Arts and Humanities Commons^™

05. Aesthetics, Humor, And Virtue: Reflections On Richards And The Good Life, Elizabeth Victor

Praxis, Poems, and Punchlines: Essays in Honor of Richard C. Richards

In A Philosopher Looks at the Sense of Humor, Richard C. Richards discusses how one's appreciation of and ability to create incongruities is a necessary condition for developing a sense of humor. One's sense of humor, according to Richards, can be a component of happiness. In this paper, I will build on Richards's concept of the sense of humor. I will argue that Richards account is consistent with an Aristotelian picture of happiness as holistic well-being. Specifically, I will suggest that the attitude underlying the aesthetic and/or the humorous is a kind of pro-attitude that must be cultivated (i.e., …

Praxis, Poems, And Punchlines: Essays In Honor Of Richard C. Richards, Steven Gimbel

Praxis, Poems, and Punchlines: Essays in Honor of Richard C. Richards

Richard C. “Dick” Richards has a 40 year history of being an influential philosopher, teacher, and colleague. This volume collects thoughts, memories, and philosophical essays that engage with and celebrate the life and career of this much beloved figure.

09. A Philosopher With A Sense Of Humor, Eugenio Zaldivar

Praxis, Poems, and Punchlines: Essays in Honor of Richard C. Richards

In this very short acknowledgment I think I’d like to accomplish two things. First, I’d like to give a sense of the affect that having seen Richard in action has had on me. Second, I’d like to point to an important development in philosophy of humor contributed by Richards in his work “A Philosopher Looks at the Sense of Humor” which I believe needs to be central to the philosophical discussion of humor and joking going forward. [excerpt]

Nathifa Greene, Assistant Professor Of Philosophy, Musselman Library, Nathifa Greene

Next Page

In this latest Next Page column, Assistant Professor of Philosophy Nathifa Greene ’03 shares her longtime love of Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, and George Eliot, as well as a newfound appreciation for speculative fiction.

Something To Do With A Girl Named Marla: Eros And Gender In David Fincher’S Fight Club, Vernon W. Cisney

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

David Fincher’s 1999 film, Fight Club, has been characterized in many ways: as a romantic comedy, an exploration of white, middle-class male angst, an existentialist search for meaning amidst the moral ruins of late capitalism, an anarchist manifesto, and so on. But common to nearly every reading of the film, critical and laudatory alike, is the assumption that Fight Club is indisputably a celebration of misogynistic, masculinist virility and violence. On its face, this assumption appears so overwhelmingly obvious as to render superfluous any argumentation in support thereof, and absurd any opposing argumentation. Consider the ubiquitous homoerotic adulation of the …

Wolves Are Wild: A Collection Of Narratives About Rescued Wolves And Wolfdogs, Molly G. Vorhaus

Student Publications

Breeders across the country are creating wolfdogs by breeding dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) with wolves (Canis lupus) for a large profit. This project is a response to the growing exotic pet trade of wolves and wolfdogs. Through this project, I hope to bring awareness to the issues associated with these animals being raised in captivity. Recent research has shown that raising a wolf or wolfdog in captivity can lead to various negative psychological and physical effects on the animal, and can cause potential problems for humans as well. This practice is embedded in the concept of humans wanting to own …

Moral Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, Daniel R. Denicola

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Moral Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction is a compact yet comprehensive book offering an explication and critique of the major theories that have shaped philosophical ethics. Engaging with both historical and contemporary figures, this book explores the scope, limits, and requirements of morality. DeNicola traces our various attempts to ground morality: in nature, in religion, in culture, in social contracts, and in aspects of the human person such as reason, emotions, caring, and intuition.

Deleuze And Derrida: Difference And The Power Of The Negative, Vernon W. Cisney

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The first scholarly comparative analysis of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze's philosophies of difference.

Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze are best known for their respective attempts to theoretically formulate non-dialectical conceptions of difference. Now, for the first time, Vernon W. Cisney brings you a scholarly analysis of their contrasting concepts of difference.

