Research Projects

Etty Hillesum and the Spiritual Search: An Analysis of the Diaries and Letters 1941-1943 in the light of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Research Funding: FWO & Ghent University (2007-2011)

PhD: Comparative Science of Cultures, Ghent University

Title: “Etty Hillesum and the Spiritual Search: An Analysis of the Diaries and Letters 1941-1943 in the light of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer”

Pages: 640 pp.
Publisher: University Press (October 20, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN: 978-90-7083-053-3

Author:  Meins G.S. Coetsier (1977) is affiliated with the Research Foundation in Flanders (FWO) and is staff member at the Etty Hillesum Research Center (EHOC). He is author of Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008). The co-editor of Spirituality in the Writings of Etty Hillesum: Proceedings of the Etty Hillesum Conference at Ghent University, November 2008, Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy (Boston, MA: Brill, 2010). He has published several chapters, articles and conference proceedings on Etty Hillesum, and was co-organizer of the first international Etty Hillesum Conference at Ghent University in 2008.

Etty Hillesum and the Spiritual Search: An Analysis of the Diaries and Letters 1941-1943 in the light of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Ghent: University Press, 2011), 640pp.

  Abstract

 

ETTY HILLESUM AND THE SPIRITUAL SEARCH

An Analysis of the Diaries and Letters 1941-1943 in the light of

Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

 

The comparative study Etty Hillesum and the Spiritual Search breaks new ground by demonstrating the Jewish existential nature of Etty Hillesum’s spiritual and cultural life in the light of the writings of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Much of the disputed theological literature on Etty Hillesum has emphasized her as a Christian writer, mystic or martyr. But as the dissertation argues, such a reading overlooks the extent to which Etty Hillesum was already intuitively resonating with Jewish spiritual experience in a life that was culturally shaped by the totalitarian Nazi regime. Hillesum’s diaries and letters illustrate the struggle of her spirit to come to terms with her personal life in the context of the Second World War. Her consciousness was formed by a rediscovery of the divine presence in the relationship between man and man, leading to a direct conversation with God. Hillesum took responsibility for the Other as a way to embrace justice and compassion. Some studies on Hillesum’s spirituality summarize her writings in the light of Christian literature, culture and tradition. This dissertation, on the other hand, provides a framework for understanding Hillesum’s spiritual search as a Jewish existential path to God within the wider cultural context. The study seeks to dispel some of the confusion that assails readers when they are exposed to the bewildering range of Christian and other cultural interpretations of the diaries and letters. This work represents a spiritual search within an intercultural environment that will resonate with the contemporary world.

2012 Doctorate Defense at Ghent University

Coetsier's 2012 Doctorate Defense, Ghent University, Belgium
Etty Hillesum and the Spiritual Search: an Analysis of the Diaries and Letters 1941-1943 in the light of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Eric Voegelin's Philosophy of Luminous Participation in the Transcendent Ground of Being

Coetsier, Meins G.S., Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Luminous Participation in the Transcendent Ground of Being, Ghent University: a non-commercial publication of Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Belgium, 2008, 369pp.

The dissertation investigates the works of the German-American philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), who after criticizing Nazi racism was forced to flee from Austria to the United States, following the Anschluss in 1938. Coetsier illustrates how as a native German Voegelin had to find an answer to this central experiential problem, the burning question: What went wrong, that Adolf Hitler could rise to power? What are the consequences? Voegelin had to come to terms with his own German past and whether he, although consistently rejecting National Socialism, shared any individual guilt for crimes committed in the name of the German people. Coetsier traces his intense awareness of Europe’s need for radical spiritual reform, after his experience of the intellectual and general breakdown of Europe, before and during the Second World War. Voegelin’s analysis of movements such as Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, and racism had made it clear to him that the centre of a philosophy of politics had to be a theory of consciousness. In search of his humanity and in acceptance of his own past, Voegelin developed a philosophy of luminous participation in the transcendent ground of being, which reflects his notion that we are not detached spectators but engaged in reality through participation. We participate in this world and one language expresses this, but we also participate in another world, in a divine reality, and the language of this world is metaphorised to express this other kind of participation in this other dimension of reality, which for Voegelin is the transcendent ground of being.

2008 Doctorate Defense at Ghent University

Ghent, Belgium, March 7, 2008

Vrijdag 7 maart 2008

Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte

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