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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Spinoza's Methodology: A Genetic Account Of Fundamental Concepts In His Early Writings, Clay Graham
Spinoza's Methodology: A Genetic Account Of Fundamental Concepts In His Early Writings, Clay Graham
Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy
Spinoza’s magnum opus, the Ethics, is written in a very peculiar, “geometrical” style, one that builds metaphysical and ethical doctrines out of mathematical, deductive proofs. These proofs rely on a series of definitions, axioms, propositions, and demonstrations. Nowhere in the Ethics does Spinoza explain his fundamental definitions and axioms, nor does he proffer a defense of his manner of presentation. I claim that by a thorough and systematic investigation of his earliest writings we can peel back the mystery of this geometrical garb and grasp why Spinoza presents his philosophy with formal, mathematical structure. I argue for the view …
Reconsidering Moral Perception: The Dialectical Emergence Of Moral Perceptual Contents During Experience Via Cognitive Penetration And Oppressive Socialization’S Suppression Of Our Ability To ‘See’ Moral Reasons For Humanization And Liberation, James William Lincoln
Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy
Moral perceptions occur when a subject makes an immediate discernment about the moral features of an occurrent experience. This project taxonomizes theories of moral perception into the following two camps: experientialism and judgementalism. I defend a version of experientialism, Moral Perceptual Orientation, by arguing that we, in addition to making moral judgments, have genuine perceptions with moral content during occurrent experience. I then go on to advance a framework for understanding how these perceptions are curated by our background beliefs by developing a view of dialectical consciousness. I do this by synthesizing Herbert Marcuse’s perspective on the epistemic subject with …
The Revolt Against Mourning: Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, And Beyond, Andrew Leo Beutel
The Revolt Against Mourning: Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, And Beyond, Andrew Leo Beutel
Theses and Dissertations--English
The Revolt against Mourning calls into question the widespread critical alignment of literary modernism with Freudian melancholia. Focusing instead on “mourning,” through close readings of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, I demonstrate how their depictions of this notion overturn both its traditional and contemporary understandings. Whereas Freud conceives mourning as a psychic labor that the subject slowly and painfully carries out, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner convey it as a destabilizing, subversive, and transformative force to which the subject is radically passive. For Freud, mourning is a matter …
Aristotle And Game Theory On Human Nature And Ethics, Beau R. Revlett
Aristotle And Game Theory On Human Nature And Ethics, Beau R. Revlett
Oswald Research and Creativity Competition
This paper considers whether Aristotle’s ethics is consistent with one modern scientific view of humans. The modern scientific view discussed is based on Nancy Cartwright’s argument that game theory uncovers something akin to the Aristotelian natures of humans. Following Martha Nussbaum, this paper focuses on the role of human nature in Aristotle’s ethics. Specifically, it focuses on two kinds of ethical conclusions Aristotle grounds in claims about human nature: one about what can be coherently desired for a human being, one about the social arrangements appropriate to human beings. This paper considers Nussbaum’s interpretation that Aristotle’s claims about human nature …
Transcendental Idealism’S Theory Of Selfhood: Fichte On The Relationship Between Knowing Oneself And Moral Deliberation, Caroline Ann Buchanan
Transcendental Idealism’S Theory Of Selfhood: Fichte On The Relationship Between Knowing Oneself And Moral Deliberation, Caroline Ann Buchanan
Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy
In this dissertation, I take on an exegetical project of understanding how Fichte’s theory of the self influences his account of moral deliberation, and specifically, his account of conscience. I argue that moral action can only be understood within Fichte’s system as possible on the basis of the individual’s own cognitive awareness that they are not only bound by the moral law, but that they are so in virtue of their essential nature as selves. In other words, the feeling of conscience in Fichte’s work, and the decision to abide it, requires that the acting individual recognize that the ought …
A Pedagogy For Justice: Kant, Hegel, Marcuse And Freire On Education And The Good Society, Michelle J. Johnson
A Pedagogy For Justice: Kant, Hegel, Marcuse And Freire On Education And The Good Society, Michelle J. Johnson
Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy
Rousseau’s educational treatise Emile is a well-known pedagogical work often noted for its progressive educational insights. Although Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy is much less well known, Kant suggests a solution to an educational problem Rousseau is unable to solve: the problem of whether or not education can work for the good of humanity. Rousseau is concerned that society, and the schools in society, inflames people’s passions and leads to inequality and enslavement. Rousseau sketches an educational program that ideally develops students’ autonomous moral reasoning untainted by inflamed passion, an education which enables students to be moral and just citizens, working …
The Normative Architecture Of Reality: Towards An Object-Oriented Ethics, Justin L. Harmon
The Normative Architecture Of Reality: Towards An Object-Oriented Ethics, Justin L. Harmon
Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy
The fact-value distinction has structured and still structures ongoing debates in metaethics, and all of the major positions in the field (expressivism, cognitivist realism, and moral error theory) subscribe to it. In contrast, I claim that the fact-value distinction is a contingent product of our intellectual history and a prime object for questioning. The most forceful reason for rejecting the distinction is that it presupposes a problematic understanding of the subject-object divide whereby one tends to view humans as the sole source of normativity in the world. My dissertation aims to disclose the background against which human ethical praxis is …
Mackenzie, Catriona; Rogers, Wendy; And Dodds, Susan, Eds. Vulnerability: New Essays In Ethics And Feminist Philosophy (Review), Anita Superson
Mackenzie, Catriona; Rogers, Wendy; And Dodds, Susan, Eds. Vulnerability: New Essays In Ethics And Feminist Philosophy (Review), Anita Superson
Philosophy Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.