Comparative Philosophy Commons^™

Course Syllabus (Fa13) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "Power, The Subject, And Technological Rationality", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description and Objectives:

In this course, we will examine mechanisms of power and the processes by which these produce categories of subjectivity. Theoretically speaking, we will begin by considering these processes at the level of society and then dwell on their human experience at the level of the psyche. Here, we will aim to discover processes by which the subject reproduces conditions of domination by power at the level of psychic experience. Power-practices assume their condition of possibility by positing, on the one hand, that the category of the subject is a priori existent and, on the other, that …

On The Permanence Of Heideggerian Authenticity, Seth Daves

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this essay I pose the following question: is Heideggerian authenticity permanent? To investigate this question I begin with a thorough analysis of what Heidegger means by authenticity. Afterwards I look into the leading figures within the field, seeking guidance in answering the question of the permanence of Heideggerian authenticity. Ultimately I conclude that an amended version of John Haugeland's analysis of resoluteness gives rise to the affirmative response to my question. I conclude by investigating potential problems concluding that Heideggerian authenticity is permanent.

Zange And Sorge: Two Models Of 'Concern' In Comparative Philosophy Of Religion, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

The concept of Sorge, as developed in Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) classic work, Sein und Zeit (1927), describes an existential-ontological state characterized by “anxiety” about the future and the desire to “attend to” the world based on our awareness of temporality. In Japan, this concept was borrowed and critically developed by Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960). In Rinrigaku (1937–49), Watsuji argued that Heidegger’s Sorge remains overly reliant on the philosophical structures of Western individualism and subjectivism, and thus neglects the social dimension of human being. In turn, Watsuji’s contemporary, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), developed an alternative theory of “concern” in his reflections on …

The Convergent Conceptions Of Being In Mainstream Analytic And Postmodern Continental Philosophy, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

There is ultimately a very close convergence between the conceptions of being in widely recurrent elements of both mainstream Anglo-American philosophy and mainstream postmodern Continental philosophy. One characteristic idea often drawn upon in Anglo-American or analytic philosophy is that we establish what has meaning (at all or as such) and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in Continental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it is not, with what has no being at all and …

Review: James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, And John C. Maraldo (Eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Hawai'i, 2011), James Mark Shields

Other Faculty Research and Publications

Book Review: James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo (eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Hawai'i, 2011)

Freshest Advices On What To Do With The Historical Method In Philosophy When Using It To Study A Little Bit Of Philosophy That Has Been Lost To History, Bennett Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The paper explores the question of the relationship between the practice of original philosophical inquiry and the study of the history of philosophy. It is written from my point of view as someone starting a research project in the history of philosophy that calls this issue into question, in order to review my starting positions. I argue: first, that any philosopher is sufficiently embedded in culture that her practice is necessarily historical; second, that original work is in fact in part a reconstruction by reinterpretation of the past and that therefore it bears some relation to historiographic techniques for the …

Our Country Right Or Wrong: A Pragmatic Response To Anti-Democratic Cultural Nationalism In China, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since Deng Xiaoping came into power, China has been described as pragmatic in its approach to politics and development, and in the nineties there has been a revival of interest in Chinese cultural tradition. What is the relation between these two phenomena? Do they coexist, separately in mutual indifference, or in tension? Has there been constructive engagement, or at the very least does the potential for such engagement exist? More specifically, what roles, if any, do they play in China's quest for democracy? Does Dewey's pragmatism have any relevance to China in the twenty-first century? The issue of cultural tradition …

Concrete Containment In Late Capitalism, Mysticism, The Marquis De Sade, And Phenomenological Anthropology, Apple Igrek

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Arts and Humanities

Georges Bataille is known for being complex and multifaceted: influenced by Christian mystics as well as Hegelians and Marxists, his work is also linked with that of the surrealists and existentialists of his own mid-20th century France as well as the post-structuralists - in particular the Tel Quel collaboraters - who followed in his wake. It would be astonishing, then, if Bataille's thinking were not conflated with precisely those movements and those ideas with which he has so much in common, despite the fact that we should refuse to expect this. Much of Bataille's work was devoted to the ambivalent …

Energy-Flow – A New Perspective On James Macgregor Burns’ Transforming Leadership: A New Pursuit Of Happiness, Pi-Jern Caroline Fu

