Philosophy Commons^™

An Exposition Of Blaga's Fiinta Istorica.Docx, Michael Jones

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is an introduction to the book Fiinta istorica (The Historical Being), written by the 20th century Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga. Blaga was an important thinker, authoring over 30 books of philosophy and a great many articles. Unfortunatly very little of his work is translated into English. This book is the very last that he wrote. It was published posthumously.

Shifting Identities: Professorial Identification During Covid-19, Anthony Survance

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Building on existing studies of identification, this paper melds crisis research with studies of identity to understand how crises influence workplace identities. To accomplish this, the study addresses two research questions: (a) How are professors’ identities enacted during the COVID-19 crisis? And, how, if at all, does university rhetoric shape the enactment of identity during the COVID-19 crisis? This paper uses qualitative methods to get rich descriptions of professorial identities allowing research to get at the heart of how changes during the pandemic affected professors’ organizational, personal, professional, and workgroup identities. Overall, this study shows the pandemic encouraged professors to …

Wellness Review 2021, Part 2, Brian A. Ferguson, Martin Huecker

Journal of Wellness

Introduction: This article presents Part 2 of the biannual JWellness Review of literature from 2021 (July – December). We emphasize new science and resilience initiatives published outside of JWellness that seek understanding of burnout and thriving among healthcare professionals (HCPs).

Methods: For the interval of July 1 to December 30, 2021, PubMed was queried for empirical and observational research studies, review articles, guideline summaries, letters, and editorials. Of 93 results, we reviewed methods and salient points to arrive at a final list of 48 articles for inclusion.

Literature in Review: Common themes that emerged included teamwork, EMR optimization, group decompression, …

Public Goods From Private Data: An Effectiveness And Justification Dilemma For Digital Contact Tracing, Andrew Buzzell

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Debate about the adoption of digital contact tracing (DCT) apps to control the spread of COVID-19 has focussed on risks to individual privacy. This emphasis reveals significant challenges to ethical deployment of DCT, but generates constraints which undermine justification to implement DCT. It would be a mistake to view this result solely as the successful operation of ethical foresight analysis, preventing deployment of potentially harmful technology. Privacy-centric analysis treats data as private property, frames the relationship between individuals and governments as adversarial, entrenches technology platforms as gatekeepers, and supports a conception of emergency public health authority as limited by individual …

Ecofeminism And The Domination Of Women In Moana, Jessica Marinho

Student Research Symposium

A rhetorical analysis of Moana through an ecofeminist theory lense, drawing on the parallels of the objectification and domination of women through the character of Maui.

Egyptian Etiquette: A Historical Rebuttal To The Genealogy Of Morals, Noah C. Evans

Honors College Theses

In his book Genealogy of Morals, German philologist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche posits an understanding of the origin and development of morality that stood in stark contrast to the common understanding of his day. Rather than presuming the existence of some metaphysical, objective reality to morality, Nietzsche outlines a natural development and evolution to the concepts of "Good," "Bad," and "Evil" throughout a nebulously defined period of history, focusing primarily on the psychological conditions surrounding the advent of morality. Following this, he wrote The Antichrist, in which he provided a far more specific historical framework within which the …

Antimicrobial Activity Of Artemisia Tridentata, David Suisse

Student Research Symposium

Natural medicines with antimicrobial capabilities often contain secondary metabolites from any number of plants or fungi. These plant-derived compounds can have great medicinal or agricultural value. Artemisia tridentata is said to contain antimicrobial compounds and has been used as a medicinal herb in Native American cultural medicine. Artemisia annua, a Chinese herb, was used to derive artemisinin, a common antimalarial drug and potential anticancer treatment. Very few studies exist to research the identity of any antimicrobial compounds in A. tridentata.This study is to identify any antimicrobial compounds in A. tridentata. We collected, dried, and crushed local samples of three different …

Effects Of Life-Extension Biotechnology On Global Society, David Suisse

Student Research Symposium

For much of human history, diseases and disorders ranging from tuberculosis and the flu to cancer and Alzheimer’s have appeared inevitable and unstoppable. Yet modern medicine offers remedies to many illnesses that used to be fatal and continues to make astounding steps against other disorders that experts now understand to be treatable. In the last 10 years, scientists have made remarkable progress regarding the causes of aging itself, and current trends in technological, medical, and genetic research indicate that groundbreaking lifespan-extending and vitality-extending biotechnologies will soon be developed and may be implemented within decades. Some experts suggest that “curing” aging …

