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Bagley, Paul Michael. "Mysticism in 20th and 21st century violin music." Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3643907.
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“Mysticism,” according to the Oxford dictionary, can be defined as “belief in or devotion to the spiritual apprehension of truths inaccessible to the intellect.” More generally, it applies to the aspects of spirituality and religion that can only be directly experienced, rather than described or learned. This dissertation examines how mysticism fits into the aesthetic, compositional, and musical philosophies of four prominent composers of the 20th and 21st centuries—Ernest Bloch, Olivier Messiaen, Sophia Gubaidulina, and John Zorn, with a cameo by the Jewish composer David Finko—and how their engagement with the concept of mysticism and the mystical experience can be seen in a selection of their works featuring the violin: Bloch's Baal Shem suite and Poème mystique; Finko's Lamentations of Jeremiah, Zorn's Kol Nidre, Goetia, All Hallow's Eve, and Amour fou; Gubaidulina's In tempus praesens; and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. These works exemplify the mysticism shared by these composers, despite their different religious and cultural backgrounds, particularly their belief in the transcendental nature of music. This belief is expressed in their works through programmatic, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and formal elements, all of which display, to a greater or lesser degree, the influence of mystical philosophy and symbolism.
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Grabovskiy, Aleksandr. "Reception of Marxism in 20th Century Russia." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2011. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/211.
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In my thesis I will study how the revolutionary philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was received and interpreted by early 20th century Russian intellectuals in an attempt to reconcile orthodoxy with the real conditions present in Russia. Through analysis of documents spanning several decades of debate, I will trace the evolution of this discussion to unlock the logic that led to philosophy put to action in the form of revolution. Finally, I will evaluate how this logic fits into the historic trajectory described by Marxism.
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Parent, Marcel 1975. "Is comparative philosophy postmodern?" Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79800.
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This thesis examines the claims of Jeffrey Timm and James Buchanan that the field of Comparative Philosophy is moving in a postmodern direction. I examine their conception of the postmodern and compare to both the most influential views of postmodernism and with my own understanding of postmodernism. To evaluate their claims I examine the journal Philosophy East and West, which I argue is representative of the field of Comparative Philosophy. I analyze the works of the editors of the journal and also do a statistical analysis of the journal to determine whether the field is becoming more postmodern. I conclude that Timm and Buchanan may be correct.
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Tao, Wenjia, and 陶文佳. "The Chinese reception of Rousseau's political philosophy in the 20th century." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/195979.
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The present thesis explores the history of interpretations of Rousseau’s political philosophy in the last one hundred years in China. Ever since the introduction of Of the Social Contract into China at the beginning of the twentieth century, Rousseau became one of the few western thinkers who greatly influenced how the Chinese perceive modern society and politics. Rousseau’s political ideas first generated a growing number of interpretations from 1898 to 1920. In these interpretations, his work was portrayed as the epitome of modern democracy, and his teachings were considered the cure for social problems in China at the time. However, in the recent three decades in China, scholars interpreted his political writings differently. Some even accused him of being the advocate of totalitarianism, and his political theories the theoretical support of dictatorship of the French Revolution. Such different interpretations in different periods of the Chinese reception of his political philosophy raised the question: what caused the distinctive alteration of Rousseau’s image in the last century in China? This thesis intends to provide a possible answer by examining the movement and evolution of interpretations of his political philosophy over the past century.
In this examination, I first introduce the methodology and the theoretical foundation of this dissertation: Gadamer’s hermeneutic method in interpreting a text, and Rousseau’s political philosophy as a whole. In part two and part three, the history of the Chinese interpretations will then be divided into two phases in accordance with the alteration of Rousseau’s image over time. I present and briefly analyze different interpretations of his political theories to provide a thorough overview, as well as different characteristics of the interpretations from both phases. I then employ Gadamer’s hermeneutic method to analyze three interpretations that were most influential in these phases to argue that even though some interpretations contained inaccurate accounts of Rousseau’s texts, all fulfilled the hermeneutic task of understanding these texts in different phases. The cause of the alteration of Rousseau’s image in the last century is the alteration of interpreters’ hermeneutic horizons in different times. As the process of understanding his political writings evolved through the last century in China, these texts constantly generates new fusions of the horizon of the author with the horizons of the interpreters.published_or_final_version
Philosophy
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy
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Cook, Jordan Ellington. "Space, Time, and the Self in 20th Century Literature." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1525456817163611.
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Ulmschneider, Jacob A. "Paul Piccone’s Providential Moment: Phenomenology, Subjectivity, and 20th Century Marxism in Telos." VCU Scholars Compass, 2018. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5445.
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This thesis explores the intellectual history of editor, writer, and philosopher, Paul Piccone and Telos, an independent journal of contemporary critical theory, which he founded in 1968. Born in Italy, Piccone lived most of his life in the United States, earning his Ph.D. in philosophy at SUNY-Buffalo in 1970. Piccone served as Telos’ editor and a major contributor from 1968 to 2004. This thesis follows the trajectory of his thought by contextualizing his writing within the broader world of Marxist, and eventually post-Marxist, political philosophy. Telos also concerned itself with modern interpretations of historical dialectics and early 20th-century Marxist philosophy. Piccone himself predicated much of his philosophy on Husserlian phenomenology, which stresses concrete experiences, and his writing therefore stands at a unique confluence of Husserl and Marx. Piccone ultimately became a leading exponent of anti-Liberal philosophy and the theory of artificial negativity, which examines capitalist hegemony in both material and socio-historical terms.
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Feng, Dongning. "Text, politics and society : literature as political philosophy in post-Mao China." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2216.
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The purpose of this study is to arrive at a critical overview of politics and literature in the Chinese context. The relationship has increasingly become a "field" of studies and theoretical inquiry that most scholars in either disciplines are wary to tread. This thesis tries to venture into this problematic field by a theoretical examination as well as an empirical critique of Chinese literature and politics, where the relationship seems even more paradoxical, but adds more insight into the argument. The Introduction and Chapter One set up a framework by asking some general but fundamental questions: what literature is, and how it is to be related to politics. Chapter Two examines the historical function of literature and Chinese writers in society to establish the basis of argument in the Chinese context. Chapter Three focuses the discussion on the relationship between politics and literature during the Mao era and after. Chapters Four analyses the literary works published during the post-Mao period to establish the argument that literature, as part of our perception of the world, is most concerned with human society and social amelioration and participates in the socio-political development by contributing to it through a discourse that is otherwise inaccessible. Chapter Five explores the argument further by extending it into the field of cinema, which basically comes from the same narrative tradition of prose literature, but offers a wider and different dimension to the argument pursued. Chapter Six and the Conclusion try to draw together the argument by examining literature as both form and content to argue how and why literature is related to politics and how it has functioned in a political manner in Chinese society. To summarise, Chinese literature in this period will b& shown to be involved In a process of political reform and development by way of bringing the reader to participate in a critical and philosophical dialogue with power, history and future. In the long run, it offers emancipating visions and possibilities revealed to the reader in ways that are historical, developmental, philosophical and comparative. This study focuses on the prose fiction published in this period, for it is the leading force in China's cultural development and constitutes the major trunk of the modern Chinese canon. In addition, the research also extends to drama and films, and the way they, together with prose fiction, make up the most popular perception and intellectual discovery of contemporary Chinese society and politics and best inform the argument of the study of politics and literature.
