Ancient Philosophy Commons^™

Isocrates's Place In Postmodern Advertising, Christopher Barkley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study in communication and rhetoric seeks to ascertain constructive applications for distinct advertising practices by examining Isocrates’s work and place in postmodern advertising. The focus uses 5 principles known to Isocrates which are: 1) commonwealths of households, 2) integration of reputation, elegance, substance and style, 3) education and public discourse, 4) phronesis and praxis, and 5) truth and verisimilitude. These 5 principles can form a constructive and practical advertising approach. This study is important. It examines Isocrates through the lens of advertising and extends the research done about him by leading Isocrates scholars who have looked primarily at his …

Searching For Hades In Archaic Greek Literature, Daniel Stoll

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No single volume of mythological or philological research exists for Hades. In the one moment Hades appears in archaic Greek literature, speaking for only ten lines, Hermes stands nearby. Thus, to understand and journey to Hades is to reckon with Hermes’ close presence. As I synthesize research by writers from several different disciplines, may some light be brought into the depths. May we analyze Hades’ brief appearance in archaic Greek literature, examining how what I define as the “Hermetic” emits from his breath in the one moment he physically appears and speaks.

Language As The Medium: A Literature Review. Harnessing The Prolific Power Of Dramatic Language As A Therapeutic Tool In Drama Therapy, Edward Freeman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Language in and of the theatre, with its palate of variegated writing styles and playwrights from throughout time, has the potential to be harnessed, focused, and systematized for use as a therapeutic tool within drama therapy – the field’s artistic medium. Drama therapy could benefit from having a specific medium germane to its artform which has the potential to provide practitioners with a common resource and means of communication, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning, as well as align the field with other creative arts therapies. Language encompasses all forms of human communication – speaking, writing, signing, gesturing, expressing facially – …

Digital Occult Library, Alexis Brandkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a website, titled Digital Occult Library, hosted by the CUNY Commons and built with WordPress. The site address is:

digitaloccultlibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu

It features (in this iteration) twenty-five unique pages with information on and discussion of occult and esoteric topics. It also hosts a forum that can be accessed and utilized by anyone, not just those registered on the Commons. The purpose of the site is to inform three types of interested parties on the highlighted topics: a general audience with no current knowledge of the occult, practitioners of esoteric traditions, and academics. Not only is the …

Tracing The Past, Drawing The Present, Sixue Yang

Graduate School of Art Theses

The group of work, Rising Water, Floating Islands is inspired by traditional Chinese scroll landscape paintings. Such landscape paintings combine meticulous technique, compositional complexity, and tension between representation and abstraction to reveal an alternative universe that waits discovery amid our mundane existence. In “Rising Water, Floating Islands,” I explore the political and social ramifications of the ongoing cultural conflict between traditional and emergent contemporary values. By combining traditional Chinese elements and techniques with my own markings and gestural adaptation in my painting, I give the audience the opportunity to contemplate the implications of our present digital condition through traditional esthetic …

French Classicism In Four Painters: Where It Went And Why, Kristen Tayler Westerduin

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Language and Literature and The Division of Arts of Bard College. French Classicism in Four Painters: Where It Went and Why is an analytical approach to the history of classicism and its definitions since being proposed as a style by the ancient Greeks. This paper looks to artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Jacques-Louis David, Charles le Brun, and Eugène Delacroix to understand the evolution of the style’s interpretations within France between the 16^th and 19^th century.

Sense And Sensibility: A Sermon On Living The Examined Life, Sarah J. Mejias

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Jane Austen’s novels remain an essential component of the literary canon, but her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is frequently neglected. However, in Sense and Sensibility is the genesis of Austen’s technique through which her major characters cultivate and reveal a strong inner life, demonstrated through the character of Elinor Dashwood. This technique is a characteristic she incorporates in each of her succeeding novels. Her approach to literature centers on the interiority of her characters and their ability to change, but it her first novel Austen takes a unique approach. Following the structure of an eighteenth-century sermon, Austen …

Philosophical Self-Presentation In Late Antique Cappadocia, Stefan Vernon Hodges-Kluck

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a new perspective to the development of religious orthodoxy in the second half of the fourth century CE by examining the role of the body in the inter- and intra-religious battles between Christians and “pagans” over the claim to the cultural capital of philosophy. Focusing on Cappadocia (modern-day central Turkey), a particularly vital region of the fourth-century Roman empire, I argue that during this time, Greek-speaking intellectuals created and disputed boundaries between Christianity and “paganism,” as well as between “orthodoxy” and “heresy,” based on longstanding elite notions of how an ideal philosopher should look, think, and act. …

Pharaonic Occultism: The Relationship Of Esotericism And Egyptology, 1875–1930, Kevin Todd Mclaren

Master's Theses

The purpose of this work is to explore the interactions between occultism and scholarly Egyptology from 1875 to 1930. Within this timeframe, numerous esoteric groups formed that centered their ideologies on conceptions of ancient Egyptian knowledge. In order to legitimize their belief systems based on ancient Egyptian wisdom, esotericists attempted to become authoritative figures on Egypt. This process heavily impacted Western intellectualism not only because occult conceptions of Egypt became increasingly popular, but also because esotericists intruded into academia or attempted to overshadow it. In turn, esotericists and Egyptologists both utilized the influx of new information from Egyptological studies to …

Saving Socrates: A New Socratic Portrait, Anthony Lobrace

Honors Theses

In 399 B.C. Socrates was indicted on charges of asebeia, or impiety and corrupting the youth. He was brought before a jury of some 500 Athenians in a type of trial known as agon timetos, or “trial of assessment”. Casting their votes, the vast majority of the jurors found Socrates guilty of the offenses he was accused of. A week later he drank a cup of hemlock and died in his prison cell. In what follows I will draw a new portrait of Socrates. This will be constructed from details found in Aristophanes’ the Clouds, as well as Socratic dialogues. …

The Memetic Evolution Of Alchemy From Zosimos To Timothy Leary, Ryan J. Hutchinson

History Undergraduate Theses

The subject of alchemy is often only relegated to a footnote of the history of modern chemistry. When framed as a discussion of the history of ideas and mankind attempting to understand their position in the universe, the language of alchemy is seen present in the writings of ancient Greece to 20th century counterculture. But how did this obscure art survive such a long journey over time and space? This paper explores alchemy as a meme (as defined by Richard Dawkins) that changed over time to fit the needs of its proponents. We find that the ideas in alchemy had …

Augustine, Wannabe Philosopher: The Search For Otium Honestum, Allen G. Wilson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Kykloi : Cyclic Theories In Ancient Greece, Hubert Wayne Nelson

Dissertations and Theses

It is both curious and frustrating, given the perennial popularity of the cycle concept in Ancient Greece, that there has not been a single book written devoted to the wide variety of philosophic and historical conceptions bound up with that loosely descriptive designation. This study was originally undertaken to satisfy my own curiosity on the subject. Herein I intend to survey the entire history of the cycle concept in general from about 700 B.C. to the time of Polybius in the second-century A.D. It is intended to be a descriptive as well as an analytical report.