History Commons^™

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

Helene Stöcker, Weimar Germany And Prophylactics: An Investigation Into The Context And Effects Of The Reichsgesestz Zur Bekämpfung Geschlechtskrankheiten, Joshua Stern

Dissertations and Theses

This paper investigates German gender studies in the Weimar Era. It looks at a specific law, passed regarding contraceptive devices. It seeks to show how women were presented with a guise of freedom, while living in a truly paternalistic society.

From Pietism To Pluralism: Boston Personalism And The Liberal Era In American Methodist Theology, 1876-1953, Amos Yong

Dissertations and Theses

Boston personalism has generally been recognized as a philosophic system based upon a metaphysical idealism. What is less known, however, is that the founder of this school of thought and some of the major contributors to the early development of this tradition were committed members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The purpose of this study is to examine the contributions made by the early Boston personalists to the cause of theological liberalism in the Methodist Church. It will be shown that personalist philosophers and theologians at Boston University ushered in and consolidated the liberal era in Methodist theology. Further, it …

Facing Both Ways: Yan Fu, Hu Shi, And Chen Duxiu -- Chinese Intellectuals And The Meaning Of Modern Science, 1895-1923, Niobeh Crowfoot Tsaba

Dissertations and Theses

The concern of Chinese intellectuals with the "idea" of modern science from the West in the transition generation from 1895 to 1923 was fundamentally a concern about "national survival" and modernity. The value and meaning that accrued to science as "method" -- as a "thinking technique" -- and to the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer as the "science of choice" among Chinese intellectuals of this period, was due to belief or disbelief in the power of these ideas to describe, explain, or solve the problematic of "modernity" in a Chinese context.

Yan Fu's (1853-1921) translations of Thomas …

Nietzsche's "Woman" : A Metaphor Without Brakes, Kathleen Merrow

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis reconsiders the generally held view that Friedrich Nietzsche's works are misogynist. In doing so it provides an interpretation of Nietzsche's texts with respect to the metaphor "woman," sets this interpretation into an historical context of Nietzsche reception and follows the extension of Nietzsche's metaphor "woman" into French feminist theory. It provides an interpretation that shows that a misogynist reading of Nietzsche is in error because such a reading fails to consider the multiple perspectives that operate in Nietzsche's texts.

Patterns In Creativity : An Examination Of Viennese Culture And Politics At The Turn Of The Century, Allen Nolan Hauser

Dissertations and Theses

This examination explores the Viennese cultural milieu at the turn of the century in an effort to show the commonality of backgrounds and interests among those who created the culture during that period. In this the study aims at illustrating the similarities among those artists, intellectuals, and politicians in spite of the fact that their ideas helped lay the basis for the breakdown in integration of twentieth century culture which was illustrated by Carl E. Schorske in his Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture. All this is in pursuance of the overall issue of the origin of the ideas which have …

The Study Of National Character In The Post War Era : The Work Of Erich Fromm, David Riesman, And David Potter, Adam Rittenberg

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the study of national character through the work of the psychologist Erich Fromm, the sociologist David Riesman, and the historian David Potter. Above all Intend to provide a critical exegesis of the three thinkers will relate them to one another by discussing the Interconnections In their thought, beginning with Fromm's social psychological theory of character, turning to Riesman's theory of sociology and, finally, Potter's theory of American history. Each, I argue, must be studied in the context his time--above all the climate of horror and uncertainty at mid-century.

The Philosophy Of William James As Related To Charles Renouvier, Henri Bergson, Maurice Blondel And Emile Boutroux, Peggy Lyne Hurtado

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis argues two issues: William James' philosophy was-to a great extent derived from his interaction with the French philosophers, Charles Renouvier, Henri Bergson, Maurice Blondel and Emile Boutroux. Correlative to the fact that these five figures have an intellectual relationship with one another, I also argue that in order to understand James, he must be placed within the context of these relations. These five philosophers, as a group, can be clearly seen and understood in the context of an identifiable movement. Each one was a part of a whole reality with their own slightly different perspectives. However, the context …

An Historical Overview Of Creativity With Implications For Education, Antoinette S. Ellis

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis traced the development of the concept of creativity from the earliest works in the intellectual history of Western civilization to the late twentieth century. This historical perspective on the concept of creativity served as a backdrop to current views of the concept and as a reference source for recurrent views of the concept and as a reference source for recurrent and essential themes in the progressing debates concerning this issue.

Richard Whately's Theory Of Argument And Its Influence On The Homiletic Theory And Practice Of John Albert Broadus, Robert Allan Vogel

Dissertations and Theses

In his Treatise On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, the Southern Baptist preacher and educator of the latter nineteenth century, John A. Broadus, acknowledged the influence of classical and contemporary theorists upon his work. Among those named, particularly with regard to notions of argument, was Richard Whately, the Anglican Archbishop and rhetorical theorist of the early nineteenth century. The research task involved in this thesis was to determine whether and to what extent Whately's theory of argument was employed in Broadus's homiletic theory and practice.