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Valevicius, Andrius Darius. "From the other to the totally other : the religious philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas." Thesis, McGill University, 1985. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=65997.
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Davies, Christopher. "'Carrying the fire' : Cormac McCarthy's moral philosophy." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002260.
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In this thesis, I argue that the question of ethics, despite claims to the contrary, is a central concern in Cormac McCarthy’s fiction. My principal contention, in this regard, is that an approach that is not reliant on conventional systems of meaning is needed if one is to engage effectively with the moral value of this writer’s oeuvre. In devising such an approach, I draw heavily on the ‘immoralist’ writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first chapter of the study contends that good and evil, terms central to conventional morality, do not occupy easily definable positions in McCarthy’s work. In the second chapter, the emphasis falls on the way in which language and myth’s mediation of reality informs choice. The final chapter focuses on the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road, in which normative systems of value are completely absent. It argues that, despite this absence, McCarthy presents a compassionate ethic that is able to find purchase in the harsh world depicted in the novel. Finally, then, this study argues that McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road, requires a reconsideration of the critical claim that his work is nihilistic and that it negates moral value.
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Humphrey, Christopher Wainwright. "The sage of Kingston : John Watson and the ambiguity of Hegelianism." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=39349.
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John Watson's thought has not been well understood. A question suggested by previous scholarship, namely, how successful was he at his task of re-founding the Christian religion on a philosophical base? is answered first in terms of consistency with the theological tradition. His revision of Christian theology is found to be inadequate by traditional standards; it is then examined as a philosophy of religion which, to his mind, overcame the difficulties of classical theism. It is argued that, despite some advantages, his philosophy of religion is deficient in two respects. First, its method is vitiated by a strained and sometimes mistaken interpretation of the philosophical tradition, indicative of arbitrariness. Second, "Speculative Idealism" as the result of that method reveals conceptual ambiguities corresponding to the ambiguities of classical theism. As the method is not self-evident and is used implicitly by Watson, and the results are philosophically ambiguous, the appropriation of this thought was theologically or philosophically shallow. Though Watson's thought, as far as it was understood, provided an underpinning for the "social gospel" movement in Canada, it is argued that this shallow appropriation explains, at least in part, the brevity of its appeal as philosophy of religion.
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Costello, Paul. "The goals of the world historians : paradigms in world history in twentieth century." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=74629.
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Following Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler posed the central problems of the cyclical history of civilization in the twentieth century. Subsequent world historical theorists have attempted to answer Spengler's nihilistic perspective on the destined rise and fall of all cultures by rescuing a progressive movement which transcended the downfall of civilizations. World history since Spengler has been written in pursuit of an answer to the crises of modernism: to the 'Death of God,' the problem of progress, the emergent technological order with its bureaucratic management of society, and the need sensed by the metahistorians for a new 'mythical' grounding to avert the fall of the West. The "Crisis of the West" dominates the perspectives of the world historians. Their goals for the solution of 'modernism,' through the religious transformation of society or political and cultural world unity, are central to their motivation as writers and to the formulation of their paradigms.
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Venema, Henry I. "Paul Ricoeur's interpretation of selfhood and its significance for philosophy of religion." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=34475.
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On numerous occasions Ricoeur has characterized the goal of his philosophical analyses as the "exchange of the ego, master of itself, for the self, disciple of the text." Our investigation follows the development of this theme through careful examination of Ricoeur's phenomenological-hermeneutical philosophy. By way of contrast with Husserl's phenomenology we see how Ricoeur initiates a program of self-recovery that decenters consciousness from the immediacy of self-grounding radicality. Looking instead to the polysemic world of the text, Ricoeur chooses a path of indirect imaginative mediation as the route towards self-interpretation.The imagination, correlative with the works of culture (signs, symbols and texts), forms the central core of Ricoeur's understanding of selfhood. Already operative in his early publications as the mediating structure of selfhood, the work of imagination is transformed from a transcendental third term into a linguistic process that constructs sonorous worlds in front of consciousness for the self to inhabit.
Ricoeur's analysis of metaphor and narrative shows selfhood to be a task accomplished by means of linguistic interpretation. However, such an interpretation of the self, with the textual world as its other, is a linguistic construction that is caught up in semantic self-identification. Ricoeur's program for the exchange of the self-enclosed ego, for a self discipled by the text, becomes entangled in the semantics of identity to such an extent that selfhood is equated with the objectifications of the reflective process and is never dealt with on the intimate level of the reflexive structure of the self in relation to otherness. This has significant consequences which need to be critically examined by philosophy of religion.
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Thorpe, Josh. "Here hear my recent compositions in a context of philosophy and western 20th century experimental art /." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ59209.pdf.
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Thorpe, Josh. "Here hear my recent compositions in a context of philosophy and Western 20th century experimental art /." Ottawa : National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2002. http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ59209.pdf.
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Pinkoski, Nathan. "Postmodern Aristotles : Arendt, Strauss, and MacIntyre, and the recovery of political philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b4d728b9-8bb4-47e6-ac01-16dcc9f6f314.
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What is political philosophy? Aristotle pursues that question by asking what the good is. If Nietzsche's postmodern diagnosis that modern philosophical rationalism has exhausted itself is true, it is unclear if an answer to that question is possible. Yet given the prevalence of extremist ideologies in 20th century politics, and the politically irresponsible support of philosophers for these ideologies, there is an urgent need for an answer. This thesis examines how, in these philosophical circumstances, Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Alasdair MacIntyre conclude that a key resource in the recovery of political philosophy, and in showing its contemporary relevance, lies in the recovery of Aristotle's political philosophy. This thesis contends that how and why Arendt, Strauss, and MacIntyre turn to Aristotle, and what they find in Aristotle, depends on their varying critiques of modernity. Convinced that the philosophical tradition is shattered irreversibly after the events of totalitarianism, Arendt argues for a retrieval of Aristotle and his understanding of politics from the fragments of that tradition. Strauss is impelled to turn to the political philosophy of Aristotle because of the crisis of radical historicism, to recover classical rationalismâs answer to what the good is. MacIntyre turns to Aristotle to find the moral justification for rejecting Stalinism that contemporary philosophical traditions fail to provide; he reconstructs an Aristotelian tradition that can answer the question of what the good is better than his contemporary rivals. Although these thinkers may appear disparate, this thesis argues that each addresses the question of what the good is by offering a vision of political philosophy as a way of life, which Aristotle helps form. This way of life probes the relationship between philosophy and politics as permanent problem for human existence. In recovering this tradition of thinking with Aristotle about the character of political philosophy, this thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of each of these thinkers, as well as to the practice of political philosophy in modern, post-Nietzschean times.
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Botha, Estelle. "Where dance and drama meet again : aspects of the expressive body in the 20th century." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1704.
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Thesis (MDram (Drama))—University of Stellenbosch, 2006.Acknowledging theatrical styles such as physical theatre, Tanztheater and poor theatre as forms of ‘total theatre’, and recognizing that there has been a prolonged process of development to reach such a point, the first chapter investigates the historical divide between dramatic dance and drama as starting point. Subsequently, in considering the body as expressive medium, the impact of content and form on the training of the performers’ body for the theatrical context is also evaluated.
