Metaphysics Commons^™

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

Awe As Signpost: An Argument For The Consistency Of Lewis’S “Joy” And Psychological Awe, Audrey Hendricks

Senior Honors Theses

C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy details Lewis’s autobiographical apologetic for the existence of God through his experiences of “Joy,” a technical term invented by Lewis. Upon close study, his experiences of Joy contain many similarities to psychological awe. This investigation compares Lewis’s Joy with psychological awe using the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S) to determine consistency. Lewis’s Joy was found to be consistent with all six criteria of the AWE-S in addition to other recognized psychological characteristics of awe. In addition to qualitative consistency, this review also argues for the teleological consistency of the two concepts, contending for a Christian teleological …

Human Evil (In The Weird), Lucas Ethridge

University Honors Theses

This paper examines a trending doom in speculative fiction: the post-human age. Many modern works have started to look past human civilization as humans surrender all hope and faith in a climate-doomed world. Honing in on core concepts in Weird fiction, this paper explores human merit through Old and New Weird. A good part spends time establishing the canon, looking at similar patterns across age, philosophy, war and genre. The chief question asks if humankind was ever worth saving.

“War Is God” And “Unguessed Kinships”: Blood Meridian And Cormac Mccarthy’S “Border Tetralogy”, Seth Reeves

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis applies the metaphysics of philosopher Gilles Deleuze to Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian, arguing that the novel initiates a thread of immanent subjectivity that unfolds throughout the Border Trilogy that follows it. Against a hierarchical metaphysics of transcendence, specifically an inverted Platonic Idealism, Blood Meridian dramatizes an immanent world of “optical democracy,” a prose style that levels the human and nonhuman and eludes subject and object categories. The kid’s autonomy from Judge Holden’s violent domination marks the truncated beginning of a Deleuzian subjectivity of becoming-other and immanent kinship. This incomplete gesture continues in the Border Trilogy, where …

Reading, Rending, And Queering The Web Of Story With The Lenses Of “Con-Creation” And Process Theology, Cameron Bourquein, Nick Polk

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

“Sub-creation” within Tolkien’s narrative and extra-narrative works is routinely exhibited not as monolithic but rather as (literally and figuratively) polyphonic. In this joint paper Bourquein proposes that the Legendarium can be read through the lens of “con-creation” (total, continuous, collective, creative activity) both internally (as events in the Secondary World) and externally (as both a text and a pseudohistory in the Primary World). This approach levels the playing field between all actors in—and readers of—“The Drama,” providing a queer approach to interpretive-creative activity when compared to “orthodox” doctrines of creation. Polk further argues that con-creation resonates with process theologies of …

Mythos And Meaning: Medieval Appropriations Of Mythological Types In The Consolation Of Philosophy And Later Western Literatures, Francis J. Hunter

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Often referred to as the last Roman and first medieval, Boethius, author of The Consolation of Philosophy, has been widely received as an unoriginal philosopher who sought to preserve Platonic thought as the Western Roman Empire fell. However, this essay features an investigation into the literary originality of Boethius who initiates a line of Christian and Platonic literatures to follow in the medieval European tradition. Boethius demonstrates himself to be a poet who makes great use of philosophy rather than as a philosopher writing poetry. Boethius’ poetic influence is felt most strongly in major aspects of Dante’s Divine Comedy and …

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 …

Darkness Leaping Out Of Light: Anti-Metaphysics And The Paradoxical Negative Affix In Moby-Dick, Bryce N. Wallace

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

This paper argues that the varied philosophical beliefs that are present in the discourse of Moby-Dick’s characters are met with discursive resistance at the level of the novel’s form. Though a range of metaphysical arguments are posited by the characters as they explore the unknown, Melville’s use of negative linguistic constructions refutes the entire range of metaphysical beliefs by displaying the paradoxical and impossible nature of the primary subject that metaphysicians ponder—the unknown. I propose that in trying to comprehend “the unknown” humans unavoidably create something out of nothing then deem it unknowable and therefore fail to grant it …

