Philosophy Commons^™

A Problem For The Political Reading Of Plato's Republic, Mason Marshall

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

On one of the most common readings of the Republic, Plato means for us to agree with Socrates and his interlocutors that their aristocratic city is the just polis. For convenience, I call this the political reading. It is no wonder, of course, that this interpretation is as common as it is, since it might be one of the most natural interpretations of the Republic. I argue, though, that it faces a serious problem: Socrates and his interlocutors’ argument for the justice of the aristocratic city has certain deficits, and—more important—there is considerable evidence that Plato was aware of at …

The Desert Of The Real: Christianity, Buddhism & Baudrillard In The Matrix Films And Popular Culture, James F. Mcgrath

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The movie The Matrix and its sequels draw explicitly on imagery from a number of sources, including in particular Buddhism, Christianity, and the writings of Jean Baudrillard. A perspective is offered on the perennial philosophical question ‘What is real?’, using language and symbols drawn from three seemingly incompatible world views. In doing so, these movies provide us with an insight into the way popular culture makes eclectic use of various streams of thought to fashion a new reality that is not unrelated to, and yet is nonetheless distinct from, its religious and philosophical undercurrents and underpinnings.

Moral Foundation Theory And The Law, Colin Prince

Seattle University Law Review

Moral foundation theory argues that there are five basic moral foundations: (1) harm/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. These five foundations comprise the building blocks of morality, regardless of the culture. In other words, while every society constructs its own morality, it is the varying weights that each society allots to these five universal foundations that create the variety. Haidt likens moral foundation theory to an “audio equalizer,” with each culture adjusting the sliders differently. The researchers, however, were not content to simply categorize moral foundations—they have tied the foundations to political leanings. And it is …

Joy As Attunement And End In The Philosophies Of Martin Heidegger And Henri Bergson, Justin Albert Harrison

Dissertations

Martin Heidegger claims that attunement is one of the primordial ways in which Dasein understands its world. He focuses on anxiety as the fundamental attunement in which Dasein can more authentically uncover its Being. However, it is necessary to ask if anxiety is the only attunement out of which one can most authentically appropriate Being. Heidegger seems to have an unexamined bias in favor of "negative" attunements (anxiety, boredom) and never undertakes an extended analysis of "positive" moods such as joy or happiness. This dissertation is an examination of joy as a fundamental attunement through the works of Henri Bergson …

The Soul And The Body In Hegel's Anthropology, Nicholas Mowad

Dissertations

I provide a close exegetical reading of Hegel's "anthropology," his doctrine of the human body and soul, located in the first part of the Philosophy of Spirit, volume three of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. In the course of this exegesis I show how Hegel demonstrates that all of the phenomena there under investigation must be understood as at once corporeal and distinctively human. Accordingly, anthropological phenomena should not be understood as essentially the same in humans as it is in animals, though many commentators allege that they should be. I provide a survey of the secondary literature on …

An Experiential Approach To Kant's Moral Philosophy: A Reply To Dogmatism, Formalism And Rigorism, Chris Mctavish

Dissertations

Many of Kant's commentators and critics interpret his moral philosophy solely in terms of the cognitive dimension of his categorical imperative. Such a predominant manner of reading Kant gives rise to the criticism that his moral philosophy is too far removed from the actual way in which human beings orient themselves as moral persons in the world. In response to this general tendency in Kant interpretation, my dissertation proposes to offer an experiential approach to Kant's ethics. By the expression experiential I mean an approach to Kant's thinking that attends to the living sense in which we experience the phenomena …

The Unheard Voice Of Immigrant Muslim Women In The United States Post-9/11/2001, Erin Alkhaolany

Philosophy & Humanities Theses - Archive

Immigrant Muslim women in the United States experience difficulties, as most immigrants do, with integration into a new society. In order to better depict the reality that these women are actually experiencing a lack of voice to demonstrate their difficulties and subsequently receive assistance, I utilize intersectionality feminist theory to differentiate categories where analyses can lead to improved assimilation and ease in integration for these women. Specifically, the intersections of aspects such as religion, race, class, gender, and ethnicity are included as major points of concern in dissecting what it means to be an immigrant Muslim woman in the United …

Repression, Language, Resistance: An Analysis Of Jacksonian America Through Foucauldian Lens, Brandon D. Vestal

Philosophy & Humanities Theses - Archive

During the age of Andrew Jackson (1824-1845), the United States experienced a social and political sea change that would leave the country changed forever. As Jackson served his country first as general and ultimately as president, his name came to represent a new brand of American Democracy. This expression of democracy that emerged during Jackson's life extended a politcal hand to the "common man" as represented by the yeoman farmer and urban laborer. However, as universal suffrage was granted to these common white men and the politcal landscape shifted from an elitist republic to a meritocracy, there were other politically …

Metaphysics And The Charge Of Misanthropy : Ralph Waldo Emerson’S “Circles” As A Cipher For Understanding The Connection Between Robinson Jeffers And Herman Melville, Hunter Stark

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Herman Melville’s and Robinson Jeffers’s metaphysical thoughts reflect Ralph Waldo Emerson’s notion of looking towards Nature for discovery; all three writers’ observations of Nature influence how they see humanity’s place in existence. Both Melville and Jeffers observe Nature decentralizing humanity, which distinguishes their views from Emerson’s. Where Jeffers’s verse sternly voices this message, openly criticizing the anthropocentric viewpoint, Melville utilizes humor, subtly confronting the anthropocentric proponent and downplaying humanity’s power. Jeffers garners the label of misanthrope, whereas Melville’s metaphysical realm in Moby-Dick largely escapes this charge with the masking quality of his humor. Comparing both writers’ texts to an Emersonian …

