History of Philosophy Commons^™

The Cosmological Significance Of Animal Generation, Devin Henry

Devin Henry

This paper explores the relation between Aristotle’s mature theory of animal generation and his broader cosmology.

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Coleridge’s prose works, published and unpublished, demonstrate a thorough and critical testing and understanding of British and German philosophical responses to skepticism and the ability of philosophy to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 …

The Roaring Lion Of Berlin: The Life, Thought, And Influence Of Eugen Dühring, Arden Roy

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The life and influence of 19th-century German polymath Eugen Dühring remain but a mere footnote in the history of ideas, being primarily relegated to the status of little more than a theoretical rival to Marxism in the German socialist movement and the occasional object of Freidrich Nietzsche's rhetorical flogging. Despite the current consensus on the subject, Eugen Dühring was a scholar of vast, remarkable learnedness, contributing greatly to philosophy, economics, and the natural sciences. The aim of this talk will be to clear the fog surrounding the life and work of the controversial blind scholar and give an account of …

Softening Corners: How A Carefully Considered Hospitality Operation Impacted An Educational Institution, Jennie Moran

Dissertations

Enter quickly, as I am afraid of my happiness!

(Derrida, 2000, p.131)

This research project is an attempt to bridge the gap between the philosophical ideals of hospitality and the hospitality industry, by examining how a carefully considered hospitality operation impacted an educational institution over the course of eight years. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that the application of the philosophical ideals to a commercial hospitality setting yielded profoundly positive results. The primary research was compiled by the author conducting a case study of her own food business, Luncheonette which was located in the National College of …

Plurality, Precarity, Nos/Otras: Searching For A New Guarantee Of Dignity In The Contemporary World, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

One cannot comprehend the topography of our contemporary globe without seeing the chain-link lines that fractalize sand, sea, and soil. Contemporary global politics is marked by a refugee crisis of colossal proportion. At its core, the contemporary refugee crisis is perpetuated by the fact that there is no framework to apprehend the personhood of the refugee, let alone an organized and attentive global process for directing the flow of vulnerable persons toward safety.

I argue that in order to ease the burdens placed on vulnerable people we must return to philosophy and look at the refugee crisis for what it …

Le Secret D’Une Pyramide : Diderot, La Double Doctrine Et L’Encyclopédie, Rudy Le Menthéour

French Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Existential Challenges Of Cyberspace, Sean Cleary

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cyberspace is an emergent environment that has come to facilitate a growing range of human activity. Here, information is tightly woven, freed of unnecessary context and always within reach. This thesis explores the existential challenges that arise from increased engagement in this space and offers solutions informed by Henry Thoreau and Søren Kierkegaard. Section One offers an ontological account of cyberspace and describes its relationship to what I call the lifeworld. Section Two further examines the relationship drawn out in Section One, introduces the challenge of foreground saturation and appeals to Thoreau for solutions. Section Three introduces the concept of …

American Absurdity: Reconciling Conceptions Of The Absurd In European And American Literature, Benjamin Spencer

Senior Theses

This thesis aims to examine the development of the concept of the absurd in literature across different time periods and cultural contexts. The absurd, as defined by Camus, is the gap between humanity’s desire to understand the world and the impossibility of doing so.

However, the ways in which the absurd is recognized as an aspect of existence depends heavily on the sociological contexts in which an individual lives. By analyzing the works of absurdist authors, filmmakers, and artists across time, we can track the development of these absurdist conceptions in both Europe and American literary movements.

Looking at these …

Beast Or God: Philosophical Exclusion Of Disability And Disabled Voices, Ellie Alsup

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

In philosophy, our goal is to ultimately discover what it is to be human. How do we exist in our world, and how should we exist? Throughout history, philosophers have been attempting to answer these questions in any way possible. Well, almost. Unfortunately, marginalized voices -- such as those with disabilities -- have been excluded from the conversation in a way that minimizes and undermines any answers provided. Philosophers such as Descartes make the argument that human existence is purely in the mind, and that we can separate ourselves from our bodies; many disabled philosophers would disagree. Disability studies finds …

Descartes And Our Philosophies, Juan Carlos Moreno Romo

Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events

We propose to show that, although we think of Descartes as a "modern Parmenides" or as the "father of Modernity", otherwise for excellent reasons, this condition is at least as ambiguous as different are the cultures or societies that arose from the breakdown of Christianity. Where the Protestant Reformation triumphed, the dominant conception of philosophy is manifestly anticartesian, although they recognize, curiously, a debt to Cartesian philosophy; for example, we recognize this due in Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Neither empiricist nor rationalist, neither analytical nor continental, nor national or identitarian either, more than a "French", "European" or "Western" philosopher, Descartes would …

Cognition Without Construction: Kant, Maimon, And The Transcendental Philosophy Of Mathematics, Nicholas A. J. Birmingham