Narratives Of Existence And The Narrative Existence: Ontological Unity In The Border Trilogy And Quantum Theory, Rebecca Leigh Mcintosh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because the humanities and the sciences approach philosophical questions in contrasting ways, the study of literature and the study of physical science are often viewed as unrelated realms of scholarly inquiry. Science aims to provide a methodological approach for gathering knowledge about the world, while the humanities focus on criticism or analysis of cultural artifacts. However, even though the conceptual frameworks applied in scientific study and literary study are often incompatible or remarkably divergent, their methods for conceptualizing and transmitting ideas are the same, for humanity understands the world and experience of this world through narratives composed of referential metaphors. …

To The Lighthouse Or To Mrs. Ramsay? A Study Of Materialization Through The Symbolism Of The Lighthouse In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse, Virginia Moscetti

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In this paper, I argue that the “lighthouse” in Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse operates as a symbol for Mrs. Ramsay’s “self-hood” and for Mr. Ramsay’s obscure desire for sanctuary and domesticity in Mrs. Ramsay. Through this symbolism I further contend that Woolf renders the ambiguous processes associated with self-hood and desire materially legible and, in doing so, demonstrates how metaphor and symbolism reconstitute our material world into representation. Moreover, I argue that we can conceptualize the lighthouse symbolism revolving around and centered in Mrs. Ramsay in terms of T.J. Clark’s “dual figure”; a figure with two symbolic connotations …

A Leap Into Communion: Kierkegaard And Spiritual Practices In _To The Wonder_, Madeleine Hall

Honors Theses

The study of metaethics contains the question of where value comes from. Different theories of goodness encourage tracing goodness back to God, saying that goodness is that which is like God (the resemblance thesis) or that which perfects nature (the perfection thesis). Kierkegaard participates in these questions of goodness, and in Fear and Trembling concludes that the moral absolute of the akedah reveals a good, Divine mystery. Fear and Trembling is a work of Christian existentialism that encourages an internal faith that embraces mystery rather than attempting to conquer it. Rather than trying to understand exactly who God is, Kierkegaard …

Pierce And Pine: Diane Di Prima, Mary Norbert Korte, And The Meeting Of Matter And Spirit, Iris Cushing

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Diane di Prima (1934-2020) and Mary Norbert Korte (b. 1934) are two poets whose contributions to postwar American poetry are vitally important, and yet their status on the margins of mainstream literary culture has left their work largely unstudied. Di Prima, the granddaughter of Italian Anarchist Domenico Mallozzi (with whom she shared a close relationship) grew up in an Italian-American community in Brooklyn and bore witness to the cultural schizophrenia of WWII as a child. Korte was raised in an affluent Bay Area family, and encountered hardships (including the death of her father when she was 12) that affected her …

The Digital Gaze: Anthropomorphic Reflections Of Future Posthuman Reality, Joshua Nieubuurt

English Faculty Publications

The human world continues to be ever more entangled with the nebulous realms of the digital. The digital lives of humans are constantly viewed, analyzed, and organized by the use of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as tools of governments, institutions, and corporations. Digital-machines are able to harvest massive swaths of data from users the world over including discursive elements and biometrics; accumulating the essences of what it means to dwell in a digital world. Although such digital-machines, and the algorithms on which they operate, are becoming more and more complex, they are still viewed as a tool …

Nine Stories And The Society Of The Spectacle: An Exploration Into The Alienation Of The Individual In The Post-War Era, Margaret E. Geddy

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the thematic links between three of J. D. Salinger’s short stories published in Nine Stories (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Down at the Dinghy,” and “Teddy”), ultimately arguing that it is a short-story cycle rooted in the quandary posed by the suicide of Seymour Glass. This conclusion is reached by assessing the influence of T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” on these stories, something that is understood through the Marxist frame of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

Setting The Stage And Building Homes: Architecture Metaphors And Space In Donne's First Caroline Sermon, Alexander S. Laws

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through his use of "foundation" and "house" metaphors in his "First Sermon Preached to King Charles at St. James, 3 April 1625," John Donne discreetly presents his ideologies and principles before the new king, while simultaneously criticizing his contemporaries' misguided bickering over religio-political factions. This essay seeks to unpack the history surrounding, as well as the casuistical logic found within Donne's first sermon preached during the Caroline period, which both explicitly and implicitly addresses the foremost anxieties of the people of the changing age.

