Associate Professor Matthew Del Nevo teaches logic, philosophy of human person, philosophy of culture, from Kant to Postmodernism, philosophy of phychology, and generally speaking at the intersections of faith, formation and culture at the Catholic Institute of Sydney. He is interested in art and literature and poetry and psychoanalysis, spirituality and wisdom traditions. Matthew has a background in Spirituality and was Head of Spirituality at the Broken Bay Institute under Bishop David Walker as well as Dean of Research there for seven years, before coming to the Catholic Institute in 2009.
Associate Professor Del Nevo is a graduate of the University of Sydney. He has a post-graduate degree in Divinity and did an Honours research year in the History and Thought of Christianity with a thesis in patristics, and focus in Eastern Orthodox theology. Matthew’s PhD was in the post-Holocaust writings of the Egyptian-born Jewish French-cultured poet Edmond Jabès, and investigated questions of the absence of God and the spiritual effect and meaning of an event such as the Holocaust for God’s chosen people. The breathtaking beauty and wisdom of Jabès writing showed the redemptive power of writing, and Matthew’s work investigated the poetics of this creative achievement. The philosophies of Heidegger, Blanchot, Derrida and Levinas went into this interpretative project, the best parts of which were published in Literature and Theology (Oxford) and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
Matthew has research interests in Continental philosophy spanning Aesthetics, Music, Theology (Sophiology, Patristics, von Balthasar); Judaism (Bible, rabbinics, Zohar); Wisdom Traditions (Eastern, esoteric); Psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan); Feminism (Kristeva); Literature (poetics, late 19th early twentieth century French).
Matthew grew up in the UK and worked in Jerusalem in his twenties, a city where East meets West and three world religions are centred. He also worked with Jean Vanier during this period.
Matthew has written a number of books on psychology and culture that pick up on a distinction, important in his work, between the soulfulness and soullessness . He has also written about Devout Humanism, the Catholic tradition from St Francis de Sales.
Matthew has been involved in translation projects of the philosopher Max Picard with St. Augustine’s Press, and Lou Andrea’s-Salome the first Freudian female psychoanalyst with Transaction Publishers.