The writer gathered his data using methods of documentary research. Most of the sources …

Wilhelm Reich's Character Analysis In Its Historical Context, R. Daniel Mccauley

Dissertations and Theses

The thesis is an attempt to reconcile contradictions and devise historical meaning from a problematic text. The book is Wilhelm Reich's Character Analysis, first published in 1933. This influential psychoanalytic work embodies both a radical social theory and disturbing authoritarian attitudes. The thesis uses a variety of methodologies, in particular Roland Barthes' techniques for ascribing historical meaning to certain formal qualities of writing. The thesis proceeds from a summary of methodological studies in intellectual history and criticism, including those of I. A. Richards, R. G. Collingwood, and Dominick LaCapra, as well as Barthes, to a description of Character Analysis and …

The Prosecutors Of Socrates And The Political Motive Theory, Thomas Patrick Kelly

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis presents a critical analysis of the historical roles assigned to the prosecutors of Socrates by modern historians.

Ancient sources relating to the trial and the principles involved, and modern renditions, especially those of John Burnet and A. E. Taylor, originators of the theory that the trial of Socrates was politically motivated, are critically analyzed and examined.

The thesis concludes that the political motive theory is not supported by the evidence on which it relies.

Louis De Potter And The Belgian Revolution Of 1830, Karen N. Groth

Dissertations and Theses

Louis Joseph Antoine De Potter (1786-1.859) was the gifted journalist who served as the catalyst of the successful Belgian revolution of 1830. He has been largely overlooked by students of the nineteenth century revolutionary era. Only one of De Potter's works is known to have been translated into English, his Vie de Scipion de Ricci.

This paper has examined the development of De Potter's thought from his youth up to and including his participation in the Provisional Belgian Government of 1830. For clarity this study has been divided into four chapters.

The Status In 1980 Of The Toulmin Model Of Argument In The Area Of Speech Communication, Jeffrey Robert Sweeney

Dissertations and Theses

In 1958 Stephen E. Toulmin wrote of inadequacies of formal logic and proposed a new field-dependent approach to the analysis of arguments. Despite a generally negative response to his proposal from formal logicians, Toulmin's model for the laying out of arguments for analysis was subsequently appropriated by several speech communication textbook writers. In some textbooks, the Toulmin model has become successor to the syllogism as the paradigm of logical argument. Yet, perhaps due to their seemingly uncritical acceptance of Toulmin's approach there appears to be serious disagreement and confusion among speech communication professionals about the nature and applications of the …

Kykloi : Cyclic Theories In Ancient Greece, Hubert Wayne Nelson

Dissertations and Theses

It is both curious and frustrating, given the perennial popularity of the cycle concept in Ancient Greece, that there has not been a single book written devoted to the wide variety of philosophic and historical conceptions bound up with that loosely descriptive designation. This study was originally undertaken to satisfy my own curiosity on the subject. Herein I intend to survey the entire history of the cycle concept in general from about 700 B.C. to the time of Polybius in the second-century A.D. It is intended to be a descriptive as well as an analytical report.

Martin Luther's Concept Of The Church : Its Implications For The Layman, William W. Dean

Dissertations and Theses

This paper is a study of the relationship between Martin Luther's theology of the church and the practical development of the religious life of the church under his leadership, as this relationship relates to the active and passive roles of the layman in the church. The thesis question is: Did Luther hold a social prejudice against the lower classes and in favor of the upper class that caused him to modify or reinterpret his concept of the church in the course of his career?

The Historical Imagination Of Francesco Petrarch: A Study Of Poetic Truth And Historical Distortion, Sally Scholz

Dissertations and Theses

In the continuing debate among historians over the nature, if not the actual existence, of the Italian Renaissance, the life of Francesco Petrarch has played a major role. Petrarch was an outspoken critic and commentator on the state of fourteenth-century society. His opinions have been cited by all scholars interested in the origins of the “Renaissance Mind.”

François Pierre Guillaume Guizot: An Intellectual Approach, Elbert Hardy Cave

Dissertations and Theses

The problem of this study was to present an intellectual picture of a man who is too often written off as a mere politician and a failure at that. In approaching the problem, his works were used heavily, though availability was a problem. Francois Guizot, the man studied, wrote profusely, on a large variety of subjects, including philosophy, religion, history, political theory, and education. All of these areas were covered in the study. His private papers and correspondence are, for the most part, unpublished, though the eight volumes of his Me´moires were extremely helpful. There are many good biographical studies …