Relevant bibliographies by topics / History, Philosophy and Politics / Dissertations / Theses

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'History, Philosophy and Politics'

To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: History, Philosophy and Politics.
Author: Grafiati
Published: 10 December 2022
Last updated: 29 January 2023

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'History, Philosophy and Politics.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

1

Cosby, Bruce. "Technological politics and the political history of African-Americans." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 1995. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/AAI9543185.

Full text
Abstract:
This dissertation is a critical study of technopolitical issues in the history of African American people. Langdon Winner's theory of technopolitics was used to facilitate the analysis of large scale technologies and their compatibility with various political ends. I contextualized the central technopolitical issues within the major epochs of African American political history: the Atlantic slave trade, the African artisans of antebellum America, and the American Industrial Age. Throughout this study I have sought to correct negative stereotypes and to show how "technological gauges" were employed to belittle people of African descent. This research also has shown that the mainstream notion that Africans had no part in the history of technology is false. This study identifies and analyses specific technologies that played a major role in the political affairs of Africans and African Americans. Those technologies included nautical devices, fort construction, and automatic guns in Africa, and hoes, plows, tractors, cotton gins, and the mechanical cotton pickers in America. The findings of this study suggested that African Americans have been disengaged and victimized by western technologies. This dissertation proposes how to overcome the oppressive uses of technology.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

Pitt, Peter. "Rough justice: Predicaments of philosophy, history, and world politics." Thesis, Pitt, Peter (2014) Rough justice: Predicaments of philosophy, history, and world politics. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2014. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/28979/.

Full text
Abstract:
In this dissertation I explore some recent philosophical attempts to address questions related to global justice and world politics, principally through the work of Amartya Sen and Thomas Pogge. My discussion focuses on some central intractable puzzles, and I argue that global justice is best seen as a predicament – an unanswerable, impossible question which cannot be readily dismissed, but also as a topic of deliberation and contestation which, once predicated, requires a depth and seriousness of response which confounds conventional disciplinary and conversational boundaries. The disciplinary decorum of liberal political philosophy minimises attention to the historical context of the theorist, along with evidence and interpretive argument about history and social theory. Writers such as Pogge and Sen have pushed against those constraints, attempting to develop more empirically informed and practically oriented accounts. However, I argue that they have underestimated the need for a deeper engagement with history, and for a more radical challenge to implicit understandings of the character of the world. Without a more robust engagement with the power-infused politics of the real world, the abstraction of political philosophy will continue to produce accounts which are inadequate to the dimensions of domination, the character of human suffering, and the dynamic and strategic character of normative argument. To counteract the bias towards conciliation and public reason in recent liberal political philosophy, I emphasise a history of deeply connected reciprocal engagement, cooperation, and struggle. This orientation allows a better sense of the power and persistence of the rhetoric of justice, and particularly its capacity to motivate social and political movements of resistance to domination. Liberal humanitarianism unduly privileges the beneficiaries of past injustice. A perspective of rough justice is needed – attuned to the dialectic between facticity and evaluative aspiration which the concept of justice has long embodied, and recognising claims to rough equality, fair treatment, and reparation – on the basis of a broadly connected, deeply reciprocal, and deeply conflictual history.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

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.

Full text
Abstract:
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.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Tarrant, Neil James. "Disciplining the School of Athens : censorship, politics and philosophy, Italy 1450-1600." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2010. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/2340/.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis examines the censorship of philosophy in Italy in the period 1450-1600, seeking to establish how the scrutiny of ideas was affected by the religious crisis of the sixteenth century. One of the primary aims of this thesis is to revise older accounts of censorship, dominant in the literature of both the history of science and Italian intellectual history traditions. These historiographies suggest that the Counter- Reformation triggered the emergence of a new and repressive attitude towards the censorship of philosophy, which grievously affected Italian intellectual and scientific culture in the seventeenth century. My thesis challenges this received view by drawing upon the insights produced by historians working in other disciplines, especially institutional historians of the Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books, and historians of the Church who have challenged the older monolithic view of the „Counter-Reformation Church‟. It seeks to show that while there were indeed significant changes to the apparatus of censorship during the sixteenth century, notably the re-organisation of the Inquisition and creation of the Index, they did not signal an entirely new approach towards the censorship of philosophy, nor did it have the cataclysmic impact suggested by earlier historians. I argue that the attitudes towards philosophy maintained within these institutions represent a specific formulation of the relationship between philosophy and revealed faith, which was in fact consistent with ideas elaborated within the mendicant orders during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I argue that the implementation of these ideas as the basis for censorship can only be understood by understanding complex power struggles within the Church.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Sheppard, K. N. "Man as he is: Politics and propriety in the thought of David Hume." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/27037.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis considers propriety and politics in the thought of David Hume. It argues that Hume's political thought was intimately connected with his philosophical investigation of the 'science of man', first undertaken in A Treatise of Human Nature (17 39-40). It outlines how the 'science of man' progressed from Pyrrhonian scepticism to a 'mitigated' scepticism that affirmed 'common life' and moderation. A principle factor in this development was the articulation of sympathy and a philosophy of sentiment, consistent with, yet critical of, earlier philosophical traditions. This moderate scepticism was accompanied by the early articulation of Hume's enlightened scale of values---amusement, virtue, understanding, moderation. In highlighting these values this study argues that Hume be considered an establishment thinker, connecting philosophical values to a political context where stability was a mainstay of debate. Thus, the thesis complements both Duncan Forbes and J. G. A. Pocock, scholars who have argued along similar grounds that Hume's self-conceived revolution in philosophy ironically investigated the concept of revolution in political terms, but failed to give it any hearty endorsement. This study also casts light upon how Hume offered his philosophical investigations to a broader eighteenth-century audience and why an endorsement of political revolution was not to be found in this work. It suggests that the Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary represent Hume's attempt to cultivate a political culture of politeness and moderation, containing, as they do, a critique of superstition and enthusiasm, both religious and political. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

Smith, D. S. "Politics and metaphysics : some developments in the history of Nietzsche-reception in France 1872-1972." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.332878.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Hériard, Dubreuil Emmanuelle Therese Irenee. "The personalism of Denis de Rougemont : spirituality and politics in 1930s Europe." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2005. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/262773.

