Joseph Rivera
DR

I lecture and conduct
research on a variety of topics. Trained in the fluid disciplines of philosophy of religion and systematic
theology, I am conversant with the modern religious thought as its spans from
Schleiermacher to Barth and Rahner, but I work primarily between classical
theology (St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas among others) and
continental philosophy, which includes figures such as Edmund Husserl,
Martin Heidegger and their French heirs: Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Topics of research
interest include theological anthropology in a scientific age, the domain of sacramental theology broadly conceived (as it illustrates the lived experience of religion), the
very idea of philosophy of religion, and finally, political theology and
question of "religion in the public square." The last topic
explores the value of John Rawls and Augustine for liberal politics today. I released a monograph that explores this topic; it is entitled Political Theology and Pluralism: Renewing Public Dialogue (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). In more recent articles to be released in 2019, I continue to explore the relevance of Rawls for Political Theology.
I released my first monograph in 2015, The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry: A Phenomenological Theology (University of Notre Dame Press). It critically explores insights in the work of Michel Henry, a French philosopher of religion in the school of phenomenology and existentialism. His work as earned international accolades. An archive of his work and a journal devoted to focused study of his writings (Revue internationale Michel Henry) was established in 2010, at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, as well as research centres devoted to his work in Freiburg, Germany and in Beirut, Lebanon. He also has a readership in Japan, given that he delivered several lectures there in the early 1980s. I continue to publish on Henry, as well as Marion and Lacoste. Most recently I have published an article on the meaning and practice of empathy in Henry and Husserl. A strictly phenomenological analysis, the manuscript is published with Research in Phenomenology. Another article on Husserl's fertile concept of time is underway.
I am currently working on a fourth book project that explores the concept of the world from theological, philosophical and cultural perspectives. While I continue to work within post-Husserlian phenomenology, I also include in this project other philosophical voices from the anglophone world, such as Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty.
Originally from a small town in Missouri, I earned my BA in Religion and History at Northwestern University in Chicago. I then pursued further graduate studies in Boston and St. Louis before completing my PhD in Theology and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Edinburgh. I came to DCU in the Autumn of 2013 as a full-time lecturer in the School of Theology, Philosophy and Music.
I released my first monograph in 2015, The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry: A Phenomenological Theology (University of Notre Dame Press). It critically explores insights in the work of Michel Henry, a French philosopher of religion in the school of phenomenology and existentialism. His work as earned international accolades. An archive of his work and a journal devoted to focused study of his writings (Revue internationale Michel Henry) was established in 2010, at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, as well as research centres devoted to his work in Freiburg, Germany and in Beirut, Lebanon. He also has a readership in Japan, given that he delivered several lectures there in the early 1980s. I continue to publish on Henry, as well as Marion and Lacoste. Most recently I have published an article on the meaning and practice of empathy in Henry and Husserl. A strictly phenomenological analysis, the manuscript is published with Research in Phenomenology. Another article on Husserl's fertile concept of time is underway.
I am currently working on a fourth book project that explores the concept of the world from theological, philosophical and cultural perspectives. While I continue to work within post-Husserlian phenomenology, I also include in this project other philosophical voices from the anglophone world, such as Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty.
Originally from a small town in Missouri, I earned my BA in Religion and History at Northwestern University in Chicago. I then pursued further graduate studies in Boston and St. Louis before completing my PhD in Theology and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Edinburgh. I came to DCU in the Autumn of 2013 as a full-time lecturer in the School of Theology, Philosophy and Music.
Peer Reviewed Journal
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2021 | Joseph Rivera (2021) 'Blumenberg's Problematic Secularization Thesis: Augustine, Curiositas and the Emergence of Late Modernity'. Religions, 15 (5):297-313. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12050297 | |
2021 | Joseph Rivera (2021) 'Giving as Loving: A Requiem for the Gift?'. Continental Philosophy Review, 54 (3):349-366. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09527-y | |
2020 | Joseph Rivera (2020) 'Religious Reasons and Public Reason: Recalibrating Ireland's Benevolent Secularism'. Review of European Studies, 12 (1):1-12. [DOI] | |
2020 | Rivera, J (2020) 'Political Liberalism and Resentment: A Theological Rejoinder'. Modern Theology, . [DOI] | |
2020 | Rivera, J (2020) 'Introduction: Political Theology, or the Formations of Pluralism'. Religions, . [DOI] | |
2019 | Rivera J. (2019) 'We-synthesis: Husserl and henry on empathy and shared life'. Research in Phenomenology, 49 (2):183-206. [DOI] | |
2019 | Rivera J. (2019) 'Liberal Citizenship and the Hermeneutics of Public Dialogue: A Rawlsian Perspective'. :133-151. [DOI] | |
2019 | Rivera J. (2019) 'The “original position” as public performance: Liberalism, pluralism, and asceticism'. Religions, 10 (8). [DOI] | |
2019 | Joseph Rivera (2019) 'Phenomenologies of the Trinity: Trends in Recent Philosophy of Religion'. Philosophy Compass, 14 (1):1-11. [DOI] | |
