Philosophy Commons^™

Philosophy And Theology: Notes On Pro-Life Consistency, Personhood Potentiality, And Prayer For Healing, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Why Is Beauty Form? Plotinus’ Theory Of Beauty In Phenomenological Perspective, Eric Perl

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Not A Four-Letter Word, Timothy Shanahan

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

What Is Democracy, And Is It The One?, Scott Smith

The University Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche's Debt To Kant's Theory Of The Beautiful In 'Birth Of Tragedy', R. Kevin Hill

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nietzsche describes Birth of Tragedy as a contribution to “the science of aesthetics”. In this paper, I will argue that a crucial influence on his emerging views was Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Nietzsche’s early aesthetic views are often attributed to some combination of Schopenhauer’s analyses of the plastic arts (inspiring Nietzsche’s conception of the Apollinian) and his analysis of music (inspiring Nietzsche’s conception of the Dionysian) along with Nietzsche’s own original insights into how these combine to form the tragic. As we shall see, the resources of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics were unavailable to Nietzsche due to epistemological commitments he had …

Review: Biblical Faith And Other Religions: An Evangelical Assessment, Michael S. Jones

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

On The Intellectual Sources Of Laïcité: Rousseau, Constant, And The Debates About A National Religion, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

That French Protestants gave strong support to laïcité is by now well established. In recent work, Patrick Cabanel has even made a compelling case for the Protestant sources of laïcité, placing particular emphasis on the Protestant entourage of Jules Ferry (1832-1893) and stressing the inspiration provided by the pro-Protestant intellectual, Edgar Quinet (1803-1875.)

This article suggests that we look even earlier in time for the intellectual sources of laïcité. Seminal ideas can be found in the writings of two liberal Protestants, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Benjamin Constant (1767-1830.) Rousseau is usually counted among the opponents, and not the …

Ennobling Direct Democracy, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

In this essay, Professor Clark argues that we should be attentive to the effect that direct democracy might have on our public character. Building upon earlier work, Clark suggests that the initiative in particular threatens to debase us by undercutting a crucial character trait which might best be called "responsibility-taking." The bulk of this essay is devoted to explaining what this means, and why it matters. Why should we care about the effect of political processes on public character? Why is this particular trait important and worth preserving? How is it threatened by direct democracy? In conclusion, and by way …

Nietzsche’S Conception Of Friendship, Ryan C. Kinsella

Theses

Interpreting Friedrich Nietzsche’s unorthodox conception of friendship is the focus of the following dissertation. In couching his conception of friendship within his naturalistic philosophy of the human person and his morality, I aim to establish the central importance of friendship in Nietzsche’s philosophy. An equally important second aim is to demonstrate how Nietzsche’s philosophy of friendship is distinctly constructive in contrast to other aspects of his philosophy. These aims are addressed in three chapters: in the first chapter I examine how Nietzsche discusses friendship in his works, in what tone he discusses friendship, and I will briefly discuss how his …

A Theory Of Argument (Book Review), G. C. Goddu

Philosophy Faculty Publications

A Theory of Argument is an advanced textbook “written for upper-level undergraduate students who have completed at least one prior course in argumentation theory, critical thinking, informal logic, formal logic, or some other related discipline” (ix). This puts Vorobej’s book in a unique position since, to my knowledge, there are no other second course undergraduate textbooks with a nonsymbolic focus. (Second course symbolic logic textbooks written for undergraduates, rather than primarily for graduate students, were relatively rare until recently; the past decade has seen a proliferation in such texts.)

Walton On Argument Structure, G. C. Goddu

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In previous work I argued against (i) the likelihood of finding a theoretically sound foundation for the linked/convergent distinction and (ii) the utility of the distinction even if a sound theoretical basis could be found. Here I subject Douglas Walton’s comprehensive discussion of the linked/convergent distinction found in Argument Structure: A Pragmatic Theory to careful scrutiny and argue that at best Walton’s theory remains incomplete and that attempts to fill out the details will run afoul of at least one of the problems adduced above—i.e., result in either a theoretically unsound distinction or a theoretically sound, but unnecessary distinction.

On A Moral Right To Civil Disobedience, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this essay I argue that citizens of a liberal-democratic state, one that I argue has a morally justified claim to political authority, enjoy a moral right to engage in acts of suitably constrained civil disobedience, or what I will call a moral right to public disobedience. Such a claim may well appear inconsistent with the duty usually thought to correlate to a legitimate state’s right to rule, namely, a moral duty to obey the law. If successful, however, the arguments that follow entail that the duty correlative to a liberal-democratic state’s justified claim to political authority is in fact …

The Surprise Exam Paradox: Disentangling Two Reductios, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

One tradition of solving the surprise exam paradox, started by Robert Binkley and continued by Doris Olin, Roy Sorensen and Jelle Gerbrandy, construes surprise epistemically and relies upon the oddity of propositions akin to G. E. Moore's paradoxical 'p and I don't believe that p.' Here I argue for an analysis that evolves from Olin's. My analysis is different from hers or indeed any of those in the tradition because it explicitly recognizes that there are two distinct reductios at work in the student's paradoxical argument against the teacher. The weak reductio is easy to fault. Its invalidity determines the …

