Digital Commons Network^™

From John S. Mbiti To Jacob K. Olupona: A Literary Journey In Review, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche On Language And Our Pursuit Of Truth, Le Quyen Pham

The Expositor: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities

No abstract provided.

Better Talking Heads: Concerning Fuller "Experience" In Environmental Philosophy, Christina Bovinette

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Through this project, I demonstrate how professional environmental ethics is constrained by, what I call, a rationalist bias and I offer a different approach to environmental questions in the face of this observation. Intellectual life depends on material conditions and our necessary physical ties to Earth. I suggest that an emphasis on our physical connections with the planet can benefit professional environmental ethics. I draw from some feminist understandings to discuss the advantages of a professional environmental ethics that respects and integrates experiences outside of rational deliberation. I attempt to bring my discussion of experience, environmental ethics, and some feminist …

The Reception Of Tacitus’ Germania By The German Humanists: From Provence To Empire, Thomas Renna

Quidditas

It is well known he German Humanists (1490-1540) used Tacitus’ Germania to advance their notion of the German nation in response to Italian criticism. But less attention has been given to the German nature of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1509). I argue that Humanists after Conrad Celtis (Bebel, Wimpheling, Cochlaeus, Brant, Irenicus, Franck, Hutten) emphasized the Germanness of the empire by reinterpreting the traditional Translation of Empire, the Germanic migrations out of Germania after Constantine, and the designation of a new national purpose (the protection and expansion of the Church and the faith). They grafted the …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Stability Turned Into Motion Erasmus Darwin's Recourse To Ovid's Metamorphoses, Sonja Fielitz

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Turning Round Or Standing Still Movement And Stasis In Defoe, Pope, And Sterne, Allan Ingram, Hélène Dachez

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Concepts As Pluralistic Hybrids, Collin Rice

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

In contrast to earlier views that argued for a particular kind of concept (e.g. prototypes), several recent accounts have proposed that there are multiple distinct kinds of concepts, or that there is a plurality of concepts for each category. In this paper, I argue for a novel account of concepts as pluralistic hybrids. According to this view, concepts are pluralistic because there are several concepts for the same category whose use is heavily determined by context. In addition, concepts are hybrids because they typically link together several different kinds of information that are used in the same cognitive processes. This …

The Polis Artist: Don Delillo’S Cosmopolis And The Politics Of Literature, Joel Alden Schlosser

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

Recent work on literature and political theory has focused on reading literature as a reflection of the damaged conditions of contemporary political life. Examining Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, this essay develops an alternative approach to the politics of literature that attends to the style and form of the novel. The form and style of Cosmopolis emphasize the novel’s own dissonance with the world it criticizes; they moreover suggest a politics of poetic world-making intent on eliciting collective agency over the commonness of language. As a “polis artist,” DeLillo does not determine a particular politics but shapes the conditions and spaces …

The Dialectics Of Reading : Fredric Jameson And Politics Of Interpretation, Robert Henri Faivre

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Fredric Jameson’s theory and practice of reading, in the name of critical interventions into the dominant hermeneutics in literary and cultural texts, have limited transformative readings and provided interpretive alibis, though an ever-receding utopian writerly space, for cultural reform within capitalism. Deploying a materialist analytics, The Dialectics of Reading draws out Jameson’s interpretive ambivalence, unlayers its class interests and demonstrates how in Jameson’s interpretations—from his Sartre: Origins of Style to An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army—the dominant material relationships are grasped as dialectical reading. In a detailed interpretation of his interpretation of “Walmart,” The Dialectics of Reading …

The Grammar Of Politicization And Depoliticization : Arendt's Republicanism And The Translation Of Revolutionary Politics And Judgment Into Political Institutions, Daniel Kuchler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

For Arendt, political freedom is both a spontaneous rejection of rule and the foundation of institutions. In my dissertation, I argue that both aspects are linked together by her concept of political judgment. This reading of Arendt contrasts with a strand of political theory that seems to argue that public-participatory politics, as found in revolutions, cannot be translated into lasting institutions: Wolin and Rancière argue that any attempt at establishing institutions undermines the participatory character of politics. Habermas and Pettit on the other hand argue for establishing lasting institutions, but they do so at the expense of a rich concept …

Scientific Fictionalism And The Problem Of Inconsistency In Nietzsche, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this article, I begin to develop Nietzsche’s scientific fictionalism in order to make headway toward resolving a central interpretive issue in his epistemology. For Nietzsche knowledge claims are falsifications. Presumably, this is a result of his puzzling view that truths are somehow false. I argue that Nietzsche thinks knowledge claims are falsifications because he embraces a scientific fictionalist view according to which inexact representations, which are false, can also be accurate, or true, and that this position is not inconsistent.

