Philosophy Commons^™

Making Ethical Sense Of Useless Suffering With Levinas, Jules Simon

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

The Ethical Phenomenon Of Gm-Corn: Anger, Anxiety, And Arrogance In Crossing American Borders, Jules Simon

Selected Works Temporary Series

In terms of phenomenology, I often wonder about the relevance of what I do as a philosopher for the life of those with whom I come into contact. This ‘coming into contact’ happens for me on several levels: as one human among many, as a husband and father and son and brother, as a teacher, as a neighbor, and as country or city dweller. I remember with fondness those times in the late sultry summer months when, as a youth, I would drive with my father to this or that local farm-stand on some remote back road in the hills …

At The Intersection Of Philosophy, Literature, And Ethics: Axiology Through The Genre Of Literary Fiction, James Magrini

Philosophy Scholarship

This paper focuses on three interrelated topics: (1) Literature as an art form that is philosophical by nature; (2) Literature as an art form that reveals truth in the form of perceptual knowledge, which is autonomous (sensuous) knowledge, likened to “cognitive emotionality,”and (3) Literature as philosophically inspiring our effective and legitimate thinking on moral issues. I attempt to show that engaging literature as a philosophical endeavor can prove more rewarding from the perspective of moral discourse than the traditional modes of philosophical speculation found in formal treatises on morals. These forms of discourse, functioning deductively (e.g., the moral philosophy of …

Addams And Dewey: Pragmatism, Expression, And Community, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Chicago in the 1890s was home to two remarkable institutions, started by two remarkable activist-philosophers, experimenting with ideas and with social change. The first was Hull House, a social settlement, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. The second was the Laboratory School, an experimental school opened in 1896 by John Dewey, along with teachers Katherine Camp Mayhew and Anna Camp Edwards. Interaction was constant between the residents of Hull House and the teachers of the Laboratory School, as the participants learned from and taught each other. Through Hull House and the Laboratory School, Addams and Dewey …

The Oxford Handbook Of Philosophy And Literature, Richard Thomas Eldridge

Philosophy Faculty Works

This introductory article explains the coverage of this book, which is about the relations of complementarity and opposition between philosophy and literature. This book explores the interests for human life of specific genres of literature, considers broad modes of attention that have marked off certain large cultural periods from one another, traces workings of certain central literary devices for achieving attention and evaluates the use of literature as a practice in relation to the practices of inquiry, morality and politics. It also discusses the significance of the works of some philosophers in analyzing literary practice.

Popular Culture And The Denigration Of The Self, Eric Bain-Selbo

Philosophy & Religion Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sacrifice In A Post-Moral Society, Eric Bain-Selbo

Philosophy & Religion Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Popular Culture And The Denigration Of The Self, Eric Bain-Selbo

Philosophy & Religion Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of The New York Times [U.S.A.] And The Nation Media Group [Kenya] Presidential Opinion Polls Coverage 90 Days Prior To Election Day, David Okoth

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study seeks to find out whether there exists a relationship between the New York Times (U.S.) and the Nation Media Group (Kenya) coverage of presidential opinion poll results 90 days prior to Election Day. One research hypothesis was identified; (_H1) that there is a relationship – of difference – in how the two publications cover presidential opinion poll stories. The study identified 440 presidential opinion poll stories over a 90- day period prior to Election Day. It analyzed election coverage from October-December 2007 for the Nation and August-November 2008 for the Times. The study established that …

Meeting Need, Nicole Hassoun

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

This article considers the question ‘How should institutions enable people to meet their needs in situations where there is no guarantee that all needs can be met?’ After considering and rejecting several simple principles for meeting needs, it suggests a new effectiveness principle that (1) gives greater weight to the needs of the less well off and (2) gives weight to enabling a greater number of people to meet their needs. The effectiveness principle has some advantage over the main competitors including a principle suggested by David Miller in Principles of Social Justice. Miller argues that his principle accounts …

