Vlad NICULESCUHome Address University Address
818 W Moss Ave Apt J1 Bradley University
Peoria IL 61606 1501 West Bradley Ave #218
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309 673 3221 309 677 2437
Citizenship: Canadian Assistant Professor
and Romanian Department of Philosophy
Permanent Resident of USA and Religious Studies
Education
- 2006 Ph.D., University of Toronto, Department of Philosophy, Thesis Topic: “Intentionality and its Vicissitudes” (Abstract attached), Supervisor: Professor Robert Gibbs
- 2003 Ph.D., the Catholic University of America, Early Christian Studies, Thesis: “Origen’s Mystagogic paideia” (Abstract attached), Supervisor: Professor Robin Darling – Young
- 1994 M.A., the Catholic University of America, Early Christian Studies, Position Papers: “Cappadocian Trinitarianism. Towards an Ontology-Free, Apperception of Personhood;” “Revelatory apophasis in Corpus Dionysiacum”
- 1991 – 1992 Course work in Classics at the University of Vienna.
- 1992 B.A., University of Bucharest,
Double Major: Greek and Latin
License Dissertation: “The Trans-Rational Elements of Socrates’ Ethics”
Areas of Specialization
20th Century Continental philosophy
- phenomenological and postmodern philosophy of religion (Levinas, Marion)
- phenomenological and postmodern ethics (Levinas, Lyotard, Marion);
- the postmodern critique of totalitarianism and the postmodern hermeneutics of anti-totalitarian dissidence (Levinas, Lyotard, Marion)
- otherness in modern Jewish philosophy (Rosenzweig, Buber), in post-classical phenomenology (the late Heidegger, Levinas and Marion) and in Freudian psychoanalysis (Freud, Klein, Winnicott, Lacan)
- philosophy of psychoanalysis (with a concentration on Freud, the Freudian [Kleinian, Object relation, Lacanian] and the post-Freudian, relational [Mitchell] and inter-subjective (Stolorow, Atwood, Orange] schools)
- the reception of speech pragmatic theory in Lyotard, Derrrida, and Marion;
Patristic and early medieval theology
- Christian and Jewish Middle-Platonism (Philo, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria) in relation to Greek and Hellenistic Platonism
- totalitarian and anti-totalitarian tendencies in late antique and early medieval philosophy (Hellenistic Christian and Jewish logocentrism: Philo, Clement, Origen)
- patristic philosophy of language
- patristic metaphysics and negative theology
- allegorical hermeneutics
Areas of Competence
- Theories of ethics; Kant; Ancient philosophy; Existentialism; Philosophy of education; Philosophy of human nature; Aesthetics (with a concentration on Kantian and post-modern [Lyotard, Marion] philosophies of the sublime).
Honors
- 2005 Gordon Cheesborough Graduate Fellowship in Philosophy at the University of Toronto
- 2001-2003 University of Toronto Fellowship
- 1999 – 2001 Connaught Scholarship at the University of Toronto
- 1998 – 1999 New Europe College Scholarship at New Europe College, Bucharest, Romania
- 1992 – 1997 Mellon Scholarship at the Catholic University of America
- 1991 – 1992 Herder Scholarship at the University of Vienna
Refereed Publications
Books:
- The Spell of the Logos. Origen’s Exegetic Pedagogy in the Contemporary Debate Regarding Logocentrism, forthcoming at Gorgias Press.
- Theology and Retractation. (Teologie si retractare) A Phenomenological Approach to Patristic Literature, Iasi: Sapientia 2003. (in Romanian)
- From Thought to Thoughtfulness. A Study of the Solipsistic and the Relational Aspects of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Cure. Sample of the manuscript submitted for evaluation with Duquesne University Press.
Articles:
- “Spiritual Leavening. The Communication and Reception of the Good News in Origen’s Biblical Exegesis and Transformative Pedagogy” The Journal of Early Christian Studies, Winter 2007, volume 15, number 4, pp.447-483.
- "Origen in Gethsemane" Adamantius, Notiziario del Gruppo Italiano di ricerca su “Origene e la tradizzione alessandrina” No. 6/2000.
