Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger Feb 2024

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …


How Is The Christian Virtue Of Detachment Epistemically Transformative?, Simon C. Summers Dec 2023

How Is The Christian Virtue Of Detachment Epistemically Transformative?, Simon C. Summers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to understand how the Christian virtue of detachment, understood as the proper ordering of one’s desires toward God, contributes to epistemic transformation. In order to achieve this result, I rely on the work of the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, beginning by mapping out his conception of detachment and demonstrating how it helps one to overcome competing desires and find their true self. Following this, I offer an account of the type of epistemic transformation required to access some theistic knowledge in order to connect Merton’s views on the topic with those of modern-day philosophers and show the …


Lighting The Way Of The Learner: Towards A Social Virtue Epistemology In Aḥmad Al-Ṣaghīr’S The Faqīh’S Lantern, Amani Khelifa Oct 2023

Lighting The Way Of The Learner: Towards A Social Virtue Epistemology In Aḥmad Al-Ṣaghīr’S The Faqīh’S Lantern, Amani Khelifa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis offers an original translation and analysis of a West African didactic poem in Islamic ethics and law, by the Mālikī-Ashʿarī Mauritanian scholar Aḥmad al-Ṣaghīr (d. 1272 AH/1856 CE) called The Faqīh’s Lantern (Miṣbāḥ al-Faqīh). In addition to the critical translation, I examine the poem thematically through the lens of social virtue epistemology. Chapter 1 sketches the background of the text and author, positioning the author historically as a product of a rich scholarly and pedagogical tradition while noting Mauritania’s contemporary place in the North American Muslim imagination. Chapter 2 is the translation of the text, making …


A Universe Of Mirrors: The Mirror Metaphor In Ibn ʿArabī’S Thought In Relation To Ontology, Knowledge, And Perfection, Basma Eletreby Jan 2023

A Universe Of Mirrors: The Mirror Metaphor In Ibn ʿArabī’S Thought In Relation To Ontology, Knowledge, And Perfection, Basma Eletreby

Theses and Dissertations

The mirror metaphor is ubiquitous in sufi texts. It operates uniquely in Ibn ʿArabī’s thought and writings as a representation of his conception of the cosmos. Being, knowledge, and perfection are among the seminal themes of al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s thought, and the mirror metaphor is employed in revealing their reality in his writings. As opposed to Unity of Being, a term that Ibn ʿArabī does not employ, the mirror embodies the pillars of Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of Being through representing the quintessential huwa lā huwa, the configuration of oneness and manyness, and most importantly, the definition of the relation between God …


Idealism In Spinoza’S Metaphysics, Epistemology, And Ethics: A Friendly And Judicious Revision To The Active/Passive Distinction As Solution To Spinoza’S Attribute And Parallelism Problems, Sean Butler Jan 2020

Idealism In Spinoza’S Metaphysics, Epistemology, And Ethics: A Friendly And Judicious Revision To The Active/Passive Distinction As Solution To Spinoza’S Attribute And Parallelism Problems, Sean Butler

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Spinoza’s doctrine of parallelism admits of certain observed inconsistencies that have long troubled Spinoza scholars. The scholarship over the last one hundred and thirty years or so has offered three dominant interpretations of Spinoza’s metaphysics as a result of the deficiencies with the doctrine of parallelism. These are 1) the subjective/objective distinction according to which the attribute of thought is understood as subjective and the attribute of extension is understood as objective, 2) materialism according to which the attribute of thought is claimed to depend on the attribute of extension, and 3) idealism according to which the attribute of extension …


Epistemology And Presuppositional Thought, Courtney L. Krause Apr 2019

Epistemology And Presuppositional Thought, Courtney L. Krause

Selected Honors Theses

This paper will present the coherency of Reformed Christian theism’s presuppositional epistemology. It will argue for the biblical foundation of presupposing the existence and truth of God in every aspect of one’s life. This presupposition will be presented as the necessary component for interpreting the revelation of God correctly and righteously. This presupposition is vital, as it acknowledges Christ as sovereign over the realm of thought. Indeed, from the Reformed Christian theistic perspective, understanding reason presuppositionally from Scripture is the only way to reason which is honoring to God. It claims any lack of acknowledgement of and submission to Jesus …


The Problem Of Epistemically Irrelevant Causal Factors, Derek L. Mcallister Jul 2015

The Problem Of Epistemically Irrelevant Causal Factors, Derek L. Mcallister

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The problem of epistemically irrelevant causal factors is an epistemological phenomenon that occurs when a person becomes aware of some non-epistemic, causal factor that threatens to adversely influence her present belief, yet this factor is irrelevant to her deliberation concerning that belief. While the problem itself is apparently relatively widespread, very few have given it a detailed analysis. This thesis is one attempt to improve that. The first part, and the bulk, of this thesis is an analysis and explanation of what exactly the problem is and how it differs from nearby, related epistemological phenomena. The second part is my …


