This dissertation presents a new adequate typology after examining the diverse previous theodicies. The assumption underlying the author’s typology is that the central challenge for a theodicy is to address at what point(s) in the Christian narrative God deals with or acts with reference to evil and suffering. In light of this assumption, the thesis of this work is as follows: there are four main answers that have emerged to this challenge, with some writers focusing on God’s activity in creation; others on the life and death of Jesus Christ; some claiming God primarily overcomes evil in the present; and others, aware of the existence of so much unredeemed suffering, saying God will only fully deal with evil at the end of time. That is to say, in the contemporary period, there are four main types of theodicy: protological, Christological, enestological, and eschatological. In the work that follows, Alvin Plantinga (protological), James Cone and Dorothee Sölle (Christological), David Griffin (enestological), and John Hick (eschatological) serve as paradigmatic representatives of these types. Through a consideration of these authors, Anderson concludes that each of the four types contributes key insights into a Christian approach to the problem of evil, and that none can be bypassed without also losing its concomitant strengths. As such, a maximal Christian theodicy will be one that somehow integrates elements of all four approaches into its response to the reality of evil.

This dissertation argues that the Bakhtinian “chronotope” significantly revised and expanded, makes possible a type of thought formed by a non-classical imaginary constituted by spacetime, or chronotopes freed of the limitations of a Euclidean geometric imaginary. The argument is made for a non-Euclidean geometric imaginary that produces a form of “thought” characterized by “transitive consciousness.” After the introduction examines the necessity and problems of the hyphenated term, scientific-aesthetic, its first chapter establishes its historical parameters, locating the emergence of its “modern” form in England and France in 1840, and later in the work of Nietzsche. The work then turns to a philosophical examination of Foucault, first through a critique of his relation to Raymond Roussel, and then of his concept of the “aesthetics of existence” in his late work. This sets the stage for an examination of the philosophical significance of Gertrude Stein as she emerged from the work of William James, and for a comparative analysis of the thought of Alfred North Whitehead, Gaston Bachelard, and M. M. Bakhtin. A brief comparison to the doyen of “modern” dance, Merce Cunningham, follows. The sketch of chronotopology as both ingredient and methodology of the scientific-aesthetic brings this dissertation to its temporary end.

In the Korean and Eastern ways of traditional thinking, people generally have a holistic (rather than a dualistic or dichotomous) perspective of Heaven/God, nature, human beings and the world. These are viewed as holistically and organically interconnected, interrelated, and inseparable. However, people from the Western tradition, particularly after the Greek/Hellenistic influences mixed with Christianity, tend to view things from a dualistic (i.e., ‘good and evil’) perspective. This dissertation argues that the Western dualism is also present in most of the third world (i.e., non-Western) liberation theologies, including Minjung theology. John Cobb, Jr., a pioneer in Process Theology, raises this issue of Western dualism: ‘[T]he Western tradition(s) were monolithically committed to its pervasive dualism and substantialism.’ This dissertation contends that the dualistic worldview that has dominated Western traditional thoughts in academia, culture, politics, particularly in religion are logically interrelated with today’s challenging issues of the world. In an effort to further engage in this discourse between Eastern and Western thought traditions, this dissertation argues that a person’s concept of Heaven and/or God can significantly influence and shape, in many cases even determine, his/her worldview towards other human beings, society, nature and the world. This argument can be further clarified from the discussions of logical differences between A-type logic and E-type logic. This dissertation contends that most Western (and some Eastern) traditions belong to the category of A-type logic. However, it argues that Donghak, Process and some modern scientific ideas of the West belong to that of E-type logic. Throughout this dissertation, I shall suggest that the Donghak’s holistically inclusive and Process’s panentheistic concepts of Heaven/God as alternative ideas replacing (or overcoming) the traditionally personal concepts of God in the West and the traditionally non-personal concepts of Heaven in the East can lead to fruitful ways of conceiving and thus dealing with pressing problems of today such as classism, racism, sexism, imperialism, ongoing military and religious conflicts, ecological crisis, and specifically Western lead globalization.

The aim of “Process Metaphysics and Cultural Criticism” is to begin development toward a radically democratic critical practice in Communication Studies based on philosophical assumptions found in process and personalist thought. Chapter I of the dissertation provides a review of relevant literature in Communication Studies concerned with process thought and underlines the need for a sustained discussion of process metaphysics in contrast with substance metaphysics. Chapter II presents an overview of Whitehead's speculative and systematic method and describes some key process concepts in Whitehead's “Process and Reality”, contrasting those with substantialist assumptions. Chapter III examines temporality, first describing an anti-reductive temporal philosophy, then illustrating how an emphasis on the past or the present carries with it substantialist presuppositions. Concluding, Chapter III presents an argument for prioritizing possibility by adopting a future orientation with respect to conceiving change in process terms. Chapter IV outlines the working philosophical assumptions---informed by the previous two chapters---of the process-oriented cultural critic. Chapter V introduces “personalism” as a promising philosophical basis for developing an ethical framework within which the process-oriented critic can practice. Ultimately, Chapter V advances an argument for a radically democratic critical practice that challenges concerned critics to question the boundary traditionally drawn between human animals and all others and consider that boundary's implications for critical practice.