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant takes the ostensive constructions characteristic of Euclidean-style demonstrations to be the paradigm of both mathematical proofs and synthetic a priori cognition in general. However, the development of calculus included a number of techniques for representing infinite series of sums or differences, which could not be represented with the direct geometrical demonstrations of the past. Salomon Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy addresses precisely this disparity. Maimon, owing much to G. W. Leibniz, proposes that differentials of sensation achieve what Kantian constructions could not. More importantly, Maimon develops a kind of symbolic cognition that …

On The Question Of Thinking: A Study Of Heidegger's Later Philosophy, Shishir Budha

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the writings of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger to understand what “thinking” is and how thinking needs to be undertaken. I examine Heidegger’s commitments to phenomenology in his early writings, his revaluation of the meaning of truth in traditional Western metaphysics, his criticism of calculative thinking and scientific rationality, his diagnosis of the human alienation and homelessness, and his evocation of the redemptive power of art and poetry through which we can find our place in the world. By questioning through all these themes, I attempt to trace Heidegger’s path towards a deeper and more original …

The Unwavering Movement: Integrating Reason Into British Penal Code 1730-1823, Rebecca M. Good

International ResearchScape Journal

Between the early 16^th and 18^th centuries, English attitude towards crime and correction were based on the strong held belief that faith and religion were the only cure to immorality. Lawmakers began to threaten citizens with capital punishment for menial crimes such as petty theft and begging. Resulting of a moral panic, lawmakers turned to the deterrence to dissuade citizens from partaking in criminal activity. The list of crimes punishable by death in England rose from 50 offenses in 1688 to over 220 in 1815. This article explains the origins of the Bloody Code and how Enlightenment-Era thought …

The Religious-Philosophical Legacy Of Ahmed Zaki Validiy, Muminjon Xojaev

The Light of Islam

This article analyzes the social and social life during the time of Ahmad Zaki Validi Togan, the religious-philosophical, socio-political views of A. Validi.

The emergence of the need to study the history of Islam and Christian doctrine, religious and philosophical thoughts by Ahmаdom Zaki Validi. Socio-political views of Zaki Validi on the political situation during the Soviet totalitarian politics based on an analysis of his views on the spiritual degradation of society, the moral impoverishment of people and the dependent of communist ideology among people of the former Soviet Union.

What Rome Really Adopted From Ancient Greece, Christian J. Vella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Roman conquest of the Greek city-states and the appropriation of many aspects of its culture, especially architecture and art, is well known. But what of the many great philosophies that began in the various city-states of Ancient Greece? This piece is made in attempt to answer this question. The scope of these sources will start with the beginning of the Western Philosophical Tradition, with Thales of Miletus and the Milesian, all the way up to, but not including, the foundation of the Christian Philosophical Tradition. After the year 146 BC if a philosopher is born in a Greek-City state, …

The Philosophies Of Love And Despair In Kierkegaard’S Early Aesthetic Works, James Conley

Summer Research

This paper tracks the philosophies of love (and correspondingly, despair) in Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and Fear and Trembling. Both were published pseudonymously in 1843 and detail the existential perspectives of Kierkegaard’s famous three life spheres: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Each pseudonym discusses the categories of love and despair at length. By analyzing these three perspectives, the dialectics between the modes of existence illuminates itself and the messages and philosophy of each perspective wrestles with its counterparts. It is through this illumination of conflict that meaning and choice, in an existential sense, are born. This paper is meant …

Footnotes To Footnotes: Whitehead's Plato, Nathan Oglesby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the presence of Plato in the philosophical expressions of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). It was Whitehead who issued the well-known remark that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato" -- the purpose of this project is to examine the manner in which Whitehead positioned himself as one such footnote, with respect to his thought itself, and its origins, presentation and reception.

This examination involves: first, an explication of Whitehead’s cosmology and metaphysics and their ostensibly Platonic elements (consisting chiefly in the Timaeus); second, investigation …

Philosophy Bakes No Bread, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

Far from baking bread, far from practical applicability, philosophy traditionally sought to explain the world, ideally so. Thus, when Marx argued that it was high time philosophy “change the world,” his was a revolutionary challenge. Today, philosophy is an analytic affair and analytic philosophers seek less to explain the world than to squirrel out arguments or, more descriptively, to resolve the minutiae of this or that name problem. Faced with diminishing student demand, analytic philosophers have taken to urging that everyone from primary school students to scientists be required to study (analytic) philosophy. Just so, applied …

Returning To Reality: Christian Platonism For Our Times, Paul Tyson, Derek A. Michaud

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Echoes Of Leibniz In Pope’S Essay On Man: Criticism And Cultural Shift In The Eighteenth Century, Sierra Billingslea

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

This paper is an examination of the intellectual relationship between Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man and the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. This relationship was accentuated by Crousaz, a Swiss critic, who accused Pope of plagiarizing Leibniz’s misguided philosophy due to the evidence of Leibniz’s Principle of the Best, Principle of Sufficient Reason, and Principle of Continuity found within An Essay on Man. This paper argues that both Leibniz and Popes’ philosophies do not reflect a direct relationship but instead share the spirit of Augustan thought as well as a similar classical upbringing. Crousaz and other critics who criticized …

