John c. Carney

Abstract: Faust's Folly In this poem I revisit the dialogue between Boethius and Philosophy in his work The Consolation of Philosophy, a work composed while its author was imprisoned and awaiting execution under Theodoric the Ostrogoth. That Boethius produced such a work under circumstances of such brutal extremity marks him as an existential hero in the deepest sense: he embodies in his own life the argument advanced centuries later by Jean-Paul Sartre, that human freedom persists even within the confines of a gulag or a prison cell. He also bequeathed to us one of philosophy's most consequential and subtle distinctions: the difference between what something is and that something is, between essence and existence. The importance of this distinction cannot be overstated. It preoccupied the Neoplatonists and the great Medieval philosophers alike, and it underlies Leibniz's thunderous question: why is there something rather than nothing? In modern times it became a linchpin of existentialism, phenomenology, and analytic metaphysics, animating thinkers too numerous to list. In this poem, the distinction also serves another purpose: to illuminate the difference between knowledge understood as information and information-gathering, and the deeper, slower thinking that is the proper vocation of philosophy. References in the poem contain hypertext links to aid students who may be unfamiliar with the names and terms.

This paper explores Reiner Schürmann’s account of perigrinal ontology from the perspective of Meister Eckhart. What is so extraordinary about his work is its retrieval of nuances in Plato’s philosophy of mind. Professor Schürmann’s approach to Philosophy focused on a philosopher’s philosophy of mind. For example, his course titles, such as Augustine’s Philosophy, were listed and taught in Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind. The advantage of his approach can best be seen in his study of the Medieval Philosopher Meister Eckhart. In this work, Professor Schürmann totalizes the relationship between the will and the intellect and unites the different categories of Platonic philosophy under the concept of perigrinal ontology. Instead of treating epistemology or aesthetics in isolation, they are examined as they relate to ontology. In Plato’s epistemology, the highest form of knowing is different; at its highest point, knowledge is a seeing. Meister Eckhart and the other Neoplatonic philosophers continued the argument that Plato initiated. This is not an instance of Gnosticism in that the successors of Plato in the Christian tradition are not introducing new material but are extending Plato’s philosophy. At the center of the controversies about Meister Eckhart’s alleged departure from Christian doctrine is the oneness with God. Here, Professor Schürmann acts like a good editor. He painstakingly draws out pertinent distinctions to demonstrate Meister Eckhart’s adherence to tradition. It is interesting in this light to consider what Saint Thomas Aquinas has said on some of these same issues. One can see, too, that Meister Eckhart is a good deal closer to Saint Thomas than is generally thought. Saint Thomas's writings are full of references to Neoplatonic philosophers, but he also actively engages with their ideas. Though exploring this is beyond this paper's scope, Saint Thomas’s commentary of the Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo Dionysius primarily supports this point. We also need to recall that the period in which all this unfolded was a period in history marked by the democratization of religion. More importantly, Meister Eckhart’s time was informed by the democratization of theology. Meister Eckhart’s writings and personal commitment to that project are noteworthy in this context. His decision to teach women in religious orders advanced theology, a historical breakthrough. There are some notable debates that Professor Schürmann addressed in this work. Perhaps chief among these is the overly close connection between the writings of Meister Eckhart and that of the late Heidegger. It had been suggested that Martin Heidegger’s interest in Zen Buddhism was thought to include that of Meister Eckhart. Waiting upon Being and detachment or releasement were similar in these three schools of thought. Professor Schürmann viewed this as a form of syncretism, the mashing up of ideas that seem similar but have important distinctions. For Professor Schürmann, the absolute absence of the faculty of the will in Meister Eckhart’s work distinguished him from these other philosophies. It is striking that Professor Schürmann repeatedly cites texts where Meister Eckhart sees the highest form of knowledge as purely a feature of the intellect. He even goes so far as to note that the will is almost absent from Meister Eckhart’s philosophy of mind.

Fascism is a virulent historical social pathology that presents itself as a political ideology or a component of general ideology. It is historical in a double sense. It is actualized at specific times and places. It is also, a recurring feature of history itself. Crypto-fascism is the manipulation of the ambiguity of language for the purpose of fascistic actualization. Crypto-fascism is often an early “tell” or warning of the presence of more widespread fascism. There have been several powerful and deep studies of fascism and its co-optation of the ambiguity of language. Two of these approaches are of particular importance. In both instances fascism is addressed as a potentiality or susceptibility tied to the human condition per se. The first is Freudian and the second is existential. These approaches both meet the historical criteria noted above. In this essay I follow the work of Erich Fromm and Jean-Paul Sartre to understand the ground of fascism and its crypto variant. Camouflage is the hallmark of crypto-fascism, and it is exactly this that Fromm’s analysis and that of Sartre discloses.

This dissertation is a definition of Sartre's theory of alienation through an explication of his concept of Intentionality. The analysis begins with Sartre's concept of "nothingness." It explicates this concept first, through a study of Sartre's early article on Intentionality, and then the larger work, Transcendence of the Ego. It then provides a detailed account of Sartre's realism. The three-fold relationship of nothingness, realism and the doctrine of Intentionality comprise the core elements of Sartre's concept of realism. ;The analysis then considers the way Sartre develops the concept of Intentionality as it relates to nothingness and realism in Sartre's major early work, Being and Nothingness. The final part of the dissertation puts forth Sartre's theory of alienation from the perspective of his early works including his early literary works, Nausea and The Flies. The analysis then turns towards the contributions of Sartre's theory of alienation from the perspective of the doctrine of Intentionality. In this later part of the dissertation the focus is on Sartre's study of Anti-Semitism.

This work reexamines Sartre's phenomenology from the perspective of contemporary debates in political theory with particular attention to the reemergence of theories of human nature. For Sartre, any construct that stood between the self and its direct encounter with the world was suspect. Sartre's version of direct realism is a strong refutation of the 'new essentialism' that has emerged in recent years as a back-door invocation of theories of human nature. This book provides an account of the major ideas that inform the new essentialism and that serve to further identify it as other than what it claims to be, a scientific grounding of human behavior. Instead, from the perspective of Sartre's realism it is exposed as an abstract ideology. One aspect of this new essentialism has been its encouragement of ideological claims about human essences, historically and culturally derived attributes of individuals that, it is alleged, define individual human existence itself. Thus human freedom is diminished even while essentialist categories such as male aggression become an overlooked underpinning for political ideology.