History of Philosophy Commons^™

Nietzsche's Spiritual Exercises, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Nietzsche’s third Untimely Meditation, composed in 1874, Schopenhauer as Educator, reflects upon and describes a “spiritual exercise” not unlike the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, detailing tactics and including practical advice. Thus Nietzsche’s “spiritual exercises” correspond to the traditional practice of self-cultivation, self-education, characteristic of the Stoic philosophers but also influential for the Hellenistic neo-Platonic tradition, the church fathers, and St. Augustine, author of De Magistro and the Confessions. Beyond antiquity, spiritual exercises refer to a theological practice of selfcultivation and self-discipline.

History In Collaboration: Equalizing The Arts And The Humanities In San Francisco, Nicole C. Meldahl

Master's Projects and Capstones

Historically, there has been a critical imbalance in the way history and preservation organizations are civically supported in comparison with the amount of funding that is available to arts organizations in the United States. To correct this imbalance in San Francisco, I propose the creation of a San Francisco Department of Culture that would place the San Francisco Arts Commission equally alongside a San Francisco History Commission within a department that absorbs responsibilities currently managed by other divisions with in city government, such as the Planning Department and the Office and Economic and Workforce Development. City government necessarily takes time …

Species Pluralism: Conceptual, Ontological, And Practical Dimensions, Justin Bzovy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Species are central to biology, but there is currently no agreement on what the adequate species concept should be, and many have adopted a pluralist stance: different species concepts will be required for different purposes. This thesis is a multidimensional analysis of species pluralism. First I explicate how pluralism differs monism and relativism. I then consider the history of species pluralism. I argue that we must re-frame the species problem, and that re-evaluating Aristotle's role in the histories of systematics can shed light on pluralism. Next I consider different forms of pluralism: evolutionary and extra-evolutionary species pluralism, which differ in …

“Hot” So Fast, Alex Howe

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands’s target article offers a lucid, systematic treatment of a notion of personhood that has had significant influence in philosophy. The orthodox interpretation of this notion of personhood has been that it requires cognitive capacities not possessed by animals. Rowlands disputes this. However, I think his objections to the orthodox, higher-order thought (HOT) theories of mental unity may be too quick. In this commentary, I show two separable places where Rowlands’s objection to HOT theories of mental unity falls short.

Sagp Ssips 2016 Program, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Ssips 2016 Abstracts, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Rhetoric Of Tyranny: Callicles The Rhetor And Nietzsche's Zarathustra, Greg Whitlock

Sophia and Philosophia

Here I will work through the rhetoric of tyranny as practiced by Callicles and as reflected in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, in particular. In Part 2 it will be shown that Nietzsche’s account of Plato as the complex figure with a Socratic exterior but a latent alternative ego of the tyrant, arrived at an image consistent with E.R. Dodds’ later thesis. Callicles the rhetor, featured as a student of Gorgias, embodies this alter-ego. In Part 3 we find Callicles and Zarathustra shared very similar beliefs once they overcame shame and gained honesty. Indeed, Callicles expounded a number of propositions foundational to …

"Part Of That Force That Always Wills The Evil And Always Produces The Good" On A Devilish Incoherence, Peter Baumann

Sophia and Philosophia

When Mephisto was asked by Faust, "Well now, who are you then?" (“Nun gut, wer bist Du denn?”), he gave the well-known answer, "Part of that force that always wills the evil and always produces the good" (“Ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft”: Goethe, Faust, 1334-1336). This answer raises some important questions which in turn lead to interesting answers. Let us start by looking at the content of Mephisto's utterance.

The Problem Of Obviousness, Benjamin Goldberg

Sophia and Philosophia

1. The Problem of Obviousness
There’s no such thing as obviousness.

This isn’t, of course, itself obvious; nor is it clear why it should be a problem. So let me start elsewhere, with the anti-vaccine movement. A friend of mine laid out the ‘obvious’ position: there are facts and rationality on one side, unenlightened ignorance and bigotry on the other. Scientists versus fools, and the fools don’t even know what game is being played.