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Burke, Jennie. "Changes in direction of cancer research over the 20th century what prompted change : research results, economics, philosophy /." View thesis, 2007. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/44061.
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Thesis (M.Sc. (Hons.))-University of Western Sydney, 2007.A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Education, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (Honours). Includes bibliographical references.
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Hanna, Emily Lauren. "'I Am Rooted, But I Flow': Virginia Woolf and 20th Century Thought." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/97.
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My thesis is about Virginia Woolf’s novels, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, and To the Lighthouse. I examine these novels in relation to the theories of Henri Bergson, William James, and Sigmund Freud, and the groundwork of Modernism. I relate Woolf's use of water imagery and stream of consciousness technique to Bergson’s theory of “la durée,” or psychological, subjective time, James’ “stream of consciousness” theory in psychology, and Freud’s theory of the “oceanic” feeling of religious experience.
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Jolly, Edouard. "Les ombres du monde: Anders et le refus du nihilisme." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/209306.
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周嘉耀. "內聖外王？: 第三期儒家人文主義的現代轉向-對民主與科學之一回應 = Neisheng-waiwang? : the modern turn of Confucian humanism at its third period - a response to democracy and science." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2009. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/1111.
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Berner, Ashley Rogers. "Metaphysics in educational theory : educational philosophy and teacher training in England (1839-1944)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f604b518-5ea3-4e29-98b9-cecbe3c78843.
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In 1839 the English Parliament first disbursed funds for the formal education of teachers. Between 1839 and the McNair Report in 1944 the institutional shape and the intellectual resources upon which teacher training rested changed profoundly. The centre of teacher training moved from theologically-based colleges to university departments of education; the primary source for understanding education shifted from theology to psychology. These changes altered the ways in which educators contemplated the nature of the child, the role of the teacher and the aim of education itself. This thesis probes such shifts within a variety of elite educational resources, but its major sources of material are ten training colleges of diverse types: Anglican, Nonconformist, Roman Catholic, and University. The period covered by this thesis is divided into three broad blocks of time. During the first period (1839-1885) formal training occurred in religious colleges, and educators relied upon Biblical narratives to understand education. This first period also saw the birth of modern psychology, whose tools educators often deployed within a religious framework. The second period (1886-1920) witnessed the growth of university-based training colleges which were secular in nature and whose status surpassed that of the religious colleges. During this period, teacher training emphasized intellectual attainment over spiritual development. During the third period (1920-1944), teachers were taught to view education from the standpoint of psychological health. The teacher's goal was the well-developed personality of each child, and academic content served primarily not to impart knowledge but rather to inform the child's own creative drives. This educational project was construed in scientific and anti-metaphysical terms. The replacement of a theological and metaphysical discourse by a psychological one amounts to a secular turn. However, this occurred neither mechanically nor inevitably. Colleges and theorists often seem to have been unaware of the implications of their emphases. This thesis contemplates explanatory models other than the secularisation thesis and raises important historical questions about institutional identity and the processes of secularisation.
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Lavenda, Daniel. "Disenchanted engagement : the philosophy and political praxis of Massimo Cacciari." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b322a1d4-2ec9-4d24-a847-4388832f5ba9.
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Several commentators have argued that the focus within political theory in recent decades on abstraction rather than 'reality' has left it with has nothing to say to political actors. On these grounds, some have even expressed concern regarding the discipline's future. As a reply to these concerns, I introduce in this thesis the scholarship and political career of the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari. Cacciari shares many goals with Anglophone political theorists, but neither his scholarship nor his practice have engaged in the kind of intellectual abstraction which they now find so troubling. Drawing from Cacciari's philosophy, political career, and interventions as a public intellectual, I show how his understanding of real-world conflicts and contradictions begins with a commitment to what I call his 'geophilosophy of the archipelago', which regards the foundations of human knowledge to be irreducibly plural. A commitment to irreducibly plural foundations means that philosophers and political actors must discard what Cacciari views as 'enchantment' with the possibility of ultimate or absolute resolution of all political discord. In return, however, he argues that hopeful political engagement is still possible, because political actors remain able to cope in material and semiotic terms with the complex realities they face. I suggest that serious consideration of Cacciari's example of recognising irreducible plurality, coupled with a disenchanted engagement with both the material and the semiotic dimensions of political life, offers a compelling alternative orientation to the world that may suggest new ways forward in political theory.
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Gama, Lindokuhle Bagezile. "Black People in Post-Colonial South Africa A Genealogical Analysis of Dominant and Plural Narratives of Black People in 20th-21st century." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/72856.
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This disquisition is an inter-disciplinary investigation into some dominant hegemonic narratives of black people in 20th-21st century South Africa as they are found in public discourses. I contend that there exist hegemonic narratives of black people which can be seen within the African Nationalism debates in South Africa. While not all hegemonic narratives of black people are African nationalist discourses, I illustrate how nationalism is a proverbial vehicle for the dissemination of a ‘truth’ and or a ‘unitary’ understanding of black people in South Africa over others. To be sure, the African Nationalism debates evinces the power/-knowledge dynamics imbued in the meaning, functions, and performances of black people This is with the aim to foreground the less dominant everyday lived experiences and narratives of black people. I do this with the use of the genealogical method of analysis so as to suspend historiographies and/or approaches to historiography that essentializes and advance absolute origins surrounding discourses on black people in South Africa. I aim to throw the fault lines of these dominant narratives into relief by way of a genealogical reading of various different and alternative historiographies, which include the works of black authors, black philosophers and black thinkers. Certainly, a genealogical analysis will aid me in foregrounding the plurality of Blackness. Conversely, my study aims to consider the degree to which these singular lived experiences, those that counter dominant hegemonic narratives, reflect sectors of black society rather than just individual particularities so as to further understand the post-colonial black condition.Mini Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2019.
Andrew Mellon Foundation
Philosophy
MA Social Science (African European Cultural Relations)
Unrestricted
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Belling, Huw. "Dimensions of allusion : synthesis affecting craft in the works of Huw Belling and in 20th and 21st century composition." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fa0579cf-6405-4ab0-a5bb-90c28a9d36a8.
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This examination of my own works (presented largely in chronological order) and of related music by others, broadly concerns itself with appropriation and allusion on the part of twentieth and twenty-first century composers. It considers how the deliberate synthesis of existing works affects the responding composers' own output. To this end, whether surveying my own music or others', I do so within a four-pronged framework: 1. The philosophical premise and aesthetic of pieces which somehow appropriate existing composition (as claimed overtly by the composer, or inferred from available research). 2. The compositional procedure and techniques employed in the process of composing works which allude to or synthesise other pieces. 3. The product resulting from the interaction of the above two factors (naturally the latter is more concrete). 4. Critics' and scholars' responses: the basic phenomenology of the allusive element, synthesis, or stylistic appropriation, and the ethical problems surrounding any appropriation. My analyses address one or more of these connected points. They raise a number of significant questions. Is synthesis and re-composition (the latter taken to be more specifically referential) affective or effective? That is to say, is it aesthetically prescriptive? Can composers manage to quarantine 'Les objets trouvés' from their individual practice? Of interest are composers with individual credibility as innovators, whose craft is its own defence against criticism on dogmatic grounds. I consider what is to be gained, in terms of technique, and in terms of developing an aesthetic, from the process of specifically engaging with other pieces, and explore the effects of differing methods of synthesis as compared across compositional practices.
