Papers by Christopher Yates
A Question of Necessity: Deconstruction, Khōra, and Faith
Irish Theological Quarterly, 2009
Jacques Derrida's interest in questions concerning belief and religion is especially apparent... more Jacques Derrida's interest in questions concerning belief and religion is especially apparent in his later texts. Talk of a `religious turn,' however, wrongly implies a sudden conversion or translation of deconstruction into a theological discourse. To appreciate the emergence of religion in Derrida's thought, one must attend to his larger interest in the questions of `necessity,' `origins,' and `the promise.' These elements constitute the background against which Derrida's religious lexicon is shaped, and for which his complex relationship to Martin Heidegger is of critical importance. His comments on `the religious' in the work `Faith and Knowledge' are the high point of a rigorous inquiry into `necessity.' This culmination, however, is better understood as a turn `of' religion than a turn `to' religion. With his accelerating emphasis on a religion of responsibility and tolerance, Derrida's `turn' is uncharacteristically deci...
Hosting Earth: Facing the Climate Emergency, 2025
Included in the edited volume, 'Hosting Earth,' eds. Richard Kearney, Peter Klapes, Urwa Hameed (... more Included in the edited volume, 'Hosting Earth,' eds. Richard Kearney, Peter Klapes, Urwa Hameed (Routledge, The Psychology and the Other series). I conceptualize how the natural world is (a) a realm of moral revelation (following Erazim Kohák), and (b) a ground of aesthetic creation (following Friedrich Schelling).
Religion and the Arts, 2010
This introductory essay sets forth the meaning of hospitality as a matter of philosophical reflec... more This introductory essay sets forth the meaning of hospitality as a matter of philosophical reflection ever wedded to concrete experience. Drawing upon approaches from recent work in phenomenology, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and hermeneutics, the event or scene of encounter with the stranger or other is positioned as a moment of profound interrogation and imagination. The introduction to this special section of articles on hospitality is set forth as an invitation to join in the renewal of this longstanding interdisciplinary issue for our time.
The Hedgehog Review, 2023
Anacarnation and Returning to the Lived Body with Richard Kearney, 2022
Yates takes Kearney’s longstanding overtures to the arts at their word by exploring the ways in w... more Yates takes Kearney’s longstanding overtures to the arts at their word by exploring the ways in which Malick’s 2019 film, A Hidden Life, not only embodies but also animates the hermeneutic phenomenological focus on ‘imagining otherwise’ than social norms of virtualization and excarnation. More than just a study in intertextual affinities, Yates’ investigation traces the ways in which the uniquely aesthetic and phronetic achievement of Malick’s work is best appreciated when understood through the terms of Kearney’s philosophy, and how the film in turn offers a welcome means for coordinating Kearney’s recent work on carnality with his early focus on the hermeneutic (specifically poetic) imagination. Malick and Kearney alike, Yates argues, have long been preoccupied with a critical diagnosis of the ways in which cultural and epistemic norms constrain the praxis of hermeneutic possibility and narrative identity. But importantly, they are also of a similar mind when it comes to reanimating the imagination as a vital force of conviction and refiguration. By addressing elements of carnal and poetic sense on the side of Kearney, and aspects of cinematic technique and narrative in A Hidden Life, Yates demonstrates how the realms of the tactile and the imaginative show their inherent alignment in a gripping way when performed at the intersection of the hermeneutic and the filmic.
Comparative & Continental Philosophy, 2022
A study of the strain and striving in the heart of human finitude,
Brian Treanor’s case for melan... more A study of the strain and striving in the heart of human finitude,
Brian Treanor’s case for melancholic joy uses the resources of
hermeneutic philosophy and the arts to galvanize a hopeful
counterweight to despair. Though evil and suffering are tragically
ingrained in the tissue of lived experience, and entropy and loss
buffet our projects and aspirations, there remains in the
landscape of being a durable mystery of goodness, beauty, and
grace. Treanor pits such mystery against our calcified pessimisms
and arid theodicies by drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s vision for a
“second naiveté” of faith, gratitude, and moral responsibility that
is worthy of living in – and up to – an order of things which is
dark yet shining. Melancholic joy is neither resignation nor
optimism, but an attuning praxis that can be realized through
responsive modes of vitality, love, attention, and tragic wisdom.