Cisney distinguishes their conceptions of difference by differentiating them on the basis of the criticisms they level against Hegel, as well as their valorisations of Nietzsche, and the ways in which they understand Nietzsche's thought to surpass that of Hegel. The contrast between the two, Cisney argues, is …

The Poststructuralist Broom Of Wallace’S System: A Conversation Between Wittgenstein And Derrida, Vernon W. Cisney

Philosophy Faculty Publications

David Foster Wallace famously characterized his first novel, The Broom of the System, as ‘a conversation between [Ludwig] Wittgenstein and [Jacques] Derrida.’ This comes as little surprise, given the ubiquity of the question of language in the works of these two thinkers, and given the novel’s constant reflections on the relation between language and world. Broom’s protagonist, Lenore Beadsmen – in search of her eponymous great-grandmother – is preoccupied with the dread that ‘all that really exists of [her] life is what can be said about it,’ that is to say, that reality is entirely coextensive with language. …

Physician Assisted Dying As An Extension Of Healing, Zoe I. Marinacci

Student Publications

The role of a physician is to provide care for those who seek their assistance. Lisa Yount attributes the most ancient statement about this activity to the Hippocratic Oath. Many doctors, in fact, still take this oath, part of which reads, “I will [not] give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to that effect,” (8). This vow is still widely considered to be the ultimate statement of the physician’s moral creed (Yount 8). Debate over whether active physician assisted dying is an extension of healing ability or a violation of their …

Can The Philanthropic Imperative Enhance International Health Care?, Paul Carrick

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Elsewhere I have argued that, historically, the public and private funding of health care has been fueled primarily by four mixed motives, namely, the redemptive, the utilitarian, the prudential, and the charitable motives. In this paper, I further explore what I call the unifying moral force of the philanthropic imperative. The philanthropic imperative interfaces these four motives by potentially appealing to the consciences of wealthier Northern countries to provide medical resources to the sick and hurting in the typically poorer South. This, as a matter of our collective duty to others consistent with the teachings of Immanuel Kant, Thich Nhat …

A New Vision Of Liberal Education: The Good Of The Unexamined Life, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Alistair Miller’s book, A New Vision of Liberal Education, is a dilation of his doctoral thesis, but it is enormously ambitious in aim: “My specific aim in this book is to explore whether aspects of the two traditions [of Enlightenment and Aristotelian ethics] might be synthesised in the concrete form of a liberal-humanist education” (NVLE, 11). Indeed, the arc of Miller’s argument ranges from these contrasting traditions of moral philosophy, through alternate versions of liberal education, to a proposal for curricular content. The book is well researched and proceeds dialectically, as Miller sifts through scholarship on liberal education, moral education, …

Combating Chromophobia: The Importance Of Living Life In Full Color, Natasha G. Kerr

Student Publications

David Batchelor argues that Western culture has chromophobia, a fear of corruption by color, and therefore tends to marginalize color in favor of the achromatic and linear. In examination of cinematic examples of The Wizard of Oz and Pleasantville, as well as the novel The Giver, this paper explores the Chromophobia thesis in action, discussing the dangers of a chromophobic society compared to the benefits of a fall into color. Based on the equation of the fall into color with the fall into self-consciousness, the paper further illustrates the importance of color to life and its role in authenticity and …

American Populism Shouldn’T Have To Embrace Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Public ignorance is an inherent threat to democracy. It breeds superstition, prejudice, and error; and it prevents both a clear-eyed understanding of the world and the formulation of wise policies to adapt to that world.

