Hermenutics

Jesus’ thesis in Matthew 5:17–20 that He came to fulfill and not abolish the Torah is a benchmark proposition for how both Jewish and Gentile Christians can understood the Law and its relevance to the moral life of the Church today. However, recent scholarship has challenged this basic premise of the Torah as a timeless universal. Most significant is John Walton’s ‘Lost World’ series, which applies a hermetical method that interprets the Old Testament (OT) text through Ancient Near East (ANE) patterns of thinking reconstructed from his analysis of ancient source-documents. A central theme of Walton’s latest work is that the Torah must be read as a wholistic set of wisdom sayings pertinent to the values of the ANE. These laws were limited to Israel’s covenant with God whose purpose was its immediate relevance to Israel’s twin tasks of co-identification with Yahweh and protection of God’s reputation among the nations. To these ends, the Torah functioned primarily to establish societal order for Israel and secondarily—if at all—to guide Israel’s moral decision-making. Similarly, Walton argues, the New Testament (NT) writers produced works which interpreted the Torah from within their own Second-Temple worldview—shaped by its concurrence with Greco-Roman culture. Once again, this ‘shared cognitive environment’ sets limits on efforts by modern Christians to extract timeless moral principles or ethical guidelines from the NT writings. The wider effect of Walton’s work, then, is to release present-day readers from the ethical norms of both OT and NT teachings about the Torah. This paper will critique both the strengths and weaknesses of Walton’s Lost-World hermeneutic, while exploring the specific consequences for Christology and ethics as understood through the lens of Matthew 5:17-20. The goal is to demonstrate that Jesus established the universal nature of the Law—not by reducing it to a set of impersonal principles to be practiced—but by elevating the Law to the status of a relationship between God and humanity which reflects the eternal holiness of God himself. This Christocentric hermeneutic, which understands the Torah as providing timeless and universal meaning through the person of Jesus, then allows for its application to modern cultures.

We usually tend to have numerous “do’s” and “don’ts” in our day-to-day life. After being born and raised in a family, we are used to develop or to abstain from some tendencies peculiar to our family upbringing or personality type. However, for its smooth functioning, the society needs some rules and regulations expressed through myriads of “do’s” and “don’ts” in the forms of directions and prohibitions. It was the same in case of ancient Indian society also. Professor J. D. M. Derrett argues that every legal system requires a mass of prohibitions, and it may be a source of confusion to some of the lay public (who tend to think of law rather in terms of ‘must nots’ than ‘musts’) that it has this feature in common with a concurrent system of ethics.

According to the theory of Mīmāṃsā, the directive principles (vidhi) are aimed at inspiring an individual to do something positive if he would like to see some benefits accrued to him. In contrast, by “negation” (niṣedha), an individual is also directed to refrain from performing acts that consequently bring hardship to him.

The Mīmāṃsakas identified the different shades of prohibition. They sometime interpret a prohibition as a pratiṣedha, the actual prohibition and sometime paryudāsa, the partial or modified prohibition or exception. Parisaṃkhyā (better to translate it as a ‘preclusive injunction’), on the other hand, is a typical type of injunction, which recommends something exclusively. It does not articulate any kind of prohibition explicitly; rather, implying a few special commodities unambiguously. That injunction, however, should not be regarded as a compulsory or obligatory one.

In this paper, therefore, I shall try to discuss the prohibitory injections, with special reference to Parisaṃkhyā as mentioned in the Dharmaśāstras in the light Mīmāṃsā, a unique system of rules of interpretation.

This article examines Hans-Georg Gadamer's seminal work Truth and Method and the central notion of the " fusion of horizons " as it relates to several central concerns within the contemporary study of Christian spirituality. In particular, the nature of human experience in general and religious experience in particular play a significant role in Gadamer's work and spirituality respectively. Ultimately, this article concludes that Gadamer's fusion of horizons opens up the possibility of integrating the experience of God via the Holy Spirit into a critical hermeneutics of spirituality that is socially-communally oriented within the interpretive community of believers.