Brian Treanor’s case for melancholic joy uses the resources of
hermeneutic philosophy and the arts to galvanize a hopeful
counterweight to despair. Though evil and suffering are tragically
ingrained in the tissue of lived experience, and entropy and loss
buffet our projects and aspirations, there remains in the
landscape of being a durable mystery of goodness, beauty, and
grace. Treanor pits such mystery against our calcified pessimisms
and arid theodicies by drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s vision for a
“second naiveté” of faith, gratitude, and moral responsibility that
is worthy of living in – and up to – an order of things which is
dark yet shining. Melancholic joy is neither resignation nor
optimism, but an attuning praxis that can be realized through
responsive modes of vitality, love, attention, and tragic wisdom.
Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2011
Oil and gas plant is a chaotic web of equipment, piping, buildings e.t.c. The costing of this pla... more Oil and gas plant is a chaotic web of equipment, piping, buildings e.t.c. The costing of this plant means costing of the processing machines, equipment, pipes etc and other electro-mechanical components including buildings and civil works infrastructure which form the basis of procurement and management of the fluid process. This study reviews the basic considerations, activities and appropriate steps for estimating oil and gas projects. It identified the aloofness of the oil industry and inadequate cost management practices for the sector which controls the commanding height of the Nigerian economy. It recommends among others that Quantity surveyors as the country's construction cost 'watchdog' should in liaison with other professionals exercise effective cost management of process projects as is done by cost engineers abroad to ensure sustainable growth of the Nigerian economy.
The Hedgehog Review, 2020
The Hedgehog Review, 2019
Somatic Desire: Recovering Corporeality in Contemporary Thought (Lexington Books), eds. Sarah Horton, Stephen Mendelsohn, Christine Rojcewicz, Richard Kearney, 2019
Research in Phenomenology
One should not mistake Bernard Freydberg's 'A Dark History of Modern Philosophy' for a historical... more One should not mistake Bernard Freydberg's 'A Dark History of Modern Philosophy' for a historical survey of the period's leading theories, nor a deconstructive tale of gloom that would discredit them. The aim, rather, is to reveal a body of sensibilities that belong to this period, and that quietly (though vitally) constitute the life of those ideas that too often filter down to us through the wash-cycle of atomizing summaries. To speak of these issues under the rubric of a "dark history" is to propose a course of mindful descent "into those origins anterior to analytical articulation" (37)—namely, the interplay of mythos and logos within the Platonic-choric 'place' of the Greek imagination (41)—and to reveal the fingerprints of this 'anteriority' as they press through Heraclitus, Parmenides, Hesiod, Homer, and Plato into the pens of, most notably, Spinoza and Schelling.
