John D. Caputo | |
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Born | John David Caputo October 26, 1940 (age 83) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US |
Alma mater | |
Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | |
Institutions | |
Doctoral students | James K. A. Smith |
Other notable students | Theodore George |
Main interests | |
Notable ideas | |
Website | https://johndcaputo.com/ |
John David Caputo (born October 26, 1940) is an American philosopher who is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University. [1] Caputo is a major figure associated with postmodern Christianity [2] and continental philosophy of religion, as well as the founder of the theological movement known as weak theology. [3] Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, and theology.
Caputo received his BA in 1962 from La Salle University, his MA in 1964 from Villanova University, and his PhD in philosophy in 1968 from Bryn Mawr College. [4]
Caputo is a specialist in contemporary continental philosophy, with a particular expertise in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Over the years, he has developed a deconstructive hermeneutics that he calls radical hermeneutics, which is highly influenced by the thought of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Additionally, Caputo has developed a distinctive approach to religion that he calls weak theology. Recently, his most important work has been to rebut the charges of relativism made against deconstruction by showing that deconstruction is organized around the affirmation of certain unconditional ethical and political claims.
Caputo has a special interest in continental approaches to the philosophy of religion. Some of the ideas Caputo investigates in his work include the "religion without religion" of Jacques Derrida; the "theological turn" taken in recent French phenomenology by Jean-Luc Marion and others; the critique of ontotheology; the dialogue of contemporary philosophy with Augustine of Hippo and Paul of Tarsus; and medieval metaphysics and mysticism. In the past, Caputo has taught courses on Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida.
Caputo taught philosophy at Villanova University from 1968 to 2004. He was appointed the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University in 1993. Caputo was the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, where he taught in both the departments of philosophy and religion from 2004 until his retirement in 2011. He is emeritus professor at both Villanova University and Syracuse University and continues to write and lecture in both the United States and Europe. He is active in the American Philosophical Association, the American Academy of Religion, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and he chairs the board of editors for the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory.
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy although he distanced himself from post-structuralism and disowned the word "postmodernity".
Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication.
Continental philosophy is an umbrella term for philosophies prominent in continental Europe. Michael E. Rosen has ventured to identify common themes that typically characterize continental philosophy. These themes proposed by Rosen derive from a broadly Kantian thesis that knowledge, experience, and reality are bound and shaped by conditions best understood through philosophical reflection rather than exclusively empirical inquiry.
Postmodern theology, also known as the continental philosophy of religion, is a philosophical and theological movement that interprets Christian theology in light of post-Heideggerian continental philosophy, including phenomenology, post-structuralism, and deconstruction.
James Herman Olthuis is an interdisciplinary scholar in ethics, hermeneutics, philosophical theology, as well as a theorist and practitioner of psychotherapy of a kind he calls "relational psychotherapy".
Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and Catholic theologian. He is a former student of Jacques Derrida whose work is informed by patristic and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy.
Richard Kearney is an Irish philosopher and public intellectual specializing in contemporary continental philosophy. He is the Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy at Boston College and has taught at University College Dublin, the Sorbonne, the University of Nice, and the Australian Catholic University. He is the author of 23 books on European philosophy and literature and has edited or co-edited over 20 more. He was formerly a member of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Higher Education Authority of Ireland and chairman of the Irish School of Film at University College Dublin. He is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy. As a public intellectual in Ireland, he was involved in drafting a number of proposals for a Northern Irish peace agreement. He has presented five series on culture and philosophy for Irish and British television and broadcast extensively on the European media. He is currently international director of the Guestbook Project.
Ontotheology means the ontology of God and/or the theology of being. While the term was first used by Immanuel Kant, it has only come into broader philosophical parlance with the significance it took for Martin Heidegger's later thought. While, for Heidegger, the term is used to critique the whole tradition of 'Western metaphysics', much recent scholarship has sought to question whether 'ontotheology' developed at a certain point in the metaphysical tradition, with many seeking to equate the development of 'ontotheological' thinking with the development of modernity, and Duns Scotus often being cited as the first 'ontotheologian'.
Charles Edwin Winquist was the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, and is known for his writings on theology, contemporary continental philosophy and postmodern religion. Before he assumed his position at Syracuse University, he taught religious studies at California State University, Chico, from 1969 to 1986.
James Kenneth Alexander Smith is a Canadian-American philosopher who is currently Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University, holding the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology & Worldview. He is the current editor-in-chief of the literary journal Image.
Robert L. Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is known as a reader of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, and for his work on the concept of race. He has also written on the history of philosophy.
Babette Babich is an American philosopher who writes from a continental perspective on aesthetics, philosophy of science, especially Nietzsche's, and technology, especially Heidegger's and Günther Anders, in addition to critical and cultural theory.
In semiotics, Khôra is the space that gives a place for being. The term has been used in philosophy by Plato to designate a receptacle, a space, a material substratum, or an interval. In Plato's account, khôra is described as a formless interval, alike to a non-being, in between which the "Forms" were received from the intelligible realm and were "copied", shaping into the transitory forms of the sensible realm; it "gives space" and has maternal overtones :
“Moreover, a third kind is that of the Khôra (χώρας), everlasting, not admitting destruction, granting an abode to all things having generation, itself to be apprehended with nonsensation, by a sort of bastard reckoning, hardly trustworthy; and looking toward which we dream and affirm that it is necessary that all that is be somewhere in some place and occupy some khôra; and that that which is neither on earth nor anywhere in the heaven is nothing."
— Plato, Timaeus, 52a-b
"So likewise it is right that the substance which is to be fitted to receive frequently over its whole extent the copies of all things intelligible and eternal should itself, of its own nature, be void of all the forms. Wherefore, let us not speak of her that is the Mother and Receptacle of this generated world, which is perceptible by sight and all the senses, by the name of earth or air or fire or water, or any aggregates or constituents thereof: rather, if we describe her as a Kind invisible and unshaped, all-receptive, and in some most perplexing and most baffling partaking of the intelligible, we shall describe her truly."
— Plato, Timaeus, 51a
John Russon is a Canadian philosopher, working primarily in the tradition of Continental Philosophy. In 2006, he was named Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Guelph, and in 2011 he was the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute's Canadian Lecturer to India.
Catherine Malabou is a French philosopher. She is a Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, at the European Graduate School, and in the department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, a position formerly held by Jacques Derrida.
Jean Grondin is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He is a specialist in the thought of Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. His research focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, German classical philosophy and the history of metaphysics.
The following is a bibliography of John D. Caputo's works. Caputo is an American philosopher closely associated with postmodern Christianity.
John Llewelyn was a Welsh-born British philosopher whose extensive body of work, published over a period of more than forty years, spans the divide between Analytical and Continental schools of contemporary thought. He has conjoined the rigorous approach to matters of meaning and logic typical of the former and the depth and range of reference typical of the latter in a constructive and critical engagement with the work of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas.
Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher, writer and newspaper columnist. A specialist in continental philosophy, theology and the philosophy of religion, he is the author of several books, including The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility (2001), Roger Scruton: The Philosopher of Dover Beach (2009), and Why Be a Catholic? (2011).
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