Martin Heidegger’s Path to an Aesthetic ετηος

Martin Heidegger is infamous for his rejection of the validity of Ethics as a philosophical endeavour and moreover, for his aesthetic formulation of ετηος. In this paper I will attempt to trace the path of Heidegger’s thought from his early engagement with Aristotle and Religion, through pre-Socratic thinking, to the formulation of ετηος as an authentic dwelling in the truth of being revealed by the poet

Heidegger’s Notion of Religion: The limits of being-understanding

In the last two decades, the question of religion has become a central concern of many philosophers belonging to the Continental philosophical tradition. As the interest in religion has grown within Continental philosophy, so also has the question of Martin Heidegger’s relationship with religion. This paper poses the question of what religion meant to Martin Heidegger in the development of phenomenology as ontology; how he preconceived the notion of religion and why he eventually denied any authenticity to religion. In engaging with this question, the paper will also attempt to disclose some delimitations of Heidegger’s approach to religion

A phenomenological interpretation of religion via pre-Socratic thinking

What is religion? What does the concept of religion mean? Today, the word ‘religion’ appears everywhere; a seemingly all pervasive notion associated with a vast array of phenomena, including: war, terrorism, politics, science fiction, morality, and of course, with delusion and irrationality. However, what religion is, or what it means, remains a highly contested matter. It will be the aim of this paper to offer an interpretation of the meaning of the concept of religion by using just one of many philosophical ways of approaching religion, namely; phenomenology as ontology. The paper will focus upon the remaining fragments of three Pre-Socratic philosophers; Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, seeking in these fragments the basic conceptual subject matter for an interpretation of the meaning of religion. I will argue that these fragments reveal that the meaning of religion is a relation between being-human and what gets called the arche (or ground of being). Further, I will argue that this relation can be conceptually determined as a quest for ground: the ground of the human sense of being and of grounding thinking, meaning, truth, and purpose… Ultimately, I will argue in this paper that there are two essential characteristics of the meaning of religion as this relation to ground(ing). First, insofar as religion belongs to humans in our being; the meaning of religion may be characterized as the directed-ness of being-human towards meaning and purpose. Additionally, as with all relationships, the relationship that constitutes religion has a ‘towards which’ – or – if you will, a being that is related to. Thus, the second essential characteristic of religion will be disclosed as the arche; that which is the ground of being and as such, that which is otherwise than being

Thomas Aquinas on the effects of Original Sin: A philosophical analysis

No abstract is available for this article

A Phenomenology of Religion?

This research explores the possibility of a phenomenology of religion that is ontological, founded on Martin Heidegger’s philosophical thought. The research attempts to utilise Heidegger’s formulation of phenomenology as ontology while also engaging in a critical relation with his path of thinking; as a barrier to the phenomenological interpretation of the meaning of Religion. This research formulates Religion as an ontological problem wherein the primary question becomes: how are humans, in our being, able to be religious and thus also able to understand the meaning of ‘religion’ or something like ‘religion’? This study focuses on the problem of foundation; of whether it is possible to provide an adequate foundation for the study of religion(s) via the notion ‘Religion’. Further, this study also aims to explore the problem of methodological foundation; of how preconceptions of the meaning of Religion predetermine how religion(s) and religious phenomena are studied. Finally, this research moves toward the possibility of founding a regional ontological basis for the study of religion(s) insofar as the research explores the ontological ground of Religion as a phenomenon. Due to the exploratory and methodological/foundational emphasis of the research, the thesis is almost entirely preliminary. Herein, the research focuses on three main issues: how the notion of Religion is preconceived, how Heidegger’s phenomenology can be tailored to the phenomenon of Religion, and how philosophical thought (in this case, Pre-Socratic philosophy) discloses indications of the meaning of Religion. Pre-Socratic thought is then utilised as a foundation for a preliminary interpretation of how Religion belongs-to humans in our being. This research provides two interrelated theses: the provision of an interpretation of Religion as an existential phenomenon, and an interpretation of Religion in its ground of being-human. With regard to the former, I argue that Religion signifies a potential relation with the ‘originary ground’ of life as meaningful. Accordingly, the second interpretation discloses the meaning of Religion as grounded in being-human; that for humans in our being, the meaning of life is an intrinsic question/dilemma for us. This being-characteristic, I argue, can be called belief

The Aristotelian context of the existence-essence distinction in De Ente Et Essentia

This paper explores the Aristotelian context of the real distinction between existence and essence thought to be posited in Thomas Aquinas’ early work De Ente Et Essentia. In doing so, the paper situates its own position in the context of contemporary scholarship and in relation to the contemporary trend to downplay Aristotle’s influence in Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. The paper argues that re-reading De Ente Et Essentia in this way sheds new light on some of the crucial debates in contemporary Thomist scholarship, particularly with respect to the analogous relation between potency and act: essence and existence, the distinction between conceptual and causal explanation, and the relationship between philosophy and theology in the thought of Thomas Aquinas

