Joseph S O’leary
Biographic Data
| ID | 1156167 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph S O’leary |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph S |
| FAMILY NAME | O’leary |
| SIGNATURE | O’LEARY J S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sophia University |
| ORCID | 0009-0004-8787-185X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Bernanos
Le roman moderne occupe un rôle médiateur entre la vie réelle dans sa multiplicité infinie d’un côté et les perspectives plus abstraites des sciences anthropologiques de l’autre. Bernanos introduit le surnaturel dans un genre qui lui est normalement inhospitalier. Mais la lecture apologétique, édifiante à laquelle ses fictions invitent se complique du fait que la pensée spécifiquement littéraire qui guide sa plume ne peut s’accorder sans reste à …
The Love That Kills
Focusing on the legend of Phaedra and Hippolytus as developed in Euripides and Seneca and especially in Racine’s Phèdre and taking into account as well its further development in works by Camillo Boito, Luchino Visconti, and Yukio Mishima, I make the following arguments: (1) Contrary to many theologians and philosophers of love, a pathological form of love that issues in murder and suicide should not be regarded as unworthy of serious attention. …
The Place of Nicaea in Buddhist-Christian Theology
Several themes are as fundamental in Buddhist thinking as they are in the ancient and modern debates about the teaching of the Council of Nicaea (325). This article argues that if the interreligious dialogue urged by Vatican II had been more energetically sustained, a Buddhist-Christian conversation about the legacy of Nicaea could have been a significant ecumenical event, overcoming the monopoly of Eurocentric perspectives
Recent Theological Approaches to the Johannine Epistles
1 John has been rather roughly handled in recent exegesis, notably in Raymond Brown's Anchor Bible commentary, which sees the epistle as badly written, logically incoherent, full of nasty polemics and bereft of any claim to be considered a mystical text. The two books here reviewed mix exegesis and theology in a kind of pincer movement, which succeeds only partly in closing in on the treasures of Johannine contemplation. Despite their limits, the…
Johannine Revelation, Nicene Witness
On its seventeenth centenary, I seek to reassess the theological significance of the Nicene Creed, drawing inspiration from Athanasius, who came to see the Creed as a privileged transmission of the apostolic teaching based on the Revelation granted by Christ. I attempt to bring into focus the nature of Revelation, referring to Karl Barth and Jean-Luc Marion. Criticizing the deflationary approach to Nicaea and Athanasius, which has been common of …
French Jesuits, Origen, and Vatican II
This essay attempts to assess the theological significance of French Jesuit investment in the study of Origen. De Lubac and Daniélou read Origen as a vir ecclesiasticus , making him a resource for Vatican II’s new vision of the Church. They saw him as a scriptural thinker rather than a philosopher, and thus revealed him to be a master of spirituality. Origen’s account of the economy of salvation, founded on the Logos enlightening all minds, promp…
Meeting in Kenosis
In this chapter, I reflect on the radical existential contours of the Buddhist-Christian rapprochement, which take us to a deeper level than mere speculation or comparativism. I focus on the experience of kenosis undergone by both religions in facing the crises brought by the modern secular world. This frees them up for a contemplative enjoyment of the core realities they transmit. They first receive as a gift, in passive abandonment, what they t…
Numinous Presences in Two Buddhist Sūtras
Experiences of ‘presence’ are common in religion. This essay attempts to approach presence along phenomenological lines, arguing that the pluralism of the phenomena and contexts referred to is not an obstacle to a methodologically open dialogue between different experiences. Despite the impersonalism of Buddhist conceptions of ultimate reality, personal presences play a considerable role even in two scriptures devoted to evoking this ultimate emp…
Reforming the Monastery
Everyday Life and Ultimate Reality
Buddhism relentlessly exposes the impermanent, painful, and insubstantial character of all phenomena, but it ends up reinstating the conventional samsaric world as the place where nirvanic emptiness can be encountered and where compassion can be skilfully exercised. In Hegel and Heidegger one also finds dialectical reversals that bring a positive result from the ordeal of the negative. In Heidegger, the encounter with nothingness in anxiety bring…
Knowing the Heart Sūtra by Heart
The current situation of Christian faith lends a new attraction to the Mahāyāna doctrine that nothing has substantial being and that language and religions are radically conventional constructions, to be handled skillfully with a new art of judgement. We can bring a hermeneutics of the heart to bear on the doctrine of emptiness if we note how, in the Heart Sūtra, it is voiced by the bodhisattva of compassion. The wisdom of emptiness takes form as…
Conventions and Ultimacy in Japanese Religion
Interkulturelle Philosophie und Phanomenologie in Japan
Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth
Offering a new platform for inter-religious theology, O'Leary develops an interpretation of historical pluralism derived from Jacques Derrida in the West and the Buddhist Nagarjuna in the East. Awarded the Fourth Annual Frederick J. Streng Book Award by the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies
Die Transmoderne
Chan Insights and Oversights
For many people attracted to Eastern religions (particularly Zen Buddhism), Asia seems the source of all wisdom. As Bernard Faure examines the study of Chan/Zen from the standpoint of postmodern human sciences and literary criticism, he challenges this inversion of traditional Orientalist discourse: whether the Other is caricatured or idealized, ethnocentric premises marginalize important parts of Chan thought. Questioning the assumptions of East…
Zen Buddhism in the 20th Century
Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy
The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness
Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness
Questioning Back
Questioning Back
Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness
Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness
Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy
The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
Chan Insights and Oversights
For many people attracted to Eastern religions (particularly Zen Buddhism), Asia seems the source of all wisdom. As Bernard Faure examines the study of Chan/Zen from the standpoint of postmodern human sciences and literary criticism, he challenges this inversion of traditional Orientalist discourse: whether the Other is caricatured or idealized, ethnocentric premises marginalize important parts of Chan thought. Questioning the assumptions of East…
Zen Buddhism in the 20th Century
Die Transmoderne
Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth
Offering a new platform for inter-religious theology, O'Leary develops an interpretation of historical pluralism derived from Jacques Derrida in the West and the Buddhist Nagarjuna in the East. Awarded the Fourth Annual Frederick J. Streng Book Award by the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies
Conventions and Ultimacy in Japanese Religion
Interkulturelle Philosophie und Phanomenologie in Japan
Knowing the Heart Sūtra by Heart
The current situation of Christian faith lends a new attraction to the Mahāyāna doctrine that nothing has substantial being and that language and religions are radically conventional constructions, to be handled skillfully with a new art of judgement. We can bring a hermeneutics of the heart to bear on the doctrine of emptiness if we note how, in the Heart Sūtra, it is voiced by the bodhisattva of compassion. The wisdom of emptiness takes form as…
Reforming the Monastery
Everyday Life and Ultimate Reality
Buddhism relentlessly exposes the impermanent, painful, and insubstantial character of all phenomena, but it ends up reinstating the conventional samsaric world as the place where nirvanic emptiness can be encountered and where compassion can be skilfully exercised. In Hegel and Heidegger one also finds dialectical reversals that bring a positive result from the ordeal of the negative. In Heidegger, the encounter with nothingness in anxiety bring…
Numinous Presences in Two Buddhist Sūtras
Experiences of ‘presence’ are common in religion. This essay attempts to approach presence along phenomenological lines, arguing that the pluralism of the phenomena and contexts referred to is not an obstacle to a methodologically open dialogue between different experiences. Despite the impersonalism of Buddhist conceptions of ultimate reality, personal presences play a considerable role even in two scriptures devoted to evoking this ultimate emp…
French Jesuits, Origen, and Vatican II
This essay attempts to assess the theological significance of French Jesuit investment in the study of Origen. De Lubac and Daniélou read Origen as a vir ecclesiasticus , making him a resource for Vatican II’s new vision of the Church. They saw him as a scriptural thinker rather than a philosopher, and thus revealed him to be a master of spirituality. Origen’s account of the economy of salvation, founded on the Logos enlightening all minds, promp…
Meeting in Kenosis
In this chapter, I reflect on the radical existential contours of the Buddhist-Christian rapprochement, which take us to a deeper level than mere speculation or comparativism. I focus on the experience of kenosis undergone by both religions in facing the crises brought by the modern secular world. This frees them up for a contemplative enjoyment of the core realities they transmit. They first receive as a gift, in passive abandonment, what they t…
Recent Theological Approaches to the Johannine Epistles
1 John has been rather roughly handled in recent exegesis, notably in Raymond Brown's Anchor Bible commentary, which sees the epistle as badly written, logically incoherent, full of nasty polemics and bereft of any claim to be considered a mystical text. The two books here reviewed mix exegesis and theology in a kind of pincer movement, which succeeds only partly in closing in on the treasures of Johannine contemplation. Despite their limits, the…
Johannine Revelation, Nicene Witness
On its seventeenth centenary, I seek to reassess the theological significance of the Nicene Creed, drawing inspiration from Athanasius, who came to see the Creed as a privileged transmission of the apostolic teaching based on the Revelation granted by Christ. I attempt to bring into focus the nature of Revelation, referring to Karl Barth and Jean-Luc Marion. Criticizing the deflationary approach to Nicaea and Athanasius, which has been common of …
The Love That Kills
Focusing on the legend of Phaedra and Hippolytus as developed in Euripides and Seneca and especially in Racine’s Phèdre and taking into account as well its further development in works by Camillo Boito, Luchino Visconti, and Yukio Mishima, I make the following arguments: (1) Contrary to many theologians and philosophers of love, a pathological form of love that issues in murder and suicide should not be regarded as unworthy of serious attention. …
The Place of Nicaea in Buddhist-Christian Theology
Several themes are as fundamental in Buddhist thinking as they are in the ancient and modern debates about the teaching of the Council of Nicaea (325). This article argues that if the interreligious dialogue urged by Vatican II had been more energetically sustained, a Buddhist-Christian conversation about the legacy of Nicaea could have been a significant ecumenical event, overcoming the monopoly of Eurocentric perspectives
Bernanos
Le roman moderne occupe un rôle médiateur entre la vie réelle dans sa multiplicité infinie d’un côté et les perspectives plus abstraites des sciences anthropologiques de l’autre. Bernanos introduit le surnaturel dans un genre qui lui est normalement inhospitalier. Mais la lecture apologétique, édifiante à laquelle ses fictions invitent se complique du fait que la pensée spécifiquement littéraire qui guide sa plume ne peut s’accorder sans reste à …
Philosophy (20 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Theology (10 works) · Buddhism (6 works) · Religious studies (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Art (5 works) · History (5 works) · Sociology (5 works)