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This theoretical dissertation documents a personal transforming leadership experience; during which, I explored my Leadership as Energy-Flow model by having a virtual dialogue with the polymathic works of theorists and thinkers to corroborate and refine it. The model consists of a theory and a conceptual scheme. The energy-flow theory, based on the laws of physics and Chinese philosophy and cosmological science, fashions the energy-flow conceptual scheme. Using the conceptual scheme, I delve into the Premise of the Dialogue, “In what ways and to what extent would using the energy-flow frame of reference describe and stimulate new meanings in Transforming Leadership: …

From The Illuminating Moon To The Radiating Sun: The Philosophical Writings Of Emerson And Nichiren, Sharon Mitsue Blythe

Theses & Honors Papers

Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophical writings possess deep correlations to the writings of Nichiren, a 13th century Japanese Buddhist philosopher. Both Emerson and Nichiren conceive the inherent and unlimited potential of human beings, and stress the inseparability of life from its psychological, spiritual, and physical environment. Both Emerson and Nichiren address the cyclical and universal nature of all phenomena, an understanding that derives from the oneness of all facets of existence. The greatest variation between these two writers occurs in the implementation and practice of their philosophies.

The Preface provides a synopsis of Buddhism and introduces Nichiren. It also discusses the …

L'Islam En Termes Chrétiens : Quand L’Aventure Ambiguë « Croise » Pascal Et Saint Augustin, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

If it is recognized that The Ambiguous Adventure is one of Africa’s most studied texts, it should also be noted that most analyses of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel are general sociological commentaries on a mythologized Africa or on a society that is caught in the snares of its own mythic “values.” These commentaries often forget that the text is also the passage through a history that was imposed on Africa, and one which the writer tries to interpret in his own way. If Kane’s text plunges into the Christian faith by invoking Pascal and Augustine, it is in order to …

Questioning The Philosophical Influence Of Beauty And Perception In Bramante's Fist Scheme For St Peter's, Gretta Tritch

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

The association between the architects of the Renaissance and the philosophy of Plato has long been upheld and reiterated. However recent authors such as Alina Payne and Christine Smith have shown this scholarship to be somewhat limited and reactionary. A closer examination of Donato Bramante’s early scheme for the design of the new St. Peter’s basilica demonstrates such limitations of the singular Platonic associations that have been previously made. By studying the philosophical influences that Bramante may have been exposed to throughout his education and early career, a decidedly Aristotelian influence emerges. The design for St. Peter’s, as presented on …

Dialectics And The Dao: On Both, A And Non-A In Neutrosophy And Chinese Philosophy, Feng Liu, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper introduces readers to a new approach to dialectical logic: neutrosophy. Specifically it proposes a multi-valued logic in which the statement “both A and Non-A,” historically rejected as logically incoherent, is treated as meaningful. This unity of opposites constitutes both the objective world and the subjective world –a view with deep roots in Buddhism and Daoism, including the I-Ching. This leads in turn to the presentation of a framework for the development of a contradiction oriented learning philosophy inspired by the Later Trigrams of King Wen in the I-Ching. We show that although A and Non-A are logically inconsistent, …

Pengaruh Falsafah Pragmatisme Ke Atas Pemikiran Pelajar Melayu Islam : Suatu Kajian Di Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Victoria, Kuala Lumpur, Noraini Ismail

Student Works (2000-2009)

Falsafah adalah merupakan suatu bidang pemikiran yang bukan sahaja dibahaskan di dalam dunia Islam tetapi juga di barat. Pelbagai aliran pemikiran falsafah telah muncul di barat sejak berabad lamanya. Di antara aliran yang berpengaruh pada abad ke-20 ini ialah aliran falsafah pragmatisme yang menjadi topik perbahasan penulis. Aliran ini bersedia menerima segala sesuatu asal sahaja membawa manfaat yang praktis. Dari aspek ketuhanan sememangnya Islam menolak idea aliran ini yang temyata menolak kekuasaan mutlak Allah s.w.t sebagai penentu kebenaran. Aliran ini tidak berpegang kepada kebenaran mutlak termasuklah dalam masalah agama di mana mereka melihat kebenaran berdasarkan akibat dan natijah yang terhasil …

Confucianist's Perception Of Woman : Its Influence On Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior : Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts And Amy Tan's The Joyluck Club, Yoke Lin Yap

Student Works (2000-2009)

This thesis proposes to examine critically how the fundamental ideals contained within the philosophy of Confucius have evolved into social rites and rituals contained within the Five Classics and Four Classics for women. This is important for it is the social conventions that form the essential patriarchal structure in addition to the moral as well as behavioral norms of Chinese society. The study and analysis of Confucius' principal doctrines will help us understand the roles and responsibilities held by Chinese women within the structural hierarchy of Chinese family and society in general. The above will provide for a unique comparison …

"This Is Not A Christ": Nietzsche, Foucault, And The Genealogy Of Vision, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

There is nothing surprising about linking the names of Nietzsche and Foucault, something that Foucault himself frequently did. We know that the practices of archaeology and genealogy owe much to On the Genealogy of Morals; and in The Order of Things Foucault celebrates Nietzsche for being able to look beyond the epoch of "man and his doubles,'' thinking of the Obermensch as designating that which is beyond man, and for serving, along with Mallarme, as one of the prophets of the hegemony of language in the emerging episteme of the postmodern world. Here I want to focus on other affinities, …

A Phenomenological Inquiry Into The Nature Of The Sacred, Ana Maria Janssen

Institute for the Humanities Theses

There is good reason to believe that sacred experience is available to all humans. Yet the question of the sacred is frequently reduced to a debate between believers of various religions. As the focus of contention narrows, the ubiquity of sacred experience is neglected. Keeping this in mind, this analysis of the sacred confines itself strictly to the phenomenon of the sacred as a human experience, without confirming or denying the existence of a god or the veracity of any system of belief. Heidegger's Phenomenology is a useful model for such an analysis precisely because it lays aside conjecture about …

Collapsing The Philosophy/Rhetoric Disjunct: Nietzsche, Plato And The Perspectival Turn, Ned Vankevich

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Often overlooked within the standard views of academe lie hidden a number of tacit assumptions. Until the time of Nietzsche, the status of rhetoric as a discourse formation in Western intellectual history was often colored by the unflattering view generated by Plato in a number of his dialogues. In this thesis I present a case that revisits Plato and Nietzsche with an eye toward understanding the reasons why these two highly influential figures in contemporary philosophy adopt the views they advocate. In doing so, I attempt to illumine the reason Plato forms a fundamental split between philosophy and rhetoric and …

Pipe Dreams: Eternal Recurrence And Simulacrum And Foucault's Ekphrasis Of Magritte, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Michel Foucault invokes Andy Warhol at the conclusion of This is Not a Pipe; this comes at the end of a chapter entitled 'Seven Seals of Affirmation,' so that the words must be read with a Nietzschean resonance (recalling Zarathustra's 'The Seven Seals'):

A day will come when, by means of similitude relayed indefinitely along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity. Campbell, Campbell, Campbell, Campbell.

I propose to explore the approach to the visual here which proceeds by deploying or presupposing conceptions of similitude, simulacrum, eternal recurrence and …

Finding Godot: Postmodernism And Truth, Robert T. Gregory Jr.

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Postmodernism has enjoyed a wide range of influence as a critical enterprise, often being accused as nothing more than a method of critique. In addition, it is often objected that postmodernism advocates a radical relativism which is ultimately self-contradictory and lacks an overall sense of agency that can apply to concrete action. These issues are particularly significant when considering theories of truth. Given postmodernism criticizes traditional notions of truth and objectivity, it is appropriate to ask if postmodernism possesses a positive position on truth as an alternative. I argue in this work that while postmodernism has a significant critical enterprise, …

Jean-Luc Nancy And The Corpus Of Philosophy, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

How to touch, tactfully, the corpus of Jean-Luc Nancy? How can this corpus be shared and divided (partagé}? How can these words or thoughts be weighed? This text seems to set itself vigilantly and rigorously in opposition to the mystery of the incarnation and urges us to demystify the discourses of the body. The very translatability of the paper--to whatever degree translation is possible--and its presentation--in whatever way presence is possible--are modalities closely linked to the question of what body and corpus are and can be. The text "Corpus" is exscripted, to speak with Nancy, written out, that …

Deaths Of Art: David Carrier's Metahistory Of Artwriting, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This essay is a critical examination of David Carrier's Artwriting (1987), which offered a philosophical account of the implicit strategies of narrative and presentation deployed by a wide range of art historians and critics. Here, this author raises some questions concerning Carrier's attempt to describe or define a genre of 'art-writing' distinct from philosophical aesthetics; he also discusses Carrier's views in the context of those writers whom Carrier examines in Artwriting.

Subversion Of System / Systems Of Subversions, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

What might it mean to think outside or beyond the Hegelian system of philosophy? Already in Hegel's own time this was a question that came to occupy those who labored under the weight of his speculative and comprehensive system of thought. The easiest and most immediately appealing strategy was to seize upon some category that seemed to be relatively neglected within the system, something that seemed to have been too easily aufgehoben into the totality. Kierkegaard is sometimes represented as centering his challenges to the Hegelian system around the valorization of the unhappy consciousness; that is, the consciousness aware of …

Translating, Repeating, Naming: Foucault, Derrida And The Genealogy Of Morals, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Two cautions or warnings (at least) must be heeded in the attempt to do justice to Nietzsche's project of a genealogy of morals in the text that bears that name. While the Genealogy is often regarded as the most straightforward and continuous of Nietzsche's books, he tells us in Ecce Homo that its three essays are "perhaps uncannier than anything else written so far in regard to expression, intention, and the art of surprise.” If we should think ourselves successful in penetrating to these uncanny secrets and saying what Nietzsche's text means, once and for all, we would then have …

High Art, Folk Art, And Other Social Distinctions, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Most discussions of the arts by critics and philosophers could be characterized in terms of a rather studied neglect of folk and popular art. This neglect is hardly absolute, however, for it is important in order to articulate a specific conception of aesthetic taste, beauty, or style to contrast the standard being used or praised with some other, less desirable, even degraded way of producing or appreciating something similar. It is perhaps more than a historical coincidence that the formation of the modern concept of taste and aesthetic judgment, in the eighteenth century, coincides roughly with the discovery and valorization …

To Philosophize Is To Learn To Die, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As the quintessential man of letters, Roland Barthes had the genial gift of being able to sympathize with an endless variety of discourses, texts, myths, and semiotic systems. The profusion of apparent subjects-Japan, Brecht, Balzac, photography, "mythologies," classical writing, the theater-is perhaps calculated to provoke the purist who insists on the values of thoroughness and well-grounded inquiry. At the same time, one would have to be obtuse to fail to recognize the critical projects that animate the many books, essays, and studies; these are explorations that put into question the often closed and crabbed commitment of the scholar or critic …

Philosophy, Ethics, And Virtuous Rule: A Study Of Averroes' Commentary On Plato's "Republic", Charles E. Butterworth

Faculty Books

No abstract provided.

Foreword To Antonio De Nicolas Powers Of Imagining, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

Patrick Aidan Heelan, "Foreword" to Antonio de Nicolas, Powers of Imagining: Ignatius: a hermeneutic of St. Ignatius de Loyola using a new translation of his Spiritual exercises, his Spiritual diary, his Autobiography Autobiography, and some of his letters. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986). ix-xiv.

Gadamer, Habermas And The Death Of Art, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Since the appearance of Jurgen Habermas's critical review of Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method [Wahrheit und Methode], there has been talk of the ‘Gadamer-Habermas debate' among those who are interested in the nature of historical understanding and social rationality. More recently a number of philosophers have come to see that the issues involved are of wider scope, and that the opposition of the two can be seen as emblematic of two very general styles or approaches to philosophy, which are at the centre of contemporary discussion. As one might expect, differences at fundamental levels concerning truth and understanding …

Considerations Of Economic Justics: A Movement Towards A New Definition Of Poverty, Steven Medema

Bouwsma Paper Contest

Poverty, throughout the pre-modern and modern periods, has elicited a variety of attitudes and responses. Attitudes of the middle and upper classes toward poverty have alternated between thinking of it as an unavoidable natural phenomenon cast upon an unfortunate group of people, and seeing it as being caused by slothful indigents who are too lazy to work. Responses to the problem of poverty have run the gamut from moral chastisement to indoor relief (laboring in a workhouse forinordem to qualify for benefits), to the outright granting of benefits. Yet until the early twentieth century, little was done in terms of …