Towards a theology of liberation

In 1971 Gustavo Gutierrez was the first theologian to pronounce the advent of the theology of liberation. This book received both praise and criticism for its ‘radical new’ approach to theological endeavour. This paper will attempt to provide a broad overview of the complex processes or possibilities which led to the publishing of this book. In doing so, I will focus my discussion upon what has made liberation theology possible; the cultural environment, the intellectual inspiration, and the events that have played an important role in its development. Of course, I cannot hope to give depth to the breadth of the issues. Therefore, the discussion will be at times incomplete and brief in the interests of analysing the ‘big picture’. The first general assumption of this paper is that the work of Gutierrez is a product of a cultural history or multiple cultural histories. His work is one moment in a movement of humanity and human expression in the process of history. By this, I mean to say that A Theology of Liberation is an expression and response to a reality which cannot be disengaged from that historical and cultural reality. In this paper I hope to give a general picture of what this reality may have been and what informed that reality. A full account of the formation of this reality would necessarily begin with an account of pre-Christian Latin America, the religion and culture of its inhabitants and how this culture and religion moved into the Catholic faith. Although I cannot give any account of pre-Catholic Latin America I presume that the pre-Christian culture was not destroyed; but rather subsumed, pushed underground, or similarly to other conversions to Christianity; incorporated into Catholicism. This paper will begin with a discussion of the Spanish Catholic impetus, again in a broad and brief sense, acknowledging the historical formation and drawing out those points which are arguably of central importance to the formation of liberation theology. Following this, it will discuss the influence of Hegel and Marx on the thought of Gutierrez. I will assert that Hegel influenced Gutierrez’s theological framework heavily, both directly and indirectly, while Marxist theory was used as a tool for socio-economic critique by Gutierrez. Finally, I will discuss two works or Gustavo Gutierrez, Towards a Theology of Liberation and A Theology of Liberation. Angus Brook, \u27Towards a Theology of Liberation\u27, 2008. \u27Towards a Theology of Liberation\u27 is due for publication in 2009

Innovation in literacy and numeracy using e-learning technologies in Australian primary schools 2002

The 2002 Commonwealth Bank e-Learning Grants program provided $350,000 in additional funding to primary schools across all states and territories and education sectors. The grant application process provided the data for this study. The 2002 e- Learning Grants program, through the grant application process, has provided an invaluable opportunity to gain an insight into the way in which teachers and construct innovative e-learning projects within the context of their school. It has also provided a national ‘snapshot’ of the levels of school ICT infrastructure in primary schools. Implicit in government policies and the significant investment in technology is the belief that integration of ICT into Australian schools will have a ’transforming’ effect on education. By 2002 the average ratio of computers to students in state and territory government schools was 1 to 5.3. Achieving such ratios has been a direct result of the policies of state and territory governments and individual schools. While the impact of ICT on curriculum is at an early stage the 2002 e-Learning Grant applications indicate that they have the potential to challenge the structure of schools, the curriculum and the pedagogies employed by teachers as they integrate ICT’s into their classrooms. A Report funded by and prepared for the Commonwealth Bank Foundation

The VPOS: a vast polar structure of satellite galaxies, globular clusters and streams around the Milky Way

It has been known for a long time that the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (MW) show a significant amount of phase-space correlation, they are distributed in a highly inclined Disc of Satellites (DoS). We have extended the previous studies on the DoS by analysing for the first time the orientations of streams of stars and gas, and the distributions of globular clusters within the halo of the MW. It is shown that the spatial distribution of MW globular clusters classified as young halo clusters (YH GC) is very similar to the DoS, while 7 of the 14 analysed streams align with the DoS. The probability to find the observed clustering of streams is only 0.3 per cent when assuming isotropy. The MW thus is surrounded by a vast polar structure (VPOS) of subsystems (satellite galaxies, globular clusters and streams), spreading from Galactocentric distances as small as 10 kpc out to 250 kpc. These findings demonstrate that a near-isotropic infall of cosmological sub-structure components onto the MW is essentially ruled out because a large number of infalling objects would have had to be highly correlated, to a degree not natural for dark matter sub-structures. The majority of satellites, streams and YH GCs had to be formed as a correlated population. This is possible in tidal tails consisting of material expelled from interacting galaxies. We discuss the tidal scenario for the formation of the VPOS, including successes and possible challenges. The potential consequences of the MW satellites being tidal dwarf galaxies are severe. If all the satellite galaxies and YH GCs have been formed in an encounter between the young MW and another gas-rich galaxy about 10-11 Gyr ago, then the MW does not have any luminous dark-matter substructures and the missing satellites problem becomes a catastrophic failure of the standard cosmological model.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. An animation of Figure 5 can be found at http://youtu.be/nUwxv-WGfH