| In response to a conventional model of truth, which would conceive knowledge exclusively as an immediate identification of knowing subject and known object (e.g., the scholastic axiom that subject and object are identical in actu), this dissertation argues for a dramatic approach to truth, which affirms an abiding difference (in unity) within the very core of the truth relation. To accomplish this aim, the dissertation draws on the resources of the philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar, setting it in dialogue with major figures of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental thought. The introduction sets forth the problem that forms the context for the study, and lays out the basic notions in Balthasar's thought used to address it: namely, drama and Gestalt ("form," understood as an organic, concrete whole greater than the sum of its parts). The first two chapters articulate a dramatic understanding of the basic components of the truth relation: chapter one proposes a metaphysics in which being and action stand in a relation of reciprocal causality; in response to the Kantian understanding of the transcendental unity of apperception, chapter two shows the need for a "dialogically"-structured consciousness. Chapter three treats the truth relation itself in its constitutive dimensions, as an essentially fruitful Gestalt. Chapter four presents the anthropological element of truth in terms of the dramatic act that founds the possibility for knowledge. Finally, chapter five claims that truth can be understood dramatically only in its circumincessive relation with the other "transcendentals," goodness, beauty, and unity. |