Rawls And Health Care, Elizabeth H. Coogan

Honors Theses

John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971), his first major work articulating his theory of justice as fairness, was immediately recognized as a fundamental contribution to political philosophy in the twentieth century. Working within the tradition established by previous philosophers such as Kant and Locke, Rawls employed the contract theory approach. Taking it to a higher order of abstraction, he sought to determine not what the structure of social organization would be, but what the principles which governed social institutions would be under a hypothetical contracting situation. Rawls uses this contract theory approach to construct a society in which the …

Collective Moral Responsibility, Allyson Rudolph

Honors Theses

What is collective moral responsibility? And why should you care? The answer to the former, like any good philosophical question, is largely unresolved. Although writing on collective responsibility has flourished, particularly in the wake of the Holocaust, and despite the existence of an increasingly consistent bibliography of essential writings in the field, there is no definitive authority on the subject. Unlike individual moral responsibility, however, there is little consensus among the ranks. Many theories disclaim the existence or the possibility of collective moral responsibility—a group is just not the sort of thing that can ever be considered a morally responsible …

Merleau-Ponty On Human Motility And Libet's Paradox, T. Brian Mooney, Damien Norris

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In 1979, neuroscientists Libet, Wright, Feinstein and Pearl introduced the delay-and-antedating hypothesis/paradox based on the results of an on-going series of experiments dating back to 1964 that measured the neural adequacy [brain wave activity] of conscious sensory experience. What is fascinating about the results of this experiment is the implication, especially when considered in the light of Merleau-Ponty’s notions of intentionality and the pre-reflective life of human motility, that the body, and hence not solely the mind, is a thinking thing. The experiments and conclusions of Libet et al. have attracted considerable academic attention and have been used in the …

Adolf Reinach’S Contribution To The Early Phenomenological Movement, Kimberly Jaray

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Adolf Reinach made significant contributions to the early phenomenological movement with his work on states of affairs, the ontological categorization of the a priori, and a realist interpretation of essences, yet today his name and contributions go largely unrecognized. To make matters worse, the few who have contributed to Reinach scholarship have seriously misinterpreted central features of his thought. This thesis seeks to rectify this situation by offering an historical account of the origin and development of some of Reinach’s key notions and of their significance to the development of phenomenology in the early twentieth century. This thesis is …

Abstraction, Technology, And Power, John Wilkinson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The work's central question is how technological designs affect the political power of individuals. This discussion supplements claims that more democratic control over the design and deployment of technology is necessary; it does so by showing how the general tendency toward parametric designs creates technological delegates: artifacts to which we inadvertently delegate our political powers. "Delegation" in this sense is the central theme. It is developed in the context of recent philosophy and sociology of technology, as well as ecofeminism and the existentialism of Gabriel Marcel and Martin Heidegger. A distinction is made between live and dead abstractions (chapter two); …

Evaluating Transformative Spirituality In An Organizational Leadership Program At A Christian University, Elizabeth D. Rios

Theses and Dissertations

In the field of Christian higher education, some educators are more concerned with marketing their programs to nontraditional students, the fastest growing segment of new enrollments. Although many view that as a blessing, the issues of mission and specifically spirituality are of concern to educators and administrators who want to avoid the secularization already impacting many fine schools in the country. At satellite locations, some educators perceive that the lack of structured practices and intentional procedures and the marketing of convenience-based structural models have watered down the offerings of Christian higher education. This applied dissertation evaluated whether spiritual development and …

Paleolithic Flints: Is An Aesthetics Of Stone Tools Possible?1, Riva Berleant

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper asks whether an aesthetics of Paleolithic tools is possible, and if so, what it might be. The application of our own aesthetic sensibilities to artifacts of prehistory is not difficult. We easily recognize and appreciate their visual and tactile qualities. The more complicated questions that the paper explores are whether we can uncover the aesthetic sensibilities of their makers and, if we cannot, whether aesthetic examination of prehistoric tools from our own perspectives is adequate or useful. The paper is based on study of Paleolithic flints from French archaeological sites dating from about 500,000 years ago to about …

Art, Perception And Indeterminacy, Robert Pepperell

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article considers the phenomenon of visual indeterminacy, which occurs when the sensory data gathered from the visual system cannot be integrated with semantic knowledge. A number of examples are given, including from the author's own art work, and some results presented from a scientific study based on them. The implications for the operation of the mind and, in particular, the nature of aesthetic experience are addressed, and the distinction between the perception of visual forms and their cognitive interpretation is discussed. Arguments about the nature of aesthetic experience are then considered from some historical sources and interpreted in light …

Architecture Vs. Art: The Aesthetics Of Art Museum Design[1], Larry Shiner

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Many art critics have complained that the most dramatic art museum designs of the last decade have upstaged or interfered with the art within. This essay examines eight contemporary cases before drawing some lessons for art museum design, and ends by setting the architecture vs. art problem in the context of the philosophy of architecture, focusing on the issues of function and symbolism.