Search results for ""Author Claudia Welz""

The hyphenated phrase 'in-visibility' indicates that the visible and the invisible are inseparable and yet in tension with each other. If originating from acts of (in)visibilization, both the visible and the invisible are ethically imbued. Whether we see or overlook each other, respect or dismiss another's dignity, remember or forget a history of crimes against humanity, our (over)sight has an impact on our interaction. What, then, is implied in seeing the human being as created in the image of an invisible God, as imago Dei? Which (re)sources in Judaism and Christianity can counter idolatry in the sense of cognitive captivity and experiences of abandonment after the Shoah? In addressing such questions, this volume outlines an ethics of in-visibility in an interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy and theology, cultural history, art and media theory, sociology, literary and gender studies.

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Since the problem of theodicy concerns all dimensions of human existence and cannot be reduced to a logical problem of consistency, it cannot be resolved by means of a theodicy, a rational defense of God before the tribunal of human reason. But how can we deal with 'the wound of negativity?' Claudia Welz explores responses that do not end up in a theodicy. Instead of asking about the origin and sense (or non-sense) of evil and suffering, she considers God's (non)phenomenality, the dialectics of God's givenness and hiddenness. Neither God nor evil is given 'as such;' rather, God and evil are determined for someone as something within specific contexts of experience. How does God appear in human life, and how is his phenomenal presence or non-presence related to the ambiguities of our lives? In the center of the book, Kierkegaard's and Rosenzweig's answers, their reasons for having no reason to defend God and their ethics of love are discussed 'between' German idealism and French phenomenology. Both of them follow Kant's practical turn of the problem of theodicy, oppose Hegel's theodicy through history and anticipate Levinas' idea to look for the traces of God's transcendence in human movements of self-transcendence. Moreover, they have remarkable contributions to the current debates on 'metaphysics of presence' and 'onto-theology.' In dialogue with Levinas, the presence of God's love is in question, in dialogue with Derrida God's presence as a gift, and in dialogue with Marion the gift of God's presence as a so-called 'saturated' self-giving phenomenon. In conclusion to these discussions, theology is developed as semiotic phenomenology of the Invisible.

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This volume explores existential questions within the following three thematic fields: first, experiences of anxiety and despair as related to the question of what these phenomena show about freedom and its difficulties; second, hermeneutical theories as related to the question of how we can develop an existential hermeneutics that can account for the ambiguities of self-understanding between transparency and opacity, and, third, selfhood between self-understanding and self-alienation as a focal point of existential psycho(patho)logy. What can disturbances to or breakdowns in self-understanding teach us about personhood? Making visible one's own blindness by articulating the shadows of our knowledge and abilities is at the core of a negativistic approach to existential questions discussed in a dialogue between philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, theology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry.

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In what sense is trust basic for human (co-)existence, and in what sense can trust also show the limits of the social character of the self? How should the loss of trust figure in an account of trust? And how are freedom and transcendence implied in trust as relation, response, and openness? In addressing such questions, this book discusses how to understand trust, arguing for a multifaceted approach, which brings together perspectives from various philosophical traditions, from developmental psychology, sociology, ethics, and from theology. The authors of the essays collected here deal with the question of why and in what sense trust is basic for becoming oneself and for living together with others, with trust as a personal attitude, the connection between one's trust and the other's trustworthiness, and the relation between trust in the world and trust in persons. The authors investigate the distinction between trust and dis- or mistrust by describing the judgment inherent in these modes of orientation, and by comparing trust in humans with trust in God. Finally, the transformative potential inherent in trust is explored against the background of violations of trust. With contributions by:Gry Ardal, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Günter Figal, Arne Grøn, Lars Hertzberg, Karen Jones, Burkhard Liebsch, Anne Marie Pahuus, Philippe Rochat, Anthony J. Steinbock, Philipp Stoellger, Claudia Welz

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