Intellectual History Commons^™

Das Gestell And Human Autonomy: On Andrew Feenberg's Interpretation Of Martin Heidegger, Zachary Peck

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In my thesis, I examine the relationship between modern technology and human autonomy from the philosophical perspective of Martin Heidegger. He argues that the essence of modern technology is the Gestell. Often translated as ‘enframing,’ the Gestell is a mode of revealing, or understanding, being, in which all beings are revealed as, or understood as, raw materials. By revealing all beings as raw materials, we eventually understand ourselves as raw materials. I argue that this undermines human autonomy, but, unlike Andrew Feenberg, I do not believe this process is irreversible from Heidegger’s perspective. I articulate the meaning of the …

Review Of Living Well In Renaissance Italy: The Virtues Of Humanism And The Irony Of Leon Battista Alberti, By Timothy Kircher., Brian Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

Leon Battista Alberti wrote with a sense of irony that separated his works from his humanist contemporaries and linked him to the tradition of fourteenth-century vernacular writers, particularly Petrarch and Boccaccio. His irony was characterized by his encouragement to look for virtue beneath appearances and his distrust of equating virtue with humanist learning.

Review Of Neo-Latin And The Humanities: Essays In Honour Of Charles E. Fantazzi, Ed. By Luc Deitz, Timothy Kircher, And Jonathan Reid., Brian Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

This is a collection of essays that works to illustrate the cultural force of Neo-Latin and the humanists who wrote them.

Comparison Of Focus And Audience Between Seneca’S Natural Questions And Pliny’S Natural History, Joshua Ely

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Around 65 AD, the Ancient Roman philosopher Seneca wrote his only text concerning Natural Phenomenon: Natural Questions. Considered since medieval times as part of a trinity of great thinkers including Plato and Aristotle, Seneca’s work in rhetoric, philosophy, and legal theory still receive praise today. The praise is not replicated for Natural Questions, however. Modern historians who consider the work paint it as uninspiring. Pliny, another Roman author and philosopher, wrote a far more encompassing and detailed work called Natural History, and it is this work that is considered the premier Roman comment on Natural Philosophy. These contemporaneous …

Review Of Humanism In Fifteenth-Century Europe., Brian Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

This important book seeks to dispel the myth that humanism and humanists were unique to the Italian Peninsula during the Fifteenth Century.

Review Of Niccolò Machiavelli: An Intellectual Biography, Brian Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

The author offers a comprehensive analysis of the thought of Machiavelli situated against the backdrop of political and biographical developments in the early 16th century.

A Problem Of Perception An Analysis Of The Formation, Reception, And Implementation Of National Socialist Ideology In Germany, 1919 To 1939, Derrick Angermeier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to dispel the notion that Nazi ideology was merely an afterthought to numerous actions taken by the Nazis. The first chapter discusses how Nazism’s earliest adherents internalized notions from World War I into an ideology that would motivate the early Nazi Movement to launch the Beer Hall Putsch. The second chapter focuses on the Nazi Party’s electoral tactics and how those actions correlated with entrenched Nazi ideological notions of recognition and community. Finally, the third chapter will seek to demonstrate that the numerous repressive measures implemented by the Third Reich were part of a general plan to …

Review Of A History Of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620, Brian Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

Mack provides a comprehensive examination of the content and circulation of rhetorical manuals published during the European Renaissance.

“This Sort Of Men”: The Vernacular And The Humanist Movement In Fifteenth-Century Florence, Brian Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

This article focuses on a sliver of the individuals we now know as the Neo-Latinists, who viewed the vernacular as a vehicle for expression throughout the quattrocento.

Review Of Angelo Poliziano’S Lamia: Text, Translation, And Introductory Studies, Brian Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

This book reviewed discusses the life of Angelo Poliziano who was a leading humanist in Lorenzo de' Medici's Flroence. Poliziano was brought into the household of Lorenzo as a secretary and tutor for the Medici children in the early 1470's.