Affirmative Judgments: The Sabbath Of Deconstruction, Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

For reasons that are equally strategic and philosophical, we need to understand that the correct answer to the question ‘What is deconstruction?’ is that deconstruction is the unconditional affirmation of the undeconstructible. Calling upon Derrida, Kant, and Hegel, Végső posits that the fact that we have almost completely lost sight of this dimension of deconstructive thought accounts for much of the confusion surrounding its ethical and political force. In order to clarify some of these points, an explanation of the nature of this unconditional affirmation is needed. Végső puts forth the proposition that the truth of deconstruction is aptly encapsulated …

Consciousness And Society: Societal Aspects And Implications Of Transpersonal Psychology, Harry T. Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Although transpersonal psychologies of self realization emphasize individual

development, earlier shamanic traditions also showed a central societal aspect and group based

consciousness. Indeed, many have understood the transpersonal movement as developing

towards an abstract globalized neo-shamanism. That altered states of consciousness, whether

as integrative realizations of the numinous or as dissociative “hypnoid” states, could be felt

and shared collectively was a familiar concept to the first generation of sociologists, who saw

all consciousness as social and dialogic in form. Durkheim, in particular, foresaw a globalized

spirituality of the future, his “cult of man,” in which modern individuation would progress

to …

Ambivalent Posthumanism: A Few Of Stevens’ Animals, Brian Glaser

English Faculty Articles and Research

This essay focuses on several categories of Wallace Stevens' use of animals in his poetry that is arguably posthumanist. It argues on the emotional ambivalence made by "Mountains Covered with Cats" which points out that animals are also living entities to experience and know with a mixture of positive and negative emotions. It cites Sigmund Freud's concept of ambivalence where he transcribe and reflect on the most well-known dream of a predatory animal in the modernist milieu.

(2010) The View From Saturday (1996) By E.L. Konigsburg, Peter Shea

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

E.L. Konigsburg uses every word and detail in her book, The View from Saturday to provoke the reader into thinking. She is a monstrous optimist: she just expects that the reader, like her characters, enjoys thinking, is always looking for a puzzle or a problem, a thing to think about, in every corner of the world. A commentary on the necessary journeys of four children and their teacher, the novel challenges students and teachers to find the projects that will bring their own learning to life in this way. It’s a surprisingly successful strategy; one finds oneself trying to live …

Towards An Ontology Of Bob Dylan, William J. Richardson

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

Moral Agency And Advancements In Artificial Intelligence, Arielle L. Zuckerberg

CMC Senior Theses

The main trends underlying advancements in AI technology are increased autonomy, increased functionality, higher level social interaction and integration, and, many suggest, hard-wired ethical codes of conduct. These trends, along with the promises of engineers and scientists, give us ample reason to evaluate the agency of future AI machines.

Therapeutic Discourse And The American Public Philosophy: On American Liberalism's Troubled Relationship With Psychology, Clifford D. Vickrey

Honors Theses

I explore the main currents of postwar American liberalism. One, sociological, emerged in response to the danger of mass movements. Articulated primarily by political sociologists and psychologists and ascendant from the mid-fifties till the mid-seventies, it heralded the "end of ideology." It emphasized stability, elitism, positive science and pluralism; it recast normatively sound politics as logrolling and hard bargaining. I argue that these normative features, attractive when considered in isolation, taken together led to a vicious ad hominem style in accounting for views outside the postwar consensus. It used pseudo-scientific literature in labeling populists, Progressives, Taft conservatives, Goldwaterites, the New …

Family Ties: Mainstream Environmentalists' Understanding Of Radical Environmentalism In America, Zachary W. Ezor

Honors Theses

Environmentalism in the United States manifests itself in numerous ways. While American environmentalists have been grouped into broad camps over the years, observers have struggled to accurately classify the different components of the movement. Lately, environmentalists have been characterized based on their chosen modus operandi. Environmentalists who employ typical interest group tactics of policy advocacy and accept the notion of political compromise can generally be called 'mainstream.' Alternatively, those environmentalists who employ non-conventional strategies like direct action and take a no-compromise stance on environmental issues are typically described as 'radical.' Despite these distinctions, both radical and mainstream environmentalists are parts …

The Purely Reflected Self, William A. Price

Honors Theses

Belief in the concept of the self causes suffering. Unfortunately, although conceptual constructions like this may help to define our goal—the casting off of the belief in the self—this is a much more difficult thing to actualize and attain in daily practice. Our building blocks can form a neat tower, and we can climb to the top and gaze at the horizon, but they will topple, leaving us once again over our heads in the hedgerow. Buddha describes his teachings as a raft to ford the river of suffering in order to reach the far off bank of enlightenment: as …

On Perfect Friendship: An Outline And A Guide To Aristotle's Philosophy Of Friendship, Kristen Psaty

Honors Theses

Providing insight into such timeless questions as: What is friendship? Are the best friends similar or dissimilar? and Does having friends make you a better person?, the paper addresses the importance of friendship for Aristotle, but also for the modern reader as well. A topic of special philosophical concern, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) considered friendship to be necessary in achieving a virtuous and fulfilling life. Consequently, he wrote more about friendship than any other virtue he presented. This paper lays the foundation for understanding Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship as well as its position within his larger moral schema. The image of …

Darwinian Populations And Natural Selection, Grant Ramsey, Hope Hollocher, Agustín Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Edwin Siu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.