Full text
Abstract:
Neither communist, nor fascist, the personalist third way was an original attempt to remedy the malaise of liberal democracies in 1930s Europe. Personalism puts the emphasis on the human person – understood to be an individual 'in relation' to others – as the foundation and aim of society. Yet, because of the impossibility of subjecting the human person to a systematic definition, personalism remains complex and multifaceted, to the extent that it might be best to speak of ‘personalisms’ in the plural. The various personalist movements that emerged in France in the 1930s are little known, and the current historiography in English misrepresents them. This dissertation is a study of the various personalist movements based in France in the 1930s, examining their spiritual research and political philosophy through the vantage point of Swiss writer Denis de Rougemont (1906-1985). In Rougemont lies the key to understanding the personalist groupings because he was the only thinker to remain active in the two foremost movements (Ordre Nouveau and Esprit) throughout the 1930s. The personalism of Ordre Nouveau was the most original, in both senses of the term. It deserves particular attention as an important political philosophy and an attempt to justify political and economic federalism in 1930s Europe. Whilst an Ordre Nouveau activist, Rougemont can be looked upon as the mediator and federator of personalisms in the 1930s. However, Rougemont’s particular contribution to personalist thought was more spiritual and theological than political or economic. Rougemont saw it as his vocation, in a strict religious sense, to oppose ‘totalitarian’ regimes. In the final analysis, Rougemont’s personalism was best expressed in the minor classic 'L’Amour et l’Occident' (1939). Love, as the affirmation of personal freedom and responsibility vis-à-vis other persons, is the closest illustration of what lies at the heart of the personalism of Denis de Rougemont.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Carlson, Laura M. "The politics of interpretation : language, philosophy, and authority in the Carolingian Empire (775-820)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9e2574f8-b264-4e48-8390-fbec34411651.

Full text
Abstract:
Is language a tool of empire or is empire a tool of language? This thesis examines the cultivation of Carolingian hegemony on a pan-European scale; one defined by a renewed interest in the study of language and its relationship to Carolingian eagerness for moral and spiritual authority. Intended to complement previous work on Carolingian cultural politics, this thesis reiterates the emergence of active philosophical speculation during the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Prior research has ignored the centrality of linguistic hermeneutics in the Carolingian literate programme. This thesis addresses this lacuna, demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between spirituality, language, and politics within the Carolingian world. The work appropriates prior investigations into the connection of semiotics and Christian philosophy and proposes the development of a renewed interest into ontology and epistemology by Carolingian scholars, notably Alcuin of York and Theodulf of Orléans. The correlation between linguistic philosophy and spiritual authority is confirmed by the 794 Synod of Frankfurt, at which accusations towards both the Adoptionist movement of northern Spain and the repeal of Byzantine Iconoclasm were based on the dangers of linguistic misinterpretation. The thesis also explores the manifestation of this emergent philosophy of language within the manuscript evidence, witnessed by the biblical pandects produced by Alcuin and Theodulf. Desire for the emendation of texts, not to mention the formation of a uniform script (Caroline Minuscule), abetted the larger goal of both infusing a text with authority (both secular and divine) and allowing for broader spiritual and intellectual understanding of a text. Increasing engagement with classical philosophy and rhetoric, the nature of Carolingian biblical revision, and the cultural politics as seen at the Synod of Frankfurt depict the primacy of language to the Carolingians, not only as a tool of imperialism, but the axis of their intellectual and spiritual world.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

May, Adrian. "Lignes, an intellectual revue : twenty-five years of politics, philosophy, art and literature." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251334.

Full text
Abstract:
The thesis takes the French revue Lignes (1987-present) as its object of study to provide a new account of French intellectual culture over the last twenty-five years. Whilst there are now many studies covering the role of such revues throughout the twentieth-century, the majority of such monographs extend no further than the mid-1980s: the major novelty of this thesis is extending these accounts up until the present moment. It is largely assumed that a reaction against the Marxist and structuralist theories of the 1960s and 1970s led to embrace of liberalism and an intellectual drift to the right in France from the 1980s onwards: whilst largely supporting this account, the thesis attempts to nuance this narrative of the fate of the intellectual left in the following years by showing the persistence of what can be called a politicised 'French theory' in Lignes, and a returning left-wing militancy in recent years. In doing so, it will both reveal under-studied aspects of well-known thinkers, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, as their thought develops through their participation in a collaborative, periodical publication, and introduce lesser known thinkers who have not received an extended readership in Anglophone spheres. Lignes also argues for the continued persistence and relevance of the thought of a previous generation of thinkers, notably Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Dionys Mascolo, and the thesis concludes by examining the potential role 'French Theory' could still have in France. Furthermore, as revues provide a unique nexus of intellectual, cultural, social and political concerns, the thesis also provides a unique history of France from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 2007 financial crisis and the Arab Spring. Much of the thesis is concerned with contextualising intellectual debates within a period characterised by the moralisation of discourses, a return of religion, the global installation of neo-liberalism and the eruption of immigration as a controversial European issue. From a relatively theoretical and politically stable position to the left of the Parti socialiste, Lignes therefore provides a privileged vantage point for the mutations in French social and cultural life throughout the period.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Norman, F. "Mansel : God and politics." Thesis, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2015. http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/17918/.