“En este libro se reúne un conjunto de trabajos en los que se discute de forma aguda, polémica e informada sobre la obra de Mariflor Aguilar Rivero. Sus cuatro grandes secciones: “Ideología y teoría filosófica”, “Hermenéutica, diálogo, alteridad”, “Crítica y subjetividad” y “Construcción de identidades y procesos de resistencia”, marcan el trabajo de la filósofa de los últimos decenios. En la primera sección se destaca el papel fundamental de Aguilar dentro del debate sobre la configuración de las ideologías y, en este contexto, sobre las subjetividades y las identidades individuales y colectivas; en la segunda, se da cuenta del crucial trabajo hermenéutico que ha desarrollado la filósofa como una de las mayores especialistas del tema en nuestra lengua y de quienes más derivas han creado a partir del discurso hermenéutico. “En el tercer apartado del libro puede observarse cómo Mariflor Aguilar transforma radicalmente el debate sobre las ideologías para trabajar, en sintonía con las tradiciones marxistas más avanzadas y los estudios particulares —donde destacan los feministas—, las formas de la crítica y la constitución de nuevas subjetividades dentro del capitalismo, desde la recuperación de su permanente trabajo con el psicoanálisis hasta su trabajo de análisis sobre las políticas estatales, pasando por una revisión de aspectos epistemológicos de la subjetividad hasta la configuración presente de la figura del intelectual. El libro cierra con la aplicación de varias dimensiones de la teoría de Mariflor Aguilar, entre las que resalta la idea de resistencia, que, en tensión con las ideas de desplazamiento, destierro, exilio, huida, persecución y migración, abre una nueva tematización del problema de la humanidad respecto a sus formas de permanencia comunitaria y natural en este mundo. El presente volumen incluye una bibliografía de la obra de Mariflor Aguilar. En este volumen participan Juan José Abud Jaso, Carlos Andrés Aguirre Álvarez, Raúl Alcalá Campos, Pietro Maria Francesco Ameglio Patella, Neil Mauricio Andrade, María Eugenia Borsani, Laura Echavarría Canto, Carlos Emilio Gende, Dora Elvira García González, Pedro Enrique García Ruiz, María Antonia González Valerio, Mónica Hernández Rejón, Rosaura Martínez Ruiz, Cecilia Monteagudo, Carlos Oliva Mendoza, Aureliano Ortega Esquivel, Elizabeth Padilla, Carlos Pereda, Jorge Reyes, Pedro Joel Reyes, Norma de los Ríos M., Juan Manuel Rodríguez, Juan Manoel Sandoval Ríos y Ambrosio Velasco Gómez.

يمثّل الفكر المعاصر واحدًا من التيارات المهمّة في المنظومة الفكرية للعالم الإسلامي. إنّ التراث المعاصر لا يختص بعالم الإسلام فقط، بل هو مرتبطٌ بجميع الثقافات والهويات العامّة المتجذّرة في العمق التاريخي. إنّ هذا التفكير إنما يكون منتجًا عند التلاقي والتلاقح مع الآخر بوصفه ثقافةً ومنظومةً منافسةً. إنّ عامل الزمان والمكان إلى جانب التنافس مع المنظومة المفهومية للآخرين، يدعو كلَّ فكرٍ وثقافةٍ متجذِّرةٍ إلى المعترك، كي يعمل على التماهي والتطابق مع الظروف الملحقة، ويعمل في الوقت نفسه على تفعيل وتمييز مدخراته في مواجهة الآخر أيضًا.