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Kellerman, Aliza C. "Kvetching with Comics: How 20th Century American Comics Reflect the Ashkenazi Ethos of Pride and Shame." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/750.
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One of the most fundamental ways of understanding the struggles and delights of an ethnic group is to study the art the group produces. Art –visual, literary, auditory– functions as an expression of the history of the group. Often, what is considered great art in one culture is disparaged in many others. In my thesis, I will be examining how comics function as an expression of simultaneous pride and shame among Ashkenazi Jews, particularly comics created in the 20th century. Perhaps comics do not seem like an obvious expression of Eastern European Judaism. After all, there are far more renowned, and even sophisticated works to look at, such as the whimsical art of Marc Chagall and stately rabbinical paintings of Isidor Kauffman, or even the heady philosophical work of Theodor W. Adorno. “Ashkenazi expression” and “comics” do not seem intuitively connected.
This disconnect is precisely why I want to explore the relationship between comics and Ashkenazi Jewry. In addition to many of the most prominent comic creators being Jewish, I posit that there is something inherently yiddish, Jewish, about American comics.
The purpose of this essay is not to name individual comic artists in an attempt to prove the Jewishness of the the comic-book industry. Rather, I will explore why Jews of Eastern European descent gravitated toward the comic-book industry in the early to mid 20th century. I posit that American comics acted as an expression of a pride-shame tension found in American Jews of Eastern European descent. To explore this connection, I will first examine the origins of simultaneous Jewish pride and shame by tracing the roots of Eastern European Jewish self-hatred. Next, I will delve into why comics encapsulate this balance of self-deprecation and self-glorification. I will analyze both the nature of the medium itself, and the circumstances grounding the formation of American comics.
Ashkenazi Jews, or Jews of Eastern European, specifically German descent, have been at the center of much scholarly literature. Although an extremely small percentage of the world's population, the bulk of Jews are Ashkenazi, as opposed to Sefardic. Much literature has been devoted to Ashkenazi Judaism, as the ethnic division has produced an impressive body of scientific and literary accomplishment. Although the countries from which Ashkenazi Jews originate are diverse, the key words surrounding Ashkenazi discourse are reoccurring. Concepts such as “exile,” “self-hatred,” and “Jewish humor” all arise. Another central concept is Yiddishkeit.
Yiddishkeit literally translates to “Jewishness” in none other but the language of Yiddish. Yiddish has been the subject of both outward Ashkenazi expression –there is a great deal of Yiddish literature and art– and scholarly examination. Perhaps most recently, Michael Wex published a book called Born to Kvetch, an in-detail study of the history of Yiddish, and how it embodies Ashkenazi culture. Within this book, a particular theme appears: the theme of simultaneously occuring pride and shame. Jews created Yiddish as a result of the primary culture's rejection. However, after this initial dismissal, great pride emerged out of Yiddish, manifesting itself in rich Yiddish culture.
Other scholars have explored the concept of Jewish self-hatred, and the fine line this self-hatred straddles between bona fide self-hatred and isolationist pride. Sander Gilman, who writes extensively about the topic, discusses how language and literature embody this dichotomous tension of pride and shame. While conducting research for the connection between comics and class in 20th century American, I came to the understanding that many of the founders of and participants in the American comic industry were Jewish. I dug up analyses of specific comics/graphic novels (usually Maus) exploring certain Jewish themes in comics, yet I had a hard time finding extensive research asking the question as to why comics and Jews have such a strong connection. In my thesis, I hope to further this question by not only investigating the circumstances surrounding comics that made Jews turn to the industry, but why comics themselves embody Jewish pride and shame. On a much humbler scale, I hope to accomplish what Wex has in Born to Kvetch, a linguistic analysis that provides insight into the greater ethnic group engaging with it.
In chapter one, I will establish the pride-shame dichotomy found in Ashkenazi Judaism. I will first explore several biblical passages, including Lamentations, Micah, and Isaiah. By exploring these instances in the tanach, I will try to establish the uniqueness the Jews feel due to their personal and punitive relationship with God. Throughout these passages, we will see the Jews taking pride in the punishment God doles out for them, because such pain is indicative of the Jews' superiority among other nations.
Next, I will provide a brief explanation of why I am choosing to focus on the act of conversion in the Medieval time period as an indicator of Jewish pride and shame. In specific, I will focus on infamous Johannes Pfefferkorn, who converted from Judaism to Christianity. Pfefferkorn is the perfect example of a Jew who both detested his Judaism, yet used it to his advantage to speak authoritatively about Judaism to Christians, as his professed textual knowledge gave him clout.
Next, I will give an introduction on the connection between Otherness and language, explaining how Hebrew and the Talmud spurred both fascination and disgust toward Jews from their surrounding neighbors. After segueing into the origins of Yiddish as a language created out of exile, I will explain how though Yiddish originated out of spurning, the language became a source of pride of its rejected roots. I will consider the statements of various Yiddish authors, in particular American immigrant Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Through both an analysis of Singer's self-reflection of his own life and an analysis of his short story, Gimpel the Fool, I will establish the pride Ashkenazi Judaism takes in its outsider status. Singer himself remarks of the positivity of being lonely and different. His character, Gimpel, is a foolish outcast. Much like the Jews in the biblical passages explored earlier in the chapter, he suffers constant misfortune and mockery, yet his very pain is what lends him favor in God's eyes.
In chapter two, I will explore how 20th century American comics reflect the Ashkenazi dichotomy of pride and shame. Much like Yiddish is not a mainstream language, the idea of comics as mainstream art or literature has been greatly contested. I will try to determine which circumstances surrounding 20th century comics, and the comics themselves, connect with this pride-shame tension. I will use Paul Buhle's Jews and American Comics as a frame of reference, since the book often links comics and Yiddish.
I will first give a brief history of the American comic-book, starting with the Hogan's Alley comics strip, and exploring up until the mid 20th century. By understanding the working-class origins of comics, we can better understand the low-brow perception of them from the standpoint of both their readers and their critics.
I will then explain how American comics in the 20th century contained Jewish themes of pride and shame, despite their characters not being explicitly Jewish. I will more closely explore this idea through an analysis of the character Superman, drawing on both the commentary from the character's creators and the content clues of the character himself. A true foreigner, Superman masks his real identity, his superhuman powers. While his alias is what makes him exceptional, it is also the thing he abhors the most. Will Eisner, a giant in the world of comics, denies inserting Jewish identity in his own characters. However, his assistant, Jules Feiffer, half-jokingly claimed that his character, Denny Colt, featured in Eisner's The Spirit series, is in actuality a secret Jew.
Instead of focusing on Colt and The Spirit, I will do a close reading of one of Eisner's other works, A Contract with God, which is an exemplary work of Jewish pride and shame. Contract contains a motif that is similar to that of the biblical passages analyzed in chapter one. The protagonist, Russian-American immigrant Frimme Hershe, has a personal relationship with God that leaves him demoralized and punished.