Full text
Abstract:
Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-71), Anglican theologian and philosopher, hastypically been remembered as a Kantian agnostic whose ideas led to those of Herbert Spencer. This thesis provides a critical challenge to this picture, and offers a thorough revisioning of Mansel's theology in context. First, concerning misrepresentation, I argue it was Spencer himself who, having had a youthful relationship with Mansel's sister Katherine, developed a prejudice against him, distorted the reception of his work, and promoted the caricature image of Mansel as an unwitting agnostic and "Kantist". With the help of Liberals such as Goldwin Smith and Leslie Stephen, Spencer's portrayal has stuck. I refute this picture and offer an alternative reading of Mansel. Second, concerning personalism, I show that Mansel was essentially a theistic personalist, indebted to the traditions of Bishop Browne, Bishop Butler, and Scottish common sense philosophy. Mansel represents a mid-Victorian example of "IThou" philosophical theology, grounded in the religious practice of Christian prayer. Mansel's theistic personalism had much in common with Newman's theology, and I explore the ways in which Newman's Grammar of Assent was written in response to Mansel's Bampton Lectures. Third, concerning politics, I argue that Spencer's distorted picture of Mansel as a Kantian agnostic served the political interests of partisan Liberals, and was aggressively spread by them because of Mansel's own Tory commitments. Located in context, Mansel, is here interpreted with reference to key personal relationships and personal networks, including his connection with leading Tories, such as Lord Carnarvon and Benjamin Disraeli. Crucially, I interpret his controversies with Frederick Denison Maurice and John Stuart Mill with reference to the political events of 1859 and 1865. These controversies were simultaneously religious and political, and receive a careful contextual reading.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
11

Faber, Michael J. "Founding expectations American politics and the debate over the Constitution /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3337245.

Full text
Abstract:
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Political Science, 2008.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 28, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-12, Section: A, page: 4855. Adviser: Russell L. Hanson.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
12

Koikkalainen, Petri. "The life of political philosophy after its death : history of an argument concerning the possibility of a theoretical approach to politics /." Rovaniemi : University of Lapland, 2005. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy054/2005377396.html.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
13

Yount, Lisa Michelle. "Remembrance, representation and feminism : toward a politics of memorial curation /." view abstract or download file of text, 2006. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1192184061&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=11238&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

Full text
Abstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-176). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
14

Duvall, Timothy Joesph 1966. "Becoming comfortable on unsteady ground: Knowledge, perspective, and the science of politics." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282333.

Full text
Abstract:
This dissertation critically appraises the scientific identity of the discipline of political science. In it, I argue that in spite of the proclamations indicating the death of positivism, the spirit of positivism still reigns in the discipline's construction of science. The positivist state of the discipline carries with it, among other things, a belief in a world "out there" to be studied, understood and known completely. This entails faith that fact and value, subject and object, knower and known can all be reliably separated and that neutral and objective knowledge can build on itself in a progression toward the truth of political affairs. Mainstream political scientists, the bulk of the discipline's members, I contend, still embrace this positivist view of the world, a view that includes ontological and epistemological presuppositions that I find to be untenable. In support of my conviction I appeal to the hermeneutic perspective that Heidegger and Gadamer encourage and connect it to the critical theory approach of Habermas and Fay, to the postmodern approach of Derrida and Foucault and to various feminist perspectives. My goal is to (re)construct the scientific identity of the discipline in ways that are epistemologically and ontologically more tenable for what I take to be a complicated social and political world. Ultimately, I settle on Donna Haraway's notion of "situated knowledges" as the most useful alternative (re)construction of science for the discipline of political science. Situated knowledges grasp and embrace the complex nature of the world. They deny the existence of any of the dichotomies that positivism holds dear, they insist on the interpretive and contextual nature of knowledge, and they demand that we understand knowledge to be partial, perspectival and contestable. In these ways, situated knowledges compel us to take responsibility for our knowledge claims and to become accountable for how those claims are used. These are vital issues for a discipline such as political science, a discipline that professes, in these "postbehavioral" days, to be relevant for contemporary political practices.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
15

Carmel, Elad. ""When reason is against a man, a man will be against reason" : Hobbes, deism, and politics." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d0df094a-ba7f-484c-aa30-ca1dca2eeaa7.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis explores the relationship between Thomas Hobbes and English deism. It seeks to show that Hobbes's work had a significant influence upon subsequent deists, namely, Charles Blount, John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and Anthony Collins. The thesis shows that these deists were influenced by certain distinctively Hobbesian anticlerical ideas, such as his biblical criticism, his materialism and determinism, his scepticism towards present revelation, and more. The deists, who were motivated by a similar form of anticlericalism, found in Hobbes a particularly resourceful ally. Furthermore, this thesis explores how some of Hobbes's political ideas influenced the deists: particularly his concerns regarding the dangerous role that priestly interests played in society and the instability that they generated. This thesis thus argues that Hobbes can be seen as a major influence upon English deism. Secondly, it offers an examination of Hobbes's concepts of God and reason. It shows that whilst Hobbes's accounts of God and reason were multilayered and at times perhaps underdeveloped, they contained significant elements that anticipated the later positions of the deists. Finally, this thesis argues that for Hobbes, the rational potential of humankind, implanted by God, could be cultivated and fulfilled once peace and security are guaranteed. Thus, this thesis attempts to recover some of the more utopian aspects of Hobbes's thought. It concludes that both Hobbes and the deists were part of a project of enlightenment, but one which was not aimed against religion as such. They attempted to liberate natural reason from the darkness of corrupt clerics and their false doctrines: this was an anticlerical enlightenment that was partly initiated by Hobbes and developed significantly by the deists.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
16

Mounk, Yascha B. "The Age of Responsibility: On the Role of Choice, Luck and Personal Responsibility in Contemporary Politics and Philosophy." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:14226053.

