Other assignments include teaching philosophy and theology in the Philippines in 1986–87, the Lady Donnellan Lecturership at Trinity College Dublin, in the spring of 1991, the Chaire Étienne Gilson at the Institut Catholique de Paris, March, 2011, and visiting fellowships at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1997 and the Humboldt Universität, Berlin (with the Romano Guardini Stiftung) in 2012.
Joseph O’Leary is editorial assistant to The Japan Mission Journal,[2] which often publishes articles of interreligious interest, and is a regular participant in the Tokyo Buddhist Discussion Group.
With Richard Kearney he organized a seminar at the Irish College, Paris, on 24 June 1979, in which Beaufret, Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas participated, and which led to the publication of Heidegger te la question de Dieu (Grasset, 1980; 2nd ed., PUF 2009).
[4] The Heideggerian approach was spelled out programmatically in his first book, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Winston-Seabury 1985), which also showed the influence of Derrida and of his first encounters with Buddhist philosophy.
These volumes on fundamental theology advance a view of doctrinal language that is increasingly influenced by the Buddhist dyad of conventional and ultimate truth.
The basic thesis is that religious traditions can function as vehicles of ultimacy, but that to do so authentically and effectively they need to fully recognize their conventional status as linguistic constructions embedded in history.
Warding off nominalism and relativism, O’Leary argues against Derrida and Western interpreters of Nagarjuna on the notion of truth, in order to uphold the objective reference of doctrinal statements despite their conventional fabric.