What Is Philosophy?, Howard S. Ruttenberg

Publications and Research

The speaker relates philosophy to and distinguishes it from all the arts and sciences in terms of its breadth and depth. Philosophy thinks about things, and thoughts, and words and actions (“words and deeds”, in Cicero’s phrase). There are examples of philosophers who have reduced all three of them to one and of philosophers who have kept them distinct. There have been revolutions in philosophy, responsive to great changes in cultural life, in science and politics, and in reaction against established traditions within philosophy. In modern times, there has been a metaphysical revolution against the Aristotelian schoolmen, an epistemological revolution …

Imagination Bound: A Theoretical Imperative, Robert Michael Guerin

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Kant’s theory of productive imagination falls at the center of the critical project. This is evident in the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant claims that the productive imagination is a “fundamental faculty of the human soul” and indispensable for the construction of experience. And yet, in the second edition of 1787 Kant seemingly demotes this imagination as a mere “effect of the understanding on sensibility” and all but withdraws its place from the Transcendental Deduction.

In his 1929 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger provided an explanation for the revisions between 1781 and 1787. …

The Importance Of Heidegger’S Question, Surya Sendyl

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis I present a strong and universally compelling case for the importance of Heidegger’s question, namely, the question of the meaning of being. I show how the being-question has been obscured and forgotten over the past two millennia of western philosophy. I attempt to raise this question again, and elucidate why it is an important one to examine, not only for philosophy as a discipline, but for any human endeavor. My aim is to reach those of you who would normally not come across, or might even dismiss, Heidegger’s work. I hope the arguments I make will convince …

An Incongruent Amalgamation: John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism On Naturalism, Jeffrey M. Robinson

Eleutheria: John W. Rawlings School of Divinity Academic Journal

John Stuart Mill's utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, often surfaces in cultural debates in the contemporary West over the extent and foundations of moral duties. Given the drift from its historical Judeo-Christian moorings, naturalism now provides much of the epistemic grounding in Western culture in relation to moral duties. The amalgamation of Mill’s utilitarianism and naturalism has resulted in a cultural and epistemic disconnect. Naturalism is hard-pressed to provide consistent epistemic support for Mill’s utilitarian principle. This essay provides a number of suggestions as to why Mill’s utilitarianism may be inconsistent on naturalism.

Philosophy: A Short Visual Introduction, Scott Paeth

Scott R. Paeth

Philosophy: A Short, Visual Introduction is the ideal path to understanding the philosophical ideas that influence Christian theology.

Scott Paeth's fast-paced introduction covers the most important movements and thinkers with precision and clarity. The major ideas are creatively illustrated by artist Joseph Novak, whose crisp, modern style brings big concepts to life for readers.

The result is an articulate, no-nonsense approach that guides readers from the ideas of ancient philosophers to contemporary thinkers and movements that impact Christians today.

Philosophy is part of the Christianity and the Liberal Arts series, which recognizes that many Christians are eager to deepen their …

Why Philosophy Is Important For Administrators In Education, Nicolas Michaud

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

The fact that “philosophy,” to many people, is just a mysterious word that brings to mind images of white beards and mysticism is no surprise. Contemporary society seem to have little reason to value a field devoted to ideas rather than production. Simply, philosophy is impractical, a distraction from the important world of growing an economy and living real life. What, perhaps, is more surprising is that philosophy is now, also, a dying field within academia itself. As research and inquiry becomes more specialized, there is little reason to indulge the pedantic meanderings of those who do not wish to …

Auctor In Fabula: Umberto Eco And The Intentio Of Foucault's Pendulum, Douglas Stephens Iv

Senior Honors Theses

Umberto Eco’s 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum weaves together a wide range of philosophical and literary threads. Many of these threads find their other ends in Eco’s nonfiction works, which focus primarily on the question of interpretation and the source of meaning. The novel, which follows three distinctly overinterpretive characters as they descend into ruin, has been read by some as a retraction or parody of Eco’s own position. However, if Foucault’s Pendulum is indeed polemical, it must be taken as an argument against the mindset which Eco has termed the “hermetic”. Through an examination of his larger theoretical body, including …

Books And Our Human Stories, Paul Benson

Paul H. Benson

An essay on the impact of the works in the Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Progress, an exhibition of rare books from the collection of Stuart Rose. Exhibition was held Sept. 29-Nov. 9, 2014, at the University of Dayton.

Substantial Generation In Physics I 5-7, Devin Henry

Devin Henry

No abstract provided.

The Nature Of Science: A Perspective From The Philosophy Of Science, Juli T. Eflin, Stuart Glennan, George Reisch

Stuart Glennan

In a recent article in this journal, Brian Alters (1997) argued that, given the many ways in which the nature of science (NOS) is described and poor student responses to NOS instruments such as Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale (NSKS), Nature of Science Scale (NOSS), Test on Understanding Science (TOUS), and others, it is time for science educators to reconsider the standard lists of tenets for the NOS. Alters suggested that philosophers of science are authorities on the NOS and that consequently, it would be wise to investigate their views of current NOS tenets. To that end, he conducted a …