Full text
Abstract:
The value of “personal responsibility” increasingly stands at the center of contemporary discussions about distributive justice and the welfare state. While deep disagreements about who is responsible for which acts and outcomes persist, a wide range of thinkers accepts the normative premise that an individual’s claim to assistance from the collectivity should depend, in part, on whether or not they have acted “responsibly” in the past. Drawing on the recent history of moral and political philosophy, the social sciences, and political rhetoric, I argue that the current consensus around what I call the “responsibility framework” is a new phenomenon. In the postwar era, a conception of responsibility-as-duty emphasized each individual’s obligation to contribute to the community. Today, by contrast, the newer conception of responsibility-as-accountability emphasizes each individual’s obligation, insofar as they are capable of doing so, to provide for their own material needs without outside assistance. This changing conception of responsibility has, in turn, led to a significant—and normatively troubling—transformation of key political institutions. In particular, the welfare state, once conceived as a responsibility-buffering institution that was to provide a social safety net even to those citizens who have made mistakes in their lives, has been transformed into a responsibility-tracking institution, which denies citizens benefits if they are themselves “responsible” for being in a state of need. Among left-wing politicians and egalitarian philosophers, the most common reaction to these normative shortcomings has been to accept the punitive interpretation of responsibility outlined in the responsibility framework, yet insist that the threshold for ascribing responsibility to most individuals is extremely high—thus making responsibility largely inapplicable to everyday moral and political life. However, this “no-responsibility view” ultimately overstates both the philosophical reasons to apply a high bar to ascriptions of responsibility and the political feasibility of convincing people to abstain from holding their fellow citizens responsible for their actions. Instead of dismissing the punitive, pre-institutional account of responsibility altogether, I therefore argue that we should construct a positive, institutional account of responsibility. Drawing on T. M. Scanlon’s work about the significance of choice, I give an account of the important self-regarding, other-regarding and societal reasons why we need to give responsibility a real role in our moral and political world. Building on these reasons, I sketch an institutional account of responsibility that helps to empower people to gain mastery over their own lives, and draw out this account’s implications for the design of political institutions, including the welfare state.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
17

Wells, Philip L. "Pragmatism as American Exceptionalism." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2012. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/honors_theses/23.

Full text
Abstract:
The history of American philosophical thought is marked by a skepticism of epistemology and immutable truths, which is drawn under the term pragmatism. This skepticism is the genesis for the political and social attitudes that makes the United States exceptional. This thesis argues that this exceptionalism is important to the makeup of the American character and that it is being threatened by two front: ideologically driven politics, and the abuse of power by the majority. In the course of writing this essay I evaluated a large portion of the body of American philosophy as well as political and judicial writers in order to show that American exceptionalism is based upon a philosophical rejection of epistemology and immutable truth claims and that exceptionalism is integral to the progress of America as a nation.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
18

Mueller, Laura Joy. "The Logic of American Exceptionalism: Petrus Ramus, the Puritans, and Contemporary American Politics." OpenSIUC, 2010. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/207.

Full text
Abstract:
Petrus Ramus was one of the most influential philosophers of the 1500s. His attempted reform of pedagogy, which was exemplified in his dialectic and rhetoric, not only changed the way people generations after taught and thought, but also demonstrated the scholastic reforms occurring in his lifetime. Ramus' influence is evident through the amount of controversy it sparked, the amount of scholarship devoted to Ramus, and, most importantly, the spread of Ramism from Europe to New England, finding its home in the New England Puritans. Through the passing of time, Puritan notions have not entirely been subsumed and have recently reappeared in American political discourse. American Exceptionalism, traceable to the Puritans, has emerged in the words of conservative American politicians such as Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin. Has American identity, imbued with Puritan ideas, also been infected with a subtle Ramism? A study of political and theological reactions to 9/11--a reflection of the Puritan "provoking evils" --and political speeches appealing to the fabled "city upon a hill" not only show the continuance of American Exceptionalism but also demonstrate Ramist logic at work. The identification of America as "exceptional," and the support of this idea as provided by the aforementioned reactions and speeches, exhibit a belief in the ontological relationship between signs and exceptionalism. By investigating Ramism, Ramist influence upon the Puritans, and the theology and logic of Jonathan Edwards, along with recent American political discourse, one can still see not only the Puritan traces in recent American identity, but also the Ramist roots twining through it all.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
19

