Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Animal Cognition, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic

Sentience Collection

Debates in applied ethics about the proper treatment of animals often refer to empirical data about animal cognition, emotion, and behavior. In addition, there is increasing interest in the question of whether any nonhuman animal could be something like a moral agent.

Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward A Postmodern Christian Faith, Merold Westphal

Philosophy & Theory

Overcoming Onto-theology is a stunning collection of essays by Merold Westphal, one of America’s leading continental philosophers of religion, in which Westphal carefully explores the nature and the structure of a postmodern Christian philosophy. Written with characteristic clarity and charm, Westphal offers masterful studies of Heidegger’s early lectures on Paul and Augustine, the idea of hermeneutics, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Derrida, and Nietzsche, all in the service of building his argument that postmodern thinking offers an indispensable tool for rethinking Christian faith. A must read for every student and professor of continental philosophy and the philosophy of religion, Overcoming Onto-theology is an …

Skepticism Leads To Faith, Kelsey Kats

The First-Year Papers (2010 - present)

No abstract provided.

Hesitation: An Analysis Of Candide, Jared T. Mink

Masters Theses

Candide calls into question its merit as literature or philosophy because it draws its reader into eisegesis. The act of interpreting Candide is never a cool judgment. The enigmatic ending forces the reader to see that acts of judgment are appetitive: Desires shape judgment; judgment plies desire. Candide's behavior reveals eighteenth century interest in "the body," which was the scientist's chief tool in entering "the void" to explore the integrity of new knowledge. We see this body interest in Locke's Essay and, through a concept of "hesitation," we can see that Voltaire absorbed Lock's view of the interconnection between judgment …

Introduction, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

To say that Memento (2000) is thought-provoking would be, at best, an understatement. One of the main reasons for this neo-noir's popular success is that audiences were hooked by the very puzzles that make the film a challenging one. These puzzles occur at various levels. There is the initial question of what exactly the structure of the film is and, once this is solved, the much more difficult task of extracting the story—what actually happens in the film, and the chronological order of the fictional events—from the fragmented plot. At the same time, however, the film quite explicitly raises philosophical …

Nietzsche, Virtue, And The Horror Of Existence, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Robert Solomon argues that Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic like Aristotle's. Solomon’s approach seems unaware of Nietzsche’s belief in the horror of existence. A life that contains as much suffering as Nietzsche expects a life to contain, could not be considered a good life by Aristotle. To go further, as Nietzsche does in his doctrines of eternal recurrence and amor fati, to advocate loving such a fate, to refuse to change the slightest detail, Aristotle would find debased. Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic, but not an Aristotelian one.

The Oxford Handbook Of Philosophy And Literature, Richard Thomas Eldridge

Philosophy Faculty Works

This introductory article explains the coverage of this book, which is about the relations of complementarity and opposition between philosophy and literature. This book explores the interests for human life of specific genres of literature, considers broad modes of attention that have marked off certain large cultural periods from one another, traces workings of certain central literary devices for achieving attention and evaluates the use of literature as a practice in relation to the practices of inquiry, morality and politics. It also discusses the significance of the works of some philosophers in analyzing literary practice.

After Utopia: Three Post-Personal Subjects Consider The Possibilities, Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

Review essay.

The task for those exploring the relationship of Deleuze to cultural issues is not to extend his thought in a straight line, but to swerve or veer into thinking a productive approach to the cultural events that actualise themselves in our time. Cain states that the virtue of these three books is that they do not simply go back to the same old questions; all of them represent departures in thinking in the best sense of the word.

William E. Connolly (2008). Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Alexander García Düttmann (2007). …

Governmentality, Biopower, And The Debate Over Genetic Enhancement, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Although Foucault adamantly refused to make moral pronouncements or dictate moral principles or political programs to his readers, his work offers a number of tools and concepts that can help us develop our own ethical views and practices. One of these tools is genealogical analysis, and one of these concepts is “biopower.” Specifically, this essay seeks to demonstrate that Foucault’s concept of biopower and his genealogical method are valuable as we consider moral questions raised by genetic enhancement technologies. First, it examines contemporary debate over the development, marketing, and application of such technologies, suggesting that what passes for ethical deliberation …

The Perils Of Forgetting Fairness, Michael B. Dorff, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.