- “Coping with the Grief of Ignorance. Evagrius Ponticus’ Hermeneutics of the Distance between God and Humanity” in Arches, Revue Internationale des Sciences Humaines, éditée par l’Association Roumaine des Chercheurs Francophones en Sciences Humaines nr. 7 (2003). (www.arches.ro)
- “Origen’s Mystagogy of Creation” Khora, 1 (2003), Bucharest, Romania.
- “From Tragedy to Philosophy. Socratic Investigation as Therapeutic Transformation.” Caietele Institututlui Teologic Romano-Catolic “Sfinta Tereza” 2 (2001), Bucharest, Romania.
- “Kindredness with God as the Constitutive Principle of the Hierarchy in the Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite” published in Romanian translation in Altarul Banatului No. 10-12, 2001, Timisoara, Romania.
- “Empathic Meeting. From an Intentional to an Expectational Model of Phenomenological Inter-subjectivity” published in The New Europe College Yearbook 1998-1999, Bucharest, Romania.
- "The Catechetical School of Alexandria. Traditional Institution or Institutionalized Tradition?" published in Romanian translation in Altarul Banatului, March, 1998, Timisoara, Romania.
- “Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. Preliminary Clarifications for a Full Phenomenological Harmonization of the Egological Intentionality with the Spontaneity of the Other" Revue roumaine de philosophie, 1998 Bucharest, Romania.
- "Eating the Lamb that Ate the Lamb. The Eucharistical Articulation of the Triduum Paschale in the Paschal Theology of St. Ephraem the Syrian" published in Romanian translation in Revista Catolica Verbum 1996, Bucharest, Romania.
- "One to Many. An Investigation in Plotinus' Understanding of Difference" Revista de Studii Clasice (Classical Studies Review) XXXI-XXXIII/1995-1997, Bucharest, Romania.
- "Cappadocian Trinitarianism. Toward an Ontology-free Apperception of Personhood" Revista Catolica Verbum, 1994, Bucharest, Romania.
Teaching Experience
Courses taught
2008-2009
Spring Introduction to PhilosophyDepartment of Philosophy, Bradley University
Seminar in Philosophy: Lyotard’s philosophical politics
Department of philosophy, Bradley
Fall Introduction to Philosophy
Department of Philosophy, Bradley University
Recent philosophy: Lyotard’s philosophy of language
Department of Philosophy, Bradley
2007-2008
Spring Introduction to PhilosophyDepartment of Philosophy, Bradley University
Philosophy of Religion: Marion
Department of Philosophy, Bradley
Fall Introduction to Philosophy
Department of Philosophy, Bradley University
Advanced Seminar in Phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger and
Marion on Subjectivity.
Department of Philosophy, Bradley University
2006-2007
Spring Introduction to PhilosophyDepartment of Philosophy, Bradley University
Philosophy of Religion: Buber and Levinas
Department of Philosophy, Bradley University
Fall Introduction to Philosophy
Department of Philosophy, Bradley University
Aesthetics
Department of Philosophy, Bradley University
Summer Three individual studies on Jean-Luc Marion’s Reduction and
Donation, Freud’s Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis and J.-F. Lyotard’s The Differend.
2005-2006
Summer Contemporary Continental PhilosophyDepartment of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Spring Theories of Ethics
Department of Philosophy, Marquette University
Philosophy of Education
Department of Philosophy, Marquette University
Fall Theories of Ethics
Department of Philosophy, Marquette University
Philosophy of Education
Department of Philosophy, Marquette University
2004-2005
Summer Introduction to Continental PhilosophyDepartment of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Fall Authentic Living and the Competence for Living Well
Continuing Education, University of St. Michael’s College in the
University of Toronto
2003-2004
Fall AestheticsDepartment of Philosophy, University of Toronto at Mississauga
Spring Philosophy of Human Nature
Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Existentialism
Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Accepting Imperfection as a Technique of “Staying Real”
Continuing Education, University of St. Michael’s College in the
University of Toronto
2002-2003
Spring PhenomenologyDepartment of Philosophy, University of Toronto
1997 – 1998 Patristics
Theology Department, “Saint Theresa” Roman Catholic Institute,
Bucharest, Romania
Conference Papers and Lectures
- “A Non-Logocentric Logos?Some Remarks on Placing Origen within the Recent Debate regarding Logocentrism” – lecture to be held at the joint meeting of the philosophy and the theology departments at Duquesne University in the spring of 2010.”
