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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 …

Interpretive Teleology Without Eschatology: A Study Of The Hermeneutic Strategies Of Nietzsche's Genealogical Project, Darin Sean Mcginnis

Dissertations

In contemporary philosophy, there exists a vigorous debate between those thinkers who advocate the need for a truth that exists outside of historical forces and those who hold that all understanding must be historical in its basis. My research is focused on deciphering this problem by providing a description of how understanding and interpretation occur. More specifically, I have proposed a project that explores how the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche can give some insight into this problem of understanding truth. I argue that Nietzsche develops a method of interpretation - a hermeneutics - that focuses on the manner in …

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 …

Editorial

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Interpretations: Deep, Reasonable, And Free, Paul Guyer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Interpretation, Sincerity & "Theory", John Gibson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Laurent Stern's Interpretive Reasoning, Mary Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Fictional Worlds (Or Why 'The Lord Of The Rings' Is Worth Reading), James Harold

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Some works of fiction are widely held by critics to have little value, yet these works are not only popular but also widely admired in ways that are not always appreciated. In this paper I make use of Kendall Walton’s account of fictional worlds to argue that fictional worlds can and often do have value, including aesthetic value, that is independent of the works that create them. In the process, I critique Walton’s notion of fictional worlds and offer a defense of the study and appreciation of fictional worlds, as distinguished from the works of fiction with which they are …

Musical Presence: Towards A New Philosophy Of Music, Charles Ford

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Most recent writings about the philosophy of music have taken an analytic or linguistic approach, focusing on terms such as meaning, metaphor, emotions and expression, invariably from the perspective of the individual listener or composer. This essay seeks to develop an alternative, phenomenological framework for thinking about music by avoiding these terms, and by extrapolating from the writings of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. On the basis of discussions of musical time, its multiple levels of matter, and its internal dialectics, the essay presents a particular understanding of “style” as the primary basis for mediation between production and reception. It concludes …

Sailing The Seas Of Cheese, Erik Anderson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Memphis Elvis is cool; Vegas Elvis is cheesy. How come? To call something cheesy is, ostensibly, to disparage it, and yet cheesy acts are some of the most popular in popular culture today. How is this possible? The concepts of cheese, cheesy, and cheesiness play an important and increasingly ubiquitous role in popular culture today. I offer an analysis of these concepts, distinguishing them from nearby concepts like kitchy and campy. Along the way I draw attention to the important roles of cultural/historical context, background knowledge, and especially artist’s intentions as they are relevant to aesthetic assessments involving cheese and …

Liberty And The Normative Force Of The Law In Montesquieu's The Spirit Of The Laws, Cory Wimberly

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The aim of this essay is explore what demands living in liberty places on citizens in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In contrast to the ideas of liberty from many of the thinkers that were to follow him, Montesquieu’s notion of liberty requires that citizens subject themselves to the regulative relationships required by his normative conception of the law. For Montesquieu, living in liberty is not just a situation in which one avoids what the law forbids and is otherwise left ’free’ without interference and coercion. For Montesquieu, liberty is a positively elaborated ideal with normative demands and a …

Personality Disorders And Moral Responsibility, Mike W. Martin

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

In “Personality Disorders: Moral or Medical Kinds—or Both?” Peter Zachar and Nancy Nyquist Potter (2010) reject any general dichotomy between morality and mental health, and specifically between character vices and personality disorders. In doing so, they provide a nuanced and illuminating discussion that connects Aristotelian virtue ethics to a multidimensional understanding of personality disorders. I share their conviction that dissolving morality–health dichotomies is the starting point for any plausible understanding of human beings (Martin 2006), but I register some qualms about their discussion of responsibility.

