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Jeffery Nicholas

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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Toward A Radical Integral Humanism: Macintyre’S Continuing Marxism, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Toward A Radical Integral Humanism: Macintyre’S Continuing Marxism, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

I argue that we must read Alasdair MacIntyre’s mature work through a Marxist lens. I begin by discussing his argument that we must choose which God to worship on principles of justice, which, it turns out, are ones given to us by God. I contend that this argument entails that we must see Mac- Intyre’s early Marxist commitments as given to him by God, and, therefore, that he has never abandoned them in his turn to Thomistic-Aristotelianism. I examine his reading of Marx, with its emphasis on the concept of alienation as a Christian concept, and explain how this reading …


Book Review: G. A. Cohen's Self-Ownership, Freedom, And Equality. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Book Review: G. A. Cohen's Self-Ownership, Freedom, And Equality. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

No abstract provided.


Reason, Tradition, And The Good: Alasdair Macintyre's Reason Of Tradition And Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Reason, Tradition, And The Good: Alasdair Macintyre's Reason Of Tradition And Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

In Reason, Tradition, and the Good, Jeffery L. Nicholas addresses the failure of reason in modernity to bring about a just society, a society in which people can attain fulfillment. Developing the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Nicholas argues that we rely too heavily on a conception of rationality that is divorced from tradition and, therefore, incapable of judging ends. Without the ability to judge ends, we cannot engage in debate about the good life or the proper goods that we as individuals and as a society should pursue. Nicholas claims that the project of enlightenment—defined as the promotion …


Eucharist And Dragon Fighting As Resistance: Against Commodity Fetishism And Scientism, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Eucharist And Dragon Fighting As Resistance: Against Commodity Fetishism And Scientism, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

This paper examines two practices – the Roman Catholic Practice of Eucharist and the game Dungeons and Dragons – to show how social critique can be mounted from within a practice. It begins by relating Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of tradition to his earlier analysis of ideology and to the notion of ideology in general. The paper then tackles two dominant forms of ideology – Commodity Fetishism and Scientism – and shows how both Eucharist and Dungeons and Dragons promote critical thinking to resist those ideologies. In the process, it denies the Althusserian-Foucauldian analysis of ideology as mere materiality and defends …


Rights, Individualism, Community: Aristotle And The Communitarian-Liberalism Debate, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Rights, Individualism, Community: Aristotle And The Communitarian-Liberalism Debate, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

I argue that Aristotle could not be a fore-runner to liberalism, because his view of humanity is that human beings are constituted by a community and achieve self-fulfillment only as so constituted. Thus, Aristotle endorses a unique position that defends the freedom and self-development of the individual within the parameters of a social order.


Identity: Cultural Knowledge--Self-Knowledge. Disclosure Interviews Linda Alcoff, Ann Ciasullo, Christine Metzo, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Identity: Cultural Knowledge--Self-Knowledge. Disclosure Interviews Linda Alcoff, Ann Ciasullo, Christine Metzo, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

No abstract provided.


Nation, Culture, Language, Metaphor: Living With And Understanding Each Other. Disclosure Interviews David Ingram, Kelli Mcallister, Christine Metzo, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Nation, Culture, Language, Metaphor: Living With And Understanding Each Other. Disclosure Interviews David Ingram, Kelli Mcallister, Christine Metzo, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

No abstract provided.


Others Play At Dice: Friendship And Dungeons And Dragons, Jeffery Nicholas Sep 2014

Others Play At Dice: Friendship And Dungeons And Dragons, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

D&D garners exemplify Aristotle's claim that "no one would want to live without friends" (1155a5). The popular view is that a gamer is a loner or maybe even a loser, someone without friends, who maybe spends his time in a room alone or, if he has managed to find other losers like himself, in his mom's basement until he's 40, unemployed, and still a virgin. Movies like Saving Silverman or Shaun o f the Dead play with this stereotype, some- times reinforcing it and at other times resisting it. Yet garners in fact value friendship highly. One might even see …


Of Buggers And Gods: Friendship In Ender’S Game, Jeffery Nicholas Jun 2013

Of Buggers And Gods: Friendship In Ender’S Game, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is a genius—a boy wonder who shouldn’t exist except that his older siblings showed such promise that the government allowed his parents to have a “Third.” Ender is so smart that he never loses a military strategy game at a school for geniuses. He’s such a genius that when fighting the alien buggers, he loses a few battles but wins the war. Orson Scott Card writes the story of Ender to make us believe that Ender’s genius rests on his ability to empathize with his enemy so that he can anticipate their strategy and use it to …