Poetic Justice: Apology Overdue, Stephen Faison

Sophia and Philosophia

Jurors of our republic, I do not know whether you were persuaded by the case made against me, but I certainly hope that you were not. Some of what the prosecutor told you is accurate, though much of it is untrue. To put it another way, some of his facts are correct, yet the conclusions he presented were usually misleading distortions and in some cases simply incorrect. If the indictment is clarified to its essentials, I am accused of corrupting the young and not believing in the gods in whom the city believes. I intend to show that these charges …

‘To Warm Our Hands’, Emmanuel O. Angulo

Sophia and Philosophia

Lovers often die shortly one after the other. Romeo and Juliet. June Carter and Johnny Cash. My grandfather and my grandmother. Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen.

Marianne was the inspiration, most famously, of Cohen’s song “So long, Marianne”, but also of “Bird on the wire” and poems from the collection Flowers for Hitler. Cohen’s last words for her reached her just two days before her death—and a few months before his own. They said: ‘you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know …

Cindy, Ken Clatterbaugh

Sophia and Philosophia

Cindy Norton sang loud in slightly accented Spanish. The song was “Perfidia” (“Wicked Woman”). She remembered the melody, and the Spanish language radio reminded her of the lyrics, although she could hardly hear the radio or herself above the grinding, popping, and rattling of her Volkswagen Rabbit. Her radio picked up only one station.

The Descent Of Winter: William Carlos Williams Under The Influence Of Paris, Phillip Barron

Sophia and Philosophia

The Descent of Winter, published in Ezra Pound’s magazine The Exile in 1928, is an uneven experiment in unclassifiable writing. Williams began writing the diaristic entries aboard the SS Pennland “in the fall of 1927. He was returning from Europe, where he had left Florence Williams with their two sons, who were to attend school in Geneva.” (Imaginations, 231) The slim book alternates between spare, image driven poems composed of short lines and diaristic prose. Most entries are titled only with the dates of their composition. In aesthetics, Williams always concerned himself with form. The variety of …

Keats, Truth, And Empathy, Peter Shum

Sophia and Philosophia

At one level, Keats’s sonnet entitled On Peace (1814) is full of philosophical certainties. The speaker believes, for example, that a nation’s people have a right to live in freedom under the rule of law, and that the rule of law should be applicable to everybody. Political and philosophical commitments of this kind do not seem to be called into question in this poem, or made the subject of an enquiry. On the contrary, it is as though we are confronted with somebody who, in certain central thematic respects at least, appears to know his own mind.

Pharaonic Occultism: The Relationship Of Esotericism And Egyptology, 1875–1930, Kevin Todd Mclaren

Master's Theses

The purpose of this work is to explore the interactions between occultism and scholarly Egyptology from 1875 to 1930. Within this timeframe, numerous esoteric groups formed that centered their ideologies on conceptions of ancient Egyptian knowledge. In order to legitimize their belief systems based on ancient Egyptian wisdom, esotericists attempted to become authoritative figures on Egypt. This process heavily impacted Western intellectualism not only because occult conceptions of Egypt became increasingly popular, but also because esotericists intruded into academia or attempted to overshadow it. In turn, esotericists and Egyptologists both utilized the influx of new information from Egyptological studies to …

Amazon Book Review Of David Ray Griffin's God Exists But Gawd Does Not (2016), Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

David Ray Griffin employs the term “anatheism” (ana-theism) for describing a natural scientific return to theism, by moving logically from traditional theism to atheism to panentheism. Griffin shows how natural scientific reasoning leads from commitment to traditional theism (“Gawd” exists) to modern atheism (“Gawd” does not exist), then from modern atheism to [constructive postmodern] Whiteheadian panentheism (“God” does exist).

Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities [Table Of Contents], Carlin A. Barton, Daniel Boyarin

Religion

“A timely contribution to a growing and important conversation about the inadequacy of our common category ‘religion’ for the understanding of many practices, attitudes, emotions, and beliefs—especially of peoples in other times and contexts—that we usually classify as ‘religion.’” —Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University

Nāgārjuna’S Pañcakoṭi, Agrippa’S Trilemma, And The Uses Of Skepticism, Ethan A. Mills

Comparative Philosophy

While the contemporary problem of the criterion raises similar epistemological issues as Agrippa’s Trilemma in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism, the consideration of such epistemological questions has served two different purposes. On one hand, there is the purely practical purpose of Pyrrhonism, in which such questions are a means to reach suspension of judgment, and on the other hand, there is the theoretical purpose of contemporary epistemologists, in which these issues raise theoretical problems that drive the search for theoretical resolution. In classical India, similar issues arise in Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī, but it is not entirely clear what Nāgārjuna’s purpose is. Contrary …

The Challenge Of Teaching Chinese Philosophy: Some Thoughts On Method, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

In this essay I offer an alternative perspective on how to organize class material for courses in Chinese philosophy for predominately American students. Instead of selecting topics taken from common themes in Western discourses, I suggest a variety of organizational strategies based on themes from the Chinese texts themselves, such as tradition, ritual, family, and guanxi (關係), which are rooted in the Chinese tradition but flexible enough to organize a broad range of philosophical material.

Die Phantasie Gottes: An Analysis Of The Divine Ideas In Deity Theories And Brian Leftow, With A Proposed Synthesis, Nathaniel Dowell

Masters Theses

This thesis was on how God is related to the truth-values of propositions on possible worlds - specifically, those propositions that do not seem to be about Him and constitute His ideas for what to create. It opened with a survey of some historical positions with special emphasis on Aquinas, Leibniz, Spinoza and Kant. Next, some criticisms were given for these so-called deity theories (i.e., the belief that possibilities are dependent on God and God must, by nature, recognize the necessary truths He does) with the most space given to Brian Leftow’s critiques. The second chapter detailed Brian Leftow’s theological …

Dancing Philosophy: What Happens To Philosophy When Considered From The Point Of View Of A Dancer, Aili W. Bresnahan

Aili Bresnahan

Western philosophical aesthetics tends to answer the question, “What is art?” by starting with the perspective of the art appreciator. What does the spectator perceive in the artistic entity at issue? For example, are these properties formal and tangible, an arrangement of lines and colors as provided by Clive Bell’s theory of significant form? Are they contextual—are they, for example, the expression of the experience of a particular culture? Or are these properties relational in the sense of being a comment on or response to another art-historical movement, such as Cubism?

Starting from this perspective, the methodology tends to begin …

Review: 'Immovable Laws, Irresistible Rights: Natural Law, Moral Rights, And Feminist Ethics', Rebecca Whisnant

Rebecca Whisnant

This collection of Pierce's essays traces the evolution of her thinking about natural law theory--and, more broadly, about talk of "natures" as normatively significant--over a period of 30 years. We see her move from a wholesale rejection of such talk, in her influential 1971 piece "Natural Law Language and Women," to a qualified admission that it can have its liberatory uses. Yet she maintains throughout that, progressive potential or no, natural law is far inferior to Kantian notions of rights and autonomy as a foundation for ethical thought.

Saving Socrates: A New Socratic Portrait, Anthony Lobrace

Honors Theses

In 399 B.C. Socrates was indicted on charges of asebeia, or impiety and corrupting the youth. He was brought before a jury of some 500 Athenians in a type of trial known as agon timetos, or “trial of assessment”. Casting their votes, the vast majority of the jurors found Socrates guilty of the offenses he was accused of. A week later he drank a cup of hemlock and died in his prison cell. In what follows I will draw a new portrait of Socrates. This will be constructed from details found in Aristophanes’ the Clouds, as well as Socratic dialogues. …

Dancing Philosophy: What Happens To Philosophy When Considered From The Point Of View Of A Dancer, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Western philosophical aesthetics tends to answer the question, “What is art?” by starting with the perspective of the art appreciator. What does the spectator perceive in the artistic entity at issue? For example, are these properties formal and tangible, an arrangement of lines and colors as provided by Clive Bell’s theory of significant form? Are they contextual—are they, for example, the expression of the experience of a particular culture? Or are these properties relational in the sense of being a comment on or response to another art-historical movement, such as Cubism?