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity links the metrical structure of the cosmic order (or ‘cosmology’) to the contingent distributions of matter and energy throughout the universe, one of the chief areas of investigation in astrophysics. However, presently we have neither devised nor discovered a system of uniform relations whereby we can make our cosmological measurements intelligible. This is ‘the measurement problem of cosmology.’ Using both historical ideas (such as A. N. Whitehead’s work in the 1920s) and contemporary evidence and theories, the author argues that the measurement problem has neither been fully understood nor rightly interpreted. With a better grasp of this problem, such as the author is attempting to provide, the prospects for a solution look brighter.

In this dissertation the author argues that a social trinitarian pneumatology based on Moltmann’s theology and Whitehead’s philosophy is doctrinally sound, theologically adequate and logically valid. In other words this dissertation is a construction of a pneumatology synthesizing the insights of Moltmans’s Social Trinitarianism and Whitehead’s process-relational philosophy. Moltmann’s trinitarian theology and pneumatology is foundational to the establishment of Social Trinitarianism. However, Moltmann’s trinitarian theology and pneumatology also reveals some unsolved issues and problems. For example, Moltmann’s methodology is an issue that demands a systematic re-presentation. This unsolved problem of methodology undermines the overall validity of his thesis. It is in this context that the philosophy of Whitehead is meaningfully addressed. The author claims that the two different worldviews show significant mutual compatibility. One specific instance of the mutual compatibility is found between Moltmann’s concept of the Holy Spirit and Whitehead’s concept of the divine feelings. Based on the several aspects of functional equivalence between the two concepts, the author argues that the Holy Spirit can be defined as the activity of the divine feelings in terms of Whiteheadian philosophy.

This dissertation proposes a process eschatological eco-ethics as a theological model for Christian communities. Toward this end, this study pursues the following interrelated objectives: first, to articulate a process eschatology through discussion of the decisive process notions of God and God’s way of dealing with the creation; second, to propose a set of principles for a process eschatological eco-ethics; and third, to evaluate those process eschatological eco-ethical principles by engaging them in a critical dialogue with Moltmann’s political and ecological eschatology. In conclusion, this study proposes a process eschatological eco-ethics for the churches, and particularly for Christians in South Korea, where socio-political and economic injustice along with current ecological crisis is worsening due to effects of global development and political hegemony that remain unchecked by evangelical and mainline churches. The strong socio-political, eco-ethical implications of process eschatology demand that human beings exist as co-creators with God in the process of continuing creation. Moreover, the process eschatological affirmation of the dimensions of time, history, and creation must place ethical emphasis on love for the life of others and care for the suffering and oppressed.

This dissertation makes an attempt to prove that cognitive science stands in need of new empiricisms for a proper evaluation of esthetic states, especially those induced by festivals, ritual, folk-art, and all kinds of ethnological artifacts or narratives, including theater, movie, painting, and literature. Secondly, it also advocates an anti-post-modernist agenda, arguing vehemently in favor of the need for a science-based, realistic appraisal of such trance states and mystical experiences that are not only plausible, but constitute deep-rooted forms of human intuition. This dissertation rehabilitates behavioralist questions on the nature of art, and the gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, and Michael Polanyi, as well as such assumptions as those made by A. N. Whitehead, William James or John Dewey, on the “ingressive”, or “prehensive” capacity of human imagination, its ability to recognize the completely emergent, or demarcated condition of esthetic states. The artistic process has been examined in terms of the experience of the artist and the cognitive realities that inform the actual making of art works; each chapter is devoted to the analysis of one kind of artistic activity or skill. Scrutiny of praxis, in real time, of the nature of artistic experience, including acting, ritual enactment, sculpting - the making of iconography, totemic idols, masks etc., or even contriving a metaphor or poetic narrative, leads us to realize how true artists become cognizant of altered states, in handling their media and in the act of crossing a line where expression acquires an epiphanic dimension - delightful and engaging and instilled with the pre-conditions that accompany moments of “beauty” in the real world.

This dissertation argues for the possibility of genuine religious experience in the sense of an experience that receives its religious character by virtue of direct contact with a holy dimension of reality. This study is critical of the widespread modern worldview whose main characteristics are the mechanistic view of nature and the sensationist view of perception. The author contends that the modern worldview, which comes in two major versions, theistic supernaturalism and atheistic naturalism, cannot do justice to everyday experience. This work is also constructive in that it proposes an alternative framework, namely theistic naturalism, especially developed in the philosophy of Whitehead, to understand the phenomenon of religious experience and its genuine possibility. The author notes that Whitehead’s philosophy has sufficient openness for the theistic form of religious experience to be harmonious with the apparently conflicting claims found in acosmic and cosmic types of religious experience. In Whiteheadian theistic naturalism, the idea of genuine religious experience is tenable not only in Christian traditions but also in the context of religious diversity.