Ancient Philosophy Commons^™

Nietzsche And Socrates: Reflections Of Redefined Virtue In Greek Tragedy, Kyle M. Lowry

Senior Honors Theses

The works of Friedrich Nietzsche were used to study how Greek Tragedy was “born” and “died,” particularly in relation to the rise of Socratic philosophy in Ancient Greece. The intoxicated “Dionysian” and disciplinary, artistic “Apollinian,” are the elements Nietzsche claims encompass and catalyze human experience; the former containing the primal nature of the Being, and the latter containing the ordering through which identity is formed and art is created. Tragedy, the art form perfectly balancing these two elements was “born” within the conditions of a Dionysian Pessimism, by which the inevitable life of suffering was redeemed aesthetically. Socrates introduced rationality …

The Story Game: Dissuading The Abolition Of Man With Narrative Intellectual Virtue & The Hunger Games, Camille Bewley

Harding Undergraduate Research Conference

Relativism in modern America is leading society toward the fruition of C.S. Lewis’ warning of the abolition of man. This nation once founded on freedom inches closer to the dystopia which Suzanne Collins depicts in her Hunger Games series. This paper recognizes the growing need for humanity to realign with truth and universal values, first by reorienting itself to narratives. Through intellectual virtues of understanding and prudence as defined by Aristotle, society can translate stories into their inherent purpose; seeing truth and reality within the bottle of imagination. Stories contain the answers, narratives are the way humanity subscribes to reality. …

The Hypocrisy Of The Wizards—A Proposal To Correct Incentives In Higher Education Loan Financing, Caden Benedict

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper explores the origins of the student loan debt crisis and proposes tying university incentives to graduates' repayment plans and disclosing median earnings for degrees before students apply. Specifically, while there are numerous factors explaining why the price of education has increased dramatically since the 1970s, this paper proposes solutions that will specifically target university moral hazards by requiring universities fund: (1) the current subsidies to federal student loan repayments under income-driven plans as the House of Representatives intended before the Senate removed "risk-sharing," and (2) bankruptcy law discharge amounts. Moreover, requiring universities to disclose the median earnings of …

Time And Actual Infinity In Aristotle's Physics, Atanas Georgiev Iliev

Classics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between the existence of infinity and the nature of time as presented in Aristotle’s Physics, arguing that his two theories come into tension at two points. The Introduction sets out the purpose and methodology of the study and offers an overview of the historical reception and influence of Aristotle’s teaching on the infinite. Chapter I outlines this teaching, examining Aristotle’s reasons for categorising instances of the infinite through several dichotomies, most notably the distinction between actual and potential existence, before presenting his arguments for rejecting the existence of an actual infinity. Chapter II turns to …

Intellectual Virtue And Artificial Intelligence, Bayan R. Alazab

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This paper presents a clear argument that artificial intelligence in education is not inherently detrimental, but rather that its impact depends on how it is used. Drawing on Aristotle’s concept of intellectual virtue and the Golden Mean, it argues that AI can either hinder or enhance learning. When students rely on AI as a substitute for their own reasoning, they undermine the development of critical thinking skills essential to intellectual virtue. In contrast, when used in moderation, AI can function as a tool that deepens understanding and supports cognitive growth.

The paper also highlights a key inconsistency within educational institutions. …

Aristotle And The Proslavery Writings Of The Antebellum South, Ace Farris

The Cardinal Edge

This paper explores how nineteenth-century Southern intellectuals appropriated and adapted Aristotle’s ancient defense of slavery to legitimize racial slavery in the antebellum United States. Although Aristotle’s theory of “natural slavery” emerged from the social and economic conditions of classical Greece, where enslaved people constituted essential components of the household, Southern thinkers tailored his argument to justify the peculiar institution. The paper begins by outlining Aristotle’s defense of slavery in his Politics, which states that some individuals naturally lack the capacity for rational deliberation, thereby benefiting from enslavement. Then, it traces how the American South’s investment in classical education allowed …

Infinite Line, Infinite Knowledge: The 'Spera' And Organized Chaos In Lambert's Encyclopedia, The 'Liber Floridus', Ava Romano

Theses and Dissertations

The Liber Floridus is a medieval encyclopedia renowned for its program of circular diagrams, or sperae. Inside this manuscript of 190 chapters, these diagrams frame and embody written knowledge, revealing a connection between encyclopedism and life in the Benedictine monastery by creating a coherent visual organization of chapters.

The Intelligent Troglodyte’S Guide To Plato’S Republic, Douglas Drabkin

Philosophy Open Educational Resources

The Republic of Plato is one of the classic gateway texts into the study and practice of philosophy, and it is just the sort of book that has been able to arrest and redirect lives. How it has been able to do this, and whether or not it will be able to do this in your own case, is something you can only discover for yourself. The present guidebook aims to help a person get fairly deep, fairly quickly, into the project. It divides the dialogue into 96 sections and provides commentary on each section as well as questions for …

A Confucian Response To Stoic Perspectives On Physician Burnout, Charlene Tan, Ruth Neo

Journal of Wellness

Aimed at promoting cross-cultural dialogue and exchange of ideas in the humanities, this article provides a Confucian response to the Stoic viewpoints expounded by Kutch in this journal. Two arguments are made in this paper: first, Confucius shares the Stoics’ emphasis on being mindful. Secondly, a significant difference between Confucius and the Stoics is that the former replaces the Stoics’ fate with Heaven (tian), which is a central Confucian spiritual ideal. Applying Confucian and Stoic insights to burnout, medical professionals are encouraged to (re)gain strength by reflecting on and embracing spiritual ideals, whether it is fate or Heaven. …