The Poststructuralist Broom Of Wallace’S System: A Conversation Between Wittgenstein And Derrida, Vernon W. Cisney

Philosophy Faculty Publications

David Foster Wallace famously characterized his first novel, The Broom of the System, as ‘a conversation between [Ludwig] Wittgenstein and [Jacques] Derrida.’ This comes as little surprise, given the ubiquity of the question of language in the works of these two thinkers, and given the novel’s constant reflections on the relation between language and world. Broom’s protagonist, Lenore Beadsmen – in search of her eponymous great-grandmother – is preoccupied with the dread that ‘all that really exists of [her] life is what can be said about it,’ that is to say, that reality is entirely coextensive with language. …

Different Names For Bullying, Marco Poggio

Capstones

“There's all different forms of bullying,” says Steven Gray, a Lakota rancher and former law enforcement officer living in South Dakota. In this look into Gray’s life, we learn about two instances of bullying: the psychological and physical harassment that pushed his son, Tanner Thomas Gray, to commit suicide at age 12; And the controversial construction of an oil pipeline in an ancient tribal land that belongs to the Lakota people by rights of a treaty signed in 1851, which Gray sees as an institutional abuse infringing on the sovereignty of his people. Gray is involved in the movement that …

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.

Jane Austen Meets The Gps: Place And Space, David Kolb

Sophia and Philosophia

When one reads Jane Austen’s novels, one finds that her heroines’ lives center around a beloved and comfortable home, in a local region including a small town, some neighboring estates, and local hills and valleys. It is a detailed and textured home area of nearby places reachable on foot or horse. One to three miles are walkable to a friend’s house or a favorite scenic hill. Beyond this region is no longer “home.” Fifteen or twenty-five miles can be distant.

The (Re)Naturalization Of Margaret Cavendish: Making Active The Relationship Between Nature And Female Subjectivity In Blazing World, Daniel P. Richards, Julie Chappell (Ed.), Kamille Stone Stanton (Ed.)

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dread, Route And Time: An Autobiographical Walking Of Everything Else, Phil Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This response to Reconstruction's Summer 2002 edition, Volume 2, Number 3, autobiogeography: considering space and identity, particularly to the papers of Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Davin Heckman, Subhash Jaireth, Deirdre Heddon and Sally Munt, is an attempt to establish provisionally whether a discourse that sets critical theory, autobiographical practice and a poetics of space in performative motion orbiting each other can add anything to the critical discussion of autobiogeography. Part of my motivation is an antipathy toward criticism that can be applied to everything but itself. Given that hybridity will be an important part of a critical discourse about …

"Time Is One": The Temporal Aspect Of The Hopi Language And Its Experimental Application In Postmodernist Novels, Peter Buru

Masters Theses

My thesis examines the relationship between the temporal aspects of the language of the Hopi Indians, based on Benjamin Lee Whorf’s linguistic analyses, and postmodernist narrative theory. Within postmodernism itself, the study focuses on the narratives' handling of time and space, as illustrated by the following novels: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson; Time's Arrow by Martin Amis; Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; and Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko.

The study investigates how these postmodernist novels experiment with the application of a timeless temporal scheme. This scheme originates from what I refer to as Benjamin Lee Whorf’s …

Ideas And Aesthetics: An Analysis Of The Concept And Presentation Of Evil In Certain Great Novels Of The Nineteenth Century, Kenneth Lash

English Language and Literature ETDs

As the title of this paper indicates, I assume the existence of an important relationship between the idea and the aesthetic expression of it. I believe that this relationship takes shape as an influence of content upon form. Certainly this is not a new hypothesis, but I have not yet seen a careful examination of it in connection with the novel. Nor is there, so far as I know, any general agreement upon the extent of this influence.

I have chosen to examine content in the light of its concept of evil. This is not a completely arbitrary choice...I found …