Plato believed it was more than a threat: He thought it characterized democracies, and would lead them inevitably into anarchy and ultimately tyranny. But the liberal democracies of the modern era, grudgingly extending suffrage, have extended public education in parallel, in the hope of cultivating an informed citizenry. Yet today, given the persistence and severity of public ignorance, the ideal of an enlightened electorate seems …

Horror Fiction, Aljoša Mršović

Student Publications

Horror is a relatively new emotion. It is based on the subversion of a scientific account of the world. Therefore, it could not have existed prior to the establishment of such an account. Furthermore, it is unique because it can only be experienced through a fictional medium, as only a fictional medium allows the violation of the scientific, or natural, account of the world. There are several schools of thought that attempt to explain the phenomenon of fictional emotions, but 'irrationality' appears to be the most in touch with the scientific understanding of how the brain processes fictional emotions. Ultimately, …

The Possibility Of An Afterlife As Examined Through Near-Death Experiences, Anastasia N. Semenov

Student Publications

Approximately five percent of the world’s population has dealt with a near-death experience, which is the unusual phenomenon after temporarily dying or coming close to death, where people feel like they have left their body and see an afterlife. Millions of accounts from people around the world who have experienced this occurrence tell of seeing an afterlife, which should allow for the possibility of a life after death. Although peoples’ experiences in another realm differ, they all have similar features such as travelling in a fast tunnel and encountering loving light beings. These experiences are so intense that they form …

The Necessary Right Of Choice For Physician-Assisted Suicide, Kerry E. Ullman

Student Publications

Research-based paper on the importance of the right for terminally ill patients facing a painful death to be able to choose how they end their life

Exploring The Notion Of Forgetting, Nora H. Coyne

Student Publications

Ignorance and forgetting are similar in some regards, as both involve a state of not knowing. Often forgetting, like ignorance, can put us at a disadvantage in regards to a lack of retaining knowledge. Forgetting can lead to ignorance if not realized and remedied. However, just as ignorance is more than a lack of knowledge, forgetting is more than a lack of remembrance. There are many kinds of forgetting, each with different kinds memories lost and purposes served. Despite the inherent risks of forgetting, there are advantages, ones that make forgetting an essential part of human cognition. In fact, without …

Health And Sickness: An Examination Of The Question Of The Affirmation Or Negation Of Life In The Face Of Suffering, Frank M. Scavelli

Student Publications

In this thesis, I examine a line of thought that stretches from Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who regarded his own work merely as an interpretation and continuation Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) philosophy, through Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who reacted to Schopenhauer’s negation of life with an affirmative philosophy, to Thomas Mann (1875-1955), who, operating from within this tradition, attempted a synthesis of it as well as a critical analysis of some of its aspects and their relation to seemingly-pathological fascistic sentiment he witnessed in the Germany of the 1920s and 30s. This line of thought deals with the essential question of Life. It …

Knowing How: A Computational Approach, Joseph A. Roman

Student Publications

With advances in Artificial Intelligences being achieved through the use of Artificial Neural Networks, we are now at the point where computers are able to do tasks that were previously only able to be accomplished by humans. These advancements must cause us to reconsider our previous understanding of how people come to know how to do a particular task. In order to unpack this question, I will first look to an account of knowing how presented by Jason Stanley in his book Know How. I will then look towards criticisms of this view before using evidence presented by the existence …

A Bite Of Technology – How Technologies Have Made Our Food “Transformers", Huanjia Zhang

Student Publications

This poster discusses one important metaphysical question concerning food and food technologies – that is, how technologies have gradually alienated food from its natural rooting and what are the consequent philosophical concerns behind that. In order to examine this question, this poster will discuss four key sources that each exemplifies a well-known, currently ongoing technology on different levels that has altered the natural properties of food and the controversy concerning such technology.

The Passion Of The Infant Christ: Critical Edition, Caryll Houselander, Kerry S. Walters

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Although forgotten until quite recently, Caryll Houselander, who died in 1954, was a sensitive and profound English Roman Catholic writer on Christian spirituality. In this critical edition of her 1949 book The Passion of the Infant Christ, Houselander argues that the physical world is an "inscaped" revelation of the mind of the Creator. Every concrete object and every temporal event mirrors the eternal, just as the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus mirror the circumstances surrounding his death and resurrection.