- “Changing Moods.Origen’s Biblical Pedagogy as a Transformative Attunement
- to the Grief and the Joy of a Messianic Teacher” - this essay has been approved to be presented in a discussion panel at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature in New Orleans, LA.
- “Disputing Emmaus. Does Origen Use the Emmaus Scene to Authorize an Assimilationist- Supersessionist Reading of the Bible?” - this essay has been approved to be presented at the 10th International Congress on Origen in Cracow, Poland in September 2009.
- “Signed upon Delivery. Origen’s Phenomenology of the Reception of the Good
- News,” The Canadian Society of Patristic Studies meeting: May 2006
- “Signed upon Delivery. Origen’s Phenomenology of the Reception of the Good
- News,” Talk at the meeting of the “Jewish Roots of Christian Mysticism” Group at Marquette University, Theology Department: January 27, 2005.
- “Hearing, Reading, Seeing. Evagrius Ponticus’s Phenomenology of the Spiritual Ascent” The Canadian Society of Patristic Studies: May 2002.
- “Risking Trust. A Critique and Revision of Habermas’s Views on Psychoanalysis” The Canadian Philosophical Association: May 2002.
- “Coping with the Grief of Ignorance. Evagrius Ponticus’ Ascetic Hermeneutics of the Distance between God and Humanity” The Canadian Society of Patristic Studies: May 2001
- “The Paralogism of Communication. The Relevance of the Mismatch between Intentional Semantics and Universal Pragmatics for the Project of a Revised Theory of Communication” Canadian Philosophical Association: May 2001
- “Far Away, So Close. The Trajectory of the Spiritual Ascent in the Works of Evagrius Ponticus” The North American Patristic Society: May 1996
- “One to Many. An Investigation in Plotinus’s Understanding of Difference” Lecture at the Society for Classical Studies, Bucharest, Romania: March 1999. The same paper has been presented also at the International Colloquium on the Sacred
- organized by The Soros Foundation for an Open Society in Timisoara, Romania: April 1998.
- “From Tragedy to Philosophy. Socratic Investigation as therapeutic transformation”; “Mourning Descartes. Cognitive solipsism and Volitional Aim to Intersubjective Communion in Descartes’ Philosophy”; “Empathic Meeting. From an Intentional to an Expectational Model of Phenomenological Intersubjectivity.” Presented as a series of three lectures on intersubjectivity at The New Europe College, Bucharest, Romania: 1998.
Academic Associations and Service
- Member of the American Society of Biblical Literature since 2009
- Member of the North American Patristic Society since 2007
- Member of the American Philosophical Association since 2002
- Member of the Romanian Phenomenological Society since 2006
- Member of The Romanian Association for Religious Studies since 2005 (http://www.arsr.as.ro/)
- Associated Member of the Center “The Foundations of European Modernity” (www.modernthought.unibuc.ro) at The University of Bucharest, Romania, since 2004
- Associate Member of The American Philosophical Association since 2000
- Fellow of The New Europe College (http://www.arches.ro/archives/2001/nec.html), Bucharest, Romania since 1998
- Member of the Classical Studies Society, Bucharest, Romania since 1995
Languages
- English: Fluent
- Romanian: Fluent
- French: Speaking and Reading
- German: Speaking and Reading
- Latin, Ancient Greek, Spanish, Italian: Reading
Additional Professional Activities
2005-2006 Participant in the “Jewish Roots of Christian Mysticism” research group atMarquette University.
2004 Participation in the Franz Rosenzweig discussion group at The University
of Toronto. Organizer: Robert Gibbs
2002-2003 Participation in the continental philosophy discussion group at The University of Toronto
2000–2001 Participation in the Herman Cohen discussion group at The University of Toronto. Organizer: Robert Gibbs
1994–1996 Participation in the von Balthasar discussion group at the Communio group, Washington D.C. Organizer: David Schindler
1988 Summer practice at the Archeological Camp at Histria (A Greek colony at
the Black Sea).
