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Publication Givenness, grace and Marion's Augustinianism(Rowman and Littlefield, 2018-12) Ó Murchadha, FelixMarion's account of the ego can be understood as an Augustinian critique of the capable ego from Descartes to Kant. This paper will discuss such post-Kantian Augustinianism as a response to a certain Pelagian Stoicism in Modernity and investigate whether this response is phenomenologically demonstrable. The receptive ego of Marion's account when removed from a metaphysically secured Christian ontology leaves open the possibility that the gift of love is directed as much towards evil as good. This leads to the further worry, that of enthusiasm (Schwärmerei). The enthusiast is impervious to reason, for Kant, because he makes claims which transcend the bounds of experience. While Marion rejects Kant's account of experience, this alone does not remove the concern that his Augustinianism leads him to neglect necessary ethical restraints on the erotic reduction. In closing it is suggested that Marion has resources for answering these concerns and these will be briefly explored.Publication The temporality of violence: Destruction, dissolution and the construction of sense(Palgrave and McMillan, 2019-11-24) Ó Murchadha, FelixViolence tends to the destruction of meaningful entities and of that in and through which such entities are meaningful. Not all violence is annihilating in its effects, but violence aims towards a nothingness in which is disclosed a certain fragility of meaning. The obliteration of the singular, the reduction of organic and structural unity to charred flesh and rubble, is not simply an event within a world, but an event that threatens worldly sense. The constitution of such worldly sense is dependent on time, on the interweaving of temporal tendencies, or orientations, in Husserlian terms: retention and protention. But this interweaving of temporal orientations requires a minimal order of continuity whereby retention, both near and far, and near and far protention allow for a sense of temporal stretch which has a unity and a sense. This is true even though every now may be new, temporal relations being of self differentiation. Annihilating violence whether of the individual raped and tortured or the community left bereft through war, colonization or natural disaster has a traumatizing effect which results in a disconnection from the past and derealization of that which profoundly modifies the retentional and protentional orientations. The vulnerability of temporal constitution, which violence discloses, reveals a fundamental absence at the core of time itself and a nothingness threatening the stability of normalized meaningful entities and spaces while revealing a groundless space of the emergence of meaningPublication Love's conditions: Passion and the practice of philosophy(Penn State University Press, 2015) Ó Murchadha, Felix[No abstract available]Publication Humanitarianisms in context(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2016-03-16) O'Sullivan, Kevin; Hilton, Matthew; Fiori, Juliano; |~|This introduction describes the rapidly expanding history of non-state humanitarianism in terms of three themes. First, it argues that we should think about humanitarianism less in terms of ruptures or breaks, and focus more on the moments of acceleration and the continuities that shaped that narrative: how the relationships among local, national and international discourses were played out in the shift between imperial and post-colonial worlds, in the dialogue between religious and secular traditions, and in the transformative processes of decolonization, de-regulation and globalization. Second, we suggest the need to re-think the geography of non-state humanitarianism. Drawing attention to the transnational contexts and traditions in which ideas of humanitarianism have been articulated not only adds to our understanding of transnational action and the strength of global civil society beyond the West, we argue, it allows us to better appreciate the myriad languages and practices of humanitarianism employed in a global context. Finally, this introduction also re-visits the question of motivation. By looking beyond the state, we argue, we can better understand the variety of motives that shaped the act of giving: from compassion to capturing markets, the search for efficiency, and the construction of local, national and international identities.