إذا كان التراث الفلسفي الإغريقي اليوناني ـ بوصفه مساحةً مفهوميةً متناغمةً وقابلةً للتفكير والتأمّل ـ يدفع المفكرين المسلمين إلى التعريف بدينهم وتعاليمهم ومفاهيمهم في ضوء التماهي معه، وقد دفع بفلاسفةٍ من أمثال الفارابي وابن رشد إلى بذل الجهود في هذا السياق، فاليوم حلّت محله الحضارة والثقافة الغربية الحديثة ذات النفَس العَلماني التوسّعي في الاستحواذ علينا نحن وسائر الثقافات غير المتغرّبة. لقد فرضت هذه المنظومة المفهومية من خلال تفوّقها السياسي والاقتصادي على نطاقٍ واسعٍ علينا نحن المسلمين تحديًّا، وهي تعمل على توسيع دائرة هذا التحدي يومًا بعد يومٍ. واستجابة لهذا التحدي نشهد مختلف الحلول التي وضعت والتي يتمّ وضعها في هذا الشأن. وهناك من استحوذت عليه السطوة الغربية وانهار أمامها بحيث لم يجد الحل إلّا في الارتماء في أحضان هذا الغرب بشكلٍ منفعلٍ والدعوة إلى التماهي بهذا الآخر. وهناك بطبيعة الحال من فكّر في تفعيل تراثنا، ولم يرَ الحل في ساحة الخصم، وإنما رأى أنّ الحلول موجودةٌ لدينا في الداخل. وإن التراث المعاصر إنّما هو حصيلة هذه المنظومة من الحلول.

لقد بدأ قسم الفكر المعاصرـ في فرعه المركزي بقم ـ نشاطه في إطار التحقيق والتأمّل في هذه المعطيات الفكرية وتقييمها. وفي هذا السياق تم الاهتمام بمناقشة المشاريع الفكرية للمفكرين البارزين في العالم الإسلامي الواردة آراؤهم في إطار المعاصرة. ويتم نشر نتاج هذه الجهود في سلسلةٍ تضمّ دراسة وتحليل آثارهم ضمن بيان مسارهم الفكري. إن هذه الطريقة في القراءة تهتم بمسار إنتاج التفكير القائم على طرح الأرضيات والمباني والنظريات تحت عنوان المنهجية التأسيسية، وتسعى إلى دراسة مدى نجاح وإخفاق الأفكار المعاصرة بشفافيةٍ.

وختامًا أتقدّم بالشكر الجزيل لكل من ساهم في إنجاز هذا العمل وأخصُّ بالذكر منهم سماحة السيد محسن الموسوي والدكتور هادي بيكي، حيث قاما بالإشراف على هذا العمل وكذلك الدكتور مسلم طاهري حيث قام بالمتابعة والإعداد والتحرير. وآخر دعوانا أن الحمد لله رب العالمين وصلّى الله على رسوله محمد(ص) وآله الطاهرين

Due to the 20th century mathematical and scientific developments of Georg Cantor, Max Karl Planck, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg, concepts once relegated to obscurity, such as irrationality, infinity, insolvability, and chaos, were brought to mainstream attention, ultimately changing the course of technological and scientific development into the 21st century. Before these seminal thinkers, concepts like numerical irrationality and infinity were considered by many to be worthless if not amoral; such attitudes can be found persisting back to the ancient Greeks under the Pythagoreans. Interestingly, the aesthetic of irrationality follows a similar historical trajectory, mostly finding relegation in peripheral movements and specific artists before the 20th century. However, the 20th century has seen the greatest and longest persisting resurgence in mathematically irrational thought within the arts. This paper compares the visual and musical experiments in irrationality, incommensurability, and infinity in the works of MC Escher and Conlon Nancarrow during the early and mid-twentieth century, showing a correlation between contemporary mathematical and physical innovations and specific aesthetic pursuits in art and music.