References
Professor Robert Gibbs, Department of Philosophy, Graduate Coordinator,
University of Toronto (thesis supervisor; teaching supervisor)Home: 253 Major St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 2L5 Canada
Telephone: 416 927 0199
Office phone: 416 978 8124
Office fax: 416 978 8703
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Professor André Gombay, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
(member of the dissertation committee)Home: 35 Dalton Road, Toronto, ON, M5R 2Y8, Canada
telephone: 416 972 6536
Office: Dept. of Philosophy, University of Toronto
215 Huron Street, 9th floor
Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1A1
Telephone: 416 946 8364
Fax (department): 416 978 8703
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Professor Jacqueline Brunning, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
(teaching supervisor),Office: Dept. of Philosophy, U of Toronto
215 Huron street, 9th floor
e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ,
telephone: 905 828 3751, 416 978 3316
Fax (department): 416 978 8703
Home: 21 Dale Ave #632 M4W 1K3, Canada
Telephone: 416 920 1407
Ronald Ruskin, MD, FRCP[C] Dip. Psych
Staff Psychiatrist, Mount Sinai HospitalAssistant Professor, University of Toronto
Research Associate, Trinity College
Faculty, Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and
Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Tel. 416-928-0675 Fax 416-928-0870
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Intentionality and Its Vicissitudes
Ph.D. Dissertation Abstract (University of Toronto)The current study offers an investigation of the transformations (in Freudian terms, the vicissitudes) that thought undergoes when confronted with the irreducible otherness of the other person. Following a series of clues in Freud, Levinas and Marion, I maintain that, when faced with the other person’s suffering, one’s thought is compelled to take an empathic and dutiful turn, that is, it is compelled to become thoughtful. In spite of its broader phenomenological scope and implications, my investigation concentrates on a rather specific situation, namely on the patient-analyst rapport as it is described in Freud’s clinical and metapsychological writings.
In the introduction of the dissertation I justify the correlation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis by signaling the analogy between the phenomenological notion of intentionality and the psychoanalytic notion of object relation. I define the scope of the investigation as the contrastive analysis of two processes that are widely featured in the psychoanalytic cure: transference, as the patient’s attempt to reduce the therapist to a stereotypical representation of a parental figure in contrast with the real, non-transferential, relation, which acknowledges the otherness of the therapist as a person in her own right.
In the second section of the dissertation I discuss Freud’s understanding of the therapeutic process from the perspective of the analyst’s struggle to master the solipsistic tendencies of transference. Based on the clinical data indicating the surfacing of a more realistic rapport between patient and analyst in the aftermath of the interpretation and isolation of transference, I draw a distinction between solipsistic and relational trends in the therapeutic exchange. Among the solipsistic trends I mention and discuss potentially pathogenic phenomena such as transference and counter-transference, as well as regular, non-pathogenic acts such as the cognitive-scientific interest of the analyst in the patient’s condition. Among the relational phenomena I focus in great detail on empathy and the moral-deontological relation established between the doctor and the patient during the cure.
In the final section of the study I articulate the distinction between the solipsistic and the relational trends of the therapy in broader phenomenological terms. I contrast those aspects of the cure that are susceptible of an intentionality-centered description like the one delineated by Husserl in the solipsistic reduction of the first three Cartesian Meditations with the relational phenomena of therapy that comport a Husserlian intersubjective or Buberian I-Thou description. I claim that the transition that psychoanalysis has made both theoretically and clinically from an agonistic undoing of resistance (ultimately the analyst’s “fight” with transference) to the curative use of the therapist’s empathic responsiveness and ethical responsibility to the patient parallels the current turn of phenomenology from subjectivity to otherness, from an intentionality-centered line of thought to a thought marked by giving (love) and obligation (ethics) (Levinas and
Marion). In brief, through its own development, psychoanalysis seems to confirm phenomenology’s recent turn from thought to thoughtfulness.