2019 | Joseph Rivera (2019) 'The as yet Undetermined Animal: Augustine's Memoria after Cognitive Science'. European Journal of Science and Theology, 15 (5):77-94. [Link] | |
2018 | Joseph Rivera (2018) 'The Myth of the Given? Rethinking Phenomenology's Theological Turn'. Philosophy Today, 62 (2):181-197. [Link] | |
2018 | Joseph Rivera (2018) 'Futures of the Theological Turn'. Philosophy Today, 62 (2):89-97. [Link] | |
2017 | Rivera, J (2017) 'Human Nature and the Limits of Plasticity: Revisiting the Debate Concerning the Supernatural'. Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 59 :34-53. [DOI] | |
2016 | Rivera, J (2016) 'God and Metaphysics in Contemporary Theology: Reframing the Debate'. Theological studies, 77 :823-844. [DOI] | |
2015 | Michel Henry (Rivera J.;Faithful G.; translators) (2015) 'The four principles of phenomenology'. Continental Philosophy Review, . [DOI] | |
2013 | Rivera J. (2013) 'Figuring the porous self: St. Augustine and the phenomenology of temporality'. Modern Theology, 29 (1):83-103. [DOI] | |
2013 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2013) 'Toward a Liturgical Existentialism'. NEW BLACKFRIARS, vol. 94 :79-96. | |
2012 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2012) 'Corpus Mysticum and Religious Experience: Henry, Lacoste, Marion'. International Journal of Systematic Theology, vol. 14 :327-349. | |
2011 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2011) 'Generation, Interiority and the Phenomenology of Christianity in Michel Henry'. Continental Philosophy Review, Continental Philosophy Review, 44 :205-235. | |
2010 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2010) 'Jean-Luc Marion: The Subject as Gifted in Christological Perspective'. Heythrop Journal-A Quarterly Review Of Philosophy And Theology, 51 :1053-1060. |
Book
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2018 | Rivera J. (2018) Political theology and pluralism: Renewing public dialogue. [DOI] | |
2015 | Joseph Rivera (2015) The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry: A Phenomenological Theology. Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press. | |
2014 | Joseph Rivera and Scott Davidson (translators) (2014) Flesh and Body: On the Phenomenology of Husserl, by Didier Franck. New York and London: Bloomsbury. | |
2022 | Joseph Rivera (2022) Phenomenology and the Horizon of Experience: Spiritual Themes in Henry, Marion, Lacoste. New York: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Phenomenology-and-the-Horizon-of-Experience-Spiritual-Themes-in-Henry/Rivera/p/book/9781032136400 |
Conference Contribution
Book Review
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2019 | Rivera, J (2019) The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach. LONDON: BREV [DOI] | |
2016 | Rivera, J (2016) The Theological Project of Modernism: Faith and Conditions of Mineness. HOBOKEN: BREV [DOI] | |
2015 | Rivera, J (2015) Theology without Metaphysics: God, Language and the Spirit of Recognition. HOBOKEN: BREV [DOI] | |
2015 | Rivera, J (2015) Barbarism. HOBOKEN: BREV | |
2015 | Rivera, J (2015) Praying to a French God: The Theology of Jean-Yves Lacoste. LONDON: BREV | |
2015 | Rivera, J (2015) Who's Afraid of Relativism? Community, Contingency and Creaturehood. HOBOKEN: BREV [DOI] | |
2014 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2014) Postmodern Apologetics? Arguments for God in Contemporary Philosophy, Christina M. Gschwandtner (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012). BREV | |
2014 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2014) Interpreting Excess: Jean-Luc Marion, Saturated Phenomena and Hermeneutics, by Shane Mackinlay (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010). BREV | |
2013 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2013) Michel Henry: the Affects of Thought, eds., Jeffrey Hanson and Michael Kelly (New York and London: Continuum, 2012). BREV | |
2013 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2013) Secularization: In Defense of an Unfashionable Theory by Steve Bruce (Oxford, UK Oxford University Press, 2011). BREV | |
2011 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2011) Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things, by Ann Taves (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009). BREV | |
2011 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2011) Derrida and Theology, by Stephen Shakespeare (London and New York: Continuum, 2009). BREV | |
2010 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2010) Solomon Among the Postmoderns, by Peter Leithart (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008). BREV | |
2009 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2009) What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church, by John Caputo (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007). BREV | |
2008 | Dr Joseph Rivera (2008) Christ and Culture, by Graham Ward (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005). BREV |
Other Journal
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2018 | Joseph Rivera (2018) 'Spiritual Exercises in a Secular Age: Prospects for a Theological Reduction' 17 (2) :307-327. [Link] | |
2017 | Joseph Rivera (2017) 'Christian Life and the Phenomenology of Life' 16 (1) :161-182. |
Certain data included herein are derived from the © Web of Science (2022) of Clarivate. All rights reserved.
Research Interests
I seek to find ways for
theological discourse, and religious studies, to correspond critically (and
constructively) to the particular spirit of the age in which we find ourselves.
Specific Areas of interest: Modern Theology (Barth, Rahner and Balthasar), St. Augustine, Secular studies and Genealogies of Modernity, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy of Religion, Political Theology (especially John Rawls and Richard Rorty), Metaphysics and concepts of the self and personal identity.
Specific Areas of interest: Modern Theology (Barth, Rahner and Balthasar), St. Augustine, Secular studies and Genealogies of Modernity, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy of Religion, Political Theology (especially John Rawls and Richard Rorty), Metaphysics and concepts of the self and personal identity.