Towards A More Formal Understanding Of Anyāpoha, David P. Kasza

Philosophy ETDs

The aim of this thesis is to investigate if Digṇāga’s commitment that non-observation (adarśanam) of the reason (adarśanam)and property to be proven (sādya) in the dissimilar example (vyatireka dṛṣṭānta) is alone sufficient to ground the exclusion of other referents (anyāpoha), as a valid inference for oneself (svārthānumāna) and proof for others (parārthānumāna). To answer this question, four formal accounts of Digṇāga’s view of the three characteristics (Trairūpya) of inference by Hayes, Katsura, Tillemans, and Oetke were consulted. I argue a formal logical account of …

Werner's "Business Ethics Rooted In The Church" (Book Review), J. James Mancuso

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

The Symptom Of Ethics: Rethinking Ethics In The Face Of The Machine, David J. Gunkel

Human-Machine Communication

This essay argues that it is the machine that constitutes the symptom of ethics— “symptom” understood as that excluded “part that has no part” in the system of moral consideration. Ethics, which has been historically organized around a human or at least biological subject, needs the machine to define the proper limits of the moral community even if it simultaneously excludes such mechanisms from any serious claim on moral consideration. The argument will proceed in five steps or movements. The first part will define and characterize “the symptom” as it has been operationalized in the work of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj …

That Solitary Individual - The Biblical Joshua As Kierkegaard's 'Knight Of Faith' And Nietzsche's 'Man Of Power', Joshua Sullivan

Global Tides

Both existential philosophers, Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche occupy opposite ends of the religious spectrum. While Kierkegaard saw faith as the highest revelation of human existence, Nietzsche decreed it the root of European society's qualms. Both philosophers rejected utilitarian notions of society as the highest form of man and espoused the importance of the individual. Each philosopher developed his own archetype for the ideal man; Kierkegaard dubbed his man the 'knight of faith,' Nietzsche named his the 'man of power.' Although these frameworks initially appear irreconcilable, the biblical character of Joshua fills both roles, expanding each and challenging Nietzsche's claim …

The Christian Theory Of History In The Political Philosophy Of Herman Dooyeweerd, Zane Richer

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

The Problem With Pacifism: How Pacifism Can Lead To Genocide And Why One Should Fight To Combat Evil, Mike Consiglio

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Critical Thinking In The Age Of Misinformation: Information Literacy For Citizenship, Tamra Ortgies-Young, Jennfer Lobo Meeks, Barbara Robertson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

As recent political events across the globe have shed a light on the fragility of democratic values, the role of the University in creating a framework for civic education becomes more urgent. Informed, caring and engaged citizenry must be a goal of higher education. Students currently face the emergence of faulty types of information - such as misinformation and disinformation, which undermines the notion of collective or public inquiry, not only within universities, but also within society as a whole. This challenge must be acknowledged and addressed by academic institutions.

Session presenters will provide an overview of their work, “Critical …

Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev And Philosophical Progression, Graham C. Goff

Journal of Religion & Film

The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes’s philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev’s controversial film. This examination of Leviathan’s three unique …

Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …

"For You There Are No Strangers": Albert Schweitzer And The Ethics Of Necessity In Pandemic America, Joel (J.T.) Young

Faculty Scholarship

Claiming millions of lives and affecting millions more, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust humanity into a period of intense reflection on the fragility of life. However, in this time when people have been encouraged to care for their fellow human beings by taking the precautions necessary to protect one another, many have asked the same question as one of Jesus’ antagonistic opponents in the Gospel of Luke: “and who is my neighbor?” In addition to the virus, though, the United States has been plagued by another adversary: non-necessity toward the other. By claiming no responsibility for the well-being and care …

The Difference Between Life And Death: Intellectual Appeasement And Ideological Remolding Of Philosophers In Mao-Era China, Rosalie Looijaard

Asian Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The Proletarian Cultural Revolution marked the near destruction of Chinese tradition and put intellectuals in China in danger – Chairman Mao Zedong stopped at nothing to ensure anything and anyone that opposed his politics would either be assimilated or removed. Some intellectuals chose to appease him – out of fear or naivete, while others stood firm in their beliefs. This paper examines the similarities and differences between the lives and fates of two philosophers during the rise and fall of Mao Zedong - Feng Youlan and Zhang Dongsun. Both philosophers were amiable towards socialism, even before Mao rose to power. …

Persistence In The North Pacific: The Makah People And Their Fight To Protect Their Cultural Heritage, Jeff Cocci

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

In the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of North America a whale swims blissfully unaware of its own significance. It is a Gray Whale; scientists would call it Eschrichtius robustus and at nearly forty feet long, it is large enough that it does not have to worry about sharks or other carnivorous animals. Yet there are those that are brave enough to hunt the whale. They are the Makah People of the Olympian Peninsula, in upper Washington state. By doing so, they place themselves at the center of a complex ethical debate amongst activists, scientists, and the general public. …