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Professor Eui Geun Ryu

I am Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at the Silla University in Busan, Korea. I received my Ph.D. from Kyungpook National University under the title of “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Theory of Body.”  I was also a visiting professor at State University of New York at Buffalo.

My current research is in the following three areas:

(1) I am writing a book on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of body. I have published many articles on Merleau-Ponty, and during my stay at the Center I plan to investigate the body and its practices, that is, the political and historical implications, and to write a few articles on these topics.  After finishing this work in progress, I will be able to complete my planned book.  I will thereby have ended my studies in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty.

(2) In addition to this study, I plan to write an essay under the title of “ The Return to Subjectivity.”  This article is written as an alternative to the postmodern dictum which declared that human subject came to an end. According to Postmodernism and Structuralism, the self is made, constructed, and built by language, culture and history. It is not incorrect. But we can do nothing without subjective self.  I survey several kinds of paradigms of the self  in modern and postmodern philosophy, and alternatively propose new type of self from the Christian viewpoint–which means the restoration of Paulian concept of self.  I think Žižek and Badiou are useful for this purpose. It is argued that it is still clear that the subject is one who is responsible for a truth.

(3) I am also writing an essay about Derrida’s analysis of Husserl in Voice and Phenomena while attending Husserl/Derrida Seminar directed by Anthony J. Steinbock.  I have been translating Michel Henry, C’est moi la vérité: Pour une philosophie du christianisme [I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity translated by Susan Emanue]l into Korean. I would like to finish this work during my stay at Phenomenology Research Center, and with this, I am going to study deeply phenomenologies of religion. As a Christian, I believe my translation work will contribute to Korean religious phenomenological and Christian philosophical society.