Paul Ricoeur’s ''Freedom and Nature'', his first major published work, consists in an eidetic analysis of the will, a study adopting and applying a descriptive phenomenological method with a view to providing an account of man’s structures or fundamental possibilities as far as willing is concerned. In investigating those possibilities, Ricoeur identifies three consecutive but distinct phases of the willing process (decision, movement and consent), and also discovers that the voluntary is closely intertwined with various involuntary aspects, each corresponding to the three moments. Those involuntary elements play a mediating role and impose the necessity of a detour, thereby limiting any claim the subject may lay to sovereignty or to its ability to posit itself. Accordingly, Ricoeur raises a series of methodological objections vis-à-vis the tendency of Husserlian phenomenology to underestimate the essential nature of the passage from objectivity to existence and to shun the mystery of incarnation.
To what extent is this portrayal of Freedom and Nature compatible with the interpretative commonplace that the specific work is far removed from the hermeneutic turn Ricoeur’s philosophy took after the 1950s? I will reflect on that question while investigating the curious relation between the voluntary and the involuntary. Although Ricoeur admits to a certain conflict between the two modes, this conflict is eventually resolved in a dialectic whereby he affirms the reciprocity between the voluntary and the involuntary. With the aim of examining this alleged reciprocity, I will focus on the second phase of the willing process, and, in particular, on the role of ‘effort’ as the locus of the above dialectic on the level of action and movement. In addition to examining Ricoeur’s response to Maine de Biran’s philosophy of effort, I will also evaluate, perhaps with a little help from Derrida’s discussion of Maine de Biran in ''On Touching – Jean-Luc Nancy'', his critique of the Biranian prioritization of touch. My aim is to analyze the presuppositions of Ricoeur’s account of effort as much as its consequences for the reciprocal relation between the voluntary and the involuntary. Finally, I will explore the extent to which those early views on human volition differ from his later and properly hermeneutical conceptuality of ‘l’homme capable’.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498578882/A-Companion-to-Ricoeur's-Freedom-and-Nature

Master Yin-shun’s book The History of Chinese Chan Buddhism is a famous and admired masterpiece of Buddhism in East Asia. The book has two characteristics. Firstly, it was a Buddhist history divided according to dynasties. Secondly, Master Yin-shun used the logical analysis as the book’s writing skills and combined it with the historical research method which was the pioneer of Buddhist academic circle in the Republican period. And these two characteristics are also the reason for the extreme evaluations of the book. Based on this situation, the author of this article writes to analyze how the two characteristics come, from the following three dimensions:
opportunity of the book’s origin, Master Yin-shun’s experiences and own road of Buddhism Studying, the formation of his personal unique research methods. Through the process of the analysation, the dilemma of Republican Period’s Buddhist academic would be comprehended to a certain extent.

This paper proceeds in two parts: the first concerns Heidegger’s understanding of  Logos in the period leading up to Being and Time, and the second supplements this understanding with an interpretation of the mythology of Hermes. My desire is that in the mythology of Hermes we might find a way to conceive how the logos comes into being through the formation and articulation of the symbolon in magical speech. A happy offshoot of this line of thought is that it leads to a philosophical account of magic which shows magical speech or incantation to be a formal possibility built into the structure of the logos itself.  The question of whether magic in fact occurs or has occurred thus becomes an empirical problem.

Bu yazıda gösterilmeye çalışılan Hermeneutik Anlam Yöntemi’nin aslında hangi temeller üzerinden  ortaya çıktığı, hangi kelimeler ile dile verildiği ve dilde verilen bu kelimelerin nasıl bir kavram dönüşümüne uğradığı ortaya çıkartabilmektir. Bu nedenle, bize apaçık bir şekilde verildiği öne sürülen birkaç yanlışta bu yazı içerisinde yeniden revize edilmiştir. Felsefe, bilgelik sevgisinin tersine insan varlığının  bir etkinliğidir. Bu nedenle felsefenin kavram, sorun ve yorum  kavramları arasındaki bağı tekrar bulması ve bu bağın dışına çıkan yönlerin Reotrik’ten ibaret olduğunu göstermesi gerekir. Felsefe, bir retorik değildir. Bir kavramı hayatımıza getirip yeniden tartışabilmek için; Hangi problemden ortaya çıktığını, Bu problemin nerede anlamlaşarak bir kavrama dönüştüğünü, bu kavramın tarih içerisinde nasıl anlamladırıldığını ve bu kavramın bizi nere götürdüğüyle yüzleşmemiz gerekir. Bu makale, bu yolu size yazım biçimiyle göstermeyi amaç edinmiştir.
Hermeneutik Anlama Yöntemi bize, Platon’dan beri orada duran ve onu belli insan varlığı yetileri ile ulaşabildiğimiz durağan bir hakikat yerine, değişim ve dönüşümle kendi kendinin hakikatıni yaratan şeylerin anlaşılma imkanlarını göstermektedir. Bu nedenle Hermeneutik, Mantık yöntemine ve Dialektik yönteme karşıt olarak tüm çıkarımları birleştiren bir anlama yöntemi olduğunu iddia etmektedir. Ne dile gelenin kritiğiyle sınırlanmış, ne de öncesinde bildiğimizi iddia ettiği bir hakikatten ortaya çıkmıştır. Tam tersine yorumlama ve anlamanın aynandalığı göstermiş ve bu sayede insan düşüncesi üzerindeki çıkarımlarımızı yeniden değerlendirememizin olanağını sunmuştur.