A New Interpretation Of Carnap's Logical Pluralism, Teresa Kouri

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Rudolf Carnap’s logical pluralism is often held to be one in which corresponding connectives in different logics have different meanings. This paper presents an alternative view of Carnap’s position, in which connectives can and do share their meaning in some (though not all) contexts. This re-interpretation depends crucially on extending Carnap’s linguistic framework system to include meta-linguistic frameworks, those frameworks which we use to talk about linguistic frameworks. I provide an example that shows how this is possible, and give some textual evidence that Carnap would agree with this interpretation. Additionally, I show how this interpretation puts the Carnapian position …

Full Issue

Andrews University Seminary Student Journal

No abstract provided.

Course Syllabus (W16 Online) Coli 331: "Pulp Fiction And Quentin Tarantino", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Objectives and Expected Learning Outcomes:

Rejecting the standpoint of the passively entertained consumer, our shared objectives in this course will be (1) to bring our selected cinematic and written texts into interaction in such ways as to produce high-quality scholarly writing. It is hoped that, by the end of the semester, each student’s active engagement with our course material should have enabled him/her, (2) to deepen and broaden his/her knowledge base concerning the social problematics we will have treated in such ways as to inform and encourage constructive social action.

We will view Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Reservoir …

Imagination Bound: A Theoretical Imperative, Robert Michael Guerin

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Kant’s theory of productive imagination falls at the center of the critical project. This is evident in the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant claims that the productive imagination is a “fundamental faculty of the human soul” and indispensable for the construction of experience. And yet, in the second edition of 1787 Kant seemingly demotes this imagination as a mere “effect of the understanding on sensibility” and all but withdraws its place from the Transcendental Deduction.

In his 1929 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger provided an explanation for the revisions between 1781 and 1787. …

The Normative Architecture Of Reality: Towards An Object-Oriented Ethics, Justin L. Harmon

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

The fact-value distinction has structured and still structures ongoing debates in metaethics, and all of the major positions in the field (expressivism, cognitivist realism, and moral error theory) subscribe to it. In contrast, I claim that the fact-value distinction is a contingent product of our intellectual history and a prime object for questioning. The most forceful reason for rejecting the distinction is that it presupposes a problematic understanding of the subject-object divide whereby one tends to view humans as the sole source of normativity in the world. My dissertation aims to disclose the background against which human ethical praxis is …

Becoming What We Are: Virtue And Practical Wisdom As Natural Ends, Keith Buhler

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation is about ethical naturalism. Philippa Foot and John McDowell both defend contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics but each represents a rival expression of the same. They are united in the affirmation that virtue is ‘natural goodness’ for human beings. Nevertheless, they are divided in their rival conceptions of ‘nature.’ McDowell distinguishes second nature or the "space of reasons" from first nature or the “realm of law.” Foot rejects this division.

On Foot's naturalism, natural goodness is just as much a feature of first nature as health is, even though human practical reasoning is unique in the biological world. I defend …

The Modern Administrative State: Why We Have ‘Big Government’ And How To Run And Reform Bureaucratic Organizations, Sean Y. Sakaguchi

CMC Senior Theses

This work asserts that bureaucratic organization is not only an inevitable part of the modern administrative state, but that a high quality bureaucracy within a strongly empowered executive branch is an ideal mechanism for running government in the modern era. Beginning with a philosophical inquiry into the purpose of American government as we understand it today, this paper responds to criticisms of the role of expanded government and develops a framework for evaluating the quality of differing government structures. Following an evaluation of the current debate surrounding bureaucracies (from both proponents and critics), this thesis outlines the lessons and principles …

Engaging Practice In Communication Education: Institutional Politics, Knowledge Economy, And State Power, Wincharles Coker

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A grave concern in communication education scholarship is that research in practice plays second fiddle to theory. Little is known about the phenomenology of practice in communication pedagogy, and how it shapes and is shaped by programmatic assessment in particular. This dissertation attempts to explore the complexity of practice in communication education in a non-Western culture. The project demonstrates that the organizational culture that gives rise to the work of communication program administrators is always filtered and enacted through the interplay of institutional politics, the global knowledge economy, and state power. Using two public universities in Ghana, I argue, based …

Punk Philosophy As A Path To The Summits Of Ethos, Vuk Uskoković

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Elaborated in this discourse is the idea that identifying with a punk persona is a necessary step in the ethical development of an individual. Offered are various ethical corollaries of standing on the punk philosophic grounds, including: (I) abomination of the art of following, (II) appreciation of creative aspirations more than the technique, (III) the necessity for the constant shift of the epistemic grounds on which one stands, (IV) revival of the aesthetics of Speer’s theory of ruin values, (V) revitalization of language via its destruction, and (VI) embracement of anarchic revulsion of the concept of authority as a pathway …

Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory, Rock Lamanna

Departmental Honors Projects

While postmodern theory and literature is typically viewed as either “anti-humanist” or a rejection of Humanism, this essay reconsiders these assumptions by exploring ethical questions in early postmodern novels and theory, referred to as “proto-postmodernism.” For proto-postmodernists such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, Humanism—the ethical framework that asserts a centered “self” and a collective “metanarrative” of human progress—causes and legitimates violence, yet in their theories and literature, they promote the humanist value of dignity in their critiques of modern ethics and politics. To examine this hybrid stance toward Humanism, the first section situates …

Epistemic Contextualism: A Defense, Peter Baumann

Philosophy Faculty Works

This book develops and defends a version of epistemic contextualism, that is, of the view that the truth conditions or the meaning of knowledge attributions of the form “S knows that p” can vary with the context of the attributor. The first part of the book is about arguments for contextualism and develops a particular version of it. The first chapter deals with the argument from cases and ordinary usage. More weight, however, is put on more “theoretical” arguments: arguments from reliability (Chapter 2) and from luck (Chapter 3). The second part of the book discusses problems contextualism faces and …

The Question Of Truth In Literature: Die Poetische Auffassung Der Welt, Richard Thomas Eldridge

Philosophy Faculty Works

This chapter starts with the question of truth in literature, noting that this question has several interrelated senses: can literature present (significant) truths at all?; what does its presentation of truths (if it exists) have to do with its manner of presentation (with literary language)?; and is the presentation of truth a central aim of literary art? The chapter surveys a variety of neo-Fregean (Lamarque and Olsen, Walton) views that reject the very possibility of literary truth as well as a variety of anti-Fregean views (Goodman, Heidegger) that endorse it. But those endorsements often do not say enough about literary …

Politics And Pedagogy: Recuperating Rhetoric And Composition's Native Ethical Tradition, Derek Risse

Wayne State University Dissertations

Over the past decade, scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have shown renewed interest in the topic of ethics, prompting what some have described as an ethical turn in the discipline. Spurred by a deep-seated concern for the legacies of humanism, scholars have turned increasingly to extra-disciplinary referents in continental philosophy. This dissertation works to recuperate the discipline’s native ethical tradition via a critical rereading of the often-implicit treatment of ethics in Composition scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s. Returning to this “critical” moment and emphasizing the rich thinking around the question of ethics provides fuller and more disciplinary-specific resources for …

Daoism And Disability, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Ideas found in the early Daoist texts can inform current debates about disability, since the latter often involve assumptions about personhood and agency that Daoist texts do not share. The two canonical texts of classical Daoism, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, do not explicitly discuss disability as an object of theory or offer a model of it. They do, however, provide conceptual resources that can enrich contemporary discussions of disability. Two particular ideas are discussed here. Classical Daoist thinking about the body undermines normative assumptions about it that attributions of ‘disabled’ often depend upon; and Daoism vividly problematises the …

From Existentialism To Ecology: A Phlosophical Analysis Of Crisis In Samuel Beckett, Sean P. Collins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Elements Of Deconstruction: Differance, Dissemination, Destinerrance, And Geocatastrophe, Marie Chris B. Ramoya

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

This paper attempts to elucidate on Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction and its difficult elements, viz., differance, dissemination, destinerrance, and geocatasthrophe. These basic ideas need elaboration for their proper understanding. Once successfully achieved, then here lies the significance of this paper.

Absolute Pitch And Tone Identification, Gilead Bar-Elli

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Absolute pitch (AP), besides the psychological and neurological interests it has, raises some conceptual difficulties that can teach us about the richness of our notion of musical tone and various aspects of its identification. It is argued that when AP is conceived under a slim notion of identifying the pitch of a crude sound, it is hardly meaningful and has no significance in music comprehension. The rich notion, which is the meaningful and important one, involves knowing the position of a tone in a tone-space and its relations. This is presented as experiential: hearing and identifying tones under concepts and …

The Plight Of Aesthetics In Iran, Majid Heidari

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Richard Rorty believes that philosophy in the West is the result of a conflict between religion and science. In fact, philosophy seeks to clarify the border between religion and science, so neither of them would be able to overstep its explanatory or predictive potentialities. He remarks that we do not have such a thing as philosophy in the East. This paper intends to ask two questions: what is the nature of the comparable conflict in an Eastern country, Iran, and what are its effects on aesthetic studies? I will draw on the idea of the conflict between theology and mysticism. …