The Christian As Witness In View Of The True Witness, Emily Patricia Wilton Dec 2014

The Christian As Witness In View Of The True Witness, Emily Patricia Wilton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines Karl Barth’s understanding of what it means for Christian individuals to be witnesses of Jesus Christ. By analyzing the structure of Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation, with attention to his view of Jesus Christ as mediator, the thesis establishes the christological context of Barth’s concept of witness. The thesis demonstrates how Barth arrives at the conclusion that witness is central to the definition of Christian existence and identifies key features of Barth’s view of witness, namely, its theocentrism, its basis in ontology, and its enactment in human history. The thesis engages secondary scholarship in a critical appraisal of …


Hidden Treasure: The Epistemology Of Love According To Hans Urs On Balthasar, Timothy John Squier Jan 2013

Hidden Treasure: The Epistemology Of Love According To Hans Urs On Balthasar, Timothy John Squier

Dissertations

Many contemporary thinkers have wrestled with the notion that Balthasar is unwilling to consider modern theology's starting point of the consciousness of the knower. Otherwise stated, some scholars argue that Balthasar's point of departure is the will (love) to the neglect of human consciousness (intellect). The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that a constructive analysis of Balthasar's doctrine of revelation brings to light an intricate epistemology that is critical to postmodern epistemological scholarship. By way of Neo-Scholasticism much conversation has taken place pertaining to the relationship between faith and reason within the human knower. Whereas the Neo-Scholastic tradition …


Sense-Making Bodies: Feminist Materiality And Phenomenology In Constructive Body Theologies, Heike Peckruhn Jan 2013

Sense-Making Bodies: Feminist Materiality And Phenomenology In Constructive Body Theologies, Heike Peckruhn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Constructive body theology provides an ethical commitment to and a set of analytical principles for understanding bodily experience. If we insist upon the theological value of embodied experience, how can we give an adequate account of it? Are feminist appeals to the senses useful in developing theological truth claims based in embodied experiences? Feminist theologies which explicitly seek to overcome body/mind dualisms often reinscribe them when they neglect to attend to perception as a critical element of bodily experience. Phenomenological analyses of perception (such as suggested by Merleau-Ponty) strengthen and refine our conception of embodiment. Grounding constructive theology in experience …


Re-Visioning Reason, Revelation, And Rejection In John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding And John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious., Jonathan S. Marko Jan 2012

Re-Visioning Reason, Revelation, And Rejection In John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding And John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious., Jonathan S. Marko

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

Histories of philosophy that cover the rise of natural religion in England will inevitably move from John Locke to John Toland. The typical account portrays Locke as sincerely Christian and trying to balance the demands of faith and reason. His rationalistic epistemology in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Essay) even defends doctrines that are “above reason.” Toland is portrayed as a disciple of Locke whose modified Lockean epistemology in Christianity Not Mysterious (CNM) results in a subordination of revelation to reason and a dismissal of doctrines that are above reason. More detailed treatments note that CNM is the catalyst of …


An Analysis And Critique Of Leonardo Boff's Theology And Social Ethics, Luiz Roberto França De Mattos Jan 2001

An Analysis And Critique Of Leonardo Boff's Theology And Social Ethics, Luiz Roberto França De Mattos

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

Leonardo Boff wrestles seriously with two challenging questions, namely, the reality of poverty in today's world and the contemporary ecological crisis. His overall project is to offer a Christian response to them. This project has three cornerstones: first, some Marxist axioms underlying his social analysis; second, an ontology appropriated from Teilhard de Chardin and strongly emphasizing the evolution of the universe; third, an epistemological suspicion of the human ability to know reality in itself. While the importance of Boff's work cannot be denied, the theological price Hoff pays for putting his priority on social ethics is considerable. His dismissal of …


A Study Of Epistemology In The Theologies Of Emil Brunner, Martin Heinecken, Taito Kantonen, And Joseph Sittler, John Heinemeier May 1963

A Study Of Epistemology In The Theologies Of Emil Brunner, Martin Heinecken, Taito Kantonen, And Joseph Sittler, John Heinemeier

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Chapter I of the paper will deal with Brunner and Chapter II with Heinecken, Kantonen and Sittler in comparison to Brunner. The concluding section will summarize Brunner’s position, evaluate the comparison made between his position and that of the three Lutherans, and raise several questions for further investigation in this field.