Certain segments of Western Academia seem to be predisposed towards ignoring the tragedies of the past for the sake of a tacit religious tolerance. This has dangerous implications for intellectual honesty in academic studies. Accusations by Western Indology about supposed mythic tales of Islam's history in India don't comport with the evidence left by historians or even Islamic theology itself.

Japanese philosopher Miki Kiyoshi 三木清 (1897–1945) wrote an important text on translation entitled “Disregarded Translations” (keibetsu-sareta honyaku 軽蔑された翻訳). Among all Kyoto School thinkers, Miki was probably the most prolific writer. His interests spanned various intellectual topics such as philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and journalism. This paper offers a brief introduction to Miki’s conception of translation as well as, for the first time, an English translation of his text. “Disregarded Translations” deals with Japanese scholars’ propensity to revere Western philosophical texts in their original forms, while ignoring the outstanding wealth of insight that their translations can provide in their own language.

I argue from a hermeneutic point of view that formal elements of poetry can only be identified because poetry is based on both the phenomenon and the conception of poetry, both of which precede the attempt to identify formal elements as the defining moment of poetry. Furthermore, I argue with Gadamer that poetry is based on a rupture with and an epoche of our non-poetic use of language in such a way that it liberates “fixed” universal aspects of everyday language, and that through establishing itself in a new, self-referential and monologue unity, it individualizes speech. From the hermeneutic position, poetry is a form of speaking rather than a “fixed” object. As such, I will try to make sense of what Paul Celan said in his famous “Meridian” speech: namely, that the poem is “actualized language, set free under the sign of a radical individuation, which at the same time stays mindful of the limits drawn by language, the possibilities opened by language.”

Resumen En el artículo se exponen las peculiaridades epistemológicas y metodológicas del método narrativo-interpretativo, consolidado en Gran Bretaña (bajo la denominación BNIM) y Alemania (donde es conocido como Interpretative Biografi eforschung). El método, que se fundamenta en la fenomenología y la hermenéutica, busca la expresión de los marcos de signifi cado pasados y presentes de los sujetos a través de una entrevista no directiva, que es analizada mediante un proceso reconstructivo que diferencia entre la «vida vivida» y la «vida narrada», y, a posteriori, pone en conexión ambas dimensiones. Los principales pasos de aplicación del método se explican a través del estudio de caso de Adriana, tomado de una investigación I+D+i sobre inmigración y mercado de trabajo. Abstract This paper outlines the epistemological and methodological specifi cities of the Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method, developed in Britain (under the name 'BNIM') and Germany (where it is known as 'Interpretative Biografi eforschung'). Based on phenomenology and hermeneutics, this method seeks to express subjects' past and present frames of meaning through the use of a non-directive interview. This interview is analysed by a reconstructive process that differentiates between the 'lived life' and the 'told story', and subsequently connects both dimensions. The main steps for the application of the method are explained through the case study of Adriana, taken from a R&D&i research project on immigration and the labour market.

