Philosophy Commons^™

Bearing Witness: The Sight Of A Sacrifice In Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills, Megan Girdwood

Journal of Religion & Film

Drawing on the theories of sacrifice advanced by Sigmund Freud (1913) and René Girard (1972; 1982), this article interprets the exorcism depicted by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu in Beyond the Hills (2012) as a sacrifice. Explicating Girard’s defence of Freud, I use his framing of sacrifice as a function of religion to reassess scholarship addressing the parallels between liturgical and cinematic forms of representation. If, as some scholars propose, the practices of the cinema-goer and the worshipper mirror each other, then the sacrificial witness portrayed by Mungiu constitutes a third pillar in this discourse. I argue that Mungiu dramatizes the …

Six Ways Of Looking At Anomalisa, David L. Smith

Journal of Religion & Film

Anomalisa is a parable about the nature of human fulfilment that explores the tension between other-worldly desire (the conviction that real life must be “elsewhere”) and the kind of fulfilment that comes from a more transparent relationship to things as they are. The film explores this religious theme not only through its story, but through the way the story comments on its own embodiment as a puppet show—a work of stop-motion animation. In this paper, I try to tease out the film’s complex reflections on the real and the artificial (in particular, on the ways that a desire for “the …

The Repercussions Of Having A Body, James Harkness

CIE Essay Writing Contest

No abstract provided.

Angel Of Whom?, Garrett Bullock

CIE Essay Writing Contest

No abstract provided.

Literary Philosophers: Irving Singer And George Santayana, Timothy Madigan

Philosophy and Classical Studies Faculty/Staff Publications

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article's first paragraph:

The noted philosopher and Santayana scholar Irving Singer, author of the magisterial three-volume work The Nature of Love, died on February 1, 2015, aged 89. Singer was born in Brooklyn on December 24, 1925, and served in World War II. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1948, under the G.I. Bill. The following year he wed Josephine Fisk, an opera singer with whom he had four children. They spent a year at Oxford (1949–1950), during which time Singer read The Last Puritan, and in 1950 …

The Risks Of Revolution: Ethical Dilemmas In 3d Printing From A Us Perspective, Erica L. Neely

Philosophy and Religion Faculty Scholarship

Additive manufacturing has spread widely over the past decade, especially with the availability of home 3D printers. In the future, many items may be manufactured at home, which raises two ethical issues. First, there are questions of safety. Our current safety regulations depend on centralized manufacturing assumptions they will be difficult to enforce on this new model of manufacturing. Using current US law as an example, I argue that consumers are not capable of fully assessing all relevant risks and thus continue to require protection any regulation will likely apply to plans, however, not physical objects. Second, there are intellectual …

Perceived Patient Control Over Personal Health Information In The Presence Of Context-Specific Concerns, Prabhashi A. Nanayakkara

Doctoral Dissertations

Information privacy issues have plagued the world of electronic media since its inception. This research focused mainly on factors that increase or decrease perceived patient control over personal health information (CTL) in the presence of context-specific concerns. Control agency theory was used for the paper's theoretical contributions. Personal and proxy control agencies acted as the independent variables, and context-specific concerns for information privacy (CFIP) were used as the moderator between proxy control agency, healthcare provider, and CTL. Demographic data and three control variables— the desire for information control, privacy experience, and trust propensity—were also included in the model to gauge …

Sagp Ssips 2016 Program, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Ssips 2016 Abstracts, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Consumer Freeloading Behavior On An Observer's And Perpetrator's Affective Commitment, Mohamad A. Darrat

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation explores the relationship between customer affective commitment and freeloading behavior. Consumer freeloading results when a consumer takes advantage of a system or market procedures in a way that allows him or her to obtain benefits from a value proposition with no or reduced monetary costs. Thus, the freeloading consumer works the value equation in his/her favor at the expense of the marketer and/or other consumers. In addition to examining the point of view of the consumer performing the unethical behavior, the dissertation also examines the impact of such behavior on a third party observer. How do loyal consumers …

Economies Of The Internet, Kylie Jarrett, D. E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The papers in this issue of First Monday were originally presented as a series of panels at the Association of Internet Researchers 2015 conference in Phoenix, Arizona. This short introduction explains the impetus behind the organization of these panels-- which was to document diversity in approaches to the study of internet economies-- and briefly introduces each paper by locating them in the nexus between political economy and cultural studies.