I will then explore the use of visual stereotype in Contract, comparing it to that of Art Spiegelman's Maus, and contrasting it with that of the film Inglorious Basterds. I will argue that through engaging with Jewish visual stereotypes, the first two reveal them as falsehoods. Thus, through an admittance of these shamed images, the comics mock them. The latter film chooses to ignore stereotypes, thus leaving them extant.
I will conclude the chapter by positing that Jews have coped with their constant exile through through the self-deprecation of comics. Buhle mentions that comics about Jewish-American gangsters turned into a source of pride, presumably for Ashkenazi American Jews. The trope, hated by others, was lauded by those it was forced upon. Much like Yiddish, comics may have been born out of exclusion, but they came to be a source of pride among Ashkenazi Jews.
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Brice, Dusty A. "The Lawrentian Woman: Monsters in the Margins of 20th-Century British Literature." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2612.
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Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman.
The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the Brangwens. They establish the tropes of the Lawrentian-Woman and provide the base from which to compare the model’s subsequent mutations. Next, I examine modern British writers and their appropriation of the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman’s attributes remain intact, but are deconstructed in ways that explore women’s continued liminality in patriarchal society.
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Temelini, Michael. "Seeing things differently : Wittgenstein and social and political philosophy." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35950.
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This thesis calls into question a currently orthodox view of Ludwig Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian philosophy. This view is that the social and political implications of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are conservative and relativist. That is, Wittgenstein's concepts such as 'forms of life', 'language-games' and 'rule-following' defend and promote: a rule-determined and context-determined rationality; or an incomparable community-determined human understanding; or a neutralist, nonrevisionary, private or uncritical social and political philosophy.In order to challenge and correct this conventional understanding the thesis sets up as 'objects of comparison' a variety of very different examples of the use of Wittgenstein in social and political philosophy. These uses are neither relativist nor conservative and they situate understanding and critical reflection in the practices of comparison and dialogue. The examples of this 'comparative-dialogical' Wittgensteinian approach are found in the works of three contemporary philosophers: Thomas L. Kuhn, Quentin Skinner and Charles Taylor.
This study employs the technique of a survey rather than undertaking a uniquely textual analysis because it is less convincing to suggest that Wittgenstein's concepts might be used in these unfamiliar ways than to show that they have been put to these unfamiliar uses. Therefore I turn not to a Wittgensteinian ideal but to examples of the 'comparative-dialogical' uses of Wittgenstein. In so doing I am following Wittgenstein's insight in section 208 of the Philosophical Investigations: "I shall teach him to use the words by means of examples and by practice. And when I do this, I do not communicate less to him than I know myself." Thus it will be in a survey of various uses and applications of Wittgenstein's concepts and techniques that I will show that I and others understand them.
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Archer, Carol, University of Western Sydney, of Performance Fine Arts and Design Faculty, and School of Design. "Skin to work : shifting materialities, ambiguous boundaries." THESIS_FPFAD_SD_Archer_C.xml, 1998. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/380.
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This thesis challenges existing readings of paintings by Alberto Burri which discuss the work in relation to matter or the body or the psyche. The reading of Burri's Ferro, Sacco, Combustione Legno and Grande Legno G59 demonstrates how the work effects a dynamic quality of alternation between the skin and 'brute' matter. The signification of the work shifts between two types of materiality - that of sheet metal, hessian, plastic and plywood and that of the wounded human skin and psyche.It is argued that the ambiguity of the materiality of Burri's paintings effects a dynamic reciprocity between subject and object. The author argues that Burri's painting alerts the viewer to the reciprocities between industrial materials, corporeal surfaces and subjectivities, to the continuities and ambiguities with and between the skin and workMaster of Arts (Hons) (Visual Arts)
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Tavel, Jose Enrique. "A theory of architecture based on the synthesis of bricolage and linguistic devices." Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/21742.
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Boetzkes, Amanda. "Beyond perception : the ethics of contemporary earth art." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102788.
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This dissertation considers the aesthetic strategies and ethical implications of contemporary earth art. Drawing from feminist and ecological critiques of phenomenology, it posits that an ethical preoccupation with the earth is identifiable in works that stage the artist's inability to condense natural phenomena into an intelligible art object thereby evidencing the earth's excess beyond the field of perception. Contemporary earth art has the paradoxical goal of evoking the sensorial plenitude of the earth without representing it as such. The first chapter analyzes Robert Smithson's monumental sculpture, the Spiral Jetty (1970), and suggests that the artist deploys the emblem of the whirlpool to express the artwork's constitutive rupture from the earth, a loss that the artwork subsequently discloses in its textual modes, including an essay and a film that document the construction of the sculpture. Chapter two examines the recurrence of the whirlpool motif and other anagrammatic shapes such as black holes, tornadoes, shells and nests, in earth art from the last three decades. In contemporary practices the whirlpool allegorizes an ethical attentiveness to the earth's alterity; not only does it thematize the artwork's separation from perpetual natural regeneration, it signals the artist's withdrawal from the attempt to construct a totalizing perspective of the site. Chapter three addresses performance and installation works that feature the contact between the artist's body and the earth, and in particular, the body's role in delineating the point of friction between the earth's sensorial plenitude and its resistance to representation. Earth artists thereby assert the body as a surface that separates itself out from the earth and receives sensation of it as other. The conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the previous chapters through a discussion of a three-part installation by Chris Drury entitled Whorls (2005).
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Terakawa, Toru. "History and tradition in modern Japan : translation and commentary upon the texts of Sei'ichi Shirai." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=32822.
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This thesis examines the concepts of history and tradition in modern Japan, with an emphasis on the writings of Sei'ichi Shirai (1905--1983). Although Shirai has been considered as one of the most important architects of 20th century Japan, he has also been treated as an obscure figure, no doubt partly because of the enigmatic quality of his writings. A major element that contributed to his obscure status and set him apart from his contemporaries was his understanding of history and tradition.The introductory essay examines the concept of tradition prevalent around Shirai's time: how it was constructed by an a posteriori writing of history and in what ways this is complicated by Shirai's writings. The second portion of the thesis is an annotated translation of two of Shirai's texts demonstrating his attempts to disclose the a priori principles inherent in the unfolding of tradition through history.
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Hands, Rachel M. "The Nature and Value of Accessibility in Western Art-Music, 1950-1970." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1236091441.
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Scott, Sean A. "Alcohol and agriculture : the political philosophy of Calvin Coolidge demonstrated in two domestic policies." Virtual Press, 2000. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1164850.
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This thesis demonstrates that Calvin Coolidge applied a philosophy of limited government to his executive decisions concerning two domestic issues, Prohibition and agricultural policy. In both matters, various groups attempted to pressure Coolidge into permanently increasing the scope of the federal government's activities. Coolidge refused to comply with their demands and maintained his belief in the benefits of a federal government that limited itself to minimal activism by mediating the disputes of conflicting interest groups. Through both Prohibition and the agricultural problem, Coolidge exhibited his effectiveness in handling divisive political issues while maintaining his philosophy of limited government. Overall, this thesis contributes to the scholarly revisionism of Coolidge.Department of History
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McLennan, Matthew. "Wild Normativity: Lyotard's Search for an Ethical Antihumanism." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/20224.