This book is based on a doctoral dissertation that I completed at the Asian Social Institute (ASI) in 2016. It started as a work-in-progress thesis topic that I submitted as part of the requirements of the Hermeneutics Course that Dr. Charles Ringma handled at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas in Manila during the second semester of 1995-1996. That course led me to study the leading hermeneuticists and made me realize that we as human beings have various tools and techniques at our disposal to gain knowledge and understanding. During the succeeding semester, I had the opportunity to link hermeneutics with phenomenology under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Florentino Hornedo when I took his Course on Postmodern Philosophy.

El presente artículo lleva a cabo una crítica sistemática de los presupuestos teóricos que subyacen a la antropología estructural de Claude Lévi-Strauss. Se parte de una reconstrucción hermenéutica de sus principales planteamientos, a partir de su Antropología estructural, en particular, su proposición de tomar a la lingüística estructural y, dentro de ésta, a la fonología como modelo de cientificidad para la antropología. En realidad, el concepto de cientificidad que rige el estructuralismo de Lévi-Strauss,  no es el de la lingüística, sino el de las ciencias naturales y, en ese sentido, su pensamiento es afín al positivismo y al cartesianismo. Propongo que el proceso de comprensión debe realizarse de otra manera, de modo que no se violente la especificidad cultural, propia de los grupos humanos que se estudian, y el ser humano vivo, vuelva a estar en el centro de la antropología.

In this article, I aim to propose a systematic contribution to Embodied understanding in pedagogical contexts. My article revolves around two questions: How do we understand each other? Can pedagogical understanding be described as a special practice of understanding? To answer these questions, I critically refer to various hermeneutic approaches of understanding (Dilthey, Husserl, Gadamer) and expand them with Heidegger’s concept of being-understood. In contrast to these hermeneutic approaches, I then try to open up the “field of expression of the body” in the sense of a hermeneutics of expression. This approach to hermeneutics is not a hermeneutics of linguistic or symbolic expressions or rhetorical forms, but a hermeneutics of intercorporeal symbolism. In the eventful materiality of the body that shows itself, not only a material self-relation announces itself. An Intercorporeal symbolism is rather to be distinguished from a symbolism of cultural orders. It is precisely the materiality of the body in that which is non-sayable that guarantees its presence and its eventfulness—quite in contrast to approaches of understanding of the semiotic.

Acknowledgements: there were no industrial links or affiliations. For building an exhibition we were funded by funds, one public and one related to health insurance companies, but this was limited to the exhibition and did not concern the research and development of the intervention. The research was done as part of our job as researcher and innovation staff member in the service of GGnet. Disclosure of interests: there is no conflict of interest. Abstract Our aim was to develop and evaluate an intervention that can be used in recovery oriented care to promote recovery processes and goals as found in the CHIME framework [1]. Using the Appreciative cycle and principles from the MRC-Framework for the development and Evaluation of complex interventions an intervention with photography has been designed and tested on 3 long stay wards of a mental health care hospital. 15 Service users participated and were photographed during 4 sessions. The intervention built on the expertise that already existed about rehabilitation approaches, especially the Strengths approach [2] and the findings from earlier studies into hermeneutic photography by the author. The intervention proved to inspire hope and meaning giving in service users and contributed to a transformation of relationships between service users and their mentor nurses. These relationships became more reciprocal and equal. The intervention yielded opportunities for service users to express their wishes and values in life. In this way they made a representation of the persons who they are. The photographs probably contribute to a greater self-esteem of the service users and may inspire them to use the action and what it meant to them for further recovery. The intervention put the service user in the lead and contributed to more mutuality in the relationship with the mentor nurse.

"Every other is truly other, but no other is wholly other." This is the claim that Aspects of Alterity defends. Taking up the question of otherness that so fascinates contemporary continental philosophy, this book asks what it means for something or someone to be other than the self.