My submission regarding the relational dimension of the psychoanalytic cure is strongly supported from two directions. As far as argumentation is concerned, I have proven that the relational empathic and deontological aspects of the cure cannot be further reduced to more primordial intentional acts of the isolated subject and I suggested a few ways in which relation can be described as a reality in its own right (as opposed to a social “construction” motivated by sublimated private instinctual inclinations and interests). Additionally, I have offered a genealogical grounding of this view by tracing the relational orientation of post-Freudian psychoanalysis (the Intersubjectivist, the Relational, the Process of Change or the Lacanian semiotic therapeutic schools) to specific tendencies and ideas in Freud.
Origen’s Mystagogic Paideia
Ph.D. Dissertation abstract (The Catholic University of America)In the introduction to The Commentary on the Song of Songs Origen contends that the sequence of the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and The Song of Songs represents the outline of a biblical school-curriculum. According to Origen, this curriculum is the ecclesiastic replica of the Greek (Middle Platonist) instruction divided into logic, ethics, physics and epoptics.
In my thesis I reconstruct, describe and evaluate Origen's biblical paideia as it appears in Origen’s extant works. The way that I envisaged for achieving this goal was the close examination of the learning-teaching experience of each of the three stages (Proverbs or ethics, Ecclesiastes or physics and The Song of Songs or epoptics) as it emerges from Origen's exegesis of the above-mentioned books.
In addition to the study of Origen’s allegorical interpretation of the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and The Song of Songs I examine in great detail the structure of Origen’s interpretations of The Books of Genesis and of the Gospel narratives, in particular those regarding the triduum paschale. My goal was to prove that in focusing on these particular biblical texts Origen was giving shape to the project of a Christian advanced teaching curriculum that presents similarities with the advanced Jewish (tanaitic) instruction of Origen’s time as well as with the Platonist inspired curricula available in Alexandria.
BOOK ABSTRACT
Title:The Spell of the Logos
Subtitle:
Origen’s Exegetic Pedagogy in the Contemporary Debate regarding Logocentrism
Series:
Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 10
Availability:
In Press
By Mihai Vlad Niculescu
ISBN:
978-1-59333-698-1
Language:
English
Format:
Hardback, Black, 6 x 9 in
Publisher:
Gorgias Press
If, as Origen believed, humanity’s hope for salvation has been answered by a divine Word, whose coming into the world has unfolded history according to a messianic intrigue, Origen’s messianic reading of world history as a soteriological discourse should not come as a surprise. How does Origen refer to this discourse? As a speech that spells the coming Word, this discourse would have to be soteriological in its very wording, it would have to happen soteriologically. The Word’s historical unfolding would have to be approached as a gospel, a good-news or a revelatory speech event, which, literally, spells salvation. Receiving this messianic Word would necessarily imply the believer’s application to the study of the Bible as Gospel. The task of this study is twofold. In addition to offering a detailed analysis of Origen’s understanding of exegesis as a liturgical attending to the Word’s evangelic advent in the Bible (a sort of textual redoubling of the incarnation), it also addresses a recent concern regarding the totalizing potential of Origen’s Logos-centered reading of history as evangelic or Christian. One may indeed wonder whether Origen’s exegetical spelling of the Word as universal Gospel can prevent the silencing of the speech of, let us say, the Greek or the Jew outside of Christianity? Ultimately, one may wonder whether it is possible to dissociate Origen’s Christian understanding of the Bible-incarnate Word from the totalizing rigor of a universalist metaphysics and what would be the consequences of such an attempt.
Michael V. Niculescu is assistant professor of philosophy at Bradley University. His training includes a degree in classics and doctoral studies in patristic and contemporary continental philosophy. In a series of published articles Niculescu has proposed a critical-phenomenological interpretation of the thought of Greek Patristic authors such as Origen of Alexandria, the Cappadocians or Evagrius Ponticus. In addition to his continued interest in Patristic literature Niculescu’s current research is focused on the post-modern criticism of the reductionist, power-driven, use of reason (the so-called “logocentrism”) in post-Enlightenment continental philosophy, with a particular concentration on logocentrism’s contribution to the ideological repression of the rational-critical and religious-testimonial forms of dissent in recent totalitarianisms.
Niculescu, Mihai Vlad. The Spell of the Logos
ISBN:
978-1-59333-698-1
Weight:
1 LBS.
Price:
$99.00
