Gilger, Patrick (2007) Hermeneutics and Conversion. Masters thesis, Loyola University Chicago.
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Abstract
For in that instant, with the very ending of the sentence, it was as though a light of utter confidence shone in all my heart, and all the darkness of uncertainty vanished away. – Augustine (Confessions, 8.12.29) The above passage “records, in metaphorical language, a purely subjective experience of tensions giving way to relief, darkness to light, agitation… to peace. But what does it mean?”1 Questioning the meaning of events is a task proper to philosophical reflection. But the extent to which the event of spiritual conversion can be explicated by reason remains an open question. It is this relation between philosophy and the phenomenon of religious conversion which occupies our attention throughout the course of this essay, an essay which takes place in four parts. The first section is a problematic; there I introduce the themes toward which and the limits within which I write. The second part is a first attempt to achieve philosophic access to the phenomenon of conversion, an attempt which consists in a “phenomenological” reading of Saint Augustine’s conversion as it is set forth in the Confessions.2 Following this phenomenological focus on conversion, our attention turns in the third part to Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy, especially to the manner by which the conflict of interpretations is made possible by the structure of symbols. There I show that the structure of the symbol allows philosophy to venture a response to the question of the meaning of religious conversion. This essay concludes by offering a response to the question of the meaning of conversion, which may now be philosophically understood as that event by which a subject is willfully intended by a meaning not constituted by consciousness. Conversion is to be philosophically understood as that event by which the subject is carried from the first to the second symbolic meaning. The justification for such a philosophic conception of conversion is given throughout the course of this essay.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BT Doctrinal Theology B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BV Practical Theology |
| Divisions: | Comparative Jesuitica |
| Depositing User: | JHI Africa |
| Date Deposited: | 21 Jul 2017 14:29 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2017 09:28 |
| URI: | http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/2047 |
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