Other Philosophy Commons^™

The Transformation Of Autonomous Faculties: From The Enlightenment Era To Present-Day, Amber Ready

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the historical transformation of autonomous faculties from the Enlightenment to the present, arguing that the material and technological conditions necessary for autonomous judgment have been progressively eroded through capitalism. Beginning with Kant’s account of enlightenment as the emergence from a self‑incurred minority, this paper shows that autonomy has always depended on social and economic structures that determine who can exercise independent reasoning. Through Marx and Lukács, the analysis traces how commodity production, alienation, and reification reorganize subjectivity and render social relations increasingly opaque. Adorno’s account of recognition, self‑preservation, and the culture industry further illustrates how individuals are …

Poetic Philosophy And The Moralization Of Social Networks, Finn Janning

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

In this paper, I aim to explore the question, “What distinguishes philosophy in its original sense? ” My intent is not to provide a historical overview of philosophy, but to concentrate on what makes philosophy a liberating practice. I argue that this practice is rooted in its poetic and affirmative way of organizing life. To emphasize this idea, I contrast it with the presumed organization found in social media and networks. While social media and networks encourages commitment by simplifying complexity, they also restrict users' freedom, responsibility, and ability to make meaningful decisions. To support these claims, I examine the …

“Women And Lockean Theory: John Locke, Rachel Speght, And Egalitarian Personhood, Katherine Gillespie, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Liberal political thought affirms the moral equality of all persons. The Lockean tradition within liberalism captures this equality by endowing people with equal natural rights. However, a powerful line of criticism holds that the theory fails to live up to its egalitarian billing by treating men and women differently. This article offers a rational reconstruction of the Lockean position on gender equality, and the rights of women in particular. We propose a novel interpretative method which puts Locke into conversation with a contemporary female author, Rachel Speght. In Speght, we find an interesting argument supporting an egalitarian Lockean view, grounded …

Encounter-Oriented Subjectivity In Levinas And Barth: Conditioned Freedom In Resistance To Ethnonationalism, Michael Laminack

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines philosophical and political subjectivity, or how an individual knows the world and relates to society, through a comparative analysis of the phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas and the Christian theologian Karl Barth. Levinas and Barth share a deep structure of “encounter-oriented subjectivity,” meaning subjectivity oriented by encounter with the Other that calls into question the subject’s freedom and, in this same moment, calls the subject to concrete response. Encounter-oriented subjectivity is critical of the “unconditioned freedom” that orients liberal subjectivity and offers an alternative sense of a “passively conditioned” freedom, or a freedom always already called into question by …

Karl Marx And Liberation Theology: Dialectical Materialism And Christian Spirituality In, Against, And Beyond Contemporary Capitalism, Peter Mclaren, Petar Jandrić

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This paper explores convergences and discrepancies between liberation theology and the works of Karl Marx through the dialogue between one of the key contemporary proponents of liberation theology, Peter McLaren, and the agnostic scholar in critical pedagogy, Petar Jandrić. The paper briefly outlines liberation theology and its main convergences with the works of Karl Marx. Exposing striking similarities between the two traditions in denouncing the false God of money, it explores differences in their views towards individualism and collectivism. It rejects shallow rhetorical homologies between Marx and the Bible often found in liberation theology, and suggests a change of focus …

Can God Know What Time It Is? A Working Paper, Caleb Brown

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Many thinkers hold the following five propositions are inconsistent:

1. The dynamic theory of time (McTaggart’s “A-theory”) is correct
2. God is atemporal
3. God knows tensed facts
4. Free human actions are possible
5. God interacts responsively with humans

This working paper uses the discussion in Four Views: God and Time as a starting-point and moves towards explaining how these propositions are consistent.

The Art Of Well-Regulated Freedom: Rousseau And Cortázar, Braden M. Goveia

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential philosophers of eighteenth-century Europe. In 1762 Rousseau published his treatise on education titled Emile. In Emile, Rousseau argues that people require an education that returns them to themselves. He demonstrates how he could take on an ordinary boy (Emile) as his pupil and experiment with the possibility of raising him into an autonomous adult, both morally and intellectually. In 1963, Julio Cortázar published Hopscotch in its original Spanish title Rayuela. Cortázar wrote Hopscotch in a way that allows the reader to decide what role, if any, the last ninety-eight …