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In spite of its thematic and stylistic heterogeneity, Jean-François Lyotard’s corpus may be plausibly interpreted as, by and large, an attempt to grapple with the following problem set: a) In general: if we reject all transcendent/systematic philosophical frameworks, can we consistently make normative claims? Can we ground them in any way? Do we need to? b) In particular: if we reject the philosophical framework of humanism, what does this mean for ethics and/or politics? Can one be an antihumanist without abandoning ethics? The basic issue is over the titular possibility of a “wild normativity” – that is, a normativity that does not derive its force from any kind of transcendent guarantor. As I reconstruct him, Lyotard begins from a methodological rejection of transcendent guarantors in general; this plays itself out in particular terms as a rejection of humanism. Thus, beginning from a thought not of universality and totality but of singularity and difference, and wishing at a certain point in his career to ensure that the problem of justice stays firmly on the agenda, Lyotard gives us to think the very possibility of an ethical antihumanism. My dissertation is both an interpretation of Lyotard’s work as it unfolds in time, as well as a contribution to thinking through the general-particular problem set that I argue is at play in his work.
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Dowthwaite, James. "Ezra Pound's theory of language." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b7fdc3da-8442-478f-8dbf-4a401cf29e27.
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This thesis examines Ezra Pound's linguistic theory in relation to literary, philosophical and academic treatments of language in the modernist period. Pound is a central figure in the history of twentieth century literature, and his poetic career marks a sustained engagement with questions of how language can register thought, how it can transmit and communicate images, and, ultimately, how language is able to mediate between artists (or, indeed, language speakers as a whole) and the world. I read Pound's statements on language against the disciplinary history of linguistics, assessing the extent to which his positions are representative of his period, or, conversely, the ways in which they form part of an idiosyncratic worldview. My approach is broadly historical. I begin with Pound's educational background, and move chronologically through his career to the concluding passages of his Cantos. I investigate the extent to which Pound's critical writing engages with new departures taking place in linguistics in the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. The scope of my investigation ranges from the legacy of nineteenth century philology to the approaches taken by William Dwight Whitney, Michel Bréal, and Ferdinand de Saussure, to name but a few, in focusing linguistic scholarship on synchronic study of language as function in the early twentieth century, to Franz Boas's and Edward Sapir's studies in the relationship between language and culture between 1910 and 1939. In situating Pound in relation to the history of linguistics as a discipline, I argue that his work asks some of the period's most apposite questions about language and culture, even if his conclusions differ from the dominant academic positions of the time.
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Symons, Suellen, University of Western Sydney, of Performance Fine Arts and Design Faculty, and School of Design. "Rememories/imagetexts." THESIS_FPFAD_SD_Symons_S.xml, 1997. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/731.
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This research paper places the three Research Projects 2 DIVINE, CARNIVAL, and HER STORIES: THE WENTWORTH WOMEN against the background of memory, remaking history, play, as well as hermeneutics. It is argued that the understanding of a work of art involves participation in its meaning by the audience which is not so much a mere receiver of information as a catalyst of the work's content. This Research Paper also attempts to place the three Research Projects, which when combined are entitled REMEMORIES/IMAGETEXTS, into a feminist remaking of history (in Barbara Kruger's sense), realigning the male-oriented histories with a female presence. Questioning the 'historical document' as the authority on history, and giving alternative versions of the life of Jeanne d'Arc and the life of Sarah Cox Wentworth are some of the concerns in the Research Projects. How these three Research Projects came to be linked is that each was originally exhibited during 1995 for the Twentieth Anniversary of International Women's Year, in venues from Penrith to Paddington. Their making spans many years, and in essence comes down to a fascination with the portrayal of women throughout history.That our images of women originally derived from how women were portrayed in carnival is one of the emerging themes, and that there are a number of different memories of specific events, depending on who is remembering them, and what their (hidden) agenda entails. In moving between time zones, questioning the portrayal of 'woman as sign', and subverting the traditional sign of woman, the artist puts forward the argument that women are the producers of signs and thus not merely objects as represented by signsMaster of Arts (Hons)(Visual Arts)
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侯勵英. "蔡元培學術思想研究 = A study of Cai Yuen-pei and his thoughts and scholarship." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2007. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/794.
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Jackson, Allison L. "The Character Education Work of Milton Fairchild| A Prism for Exploring the Debate between Liberal Progressives and Conservative Progressives in the Early 20th Century." Thesis, Notre Dame of Maryland University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10813434.
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The development of character is one of the objectives of the American educational system. This historical study examined the debate over character education in the 1920s, a decade in which Americans were especially committed to creating moral youth. Specifically, this study investigated the character education work of Edwin Milton Fairchild from 1893 to 1939 and how his work reflects the tension between conservative progressives and liberal progressives in the early twentieth century. Primary source and archived documents such as journal articles, personal correspondences, ephemera, and photographs were used to conduct this study. As a result of this study, it was determined that Edwin Milton Fairchild was a pioneer of secular moral education in America and that the current controversy surrounding how character education should be taught in schools has roots that were established a century ago. The work of Edwin Milton Fairchild during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries played an important role in the secularization of moral education and is a prism through which the debate over character education among progressives can be better understood.
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Hickmott, Sarah. "(En) Corps Sonore : towards a feminist ethics of the 'idea' of music in recent French thought." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:eb562d0f-e9be-40f4-b0a3-9fa6da0a3136.
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This thesis explores the way music is characterized, used, or accounted for in recent (post-1968) French thought, focusing in particular on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Alain Badiou. In spite of the differences in their philosophical-theoretical positions, all of these writers invoke music - both directly and indirectly - to negotiate their relationship to ontological, political, ethical and aesthetic concerns, particularly in terms of how it relates to the (im)possibility of a subject, the condition of truth, and the role of philosophical thought itself. The thesis situates these texts in a longer genealogy of musico-philosophical interactions and also brings them into dialogue with recent musicological approaches, thus showing how an inherited idea of what music 'is' is often assumed rather than critically re-evaluated. In short, by tracing the musical-transcendental baggage of an inherited metaphysical conception of music - one which often understands music in close relation to the feminine, (sexual) excess, and the beyond of language and/or the symbolic - the thesis shows that though music is instrumentalized by progressive thinkers as a way of shifting theoretical/philosophical paradigms, it nonetheless does so in a way that has a strong sense of continuity with previous thinking on music. Secondly, the thesis highlights the way in which music in its metaphysical-ontological guise is often conceived as synonymous with Western high art classical music (which is itself constructed as absolute and transcendent, and ontologically independent of its means of (re)production or context) whilst non-literate, popular, folk and world musics - on the occasions that they are considered and not simply ignored or denigrated - are notably considered almost exclusively in terms of their social-cultural or technological contexts. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that much of this takes place through a simultaneous instrumentalization of gender as an organisational category for philosophy, and one which all too often has the consequence of sending women - along with music - to the beyond of pre-, inter-, or post-signification.
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Baird, Catherine 1966. "The "third way" : Russia's religious philosophers in the West, 1917-1996." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=34695.