Starting from this perspective, the methodology tends to begin …

Aristotle, The Pythagoreans, And Structural Realism, Owen Goldin

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Aristotle’s main objection to Pythagorean number ontology is that it posits as a basic subject what can exist only as inherent in a subject. I then show how contemporary structural realists posit an ontology much like that of Aristotle’s Pythagoreans. Both take the objects of knowledge to be structure, not the subject of structure. I discuss both how pancomputationalists such as Edward Fredkin approach the Pythagorean account insofar as on their account all reality can in principle be expressed as one (very big) number, made up of discrete units, and even more moderate varieties of structural realism, like that of …

The Problem Of Evil And The Probity Of Theodicy From William Rowe's Evidential Evidential Of Evil, Olaoluwa Apata

Masters Theses

In this research, we discussed the types of evil: moral and natural, which are cited by atheistic philosophers as evidence against the existence of God. The so-called evidence from evil has been used by the atheistic and other non-theistic scholars to raise hypothesis on evaluating the possibility or likelihood that an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God exists in a world that is littered with evil. Moral evil is evil that arise from the misuse of free will by moral agents, while natural evils are natural disasters such as: earthquakes, famine, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes etc. We discussed moral evil and …

Adam Smith For Our Time, I: Necroeconomics, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews a wide-ranging new American study of the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723-1790), examining its treatment of Smith as critic and rhetorical theorist, as well as of his better-known writings on moral philosophy in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and economic theory in The Wealth of Nations (1776), and discusses briefly the value for Scottish cultural history of interpretative practices developed originally in other national traditions, concluding that the book is "important for scholars of 18^th century Scottish literature... because it approaches Smith’s work through disciplinary practices that are common enough in other literary fields but …

From Jekyll To Hyde: The Grooming Of Male Pornography Consumers, Rebecca Whisnant

Rebecca Whisnant

Robert Jensen has observed that "the danger of pornography is heightened exactly because it is only one part of a sexist system and because the message it carries about sexuality is reinforced elsewhere" (2007a: 103). In a culture that normalizes male sexual aggression against females in a variety of contexts, the typical consumer is pre-groomed to accept such aggression before he ever begins using pornography. In this article, I argue that many pornography consumers undergo further and more specific grooming as they acclimate to rougher and more openly sadistic materials. This grooming is a co-operative effort involving both the industry …

Pornography, Contemporary-Mainstream, Rebecca Whisnant

Rebecca Whisnant

Once a relatively small‐niche market, pornography in recent years has become a mainstream, technologically sophisticated multi‐billion‐dollar industry, one that plays a significant role in shaping our ideas about gender and sexuality. Like many complex and politically contested concepts, pornography can be defined in a number of different ways. While some defined pornography simply as any sexually explicit written or graphic material, others include additional criteria, such as that the material be produced for the purpose of sexually arousing its audience or that the material convey certain (typically sexist and degrading) ideas and attitudes about women, men, and sexuality. While these …

Global Feminist Ethics: Feminist Ethics And Social Theory, Rebecca Whisnant, Peggy Desautels

Rebecca Whisnant

This volume contains four sections, the first of which examines some of the special moral concerns that arise from assigning distinct activities and responsibilities to women and men respectively. It is difficult to argue against the view that women and not men are the birth-givers. But it is also true that death rates tied to pregnancy and birth-giving are unacceptably high in developing countries. Are women better off giving birth in hospitals with attending physicians (often male) or in homes with attending midwives (usually female)? Which approach should be "exported" to the developing world?

In the first chapter, "Exporting Childbirth," …