Philosophy Commons^™

Temples Of Caesar: The Politics Of Renaissance Georgics Translations, Kimberly Johnson

Quidditas

Between the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign and the regicide of Charles I, three major English translations of Virgil’s middle poem, the Georgics, were published. Each translation appeared at a moment of religio-political crisis in England, a coincidence made more significant by the ambivalent political stance of Virgil’s text, which simultaneously communicates praise for Octavian and suspicion about an imperial program that disenfranchised the agricultural classes, an oversight which Virgil records in the Georgics as impiety. This paper charts the ways in which seemingly innocent translation decisions manage to perform a critical interrogation of monarchal authority, particularly as it …

William Of Auvergne And Popular Demonology, Thomas De Mayo

Quidditas

Theologian and bishop of Paris during St. Louis’ early reign, William of Auvergne (d. 1249) aimed in his life and writings to combat the myriad threats he perceived as facing Christianity. The early thirteenth century saw many potential competitors to official doctrines concerning the natural and supernatural worlds—Arabic philosophy imported into the universities, heretical attacks on the institutional church, and persistent folk beliefs and practices. William attributed these challenges to an underlying demonic conspiracy directed against humankind. This paper examines William’s treatment of popular beliefs on the Wild Hunt, a mysterious congregation of spirits, and related beliefs about female spirits …

Old Icelandic Gaglviðr, Aurelijus Vijūnas

Quidditas

This essay discusses a debated word form gaglviðr occurring in stanza 42 of the Old Icelandic poem VÄluspá 'The Prophesy of the Seeress'. The noun gaglviðr is problematic both from the semantic point of view (Old Icelandic gagl 'gosling', viðr 'tree; forest' 'gosling forest'?), and because it possesses a variant spelling galgviðr ('gallows' tree;’gallows' forest') which occurs in another manuscript containing the same poem. In the present paper, the form gaglviðr is considered to be the correct and the original form of this word, whereas the form galgviðr is interpreted as a scribal error. Various existing semantic analyses of the …

Rendering Shakespearean Rhetoric Visible In The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, Katherine Kickel

Quidditas

Traditionally, the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery is considered an important moment in England’s art history narrative. In this essay, I argue that the Boydell collection also reflects a new preference for reading Shakespeare’s plays in the eighteenth century via its editorial illustration of parts of the plays that would not normally be emphasized in theatrical productions.

Vico’S New Science Of Interpretation: Beyond Philosophical Hermeneutics And The Hermeneutics Of Suspicion, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article situates Vico's hermeneutical science of history between a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricoeur, Habermas, Freud) and a redemptive hermeneutics (Gadamer, Benjamin). It discusses Vico's early writings and his ambivalent trajectory from Cartesian rationalism to counter-enlightenment historicist and critic of natural law reasoning. The complexity of Vico's thinking belies some of the popular treatments of his thought developed by Isaiah Berlin and others.

The Powers Of Silence: Cistercian Monasticism As A Radical Critique Of Information Age Epistemology, Brad Rubin

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

Universals And Particulars: Aristotle's Ontological Theory And Criticism Of The Platonic Forms, Brad Vezina

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

The Scepticism Of Francisco Sanchez, Damian Caluori

Philosophy Faculty Research

The Renaissance sceptic and medical doctor Francisco Sanchez has been rather unduly neglected in scholarly work on Renaissance scepticism. In this paper I discuss his scepticism against the background of the ancient distinction between Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism. I argue that Sanchez was a Pyrrhonist rather than, as has been claimed in recent years, a mitigated Academic sceptic. In keeping with this I shall also try to show that Sanchez was crucially influenced by the ancient medical school of empiricism, a school closely allied with Pyrrhonism.

“Once More Into The Breech…”, Dewey I. Dykstra

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Is There A Problem Of Induction For Mathematics?, Alan Richard Baker

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Implications Of New Vocabulary Assessments For Minority Children, Jill De Villiers, Valerie Johnson

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Decision Structuring In Important Real-Life Decisions, Kathleen M. Galotti

Cognitive Science Faculty Work

No abstract provided.