'Wars The Like Of Which One Has Never Seen', Tracy B. Strong

Research Resources

'WARS THE LIKE OF WHICH ONE HAS NEVER SEEN': READING NIETZSCHE AND POLITICS

Tracy B. Strong

Review Of Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, And Normalized Bodies And The Body Problematic: Political Imagination In Kant And Foucault, Dianna Taylor

Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche, Virtue, And The Horror Of Existence, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Robert Solomon argues that Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic like Aristotle's. Solomon’s approach seems unaware of Nietzsche’s belief in the horror of existence. A life that contains as much suffering as Nietzsche expects a life to contain, could not be considered a good life by Aristotle. To go further, as Nietzsche does in his doctrines of eternal recurrence and amor fati, to advocate loving such a fate, to refuse to change the slightest detail, Aristotle would find debased. Nietzsche is committed to a virtue ethic, but not an Aristotelian one.

Is Prospero Just? Platonic Virtue In William Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Anthony Jannotta

Undergraduate Review

The Tempest is often regarded, and rightly so, as Shakespeare’s last great play. Many scholars argue that Prospero is an analogue for Shakespeare himself, noting the similarities between Prospero’s illusory magic and Shakespeare’s poetic genius. The themes of imagination, illusion, and, indeed, theatre itself play an integral role. The line that is perhaps most often cited as evidence for this argument is Prospero’s speech directly after he breaks up the wedding masque in which he refers to “the great globe itself” (IV.i.153). There is a danger, however, in appealing to the author’s biography or treating the biography as paramount, namely …

Kierkegaard's Case For The Irrelevance Of Philosophy, Antony Aumann

Faculty Works

This paper provides an account of Kierkegaard’s central criticism of the Danish Hegelians. Contrary to recent scholarship, it is argued that this criticism has a substantive theoretical basis and is not merely personal or ad hominem in nature. In particular, Kierkegaard is seen as criticizing the Hegelians for endorsing an unacceptable form of intellectual elitism, one that gives them pride of place in the realm of religion by dint of their philosophical knowledge. A problem arises, however, because this criticism threatens to apply to Kierkegaard himself. It is shown that Kierkegaard manages to escape this problem by virtue of the …

Method In History, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Preface, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Reliabilism—Modal, Probabilistic Or Contextualist, Peter Baumann

Philosophy Faculty Works

This paper discusses two versions of reliabilism: modal and probabilistic reliabilism. Modal reliabilism faces the problem of the missing closeness metric for possible worlds while probalistic reliabilism faces the problem of the relevant reference class. Despite the severity of these problems, reliabilism is still very plausible (also for independent reasons). I propose to stick with reliabilism, propose a contextualist (or, alternatively, harmlessly relativist) solution to the above problems and suggest that probabilistic reliabilism has the advantage over modal reliabilism.

Who Owns This Text?: Plagiarism, Authorship, And Disciplinary Cultures, Carol Petersen Haviland, Joan A. Mullin

All USU Press Publications

Carol Haviland, Joan Mullin, and their collaborators report on a three-year interdisciplinary interview project on the subject of plagiarism, authorship, and "property," and how these are conceived across different fields. The study investigated seven different academic fields to discover disciplinary conceptions of what types of scholarly production count as "owned." Less a research report than a conversation, the book offers a wide range of ideas, and the chapters here will provoke discussion on scholarly practice relating to intellectual property, plagiarism, and authorship---and to how these matters are conveyed to students. Although these authors find a good deal of consensus in …

Hegel's Philosophy Of Language, By Jim Vernon, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2009)

Quidditas

Adele Lee

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Delno C. West Award (2009)

Quidditas

Andrea Knox

The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

“The Whole Is An Idle Dream:” The Early Modern And Post-Modern Quest For Cathay, Adele Lee

Quidditas

This article examines how the Renaissance English understood and responded to the land of Cathay. It argues that although Cathay is technically just another name for China it represented a separate conceptual realm in this period. In other words, Cathay must be considered as being, in many ways, a distinct discursive construct. Viewed as the ‘glittering prize’ of the East India Company, Cathay, which fuelled countless (doomed) attempts at discovery, possessed characteristics both Chinese and Tartar. Descriptions of it converged and diverged simultaneously with descriptions of China and Tartary. As well as being a culturally liminal entity, Cathay was also …

Dancing In The Shadows: Ritual, Drama And The Performance Of Baptisms In The Digby Conversion Of St. Paul And Philip Massinger’S The Renegado., Matthew C. Hansen

Quidditas

The anonymous Digby Conversion of St. Paul aims at historical verisimilitude in order to distance the on-stage baptism the play contains from the rite as performed in early sixteenth-century English churches. Philip Massinger’s The Renegado (published 1624), presenting the conversion and baptism of a Muslim woman, employs specific details to establish the baptism performed on stage as a rite that, while efficacious within the contexts of the play, is markedly different in substantive performance than the form of baptism presented in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. Both plays frame the dramatically significant and sensitive performance of the religious rite …

The Convent As Cultural Conduit: Irish Matronage In Early Modern Spain, Andrea Knox

Quidditas

Irish catholic women religious who migrated to Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries established a strong tradition of schools, hospitals and charitable institutions. Education and learning were important to Irish communities, and were recognised within Spain. Irish nuns and their convents were not part of an enclosed tradition and outreach work was a central aim. Sponsorship links between women were part of a collective plan, and cultural matronage by and for women appears to have been very effective. Censorship by the Inquisition and tridentine orthodoxy was contested by women’s religious houses which resisted censorship of book collections and art …

Review Essay: “Will In Overplus” A Review Of Shakespeare Biographies, Stephannie S. Gearhart

Quidditas

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 135, ll.1-3

It seems to be a kind of Respect due to the Memory of Excellent Men,

specially of those whom their Wit and Learning have made Famous,

to deliver some Account of themselves, as well as their Works, to Posterity.

For this Reason, how fond do we see some People of discovering any little

Personal Story of the great Men of Antiquity, their Families, the common

Accidents of their Lives, and …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Mind/Body Distinction: Towards A Continuist Ontology Of Consciousness, Michael Robillard

Undergraduate Review

In his paper, “The State and Fate of Contemporary Philosophy of Mind,” John Haldane likens the present condition of Philosophy of Mind to that of the philosophically stultifying period of late scholasticism, where naming took the place of explaining, and philosophy was reduced to taxonomy. Haldane argues that our current physicalistic lexicon has made it virtually “impossible to accommodate the basic features of mindedness revealed in reflection and direct experience.” For Philosophy of Mind to progress, Haldane argues, we must “make space” for alternative modes of knowing that exist beyond the bounds of our current, overly physicalistic terminology.

The Ethical Phenomenon Of Gm-Corn: Anger, Anxiety, And Arrogance In Crossing American Borders, Jules Simon

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

In terms of phenomenology, I often wonder about the relevance of what I do as a philosopher for the life of those with whom I come into contact. This ‘coming into contact’ happens for me on several levels: as one human among many, as a husband and father and son and brother, as a teacher, as a neighbor, and as country or city dweller. I remember with fondness those times in the late sultry summer months when, as a youth, I would drive with my father to this or that local farm-stand on some remote back road in the hills …

Children’S Insensitivity To Information From The Target Of Agreement: The Case Of Xhosa, Sandile Gxilishe, Mantoa Rose Smouse, Thabisa Xhalisa, Jill De Villiers

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

The paper presents an account of number agreement phenomena arguing that the target of agreement may be bleached of number information. This would explain why English-speaking children have difficulty relying on the target alone as a clue to number, despite producing it correctly. Xhosa has a very rich subject-verb agreement system and pro-drop, and there is theoretical dispute over its properties. An experiment with Xhosa-speaking children revealed that they, too, are unable to use the morpheme on the verb as a cue to subject number. It is argued that this may be further evidence that the morpheme is agreement rather …