Levinas and those influenced by him point out that the philosophical tradition of the West has generally favored the self at the expense of the other. Such a self-centered perspective never encounters the other qua other, however. In response, postmodern thought insists on the absolute otherness of the other, epitomized by the deconstructive claim "every other is wholly other." But absolute otherness generates problems and aporias of its own. This has led some thinkers to reevaluate the notion of relative otherness in light of the postmodern critique, arguing for a chiastic account that does justice to both the alterity and the similitude of the other. These latter two positions—absolute otherness and a rehabilitated account of relative otherness—are the main contenders in the contemporary debate.

The philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel provide the point of embarkation for coming to understand the two positions on this question. Levinas and Marcel were contemporaries whose philosophies exhibit remarkably similar concern for the other but nevertheless remain fundamentally incompatible. Thus, these two thinkers provide a striking illustration of both the proximity of and the unbridgeable gap between two accounts of otherness.

Aspects of Alterity delves into this debate, first in order understand the issues at stake in these two positions and second to determine which description better accounts for the experience of encountering the other.


After a thorough assessment and critique of otherness in Levinas's and Marcel's work, including a discussion of the relationship of ethical alterity to theological assumptions, Aspects of Alterity traces the transmission and development of these two conceptions of otherness. Levinas's version of otherness can be seen in the work of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo, while Marcel's understanding of otherness influences the work of Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney.

Ultimately, Aspects of Alterity makes a case for a hermeneutic account of otherness. Otherness itself is not absolute, but is a chiasm of alterity and similitude. Properly articulated, such an account is capable of addressing the legitimate ethical and epistemological concerns that lead thinkers to construe otherness in absolute terms, but without the "absolute aporias" that accompany such a characterization.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: THE QUESTION OF OTHERNESS

CHAPTER TWO: EMMANUEL LEVINAS 
Transcendental Phenomenology: Metaphysics Precedes Ontology
The Same and the Other
Justice and Love

CHAPTER THREE: GABRIEL MARCEL
Concrete Existential Philosophy
The Self and the Other: Intersubjectivity
Love and Justice

CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Philosophers of Dialogue
The Generic Critique
The Specific Critiques
An Uneasy Kinship: Marcel and the Transcendental Critique

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCRETE PHILOSOPHY
Levinas and his Readers 
Marcelian Critiques

CHAPTER SIX: THE OTHER AND GOD
A Brief Review: Justice and Love
Absolute Alterity versus Relative Alterity: A Preliminary Sketch
The Alterity of the Other and the Alterity of God
Two Ways of Encountering God
Levinas and Judaism
Buber and Judaism
Faith and the Irreducibility of First Principles

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE NATURE OF OTHERNESS
Absolute Otherness and Relative Otherness: Two Possible Reconciliations
Otherness in the Contemporary Debate
Alterity, Similitude, Otherness
Conclusion

Jean-Luc Marion’s remarks on the saturated phenomenon of the Name made in the sixth chapter of his book In Excess add a very interesting voice to the ongoing discussion about the interpretation of Exod. 3.14. In this article, I look at possible interpretations of the Burning Bush episode in the light of Marion’s philosophical discourse. I shall answer the following question: Can we propose a modern interpretation of Exod. 3.14 which would be in accordance with the concept of the Name understood as a saturated phenomenon, and with de-nomination conceived as a pragmatic theology of absence?

In information systems (IS) research, top management support is typically seen as an exclusively positive phenomenon that is key to any successful digital transformation including IS implementation and associated organizaational, operational and startegic chnage.. Surprisingly, this view contrasts with the findings of organization studies research, which reveal a "dark side" of top management support. We propose that this chasm in the research findings may result from: (1) IS research taking a single-sided view of a dialectic phenomenon; or (2) IS implementation being a phenomenon within which top management support can only ever play a positive role. This study examines these propositions by employing a hermeneutical analysis of a published case study on the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The findings support the first proposition, revealing that senior management "hyperopia" and overconfidence could lead to significant operational confusion and a costly implementation. The study contributes to IS research by revealing that the style and approach of top management support are key to determining the impact of that support and whether it is positive and/or negative. It also extends management research on the dark side of top management to the domain of IS implementation and organizational change, in addition to providing a thorough application of hermeneutical analysis.