Zoido, Oses Paula. "Between history and philosophy : Isaiah Berlin on political theory and hermeneutics." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2016. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3644/.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis offers a positive reinterpretation of the relevance of Isaiah Berlin’s political thought. It re-examines his work hermeneutically with the double aim of claiming its intrinsic relevance as a work of political theory beyond what most critics have acknowledged, first; and second, with the intention of using it to draw conclusions that will address some of the most pressing discussions found in contemporary liberal political theory, such as the conflicting link between value pluralism and liberalism, or the recent confrontation between political moralism and political realism. This is achieved by reading Berlin hermeneutically, and thus transcending the categorical differentiation between historical and philosophical methods in his work. The argument is presented in three sections. The first one is a biographical introduction that acts as a methodological statement. In it, the dilemma on the nature of values that sits at the heart of Berlin’s work is defined by reference to his biographical context. The second section of the thesis is formed by three chapters that look at the central philosophical aspects of Berlin’s political thought: value pluralism and a neo-Kantian normative ethical theory that emerges in relation to it. By claiming a relationship between Berlin and Kant, and by presenting value pluralism as a meta-ethical theory, the thesis offers an alternative reading of Berlin’s work that deviates substantively from most existing scholarship. The third section of the thesis compares Berlin’s political interpretation of value pluralism with that of Bernard Williams and John Rawls, in order to claim that liberal theory demands a hermeneutic method in its justification. This will show the enduring relevance of Berlin’s contribution to political theory as one that expands beyond his own historical moment, against what many commentators have argued. It also raises a strong claim on the crucial implications of method in political theory, calling for a more hermeneutic approach.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
20

He, Jianjun 1970. "The body in the politics and society of early China." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/6206.

Full text
Abstract:
ix, 212 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
This dissertation discusses the political conceptualization and social practice of the body in early China through a close examination of the texts and documents produced from the Spring and Autumn period to the end of the Eastern Han dynasty. It demonstrates that, in addition to medical concerns, the body in early China was transformed into a political concept and a ritual subject that served indispensably in state construction and social control. It is divided into the following three chapters. Chapter one, "Physiognomy and the Body," examines the relationship between physiognomy and the body. Following a roughly chronological order, this chapter shows how physiognomy, a divination technique, read the body for political purposes. In addition to this, the chapter also discusses philosophical reactions to this political interpretation of the body by looking at criticisms in the works of Mengzi, Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu, Wang Chong and Wang Fu. Chapter two, "Politics and the Body," discusses the political theory and practice of the body in early China. It begins with a description of the metaphorical meanings of the body in early political discourse, focusing on their role in defining the competitive relationship between the ruler and the minister, as well as their significance in defending the political and ethical legitimacy of the state. The use of the body as an actual political tool forms the second consideration of this chapter. I demonstrate how the political symbolism of the body weighted significantly in Han China's foreign policy making. Chapter three, "Ritual and the Body," deals with the issue of ritualization of the body in early China. The chapter is organized in accordance with two issues concerning the body in early ritual theories: ritualizing the body and embodying the ritual. I show how ritual trains the body to be acceptable to the society and how the ritualized body facilitates the maintenance of a hierarchical social order.
Adviser: Stephen Durrant
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
21

Kinsel, Jason Anthony. "The Misunderstood Philosophy of Thomas Paine." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1447685875.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
22

Scott-Coe, Justin M. "Covenant Nation: The Politics of Grace in Early American Literature." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/45.

Full text
Abstract:
The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an overview of recent attempts to integrate theology and theory, specifically comparing Jacques Derrida and Zizek to better understand the latter's theology of materialism which relies on as well as informs the Reformed Protestant covenantal dichotomy of grace and works. The second chapter establishes the complicated architecture of the covenant concept within seventeenth-century New England Reformed Protestantism, and uses church membership transcripts along with Ann Hutchinson court trial documents to demonstrate how this inherently unstable theology created unintended slippage between God's grace and mankind's works, resulting in a theological formulation remarkably open to Zizek's analysis of political ideology. The third chapter demonstrates how Jonathan Edwards, through his ingenious counter-argument in Freedom of Will, provides a theoretical foundation for an uneasy but necessary alignment of the covenants of works and grace, releasing the subjunctive potential of grace to operate through history as a predeterminer of meaning and, potentially, freedom. In the last chapter, I argue that Emerson finally converts the covenant from a politically conceptualized theological framework for radical grace into a personal institutionalization of grace itself. Stanley Cavell's exploration of Emerson's "constitution" in light of the covenant motif demonstrates the political (im)possibilities inherent in America's self-conceptions of personal liberty and civic equality. In the end, complexities inherent in the concept of the covenant, especially its creative failure to control the radical nature of "grace," are determinative factors in our contradictory American egalitarian ideals.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
23

Staley, Maxwell Reed. "A Most Dangerous Science| Discipline and German Political Philosophy, 1600-1648." Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10930815.

Full text
Abstract:

This dissertation tracks the development of German political philosophy over the course of the first half of the seventeenth century, with an emphasis on the disciplinary, methodological, and pedagogical concerns of Politica writers. These figures produced large-scale technical textbooks on politics, which attempted to make sense of the chaotic civil sphere through the application of disciplinary structures. The main influences on their thought came from the sixteenth century: Aristotelianism, reason of state, natural law, and neostoicism were the competing traditions that they attempted to fit into comprehensive treatments of their subject. Generally, these thinkers have been organized by historians into schools divided by their political and confessional commitments. I argue that, while these factors were important, their disciplinary and methodological choices also decisively shaped their vision of politics, and indeed their positions on the critical questions of their day. I do this by focusing on four specific writers, one from each of the four faculties of the early modern university: Bartholomaus Keckermann from the arts faculty, Henning Arnisaeus from Medicine, Christoph Besold from Law, and Adam Contzen from Theology. I show how each Politica author?s disciplinary background inflected their construction of politics as an academic discipline, and how this in turn shaped their opinions on the confessional and constitutional debates which were then fracturing the Holy Roman Empire. While the dissertation does focus on the differences among these figures, it also tracks a trajectory which they all participated in. I argue that their attempts to discipline politics as a subject resulted in the centering of the state as a disciplinary and administrative institution. Their motivation was to prevent political upheaval through the application of technical expertise, which meant that they were able to find ever more aspects of human life which required treatment under the rubric of political philosophy, because almost anything could be conceived of as either a threat or a source of strength for the political order. This in turn suggested a vastly expanded conception of the regulatory and disciplinary powers of the state. I thus contend that, although the Politica writers are mostly forgotten today, they represent a critical phase in the intellectual development of the idea of the state.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
24