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In 1922, the Bolshevik government expelled some 160 prominent intellectuals from Russia. Numbered among these were many of the leaders of the Religious Renaissance which had flourished since the turn of the century. They advocated a "third way": neither for the Tsarist regime nor the Bolsheviks; neither for Capitalism nor Communism; neither for Materialism nor Idealism; rather, they promoted personalist, spiritual development (Godmanhood ), Christian economic ethics (Sobornost'), and a path to knowledge informed by reason, but guided by faith (Religious-Philosophy ). Forced to join the Russian diaspora, these religious philosophers continued to advance their movement with the help of the Young Men's Christian Association. Largely at the initiative of Nikolai Berdyaev (1874--1948), they also began to interact with the French intellectual milieu in Paris in order to develop inter-confessional and cultural understandings. Although Russian religious-philosophy suffered a certain decline following World War Two, many of their writings had returned to the USSR. As Soviet intellectuals discovered these works, they gradually began to revolt against dialectical materialism, and aspire to recover the religious-philosophical tradition. In 1988, this Return was at last made possible, and religious-philosophy has been enjoying a second renaissance which continues unabated today.
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Horton, Mary Therese. "The cultural status of objects." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 1996. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/35867/1/35867_Horton_1996.pdf.
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This paper addresses the cultural status of objects. The
discussion focuses on domestic objects. It is proposed that functional domestic objects are cultural artefacts which have significance beyond that of useful commodity. Their cultural status is explored by considering the nature and influence of the Marxist critique; examining
the 'aesthetic dimension' of useful objects; and by experimenting with a range of written forms which draw upon three sources: i) concepts investigated through the first two chapters; ii) ideas being cultivated through my studio practice; and iii) issues raised through the exploration of a particular site - the Rocklea Flea Markets.
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Botha, Catherine Frances. "Heidegger : technology, truth and language." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/30416.
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Potter, Eugenie Ann Conser. "The linguistic turn in philosophy of education: An historical study of selected factors affecting an academic discipline." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/184401.
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From the late 1950s to about 1970, philosophers of education began to adopt a mode of philosophizing characterized as "the linguistic turn," after a similar change in general philosophy. This involved a move away from the older "isms" approach rooted in metaphysics towards linguistic and conceptual analysis. The linguistic turn has been attributed to intellectual history--the influence of ideas on a field. The central argument of this study, however, is that during the 1950s, factors external to academia, but acting upon it, interacted with concerns by educational philosophers themselves to create the conditions for the linguistic turn. These factors included the attacks on public schooling and "educationists," the teacher education reform movement, the Ford Foundation funding of liberal arts oriented teacher preparation, and, within the academy, the concern on the part of educational philosophers for the academic legitimacy of their discipline. These factors led philosophers of education to model their discourse more closely on the reigning paradigm in general philosophy, linguistic analysis. The attacks on public schooling were centered on progressivism for its alleged anti-intellectualism and subversive character. Philosophers of education were the particular targets of these critics. Teacher preparation in education schools also came under scrutiny during this period. The Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advancement of Education underwrote major programs that centered teacher preparation in a liberal arts curriculum, with only minimal coursework devoted to professional training. In addition, the National Commission for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) supported such a reorientation, with a concomitant weakening of educational philosophy's place in teacher education programs. Philosophers of education responded by lobbying for the inclusion of their courses in certification requirements, forging an alliance with the American Philosophical Association, reducing the social activism that had characterized earlier educational philosophers' efforts, and adopting the more academically legitimate methods of general philosophy. In the short term these actions assured educational philosophy a place in teacher education programs. In the long run, however, the linguistic turn may have jeopardized the survival of educational philosophy as an academic field by creating a chasm between philosopher and practitioner.
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Mueller, Marieke. "Subjectivity in Sartre's 'L'idiot de la famille' : biography as a space for the development of theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:54f60363-e148-4481-b710-c7e68a908bd5.
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In the context of a renascent interest in the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, this thesis proposes a close examination of one of his less studied texts, the study of Gustave Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille (1971-72). The analysis focuses on theoretical developments that emerge from Sartre's biographical enquiry, pursuing an interdisciplinary approach combining a consideration of literary theory and literary history with the perspective of Sartre's philosophy of subjectivity. L'Idiot is situated amongst a wide variety of texts by Sartre, from Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (1948) to the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960), identifying theoretical innovations within Sartre's understanding of the subject (ch. 1), his social theory (ch. 2), his theory of the imaginary (ch. 3), of literary production (ch. 4) and of reading (ch. 5). Additionally, hitherto largely unexplored passages highlight Sartre's reflections on the situation of the late 1960s. Previous analyses of the philosophical innovations presented in L'Idiot have often focused on the strictly theoretical passages in the biography. The present thesis also concentrates on the 'imagined' scenes presented throughout the text. Read as an integral part of Sartre's method, it is suggested that the dramatization facilitated by the biographical format is an integral part of the theoretical enquiry. Despite the lack of explicit referencing provided by Sartre, the biography is explored in its open character, identifying a series of resonances and similarities with a diverse range of authors. The different chapters consider thinkers whose relationship with Sartre has received little or no attention (such as Pierre Bourdieu and Walter Benjamin), or whose work resonates with Sartre in ways that have so far gone unnoticed (Roland Barthes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Maurice Blanchot).
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Foehn, Salomé. "Les philosophes de l'exil républicain espagnol de 1939 : autour de José Bergamín, Juan David García Bacca et María Zambrano (1939-1965)." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2551.
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Spanish Republican philosophers in exile defended the Second Republic, legally proclaimed on April 14, 1931. They embraced the anti-fascist cause rising in the 1920s and the 1930s in Europe. During the Civil War, which lasted three years, they stood among the people. 1939 saw the victory of General Francisco Franco, supported by Nazi Germany and the Italy of Mussolini. Threatened with death, they had no choice but to escape from Spain. Some intellectuals experienced French concentration camps but, for the most part, they found refuge in Latin America, especially in Mexico and Venezuela. In exile, they swore to remain loyal to the Second Republic and to the spirit of the Spanish people. Moved by liberal views and humane ideals, these philosophers belonged to the vanquished, as those everywhere in Europe who rose against Fascist barbarity. As a result, their respective works are still widely unknown today – despite relentless efforts made to promote their thought to a larger audience for over half a century. In addition to the historical context of crisis during the interwar period, the situation of Spanish philosophy itself is suggestive. Indeed, Spanish philosophy was institutionalised at the beginning of the twentieth century only: the Schools of Madrid and Barcelona were created. These politics of cultural and intellectual renovation are first bestowed upon the generation of philosophers I study, born in the 1900s. When the Spanish War erupts, they had become professionals of international recognition. This shows the actual limits of academic philosophy, incapable of acknowledging unorthodox ways of philosophising. The experience of exile itself serves in my opinion as a catalyst: Spanish Republican philosophers in exile seek emancipation from academic conventions to philosophise freely; that is, in Spanish and according to the spirit of the people. No doubt “poetic reason” – the true invention of Spanish Republican exile – stems from this ideal of autonomous thinking.
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Ravi, Vidya. "From virgin land to hinterland : place and dwelling in American fiction, 1951-1995." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648366.
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Vimont, Michael. "The anthropological construction of Czech identity : academic and popular discourses of identity in 20th century Bohemia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bb316968-60a1-472c-bee4-b8de3af5ebbd.