Walker Percy, Philosopher (Palgrave Macmillan), Ed. Leslie Marsh, 2018
Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman (1966) and Lost in the Cosmos (1983) have borne that awkward fa... more Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman (1966) and Lost in the Cosmos (1983) have borne that awkward fate of texts that enjoin their publics to identify in themselves the same predicament undergone by the protagonists. After all, the texts in different ways summon us to terrific self-examination while disarming us of certain default clarities. In Gentleman Will Barrett lives within the ongoing decision for immanent and intersubjective meaning over the illusions of mere self-assertion or epistemic finality. In Cosmos we are all implicated in a satirical " quiz " that diagnoses the self-alienation and deceptions of modernity, then positions us on the fraught threshold of " reentry " into wagers of genuine self-awareness and responsibility. It is tempting, though misguided, to read the former as an inward and surrealist exploration, and the latter as an outward and moralistic venting against a culture that was not up to the task. Alternatively, if we appreciate the texts as one collaborative project, then we are better positioned to undergo their pronounced interplay of diagnosis and remedy regarding the very displacement from which we live and read. Divided into two main sections, this chapter will argue that Gentleman and Cosmos alike center on the predicament of human finitude in terms of three constitutive phenomena: (1) the dialogical unfolding of subjectivity and truth, (2) the ethical summons of alterity, and (3) the resituating of human inauthenticity within the art of reflective dwelling. But to properly discern these elements we must establish links between the literary terrain and corollary concerns in three twentieth-century philosophers: Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Lévinas, and Martin Heidegger. While there is some precedence for linking Percy's oeuvre with such " existentialist " itineraries, we have yet to involve them pointedly in our interpretations. Although Percy himself, excepting some mentions of Heidegger, seldom engages such projects directly, to intertextualize them with the place (in the sense of topos) and the reasoning (in the sense of logos) of his narrative world will do well to secure the interrogative arc between Gentleman and Cosmos, and also allow us to understand the way in which his works enliven (more than simply illustrate) these phenomenological focal points.
Comparative and Continental Philosophy
Phenomenologies of the Stranger
Studia Philosphiae Christianae
Hermeneutics-Ethics-Education
Jacques Derrida's appraisal of Martin Heidegger is a crucial point of reference for contemporary ... more Jacques Derrida's appraisal of Martin Heidegger is a crucial point of reference for contemporary European phenomenology and deconstruction. As well, we sometimes forget, its implications have very much to do with fundamental matters of social-political ethics. Derrida's early critique of Heidegger's 'anthropologism,' however, remains an unsettled question on which our understanding of Heidegger's trajectory nevertheless depends. I will account for Derrida's charge of a humanistic contamination in Heidegger, then demonstrate why this proves to be misdirected and ultimately shortsighted once Heidegger's more pointed efforts to elide 'subjectivity' in the traditional sense are appreciated.
Philosophy and Social Criticism
This article examines the theme of imagination in Ricoeur's Living Up to Death (2009). I argue th... more This article examines the theme of imagination in Ricoeur's Living Up to Death (2009). I argue that his meditations on death are centered on the question of the imagination, and that the exorcizing mode of detachment so crucial to Ricoeur's position amounts to a 'refiguration' of what he terms the 'make-believe'. Drawing on his work in Time and Narrative, I chart the instances of the make-believe attached to death and dying as disclosures of vulnerability attending the stages of Ricoeur's threefold mimesis. This means that Living Up to Death involves a struggle of the narrative or poetic imagination to refigure the misleading con-figurations of the natural imagination when faced with death. Ricoeur's interest in 'schematizing' the eternal and Essential, as well, marks a specific connection between the labors of the productive imagination and the refigura-tion of death as a transfiguration of the living.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology
Foucault Studies
Based primarily on his 1981-1982 course, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, I contend that Michel F... more Based primarily on his 1981-1982 course, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, I contend that Michel Foucault's robust treatment of ancient models for selfsalvation answers his systematic problem of a lost spiritual art of living primarily through a sustained dichotomy between the Hellenistic-Roman and Christian models of conversion. In this way his intended recovery of an aesthetic-ascetic spiritual ‚resistance‛ is accomplished through a methodology of resistance. He relies on an accelerating arrangement of polarities between the aim and practice of immanent self-return and what he takes to be the coercive discourses of transcendent self-renunciation. Though such historiography may raise questions for some readers, my aim is simply to show how, for Foucault, the dichotomizing is necessary for grounding his own understanding of the art of ‛conversion.‛
Analecta Hermeneutica
Phenomenology remains itself so long as it does not desert [the] appearing and its manifestations... more Phenomenology remains itself so long as it does not desert [the] appearing and its manifestations, and so long as its critique of this appearing does not lead it to deny its own essential finitude, but draws out the lines of its selflimitation, in particular before the practical imperative, whose motivations escape sensibility and without doubt every theory of pure appearing.