Self-Knowledge And Rationality, Stephen Blackwood

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Several basic asymmetries are normally thought to exist between first- and third-person present-tense ascriptions of mental states. First of all, when a speaker ascribes, for instance, a belief that p to another, she must do so on the evidence provided by the utterances and actions of the other. However, it at least appears that typically she need not do so when ascribing a belief to herself. In other words, there is an immediacy to a self-ascription of a belief (that is, an utterance of the form ‘I believe that p’) that thirdperson ascriptions (‘He believes that p’) lack. …

Othering Obama : How Whiteness Is Used To Undermine Authority, David S. Owen

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In this paper, I argue that the sociocultural structuring property of whiteness has been utilized to marginalize President Obama and effectively undermine his presidential authority. Whiteness functions in a largely invisible and ostensibly deracialized way to normalize the interests, needs, and values of whites, while at the same time marginalizing and devaluing the voice of people of color. Analyzing the health care debate through this theoretical lens generates insights into how the debate reproduced the system of racial oppression, and how whiteness functions in political discourse.

Embodied Cognition As Refutation To Langer's "Illusory Powers": "I Move, Therefore, I Know", Ruby Amanda Montana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Thesis Objective: To refute Susanne Langer's notion within her philosophy of dance which holds that emotional forces in dance are solely "virtual" and thus illusory. I plan to do so by means of the growing research in the branch of cognitive science known as Embodied Cognition.

In Brief: Susanne Langer, one of the most prominent philosophers of Aesthetics, contends that dance is able to express emotions as an external force, while creating what she calls a "primary illusion". Langer attributes gesture as the basic abstraction whereby the dance illusion is made and organized. Furthermore, she contends that dance is not …

Dispositions, Propensities And The Change Of Conditions, Alejandra Olivas-Davila

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to draw a clear line that allows us to thoroughly differentiate dispositions from propensities as well as the big problem that clouds both views. I will attempt to offer an account of the main issues that this properties face. I start by offering a general account of dispositions. In this account I offer a brief analysis of what it is to be a disposition. The distinction between categorical and dispositional property is explored. I move on to explain the evolution of the conditional analysis, as well as the problems it faces. The next point …

The Sources Of Knowledge In Islam : A Study On The Philosophical Ideas Of Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas., Akhmad Rofii Damyati

Student Works (2010-2019)

The Sources of Knowledge in Islam: A Study on the Philosophical Ideas of Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas explores and investigates the sources of knowledge in Islam as one of the important issues in knowledge or epistemology according to the perspective of Professor Syed Mohammad Naquib al-Attas. It is based on library research that involves two main processes, collecting data and analysing data. In analysing data it deals with three methods: deductive, inductive and comparative methods. It presents an analysis on many related issues, such as the possibility of knowledge, the definition of knowledge, the classification of knowledge, the tradition of …

Penggunaan Al-Qiyas Dalam Kitab Umm Al-Barahin., Engku Hassan Engku Wok Zin

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research  attempts to study the use of al-qiyas in  Umm al-Barahin, the writings of Muhammad bin Yusuf al-Sanusi. Expounded in this dissertation  is the prominent  literary figure  who successfully explained the theology doctrines of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama`ah based on the use of al-qiyas method. al-Sanusi  was an eminent scholar in the ninth century Hijrah. Kitab  Umm al-Barahin  is an expression  of his theology which applies al-qiyas to explain issues of theology according to the thoughts of al-Asya`irah. The  use of al-qiyas is a method ti create al-tasdiq  indirectly. al-Qiyas  has many forms, such as al-qiyas from al-burhan can …

Konsep Mimpi Menurut Perspektif Pemikiran Islam., Mohammad Saifuddin Talib

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research is to unveil the question of dream which is on the agenda of discussion and a popular issue among the public at large. It is a common experience to each and every human being throughout the world in accordance to their existence on earth. This dissertation aims to escertain the extent of peoples’ belief about dream they experienced. Apart from that, the research has the objective of viewing and identifying how far the influence of dream in the livelihood of the public at all level, the status and position which ultimately creating social polemic particularly the belief of …