Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Illusions Of Freedom? A History Of Attitudes Toward Death, Dominick Bucca
Illusions Of Freedom? A History Of Attitudes Toward Death, Dominick Bucca
All Theses
My thesis explores the historical question: “Is there any freedom from death?” through three figures within the Western metaphysical tradition: Thucydides (460-400 BCE), Augustine (354-430 CE), and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). In so doing, my thesis suggests the following: for Thucydides, freedom from death arose through the immortality of empire; for Augustine, through the immortality of God’s grace; and for Cervantes, through the immortality of narratives/attitudes of immortality. Moreover, I nest my claim within an exploratory narrative. Which is to say that, lifting a page from Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), I have attempted to break away from the near total …
The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass
The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass
All Theses
Browning's fascination with the senses and the mind as determiners of reality floods his work. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,' in particular, offers a more complicated, sincere exploration of this topic that had become central to Victorian debate. As Browning acknowledges repeatedly through his poetry, the debate between sensory data (empiricism) and supersensory belief (idealism) could not be understood in clear-cut categories. In much of his poetry, however, he grounds these questions in deceptively simple discussions of mesmerism or the Victorian philosophy of the mind. Although those two topics may seem disparate to twenty-first century readers, Victorian belief …