The Substance Of Reality: Moral Perfectionism In Shakespeare's Hamlet., David Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through a selection of and close reading of key passages, I offer an interpretation of Hamlet that seeks to illuminate the play as an important work of moral philosophy, and to situate the play within a strand of moral philosophy named moral perfectionism by Stanley Cavell. Indeed, Hamlet is a masterpiece of Renaissance drama, but when read with attention to moral perfectionism, the play yields additional layers of meaning. Hamlet is a “philosophical drama” that navigates the “moral calling of philosophy”—a text that seems to, almost uncannily, elicit the audience to think reflectively, to ask fundamental human questions along …

The Fangs Of Philosophy: Religious Experience As A Persuasive Device, Lukas A. Dunford

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Senior Theses

The philosophical systems of Plato and Lucretius use the religious experience to compel readers into their distinct philosophical versions of reality. This compulsion is necessary for philosophy. This study’s three philosophical systems reappropriate this experience from the existing structures of religion to violently produce conviction in readers. The religious experience is not window dressing over the arguments of the philosophical systems, but a necessary component that reorients the audience into a new discursive reality. Ultimately, the philosophers we examine will show how the knowledge structure of philosophy becomes able to grip the audience, consuming them into its reality – how …

The Love With A Thousand Faces: Heroism As Embodied Love In Action, Scott T. Allison

Heroism Science

In this article, I argue that heroism is, at its core, embodied love in action -- a morally charged, physically grounded expression of care enacted through selfless deeds, courage, and commitment to others. Rather than reducing love to sentiment or an abstract ideal, I emphasize its embodied dimensions: love as a lived, relational force that motivates people to act bravely and altruistically, often at great personal cost. Drawing on psychological research in empathy, attachment, and prosocial motivation, I show how love undergirds moral courage by activating deep emotional bonds and transforming them into action-oriented commitments that transcend fear and self-interest. …

Fear, Trembling, And Wonder: Psalms Of Awe, Solomon Aleph

University Honors Theses

This thesis proposes an expansion of genre form criticism within the Book of Psalms to include an additional category: Psalms of Awe. Building on scholarship that emphasizes the Psalms as expressions of religious experience, it draws from philosophical, theological, and critical scholarship to define the experience of awe as a distinct religious experience not fully captured by form critical scholarship. The thesis argues that awe is reflected in the Psalms through the combination of three key Hebrew roots: ירא (fear/reverence), פחד (fear/dread), and פלא (wonder). This is done by analyzing several psalms to explicate how each term captures a different …

A Reconstruction Of The Homeric Tradition In Early Greece, Aidan F. Hoey

Student Theses

This thesis discusses the centuries-long historiographical debate that is known to us as the Homeric Question. The identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dating from when the Homeric epic poems were composed, the Homeric diction, and the historicity of the Trojan War has puzzled scholars since Antiquity. Only by the twentieth century, scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord proved that the Iliad and Odyssey were orally composed. How the written form of the Homeric epic poems came about has become even more of a historiographic puzzle than it has been previously. Building off the …

Aristotle And Aquinas: Nature As An Ethical Principle In Law, Jimmy J. Grumich

Honors Bachelor of Arts

No abstract provided.

Ethical Pedagogy And Roman Political Identity, Luke D. Sherman

Honors Bachelor of Arts

Students often question the value of going to school. They certainly can mindlessly sit through courses for a passing grade and forget the material right after the test, but what value is that learning actually providing for them? The most apt answer one could give to this is that education molds us into model citizens, ones who can utilize math, language, logic, and other foundational ideas as building blocks to operate and understand the world through. While the term “basic education” implies vastly different curricula across different cultures and time periods, one common thread between any basic education is the …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

The Grand Narratives: The Rise And Fall Of Universal Philosophical Systems, Gavin S. Litchford

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis reviews the development of narrative and systematic methods of argumentative legitimation in the Western tradition of philosophy from its conception until the present day. Utilizing both primary sources from central figures in key movements within this development process and supplementary secondary sources, this analysis notes which systems were used as appeals to higher authority and the trends in the adoption and transformation of new models. It is demonstrated that the Enlightenment era punctuated a progression begun in the premodern era from simple, cultural narratives to individualized, subjective, and self-perpetuating Grand Narrative systems, and that it generated the preconditions …

Bibliography For "Greek Mythology Display", Arianna Tillman, Isabella Piechota, Annikah Carpio

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography created to support a display about Greek mythology in March 2025 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University.

Duae Cypriani Soarez Praefationes Ad Opus De Arte Rhetorica Libri Tres Commentariis Rhetoricis Instructae, Marcus Porto

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

De Arte Rhetorica Libri Tres (1562) written by Cyprian Soarez (1524-1593), priest and teacher of the Society of Jesus, was the standard rhetorical manual in the Ratio Studiorum and thus was used for over two centuries in Jesuit colleges throughout the world. Concerned that young students of Latin were not yet ready for the major rhetorical texts of antiquity, such as Cicero’s and Quintilian’s, Soarez wrote this manual as a digest of ancient rhetoric to the beginner. This thesis uses the rhetorical precepts found in Cyprian’s work to analyze the work’s own two prefaces. Thus, it aims at providing …