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Through close textual analysis of 20th century Czech anthropological texts from the Revivalist and Socialist periods and contemporary social research conducted after the Velvet Revolution, I demonstrate certain prominent discourses of identity developed in early Bohemian anthropology and their continuities in present day popular discourses. In each period, identity is deeply intertwined with teleological theories of history with Czech populations at the apex of cultural evolutionary development. In the Revivalist period this apex was believed to be the democratic nation state, transitioning to a Marxist nation state in the Socialist period, and in the contemporary period is conceived of as a neoliberal nation state. A major function of anthropology in the Revivalist and Socialist periods was to legitimate either period’s respective teleological theory and Czech possession of relevant values as 'objective' and 'natural' fact, a general mode of discourse which continued in the contemporary period in numerous editorials in the 1990s on the advantages of capitalism. The contemporary manifestation has particularly noteworthy consequences for the Roma minority, which I argue has provided Czech discourses with an ethnic category 'anti-thetical' to their own identity, providing a 'repository' for negative Czech self-stereotypes emerging from collaboration in the Socialist period.
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Engelbrecht, Schalk Willem Petrus. "Utopie, filosofie en hermeneutiek : 'n verkenning van die denke van Gianni Vattimo." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/53708.
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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2003.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Utopia, Philosophy and Hermeneutics Exploring the thought of Gianni Vattimo Article I: The End of Utopia An explanation for the rise of distopia in popular culture with reference to the ideas of Gianni Vattimo In this article the development of utopianism is described by tracing it back to its original classical form, following it through its modernistic form and finally describing distopia as the postmodern form of utopia. Using the ideas of Gianni Vattimo, distopia is interpreted as the creative embodiment of the "counterfinality of reason". In this way distopia acts as a critique of modem rationalism. The question is raised if it is possible to speak of "the end of utopia" in postmodern times. It is concluded that utopian thought remains and functions as a necessary fiction in postmodern ethics. Article II: An Appropriate Postmodern Philosophy A discussion of the hermeneutics of Gianni Vattimo The aim of this article is to discuss the radical hermeneutics proposed by the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. Vattimo declares a radicalization of hermeneutics to be the only consistent, persuasive and valid approach to the postmodern conditions of existence we find ourselves in today. In order to explain what this approach entails, and how Vattimo justifies it, this article discusses his interpretation of the history (and end) of modernity, as well as his proposals for a new task for philosophy, and for a postmodern ethics.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Utopie, Filosofie en Hermeneutiek 'n Verkenning van die denke van Gianni Vattimo Artikel I: Die Einde van Utopie 'n Verklaring vir die opkoms van distopie in populêre kultuur aan die hand van die idees van Gianni Vattimo Hierdie artikel beskryf die ontwikkeling van utopianisme deur die oorspronklike klassieke en latere modernistiese vorme daarvan na te gaan, en uiteindelik distopie te beskryf as die postmoderne vorm van utopie. Met verwysing na die denke van Gianni Vattimo word distopie geïnterpreteer as die kreatiewe beliggaming van die "kontrafinaliteit van rede". Op hierdie manier lewer distopie kritiek op moderne rasionalisme. Die vraag word gevra na die moontlikheid daarvan om te kan praat van "die einde van utopie" in postmoderne tye, en uiteindelik word tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat utopiese denke steeds 'n rol het om te speel as 'n noodsaaklike fiksie binne 'n postmoderne etiek. Artikel II: 'n Gepaste Postmoderne Filosofie 'n Bespreking van die hermeneutiek van Gianni Vattimo Die doel van hierdie artikel is om die Italiaanse filosoof Gianni Vattimo se voorstel vir 'n radikale hermeneutiek te bespreek. Vattimo is oortuig daarvan dat 'n radikalisering van hermeneutiek die enigste konsekwente, oortuigende en geldige benadering is tot die postmoderne bestaanstoestande waarbinne ons onsself vandag bevind. In 'n poging om te verduidelik wat hierdie benadering behels, en hoe Vattimo dit regverdig, word sy interpretasie van die geskiedenis (en einde) van moderniteit bespreek, asook sy voorstelle vir 'n nuwe taak vir die filosofie, en vir 'n postmoderne etiek.
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Castle, Allan. "Collusion and challenge : major wars, domestic coalitions and revisionist states." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=41997.
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This dissertation examines the emergence of revisionism in the foreign policies of the great powers: it is concerned with the rise of 'challenger' states. Current approaches to the rise of challengers (arguments from 'structure', 'prudence', and 'historical sociology') are if generally useful also incomplete, leaving the emergence of several great power challengers not fully explained. This dissertation offers a new explanation, not as a replacement but as a complement to these theories, and in doing so accomplishes two tasks: first, it explains cases previously unaccounted-for; and second, it does so in a fashion that acknowledges the co-determination of domestic and international politics. The new model suggests that the seeds of challenges to international orders are often found in the wartime experience itself, in social pacts between elites and societal groups struck to achieve mobilization requirements. Violation of these pacts in the postwar period can in turn generate powerful political movements for the overthrow of both the domestic and international postwar orders. The explanation offered by this model is then applied to five cases of great power behaviour after major wars. While imperfect in its ability to account for great power behaviour in all these cases and thus requiring refinement, the model obtains sufficient support to warrant further exploration of these and other cases in future studies.
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Turner, Barry John, and barry turner@rmit edu au. "Nasution total people's resistance and organicist thinking in Indonesia." Swinburne University of Technology, 2005. http://adt.lib.swin.edu.au./public/adt-VSWT20060227.095349.
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This thesis argues that General Abdul Haris Nasution, the most influential military strategist
that Indonesia has produced, developed an elective affinity between his strategies for 'people�s
resistance' and an organicist vision of the proper relations between the state (including the
military) and society that led to the Indonesian Army�s formulation of a unique, pervasive and
highly durable means of military intervention in politics, the economy and society.
Organicism is a stream of political thinking that views state and society as a single organic
unity. Corporatist / functional modes of interest representation are often associated with
organicist thinking.
Nasution�s 'people�s resistance' strategies emerged during the armed struggle for national
independence (from the Dutch) in the second half of the 1940s. The thesis argues that unlike the
'people�s war' strategies that emanated from the political left at roughly the same time,
Nasution�s concepts were designed to uphold organic 'traditional' authority structures and
depoliticise the national struggle. Associated with these strategies was a system of territorial
commands that shadowed and supervised the aristocratically led civilian administration.
The form of military intervention that grew out of this elective affinity reached its peak during
the New Order regime of former President Suharto (1966 � 1998), when the army used its
'people�s resistance' doctrines and their associated territorial commands to control the
population and the regime championed state-sanctioned corporatist / functional modes of
interest representation.
The identification of this elective affinity is a major point of departure from previous political
biographies of Nasution. Another is the emphasis placed on Nasution�s family and personal life,
particularly in the early chapters.
This thesis explains how personal and family influences encouraged Nasution towards organicist
thinking. It identifies how, in the early 1950s, Nasution idealised his 'people�s resistance'
strategies and the support given to him during the armed struggle by organic 'traditional'
authority figures. It shows how Nasution�s elective affinity between organicist thinking and
'people�s resistance' infused the interventionist doctrines that the army began to develop in the
mid-to-late 1950s.
In recent years the Indonesian Army has distanced itself from corporatist / functional forms of
interest representation and has largely retreated from an active involvement in politics.
Nevertheless, the thesis identifies a continuing adherence within the Army leadership to
Nasution�s system of territorial commands and concepts of 'people�s resistance' that cannot
readily be reconciled with democratic processes.