Editor Kerry Walters discusses both Houselander's life and the primary themes of The Passion of the Infant Christ in …

Poetic Witness In A Networked Age, Jerome D. Clarke

Student Publications

When online videos mobilize protestors to occupy public spaces, and those protestors incorporate hashtags in their chants and markered placards, deliberative democratic theory must no longer dismiss technology and peoples historically excluded from the arena of politics. Specifically, political models must account for the role of repetition in paving the way for unheard and unseen messages and people to appear in the political arena. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the Performative and Hannah Arendt’s Space of Appearance, this paper assesses that critical and generative role of iteration. Repeating unheeded acts performs the capacity for those acts to be entered …

Serving The Public First: Archives 2.0, Matthew D. Laroche

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The hallmarks of contemporary archival philosophy, known casually as “Archives 2.0,” have everything to do with making archives open, attractive resources for researchers of all persuasions. These rotate around a few main assertions. First, that archivists should endeavor to make their repositories as attractive as possible to users—this means offering friendly, all-inclusive access, being responsive to user desires, being tech-savvy, and leaving some discovery and processing of collections to the researcher. Secondly, modern archiving stresses accessibility—having a standardized way of organizing collections that will be easily understood by visiting researchers, utilizing language familiar to average people for finding aides, and …

Provocations In Consideration Of Thomas Nail's The Figure Of The Migrant, Vernon W. Cisney

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I am delighted to be part of the conversation surrounding this important work. Thomas Nail’s The Figure of the Migrant is one of those rare works that is at once timely and timeless. It is timely in the sense that the figure of the migrant has become a ubiquitous and undeniable reality of our time. As I write this at the end of spring 2016, the number of Syrian citizens displaced by civil war since 2011 has climbed to roughly 13.5 million; the United States is in the middle of its most racially charged presidential election of my lifetime (with …

Balance In Tristram Shandy: Laurence Sterne Through Friedrich Schiller’S Eyes, Peter W. Rosenberger

Student Publications

Many critics of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy see the novel’s narrative elements and structure as a form of narrative play, which reject Enlightenment systems of understanding. In this paper, through the philosophy of Friedrich Schiller, I will argue that the novel’s narrative structure is best understood as a balance of aesthetic impulses. For most scholars, to understand the narrative form, digressions, philosophy of knowledge, and/or history in Tristram Shandy, one must understand how the novel subverts the categorization and systematization of Enlightenment thinking. The patterns of subversion in the text lend themselves to arguments that characterize the novel as one …

Stigmatized Words: A Defense Of Political Correctness, Peter W. Rosenberger

Student Publications

The debate over political correctness and the repression of speech has experienced a resurgence in the 2016 election season. “Political correctness is killing people,” Senator Ted Cruz remarked in December 2015. This thesis explores the liberal justification for the repressing politically incorrect speech and challenges the association of expressive freedom with truth, a position linked to John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of liberty and George Orwell’s denunciation of political speech. Reflecting contemporary postmodern views on language and liberation, I ultimately defend political correctness as a way to reflect social stigmatization, render stigmatized words more visible, and enhance linguistic agency.

The Republic Of Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Ignorance is trending. Despite universal compulsory education; despite new tools for learning and great advances in knowledge; despite breathtaking increases in our ability to store, access, and share a superabundance of information - ignorance flourishes. [excerpt]

The Republic Of Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

“When did ignorance become a point of view?” the cartoon character Dilbert once asked. It’s a question that has become increasingly resonant these days—especially in our public life, and especially in our political campaigns in which elected officials and those who seek election seem to assume a startling level of public ignorance. Perhaps that’s smart. [excerpt]

All The World Is Shining, And Love Is Smiling Through All Things: The Collapse Of The "Two Ways" In 'The Tree Of Life', Vernon W. Cisney

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Chapter Summary: From the blackness emerges a subtly scripted epigraph from the biblical book of Job, silently posing a question to the viewer on behalf of the almighty: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation...while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Following thirty-five chapters of Job's story, filled with relentless criticism on the part of Job's "friends" in response to Job's ongoing poetically formulated and impassioned lamentations, and the demands he places before God - demands for justice and an explanation for his suffering - at last the voice of …