Brian Schroeder

A practical hermeneutics of time. The Possible Present unfolds from within a freely reinterpreted hermeneutic perspective and provides an original theoretical proposal on the topic of time. In dialogue especially with the philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger, but resorting also to suggestions coming from a theological background (Barth and Bonhoeffer), the work proposes a personal and original theory of time centered on a conception of the present that does not reduce temporality to a succession of mere instants. When one claims that time is ungraspable, one refers neither to the past (which is rather irretrievable) nor to the future (which is rather uncertain) but to the present. The present in which we are is in fact what fades from our hands without break. The present is a decisive threshold for finite existence. It is the threshold where past and future meet and can give birth to a livable horizon of meaning. Dilating the present and giving it a meaningful chance to be is a task for philosophy. It is the attempt of giving time to time and also giving it shape, place, and space. To succeed at this task while rediscovering the sources of a narrative way of thinking that in truth it has never abandoned, philosophy must go back and turn time into the primary object of discourse, like in stories, which are precisely the attempt at disposing the temporal flow of events according to a meaning. Perone argues that in time, however, what passes is not simply decline, but rather something irreducible, an exteriority that must be said.

Centered around the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this dissertation reassesses the relation between the concepts of totality and the Absolute in an effort to bypass certain metaphysical and ontological prejudices that have resulted in a history of violent thought and action in Western culture. This study is intended for consideration not only by the philosophical community, but by the disciplines of theology and social and political science as well. ;This dissertation is composed of two movements. First, I consider the legacy of Plato's thought and how it has determined the course of metaphysical and political inquiry. The primary question at hand is the status of the $\epsilon\pi\acute\epsilon\kappa\epsilon\iota\nu\alpha\ \tau\eta\varsigma\ o\upsilon\sigma\acute\iota\alpha\varsigma$ and how this notion affects subsequent metaphysical reflection. I approach this issue by way of examination of various contemporary interpretations of the Platonic text, viz., those of Nietzsche, Whitehead, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Levinas. In the second half of the dissertation I assess the accuracy of Hegel's logico-metaphysics primarily through the analyses of Levinas. The status of the concepts of ground and totality are brought into question. I also engage the thought of Heidegger, Adorno, and Derrida--with reference to Levinas and Hegel--in an attempt to further delineate and advance the notions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity