History of Philosophy Commons^™

Of Method: A Propaedeutic To Coleridge's Prose Works, Michael A. Granger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to progress by maintaining a double-minded and conflicted suture of both the practical or imaginative eclipse of knowledge and theorizing the hypothetical epistemological absolute that explains the relativity of facticity. Any inadequate method of inquiry stagnates within attempting a purely figurative or purely demonstrative solution to skepticism. Thus, the appropriate way to approach Coleridge’s understanding of philosophy is the struggle to make inquiry adequate though progression. Coleridge’s methodological impulse originates explicitly in a …

Origins Of Great Traditions, Joseph J. Reidy

KSU Distinguished Course Repository

This course is a systematic examination of five centers of civilization in Afro-Eurasia during their defining moments. The course focuses on the historical contexts that gave rise to China’s classical philosophies, India’s transcendental world-view, the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic synthesis, African mythoreligious systems of thought, and Latin-European culture in the West. The course’s content emphasizes cross-cultural influences and connections.

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination Of The Eternal Now” 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月） (July 1931) §1 Of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft Of 2 Jan 19); Translated By Christopher Southward; Revision And Expansion Underway, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination of the Eternal Now” (July 1931) 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月）

§1 of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft of 2 Jan 2019)

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward; Revision and Expansion Underway, October 2023

Medieval Manuscripts At Loyola University Chicago, Ian Cornelius, Kathy Young

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article provides a summary overview of the collection of pre-1600 western European manuscripts in Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. The collection presently comprises four manuscript codices, at least 38 fragments, and four documents. The codices are a thirteenth-century Book of Hours from German-speaking lands; a fifteenth-century Dutch prayerbook; a preacher’s compilation written probably in southern Germany in the 1440s; and two fifteenth-century Italian humanist booklets, bound together since the nineteenth century, transmitting Donatus’s commentary on the Eunuchus (incomplete) and an anthology of theological excerpts, respectively. The fragments consist of thirteen leaves from books dismembered by modern booksellers …

Numbered, Weighed, Divided: Revolution And/As Apocalypse In The Modern Liberal Tradition, Asher J. Wycoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A long-standing political-theological critique contends that liberalism lacks the capacity to address theological challenges, and qualitative political challenges more generally. This charge is prevalent in our current age of crises, when the capacity to address such challenges is essential to any political tradition’s self-legitimation. I argue that the liberal tradition, broadly conceived, has long contended with theological challenges, particularly during modern revolutionary periods. Theological discourses, especially eschatological ones, circulate widely in these moments. Modern political actors impute cosmic significance to the events of their present, with a central analogy crystallizing between revolution and apocalypse. Reading major theorists of three modern …

Natural Lights & Natural Rights: The Problem Of The New Classical Natural Law Theory, Charles Neville Cacciatore

LSU Master's Theses

The present work examines the natural law jurisprudence of John Finnis. It argues that Finnis’s teaching is a genuinely new natural law theory. Finnis’s jurisprudence is not a re- presentation of the jurisprudence of St. Thomas Aquinas because its central element—a doctrine of natural rights—is a departure from Aquinas’s natural law teaching. In support of these claims, the present work relies upon the scholarship of Ernest L. Fortin, A.A. Following Fr. Fortin, it presents an understanding of the natural law that endorses a clear distinction between natural right and natural rights—between premodern political philosophy and modern political philosophy.

How Al-Farabi’S Interpretative Method Can Engage With Aristotle’S Method In Cognition And Practical Philosophy, Meysam Shirvani

Comparative Philosophy

Following Aristotle, al-Farabi divides philosophy into theoretical and practical each of which requires some specific methodology both in interpretation and cognition. Based on this division, there may arguably be four methodologies for four parts: 1) cognition of theoretical philosophy 2) interpretation of practical philosophy 3) cognition of practical philosophy 4) interpretation of practical philosophy. This paper focuses on the last one: the methodology of interpreting practical philosophy. Al-Farabi has an undeniably significant contribution to practical philosophy as a commentator on Greek philosophy and as a founder. In this paper, I investigate how al-Farabi (870-950 AD) read classical practical philosophy to …

The History Of Apologetics: A Collaborative Article Review, Isaiah B. Parker

Eleutheria: John W. Rawlings School of Divinity Academic Journal

In The History of Apologetics, the authors examine a variety of noteworthy Western apologists throughout seven distinct historical eras: Patristic, Medieval, Early Modern, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century (American), Twentieth Century (European), and Contemporary. Each chapter presents four essential elements relating to the life and work of one apologist: historical background, theological context, apologetic methodology and response, and critical contribution(s) to apologetics. They aim to provide an overview of influential apologists within their unique cultural contexts. This review structures its content in the same manner, albeit with some necessary minor changes to the elements for ease of reading. The historical …

From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …

An Overall-Complementarity-Seeking Account That Includes And Transcends Harmonious-Complementarity-Seeking Perspective: A Commentary On Chenyang Li’S Confucian Harmony-Seeking Account / Postscript, Bo Mou

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Doing Philosophy Comparatively In India: Classical Indian And Western Philosophical Traditions In Engagement, Joseph Kaipayil

Comparative Philosophy

When Western philosophy was introduced to Indian academia in the late nineteenth century, there arose for Indian philosophers a two-fold need: the need to preserve the self-identity of Indian philosophy and the need to dialogue with Western philosophy. In their attempt to defend the distinctiveness of Indian philosophy, the philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century affirmed that classical Indian philosophy was essentially spiritual. The philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, however, did not have a compulsion to defend Indian philosophy in the face of Western philosophy. Many of them critiqued the traditional view about …

Doing Philosophy Comparatively In Southern Europe: Western, Mediterranean, Islamic And Other Perspectives In Engagement, Nevad Kahteran

Comparative Philosophy

Aiming to become a part of transcultural discourses and debates, the author argues in this paper for the use of transcultural approaches overcoming the traditional ones in doing philosophy comparatively in the Southern Europe. Within this framework, new forms of cross-cultural philosophizing in the Mediterranean philosophy will arise in the triangle among the Western Balkans, Italy and Greece as a transcultural exchange of knowledge and ideas including more than twenty surrounding countries in the Mediterranean basin. In this regard, the author is trying to find a way for deepening and broadening transcultural approaches concerning the Southern Europe in general and …

How Speech Act Theory Can Help Address Problems In Theology And Church Posed By Modern Philosophy, Charles W. Westby

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Westby, Charles W. “How Speech Act Theory Can Help Address Problems in Theology and Church Posed by Modern Philosophy.” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2022. 347 pp.

This dissertation analyzes modern idealism as developed by René Descartes and Immanuel Kant to show how modern philosophy has impacted conservative theology, focusing on the theology of Carl F. H. Henry. The relationship between theology and philosophy is analyzed in terms of foundationalism, using postliberal theological analysis propounded by Hans Frei and George Lindbeck. Speech Act Theory as propounded by J. L. Austin and John R. Searle is used to critique modern idealism in …

​​​​From Repression To Appropriation: Soviet Religious Policy And Reform, 1917-1943, Andriy Dyachenko

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyses the dynamics of religious reform in the USSR from 1917 to 1943. It argues that the early Bolshevik policy of persecution was increasingly substituted by state co-optation. This dynamic was shaped primarily by Stalinist concerns with state security and problems of ideology.

Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev And Philosophical Progression, Graham C. Goff

Journal of Religion & Film

The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes’s philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev’s controversial film. This examination of Leviathan’s three unique …

"For You There Are No Strangers": Albert Schweitzer And The Ethics Of Necessity In Pandemic America, Joel (J.T.) Young

Faculty Scholarship

Claiming millions of lives and affecting millions more, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust humanity into a period of intense reflection on the fragility of life. However, in this time when people have been encouraged to care for their fellow human beings by taking the precautions necessary to protect one another, many have asked the same question as one of Jesus’ antagonistic opponents in the Gospel of Luke: “and who is my neighbor?” In addition to the virus, though, the United States has been plagued by another adversary: non-necessity toward the other. By claiming no responsibility for the well-being and care …

Do Androids Dream Of Improvisation?, Aidan J. Samp

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Bhikṣuṇī Śailā’S Rebuttal Of Māra’S Substantialist View: The Chariot Simile In A Sūtra Quotation In The Abhidharmakośopāyikā-Ṭīkā, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā

The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies

This study takes up the first occurrence in Buddhist literature of an illustrative simile comparing the five aggregates (Sanskrit skandhas/Pali khandhas) to a chariot (ratha), found in an early discourse attested in different parallel versions (SN 5.10, SĀ 1202, SĀ2 218, Up 9014). It introduces and translates the version extant in the Abhidharmakośopāyikā-ṭīkā (Up 9014), and then comments on this initial formulation of the chariot simile in light of the ancient Indian background against which the early Buddhist texts and teachings emerged. The implications of the distinctive Buddhist use of the chariot imagery in this context appears to be less …

Three Buddhist Distinctions Of Great Consequence For Cross-Cultural Philosophy Of Personal Identity, Antoine Panaïoti

Comparative Philosophy

This paper seeks to lay down the theoretical groundwork for the emergence of holistic cross-cultural philosophical investigations of personal identity ¾ investigations that approach the theoretical, phenomenological, psychological, and practical-ethical dimensions of selfhood as indissociable. My strategy is to discuss three closely connected conceptual distinctions that the Buddhist approach to personal identity urges us to draw, and a lucid understanding of which is essential for the emergence of appropriately comprehensive and thus genuinely cosmopolitan discussions at the cross-road between Western and Buddhist philosophical traditions. The first, primary distinction is that between the “visceral sense of self” (VSS) and the “substance …

In Search Of Buddhist Virtue: A Case For A Pluralist-Gradualist Moral Philosophy, Oren Hanner

Comparative Philosophy

Classical presentations of the Buddhist path prescribe the cultivation of various good qualities that are necessary for spiritual progress, from mindfulness (sati) and loving-kindness (metta) to faith (saddhā) and wisdom (paññā). Examining the way in which such qualities are described and classified in early Buddhism—with special reference to their treatment in the Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) by the fifth-century Buddhist thinker Buddhaghosa—the present article employs a comparative method in order to identify the Buddhist catalog of virtues. The first part sketches the characteristics of virtue as analyzed by neo-Aristotelian theories. …

Between Mysticism And Philosophical Rationality: Al-Ghazālī On The Reasons Of The Heart, Marilie Coetsee

Comparative Philosophy

In his seminal Orientalism and Religion (1999), Richard King argues that Western scholars of religion have constructed a conceptual dichotomy between “mysticism” and “rationality” that has caused them to systematically distort the claims and arguments of Eastern thinkers. While King focuses primarily on Western scholarship on the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, this essay shows that his argument can also be extended to apply to Western scholarship on al-Ghazālī, whose sympathy for Sufism and apparent rejection of Greek philosophy has often earned him the reputation of being a champion of Islamic mysticism. I argue that al-Ghazālī transcends the dueling categories of …

Civil Disobedience From A Biblical Perspective, Gabriel Reed

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

To say that civil disobedience is a complicated topic is to severely understate the topic. It is a subject matter that has derived many different and disparate opinions, points of view, and public policies. Specifically, within America today, we observe calls for civil disobedience from both sides of the political spectrum, over several divergent political ideals. These issues are, primarily, driven from both sides’ desire to provide protection and provision for the oppressed and those who cannot necessarily speak for themselves. The definition of who is necessarily oppressed and whom their oppressors are varies from person to person, regardless of …