Hoffner, Frederick James. "The moral state in 1919, a study of John Watson's idealism and communitarian liberalism as expressed in The state in peace and war." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp04/mq28205.pdf.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
25

Allsobrook, Christopher John. "Foucault, historicism and political philosophy." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003073.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis defends an ontological and epistemological account of Michel Foucault's post-structuralist philosophy, to argue that political philosophy needs to take into account the historical and political contingency of subjectivity and discourse. I show that by addressing the historical and political contingency of knowledge, Foucault's work overcomes the flaw of foundational epistemology in political philosophy, which treats true discourse as universal and disinterested. In doing so I hope to have to refuted the mainly positivistic and humanist schools of thought that lay claim to universal and foundationalist notions, by demonstrating the extent to which their misgivings about Foucault's work are informed by and founded upon an unjustified a-historicism. The thesis is composed of three chapters, the first of which deals with an ontology of the subject, the second, with an ontology of social relations, and the last with epistemology. In each chapter I use dialectical analysis to reveal how interests necessarily mediate subjectivity, social relations, and knowledge. The first two chapters defend Foucault's conception of power, by way of an analysis of the relations between Foucault's work and Sartre's existential phenomenology. I show how both Foucault and Sartre successfully address the problem of historicism for political philosophy with their respective conceptions of human freedom. The final chapter defends Foucault's conception of the relations between power and discourse, to show how it overcomes the a-historicism of universal, foundational epistemology. These three chapters demonstrate the importance of accounting for historicism in political philosophy. Claims to universal interest, because knowledge is conditioned by conflicts of interest, often mask political domination. It is important, then, to remember, in political philosophy, that knowledge is evaluative and interested, reflecting historically and politically mediated evaluations. One should be suspicious of ' natural facts' , used to justify actions or beliefs, thereby masking the choices that inform them. I have used the work of Michel Foucault to motivate this claim.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
26

Emadian, B. "The plight of the political subject : at the crossroads of philosophy and history." Thesis, University of Westminster, 2015. http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/16065/.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis explores and elaborates the notion of ‘collective political subject’ as a philosophical and historical category through a critical approach to the work of Alain Badiou and Ernesto Laclau, but also by way of an excursion into different treatments of this notion in continental philosophy. Through the choice of these two thinkers, this study aims to contribute to a line of thought that, rather than an abandonment of the notion of the subject, deems it necessary for emancipatory politics. It argues that, despite a prioritization of the individuated subject over the collective in the history of philosophy, the political work of these thinkers enable us to perceive of the subject as generic or universal and political, what we refer to as ‘the collective’ in this thesis. Politics in this context is intimately tied up with the modern category of the subject as the capacity for the‘active’ subversion of the principle of subjection and subordination. That is why the category of the subject is intrinsically implicated with the concepts of subversion/rupture, politics, and emancipation. The thesis subsequently stages an encounter between this redefined category (of the subject) and a historical experience that vividly brings to life the formation of the collective political subject. This historical instance is the Iranian Revolution (1979) as the greatest mass uprising of the second half of the 20th century. The Green Movement (2009) will be also observed in terms of a sequel of this Revolution as an unfinished project, reflecting the incessant push and pull between ‘the collective’ and an authoritarian State. This encounter between philosophy and history allows us to see what a long struggle for emancipation or fulfilment of democratic demands entails. The incentive for this thesis springs from an absence of any philosophical approaches to this Revolution and its consequences, a lack that not only surrenders the emancipatory potentials of this Revolution to the backwaters of history, but also jettisons the characteristics that make this revolution a desirable model for an engagement with the plight of the political subject.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
27

Panton, James. "Politics, subjectivity and the public/private distinction : the problematisation of the public/private relationship in political thought after World War II." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cb636385-aa16-44d1-abf5-2e835e62665c.

Full text
Abstract:
A critical investigation of the public/private distinction as it has been conceived in Anglo-American political thinking in the second half of the 20th century. A broadly held consensus has developed amongst many theorists that public/private does not refer to any single determinate distinction or relationship but rather to an often ambiguous range of related but analytically distinct conceptual oppositions. The argument of this thesis is that if we approach public/private in the search for analytic or conceptual clarity then this consensus is correct. Against this I propose that a number of the most dominant invocations of the distinction can be understood to express public/private as an irreducibly political dialectic that mediates the relationship between the subjective and objective side of social and political life. By locating these conceptually diverse invocations within a broader and more determinate framework of the historical development and contestation of the boundaries which establish the conditions for subjectivity, as the assertion of political agency, on the one hand, and which demarcate, police and defend these particular boundaries, as part of the objectively given character of social life and institutional organisation, on the other hand, then a more determinate character to public/private can be recognized. I then seek to explore the capacity of this model to capture and explain the peculiar post-war problematisation of public/private amongst a number of new left thinkers in Britain and America.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
28

Rassool, Ciraj. "The individual, auto/biography and history in South Africa." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2004. http://etd.uwc.ac.za/index.php?module=etd&amp.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis is a contribution to the field of public history, which the author and others at the University of the Western Cape's History Department have over the last decade pioneered in defining and mapping out in South Africa. Rassool's theories about the relationship between history and biography were developed in relation to the life of the Unity Movement leader, I.B. Tabata.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
29

