; its practice of historical writing constitutes an exercise of reflexive thinking within the structure of normative codes and power relations. The Association's concern for the further education and cultivation of mediums is investigated through their educational activities. Through the care of one's body and spirit, the mediums make efforts to constitute themselves into ethical beings who are able to change a degraded society. The cooperation of medium and spirit is regarded as a co-constituted ethical project. It is explored by Foucault's scheme of the four parameters of the ethical fields. The other reformative visions of mediumship are further investigated through a college student's accounts of mediumistic experiences and a medium writer's works. In sum, these reformative visions of mediumship have added a significant reflective power both to conventional mediumship and to the various trends of modernity.
The religion of reason revisited: Monotheism and tolerance in Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, and Hermann Cohen
(2007) Erlewine, Robert Adam; Wyschogrod, Edith
This study brings the work of three thinkers of the Enlightenment---particularly the German-Jewish Enlightenment: Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, and Hermann Cohen (as heir to the Enlightenment)---to bear on recent discussions about the structural intolerance inherent in the worldview largely shared by the Abrahamic monotheisms. I use recent scholarship on monotheism to highlight the inadequacies of the philosophical accounts of tolerance and pluralism by the thinkers Jurgen Habermas and Jean-Francois Lyotard, which pay insufficient attention to the unique challenges posed to these principles by monotheistic religions. I argue that the problems inherent in monotheistic intolerance are better addressed by the earlier philosophical ruminations of Mendelssohn, Kant, and Cohen. These three Enlightenment thinkers are able to preserve the tense dialectic inherent in the monotheistic worldview while mitigating the violence of its agonistic tendencies by synthesizing the logic operative in monotheistic religions, what I have termed 'scriptural universalism' with a very different logic, what I have termed 'rational universalism.' The exclusivist structures of scriptural universalism such as election, idolatry, and historical mission engender an agonistic relationship with those outside of the monotheistic community. Rational universalism however is more broadly inclusive in that it appeals to all human beings by virtue of their capacity to reason. By synthesizing scriptural universalism with rational universalism, these thinkers reconfigure the basic structures of the monotheistic worldview, appealing to the faculty of reason intrinsic in all human beings rather than relying solely on revelation via a particular set of Scriptures. As a result, with varying degrees of success, Mendelssohn, Kant, and Cohen are able to ameliorate the violence bound up with monotheistic intolerance while nevertheless preserving monotheism's basic structures, a feat contemporary, secular thinkers of tolerance are unable to accomplish. While Mendelssohn and Kant contribute substantially to the development of this trajectory of thought, ultimately Cohen presents not only the most cogent conception of a monotheistic worldview freed of violence and hostility towards the Other, but one that remains viable in the contemporary intellectual climate.
The savage side: Reclaiming violent models of God
(1994) Carroll, Beverlee Jill; Wyschogrod, Edith
The goal of this work is to revive a version of natural theology, and to retheorize violence within a religious context in a way that accords with the multiple and varied, but universal human experience of violence in the natural world. Using the nature writing of Annie Dillard and the philosophical categories of Emmanuel Levinas, I propose models of deity based on violence in the natural world, and use these models to critique those offered by a dominant strand of American feminist religious thought. Finally, I argue that the religious vision that accompanies violent models of deity, unlike that of dominant feminist thought, accommodates in significant ways the insights of important critiques of religion.
Transgressive compassion: The role of fear, horror and the threat of death in ultimate transformation
(1998) Jones, Lucy Annette; Klein, Anne C.; Wyschogrod, Edith
A cross-cultural study of a never-before translated 14$\rm\sp{th}$ century Tibetan Bon Severance (gcod) text and the theoretical work of 20$\rm\sp{th}$ century French theorist Georges Bataille is undertaken. Juxtaposing these two radically different materials is justified by themes related to sacrifice identified and highlighted in both works as well as by Bataille's expressed interest in inner experience, shamanism and Tibetan spirituality. Through exploring the role played by fear, horror and the threat of death in effecting human transformation in these two materials, a complex understanding of compassion that accommodates self-conscious transgression is put forth. A critical edition (in dbu chen) and translation of the Precious Garland of Severance Instructions (gcod gdams rin chen phreng ba) are included.

Browsing by Author "Wyschogrod, Edith"

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