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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Bedecke Deinen Himmel, Zeus! Goethe And The Quest For Individual Sovereignty, Anthony D. Magestro Sep 2015

Bedecke Deinen Himmel, Zeus! Goethe And The Quest For Individual Sovereignty, Anthony D. Magestro

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This project examines Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774) and his early poetry and their influence on the German literary movement of Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress, 1770-1785). As a reaction to the rise of rationalism, Goethe’s texts embody the value of raw, subjective emotion versus logical, objective understanding of the preceding Enlightenment period. Through his literature, Goethe challenges the status quo of absolute rule of church and state as well as humanity’s relationship with God: are we bound to the laws of the Almighty’s design or are …


Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard And The Unspeakable, Joseph C. Mohrfeld Aug 2014

Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard And The Unspeakable, Joseph C. Mohrfeld

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Soren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein have long been thought of as philosophers with little, if anything in common. There are but a handful of contemporary philosophers who have provided links between works by Kierkegaard and works by Wittgenstein; however no one has, at least explicitly, provided the following link I intend to show in this paper. I will show Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus have a remarkably common theme. The theme is the ability of one to communicate, or understand the unspeakable, that which remains beyond the limits of language. Both have a unique approach to …


Applying Early Existential Critiques To Contemporary Themes In American Culture, Erik S. Berquist, Derek J. Skillings Aug 2014

Applying Early Existential Critiques To Contemporary Themes In American Culture, Erik S. Berquist, Derek J. Skillings

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Charles Taylor, Carl Elliot, Alexis De Tocqueville, and Lionel Trilling have presented and critically analyzed a number of ideals that animate currents in contemporary American Culture, which include authenticity, sincerity, pluralism, subjectivism, and self-actualization, but these ideals do not harmoniously coexist; rather, they inevitably conflict. These notions have been realized in a way that is unique in their current understandings. Though there is the appearance of some homogeneity amongst these themes, they inevitably clash and contain internal tensions. The philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche respond to many of the ideas that underlie these modern notions. Though differing in degrees, these critiques …


Intentionality In Kant And Wittgensetin, Ryan Feldbrugge Aug 2014

Intentionality In Kant And Wittgensetin, Ryan Feldbrugge

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

How is thought about and experience of a world possible? This has been the framing question of the present work and it is generally understood as the problem of intentionality. The more specific problem dealt with has been whether or not intentionality has an internal structure that can be made explicit through science, particularly cognitive science. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant outlines an internal, mental structure that, when imposed on our sensory data, makes thought about and experience of a world possible, which can be viewed as highly anticipatory of modern cognitive science. On the other hand, …