Mason, David (David Mark George). "Burke's political philosophy in his writings on constitutional reform." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66187.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
30

Whitaker, K. S. "Curiosi and virtuosi : gentlemanly culture, experimental philosophy and political life in England, 1620-1685." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1997. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/272967.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
31

Troiani, Igea Santina. "The politics of friends in modern architecture : 1949-1987." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2005. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16040/1/Igea_Troiani_Thesis.pdf.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis aims to reveal paradigms associated with the operation of Western architectural oligarchies. The research is an examination into "how" dominant architectural institutions and their figureheads are undermined through the subversive collaboration of younger, unrecognised architects. By appropriating theories found in Jacques Derrida's writings in philosophy, the thesis interprets the evolution of post World War II polemical architectural thinking as a series of political friendships. In order to provide evidence, the thesis involves the rewriting of a portion of modern architectural history, 1949-1987. Modern architectural history is rewritten as a series of three friendship partnerships which have been selected because of their subversive reaction to their respective establishments. They are English architects, Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson; South African born architect and planner, Denise Scott Brown and North American architect, Robert Venturi; and Greek architect, Elia Zenghelis and Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas. Crucial to the undermining of their respective enemies is the friends' collaboration on subversive projects. These projects are built, unbuilt and literary. Warring publicly through the writing of seminal texts is a significant step towards undermining the dominance of their ideological opponents. It also appears that through the making of these projects, the unrecognised architects are able to convert themselves to being recognised as new figureheads. This thesis contends that as a consequence of the power within each of the three friendship partnerships, the architects are enabled to collaborate against the dominant ideology of their respective enemies and gain status. It also contends that a cycle of friendship and warring is the political system by which the institution of modern architecture has historically reengineered itself to suit the times.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
32

Holley, Jared Douglas. "Eighteenth-century Epicureanism and the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708202.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
33

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.

Full text
Abstract:
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.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
34

Guo, Yunlong. "The structure of a metaphysical interpretation of science of history." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2018. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/115891/.

Full text
Abstract:
The aim of this research is to reconstruct a metaphysical interpretation of the philosophy of history with regard to the spirit of historical thinking. The spirit of historical thinking is to emphasize the relation between what happened in the past and historical thinking about the past in the present. However, current philosophies of history, which are largely epistemologically oriented, have not adequately explored this relation. In order to investigate the relation between past and present, I refer to an Aristotelian philosophy of practice and politics, and adapt it to the domain of the philosophy of history, and argue the case for a metaphysical science of history. A metaphysical science of history contains two primary parts. They are the part on physis and the part on technê/phronēsis. With regard to physis that metaphysically investigates the natural generating progress of entities, I argue that the existence of historical events can be understood as a natural developing progress in which the events are ordered in a chronological sequence. Such chronological sequence is essentially the physis of history in the metaphysical sense (I characterize it as ‘Ordnungszeit’). For the part on technê/phronēsis, I demonstrate that Aristotelian knowing is for itself an action of knowing, which is located beyond a given temporal position in the past to both the past and the thinking present, and indicates the fundamental Beingness of history (I characterize it as ‘Geschehenszeit’). Finally I conclude that the historical eudaimonia, namely the pursuing of the completeness of historical knowledge, is the final presentation of actualizing Geschehenszeit, as it bridges the past and the present in accordance to the spirit of historical thinking.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
35

Rosensweig, Jason. "Progress, Forms of Life and the Nature of the Political." Thesis, The University of Chicago, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10639185.

Full text
Abstract:

Explores the foundations of political community as understood in two complementary ways: first, in contemporary normative political and social theory. Second, in the history of politics and in the history of philosophy. Particular attention is given to David Hume, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke, as well as their relationship to contemporary political philosophers like Bernard Williams, John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Mills. Using Wittgenstein’s concept of a form of life (lebensform) in the Philosophical Investigations, argues that there is a family within the history of political thought whose members share the understanding that a shared form of life, which develops organically and historically, is a necessary condition for a free society to work well. Examines how political and social obligation, trust and commerce, as well as sympathy and concepts of rights, all require interdependence and shared assumptions and expectations. This family balances the impulses of political realism and political idealism, though is somewhat more anti-idealist than pro-realist. Bottom-up thinking that doesn’t fall in to the trap of idealism or of rationalism, due to a commitment to epistemological limits and the recognition of our finite capacities. In particular, I am interested in how we can combine the seemingly competing forces of culture and tradition (ways we have been doing things, one might say) with the necessary desire for change, reform, and progress. My approach to these questions can help shape the way we think about the size of states, if and when foreign intervention makes sense, the pace of change, and the necessary variety of political and social orders suited to a varying world.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
36

Karstadt, Elliott. "The power of interests in early-modern English political thought." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2013. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/8464.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis studies the relationship between the particular interests of individuals and the common good, as it is conceived by various moral and political philosophers in earlymodern England (c.1640-c.1740). Interests are spoken of in English translations of Italian and French texts in the early seventeenth century, and are often used to describe goods or desires that are morally ambiguous. The vocabulary becomes commonly used in political tracts during the English Civil Wars, and this is where the thesis begins. We then move on to an analysis of the place of interests in Hobbes’s changing civil science. Hobbes continues to see interests as being morally ambiguous and dangerous to the common good. The third chapter deals with the republican tradition (epitomized by James Harrington), in which thinkers begin to conceive how interests might be manipulated to serve the common good. Chapter 4 deals with the men of latitude of the Restoration, who first conceive that interests are in fact identical with our moral virtues. We thereby come to see that the important questions regarding interests in the restoration revolved around religion and morality, rather than (as is commonly assumed) around trade. The fifth chapter deals with the commonwealth theorists, who became increasingly concerned that Charles II’s court, and subsequently the court whigs, were beginning to constitute an interest separate from that of the people. We then come to a discussion of Bernard Mandeville, who is generally thought to be a critic of the commonwealthmen, but (in his use of the vocabulary of interests) actually bears quite a close intellectual resemblance to them. The thesis ends with an account of a number of reactions to Mandeville, chief among them, Joseph Butler, who argues that not only are our interests identical with virtue, but they also naturally serve the common good.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
37

Evans, Daniel Carson. "Disputing an Analytic Construct of Philosophical Conservatism." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/539.