Content Blocking And The Patron As Situated Knower: What Would It Take For An Internet Filter To Work?, Richard Fry, Emily Lawrence

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Librarians often object to Internet filters on the grounds that filters are prone to overblocking and underblocking. This argument implies that a significant problem with contemporary filters is that they are insufficiently fine-grained. In this article, we posit that present-day filters will always be conceptually capable of failure, regardless of how granular their content analysis becomes. This is because, we argue, objections to content are best understood as objections to problematic inter- actions between content and particular knowers. We import the concept of the situated knower from feminist epistemology to capture the heterogeneous, socially embedded nature of patrons, about whom …

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 …

18th And 19th Century European Philosophy And The Justification Of Colonial And Economic Exploits, Danielle Platt, Ian Nell

Honors Papers and Posters

The theories and philosophies that have evolved over the course of human history have each influenced and affected the politics and the behaviors of the societies where they are popularized. We wish to study the sorts of relationships that may exist between popular European philosophies of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the political ideologies of the time, and why they still bear relevance in global politics today’s globalized international community.

Patient-Relativity In Morality, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is common to distinguish moral rules, reasons, or values that are agent-relative from those that are agent-neutral. One can also distinguish moral rules, reasons, or values that are moment-relative from those that are moment-neutral. In this article, I introduce a third distinction that stands alongside these two distinctions—the distinction between moral rules, reasons, or values that are patient-relative and those that are patient-neutral. I then show how patient-relativity plays an important role in several moral theories, gives us a better understanding of agent-relativity and moment-relativity, and provides a novel objection to Derek Parfit’s “appeal to full relativity” argument.

Ham Sŏkhŏn And The Rise Of The Dynamistic Philosophy Of History In Korea, Halla Kim

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is show the systematic significance and function that the concept of history has in Ham Sokhon’s philosophy. Even though he was not the first philosopher of history in modern Korea, Ham enthusiastically presented and argued for the dynamic operation of the goal (telos) and force which he calls “Ssi-al”—the anonymous grassroots in the context of Korean history. In particular, the notion of suffering plays an important role in his teleological thinking, not by imposing a pessimistic outlook but rather as an integral part of the historical mission assigned to the Korean people. In the second …

Executive Function, Disability, And Agency, Kevin Timpe

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

This paper considers how a number of particular disabilities can impact agency primarily by affecting what psychologists refer to as ‘executive function.’ Some disabilities, I argue, could decrease agency even without fully undermining it. I see this argument as contributing to the growing literature that sees agency as coming in degrees. The first section gives a broad outline of a fairly standard approach to agency. The second section relates that framework to the existing literature, which suggests that agency comes in degrees. The third section considers the psychological literature on executive function with a particular focus on how aspects of …

Developing Capabilities: A Feminist Discourse Ethics Approach, Chad Kleist

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation attempts to preserve the central tenets of a global moral theory called “the capabilities approach” as defended by Martha Nussbaum, but to do so in a way that better realizes its own goals of identifying gender injustices and gaining cross-cultural support by providing an alternative defense of it. Capabilities assess an individual’s well-being based on what she is able to do (actions) and who she is able to be (states of existence). Nussbaum grounds her theory in the intuitive idea that each and every person is worthy of equal respect and dignity. The problem with grounding a theory …

Living Within The Sacred Tension: Paradox And Its Significance For Christian Existence In The Thought Of Søren Kierkegaard, Matthew Thomas Nowachek

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation presents an in-depth investigation into the notion of paradox and its significance for Christian existence in the thought of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard. The primary aim of the study is to explore and to develop various expressions of paradox in Kierkegaard’s authorship in order to demonstrate the manner by which Kierkegaard employs paradox as a means of challenging his Christendom contemporaries to exist as authentic Christians, and more specifically to enter into the existential state I am identifying in this project as living within the sacred tension. With this aim in mind, I begin with …

Philosophy And Theology: Reflections On Interests And Regret, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

The article provides an assessment of the burdens of continuing a pregnancy. Topics discussed include the burdens and costs of abortion, anecdotal evidence regarding feelings of regret after opting for abortion, reference to the book "A Defense of Abortion" by David Boonin, and the violinist argument, which must take account of the possible burdens of a crisis pregnancy.