Is Global Poverty A Moral Problem For Citizens Of Affluent Societies?, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The gap between the affluent and the global poor has increased during the past few decades, whether it is measured in terms of private consumption, income, or wealth. One would expect that severe poverty in a world of abundance would constitute a moral challenge to the affluent, but in fact it hardly seems a serious ethical concern. Affluent citizens seem so little morally concerned with global poverty. However, the most promising approach seems to be to explore and divulge factually and conceptually the numerous ways in which the affluent are implicated in a wholly unjust world of growing inequality. Changing …

Would The United States Doctrine Of Preventative War Be Justified As A United Nations Doctrine?, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

On the same day, 23 September 2003, that President George W. Bush defended his Iraq policy to the General Assembly of the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan also spoke to the Assembly. Annan reiterated his opposition to the view that states may independently be justified in using military force “preemptively” to avoid the dangers posed by the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) among states and terrorists, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

The Public Funding Of Health Care: A Brief Historical Overview Of Principles, Practices, And Motives, Paul Carrick

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Nationally sponsored programs designed to fund health care for the general public are largely a twentieth century phenomenon. Yet a long glance backward at the medical and public health history of Western civilization, extending from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century, reveals earlier periods when governments, religious institutions, and other groups provided some measure of medical relief for the sick, the poor, and the homeless. In this essay, I will provide not an exhaustive but rather an illustrative account of this oft forgotten fact. My objectives are threefold.

First, to remind us that the active concern of society for …

Explanatory Critique, Hugh Lacey

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Revolution: A Philosophic Perspective On The Automotive Industry, Joshua Beasley

Whittier Scholars Program

For my project I will be utilizing the philosophic principles and business structure found at the sports camp I interned at and apply them in the car industry.

After interning at the camp, interviewing the founder and the current owner of the camp, I have begun doing research into the automotive industry to see where and how such a business structure and philosophic principles can be applied to the car industry, specifically to a new car company. The philosophic principles I will apply will be ones that involve customer relations and environmental ethics. I will apply these to a new …

Notes On A Poetics Of Time, Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy Faculty Research

The idea of a poetics in contrast with an aesthetics of time is intended to focus on the creative possibilities of imagination in configurations of time. An aesthetics of time focusing on sensuous experience is a certainly a basic resource of creative imagination in literature. But the concept of a poetics of time, taken from the root meaning of poiesis in classical Greek thought—to make, or to bring forth—enables an inquiry into conceptions of human life and thought brought forth in various creative configurations of time in literature. This essay will analyze some of the ways in which poetic imagination …

Artist's Labor, Derek Whitehead

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay explores the relations between perception, phenomenology and art practice. The object of my inquiry is the kind of perceptual repertoire available to the artist in relation to his art, which extends beyond the technical means available to art making in its varying forms. I invoke an artist's innate perception as the source and locus of art's creation. This creation of art also has an outward or phenomenological dimension. In this respect, I investigate the ways in which phenomenological perception, via Maurice Merleau-Ponty's hermeneutic insights into artistic activity, might offer to contemporary arts practice a means of reappraising its …

Resembling Nothing: Image And Being In Plato, Yancy Hughes Dominick

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

A crucial application of Plato’s views on the use of images in philosophy occurs through the use of the image relationship as an image for the relation of forms and particulars. The relation of a picture to the object it depicts, or that between a reflection and what it reflects, can be seen as analogous to the relation of a particular to the form in which it participates. Although the attack on the image model as analogous to the relation of forms and particulars in the Parmenides threatens to undermine any reliance on that model, this essay will present a …

Everyday Philosophy, Andrea Monteath

Theses : Honours

My thesis is a work of creative non-fiction, in the form of an introductory, philosophy workbook. The workbook, tentatively named Everyday Philosophy, is intended to appeal to upper secondary students aged sixteen to seventeen, and contains a broad cross-section of information about the philosophy tradition. The workbook is loosely constructed around the new Western Australian Certificate of Education 'Philosophy and Ethics' curriculum, due to be launched in 2008. The aim of my thesis is to provide an introduction to Philosophy and Ethics that is thought-provoking yet easy to understand, employing examples, analogies and illustrations that are relevant and current …

Perception And Presentation: Mythological Imagery And The Female Gaze In Italian Renaissance Art, Victoria Ehrlich

Philosophy & Humanities Theses - Archive

Ostensibly, it would seem that during the Renaissance, subjects of mythological origin in the visual arts were almost exclusively created with the male patron in mind. While this is a highly visible trend, it is important to remember that women, too, were spectators of art steeped in mythological imagery. Cassoni and spalliere were marriage chests and wall panels customarily commissioned for wedding rituals of the era and were often painted with such stories. To determine how the female gaze differed from its male counterpart in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, paintings meant for the eyes of a specific couple are …