The Interconnectedness Of Jonathan Edwards's Ontology And Trinitarianism, Holly Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jonathan Edwards scholarship has been divided in recent years on the correct interpretation of his work. Scholars like Sang Hyun Lee and Amy Plantinga Pauw maintain that Edwards used a radically new dispositional ontology to understand the fundamental realities of nature. Oliver Crisp, Kyle Strobel, and Steve Studebaker have argued that Edwards used an essentialist ontology. I will defend the latter position and explain how it is tied to Edwards’s Trinitarianism. I argue for an interpretation of Edwards that situates him in his historical and theological context. The early modern philosophy of his day was marked by essentialist ontology. The …

Early Modern Christian Platonism, Derek A. Michaud

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“I Said, You Are Gods”: Pastoral Motives Manifest In Patristic Citations Of Psalm 82:6, Charles Schulz

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

The early church fathers frequently cited Ps. 82:6 (LXX 81:6), “I said, You are gods and all sons of the Most High,” a passage Jesus himself quoted (John 10:34) to defend his own title as the Son of God. Scholars agree that the patristic use of verse underwrote the developing doctrine of deification, which promised that Christians would become “gods” in some sense by bearing God’s image and likeness and participating in Christ and his saving work. In order to deepen and focus our understanding of the significance and role of this passage for patristic theology—and particularly for pastoral practice—this …

Concerning Mostly Nonacademic Aspects Of My July 2006 Visit To Salzburg, Austria For The 6th International Whitehead Conference At Salzburg University, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Here are travel notes concerning mostly nonacademic aspects of my July 2006 visit to Salzburg, Austria for the 6th International Whitehead Conference at Salzburg University. These travel notes supplement the book Whiteheadian Ethics: Abstracts and Papers from the Ethics Section of the Philosophy Group at the 6th International Whitehead Conference at the University of Salzburg, July 2006 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) edited by Theodore Walker Jr. and Mihály Toth.

Damnatio Memoriae: On Deleting The East From Western History, Koert Debeuf

New England Journal of Public Policy

The story we read in books about the Renaissance tells us that Petrarch and Poggio rediscovered the books of antiquity that had been copied for centuries in medieval abbeys. The re-introduction of Greek science and philosophy, however, began in the twelfth century but occurred mainly in the thirteenth century. These works were first translated into Syriac and Arabic in the eighth and ninth centuries and stored in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. There they were read, used, and commented on by Arab philosophers, of whom the most famous was Averroes (1126–1198), who lived in Cordoba. The translation of his …

National Education System In The Educational Ideas Of Jadidism, Yulduz Namazova

The Light of Islam

The philosophy of education, which was formed in Turkestan in the late 19th - early 20 th centuries, is interpreted as an area of research that analyzes the national pedagogical activity and educational foundations of these modern educators, its goals and ideals, the methodology of pedagogical knowledge, methods of creating a new Russian school system. Thus, it can be said with confidence that the philosophy of education, as an area that has a socio-institutional form during this period, reflected the goals and objectives of the educational program of the Jadids. We know that during the formation of the Jadid Enlightenment, …

Mahmudkhuja Behbudiy As A Leader Of Jadid Reforms, Muminjon Xujaev

The Light of Islam

We are witnessing that the ideas of our Jadids, who tried to raise Turkestan through enlightenment to the level of world civilization at the beginning of the 20th century, and who showed modern education as a solution to the problems of that period, have not lost their signifcance today. In this sense, the study of the works of the famous orientalist Mahmudkhodja Behbudi based on new scientifc criteria plays an important role in the study of issues of interethnic communication, peaceful coexistence, education, culture, and religious tolerance. M. Behbudi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries began a systematic …

Digital Occult Library, Alexis Brandkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a website, titled Digital Occult Library, hosted by the CUNY Commons and built with WordPress. The site address is:

digitaloccultlibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu

It features (in this iteration) twenty-five unique pages with information on and discussion of occult and esoteric topics. It also hosts a forum that can be accessed and utilized by anyone, not just those registered on the Commons. The purpose of the site is to inform three types of interested parties on the highlighted topics: a general audience with no current knowledge of the occult, practitioners of esoteric traditions, and academics. Not only is the …