The Challenge Of Understanding Radical Constructivism, Dewey I. Dykstra

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: This contribution to the Festschrift honoring Ernst von Glasersfeld gives some insight into the perpetual problem of understanding radical constructivism (RC). Parallels with the Middle Way school of Buddhism appear to shed light on this challenge. Conclusions: The hegemony realism has over the thinking of even the most highly educated in our civilization plays a major role in their failure to understand RC. Those still subject to realism in their thinking interpret statements by those in RC in ways incompatible with RC. Until realists disequilibrate over mismatches between realist expectations and experiences, no alternative way of thinking is accessible …

“The Problem Of Science” In Nietzsche And Heidegger, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Nietzsche and Heidegger pose important philosophical questions to science and its technological projects. The resultant contributes to what may be called a continental philosophy of science and I argue that only such a rigorously critical approach to the question of science permits a genuinely philosophical reflection on science. The resultant contributes to what may be called a continental philosophy of science and I argue that only such a rigorously critical approach to the question of science permits a genuinely philosophical reflection on science. More than a thoughtful reflection on science, however, the heart of philosophy is also at stake in …

Acquisition Of Tense In Xhosa: The Long And The Short Of It, Sandile Gxilishe, Jill De Villiers, Peter A. De Villiers

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

The purpose of the present paper it so determine when Xhosa-speaking children master the morphology of tense. Specifically, we ask when Xhosa-speaking children learn the conditions on the two forms of the Present and Recent Past tenses, namely the long and the short forms. Despite the fact that there are complex grammatical conditions on which form is appropriate in a sentence, the paper will demonstrate that young children can attend to these grammatical conditions.

Identidad Y Entendimiento. Schelling O Una Instancia Intermedia Entre Kant Y Hegel, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Resumen:

Existe una tendencia a estudiar los puntos de encuentro o desencuentro entre Kant y Hegel pero se olvida la reflexión de Schelling, crucial para comprender el diálogo entre estos sistemas de pensamiento. Un caso en que se patentiza este olvido se advierte en Sublime Understanding, Aesthetic Reflection in Kant and Hegel (2005) de Kirk Pillow, quien desarrolla un modelo estético para ensanchar la noción de entendimiento humano. Partiendo de la Crítica del juicio de Kant y las Lecciones de estética de Hegel, Pillow encuentra una instancia intermedia entre el valor cognoscitivo de la determinación conceptual hegeliana y la indeterminación …

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Some Thoughts On The Greater Integration Of Islamic Sources Into The Wider Framework Of Medieval History, John J. Curry

Quidditas

The study of Islam has been attracting greater interest in recent years, due to high-profile political and economic events. In addition, the rise of world history programs has generated a need for resources by which both students and faculty alike can strengthen their knowledge in this field. Still, general knowledge on the field is limited. This disparity has occurred, in part, because the field of Islamic history, especially in its formative and medieval periods, has been oriented toward specialists rather than a general audience. Often, world history sourcebooks are content to give only short selections from religious sources such as …

Charlemagne’S Denarius, Constantine’S Edicule, And The Vera Crux, John F. Moffitt

Quidditas

In 806 a much-discussed silver denarius bearing the likeness of Charlemagne was issued. This is called the “temple-type” coin due to the (as yet unidentified) architectural structure illustrated on the reverse side, and which is explicitly labeled as representing the epitome of “Christian Religion.” By examining different kinds of archeological and documentary evidence, this building can now be finally identified. It is, in short, the “Edicule” built by Constantine the Great in 326 to cover the Tomb of Christ (or Holy Sepulcher) in Jerusalem.

Twentieth-Century Illustrators’ Interpretations Of The Works Of Rabelais, Margaret Harp

Quidditas

Gustave Doré's mid-nineteenth-century illustrations of François Rabelais's oeuvre have become as well-known as the text itself: their fanciful details capture the literally larger-than-life personality of the French sixteenth-century humanist's protaganist-giants, Pantagruel and Gargantua. Equally intrigued by the thematic complexity and imaginative narrative of this Renaissance masterpiece, subsequent artists and illustrators of Rabelais continue to create new and unexpected artistic representations. This paper presents the illustrations of a lesser-known twentieth-century French wood engraver, Jean Chièze. His notable contributions to a 1935 commemorative edition of Pantagruel simultaneously highlight the medieval woodcut, emphasize the playful tone of Rabelais's narrative and allude to contemporary …