Full text
Abstract:
This paper examines and ultimately objects to a version of political Conservatism as described in Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin’s paper “Analytic Conservatism.” Brennan and Hamlin’s argument makes several claims about economic forecasting and societal risk-aversion that ultimately uphold the status quo within society. This paper examines these claims and refutes them, while also considering counter-arguments Brennan and Hamlin could use to defend their theory. In conclusion, this paper supports the analytic dimension of Brennan and Hamlin’s theory while criticizing the trivial and arbitrary nature of valuing the status quo.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
38

Troiani, Igea Santina. "The Politics of Friends in Modern Architecture : 1949-1987." Queensland University of Technology, 2005. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16040/.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis aims to reveal paradigms associated with the operation of Western architectural oligarchies. The research is an examination into "how" dominant architectural institutions and their figureheads are undermined through the subversive collaboration of younger, unrecognised architects. By appropriating theories found in Jacques Derrida's writings in philosophy, the thesis interprets the evolution of post World War II polemical architectural thinking as a series of political friendships. In order to provide evidence, the thesis involves the rewriting of a portion of modern architectural history, 1949-1987. Modern architectural history is rewritten as a series of three friendship partnerships which have been selected because of their subversive reaction to their respective establishments. They are English architects, Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson; South African born architect and planner, Denise Scott Brown and North American architect, Robert Venturi; and Greek architect, Elia Zenghelis and Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas. Crucial to the undermining of their respective enemies is the friends' collaboration on subversive projects. These projects are built, unbuilt and literary. Warring publicly through the writing of seminal texts is a significant step towards undermining the dominance of their ideological opponents. It also appears that through the making of these projects, the unrecognised architects are able to convert themselves to being recognised as new figureheads. This thesis contends that as a consequence of the power within each of the three friendship partnerships, the architects are enabled to collaborate against the dominant ideology of their respective enemies and gain status. It also contends that a cycle of friendship and warring is the political system by which the institution of modern architecture has historically reengineered itself to suit the times.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
39

Toure, Abu Jaraad. "Towards A ‘Griotic’ Methodology: African Historiography, Identity Politics and Educational Implications." The Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1320631211.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
40

Kim, Sung-Gun. "Korean Christianity and the Shinto Shrine issue in the war period, 1931-1945 a sociological study of religion and politics /." Thesis, Online version, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.292679.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
41

Mascaretti, Giovanni M. "Adorno, Foucault, and the history of the present." Thesis, University of Essex, 2017. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/19707/.

Full text
Abstract:
What is the nature of our society? What kinds of power regimes shape our existence? What forms of emancipatory resistance might chart the way towards a better future that responds to the dangers, injustices, and pathologies marking the present? These are just some of the questions my dissertation aims to answer through the help of the conceptual resources that Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault provide us with. Accordingly, whereas the few attempts that have been made been to compare their works remain inadequate, partial, or simply out-dated, my thesis offers a detailed and comprehensive appraisal of both the explanatory and reconstructive potential of Adorno’s and Foucault’s common project of developing a critico-theoretical account of modern Western society, with a view also to showing the often-neglected compatibility of their respective approaches. At issue, is not only the scholarly reconstruction of a possible dialogue beyond their differences, but also, and more importantly, the analysis of the continued relevance of their works for our understanding of the world we inhabit. To this end, Chapters 1 and 2 start with an examination of the historical conditions Adorno and Foucault see at the root of the dangers and pathologies ailing our age. More specifically, Chapter 1 starts with a review of Adorno’s conception of late modern society as a reified totality ruled by the logic of capitalist exchange. I then confront Adorno’s account of social domination with Foucault’s early analytics of power and illustrate the similarities between their pictures of the disciplinary mechanisms at the basis of the constitution of modern individuals. The chapter concludes by presenting their critique of the scientific discourses and ideological procedures that have supported these power mechanisms. After examining the connection they establish between the development of capitalism and modern biopower, Chapter 2 compares Foucault’s and Adorno’s portraits of the political culture of liberalism. Whereas the relevance of Adorno’s insights is manly confined to the processes of socialization characterizing the welfare states in the first half of the 20th century, I argue that Foucault’s later inquiries shed an instructive light on the reconfiguration determined by the rise of neoliberalism in the contemporary technologies of government, whereby the latter are no longer based on the rigid mechanisms of disciplinary power, but rather on the fabrication of the subject as a free and responsible entrepreneur through more indirect and flexible forms of control operating on the social environment. Chapters 3 to 5 explore the anticipatory-utopian dimension of Adorno’s and Foucault’s enterprises. Chapter 3 engages in a largely unprecedented comparison of their critical approaches. Despite their different targets and narratives, I contend that they converge in the project of a critical problematization of the present, which seeks to modify their addressees’ sensibility and experience not only to show the historical contingency of the present, but also to encourage its radical transformation. Contrary to the popular view that they lack normative theorizing, Chapter 4 reviews Adorno’s and Foucault’s accounts of the normativity of critique, while pointing to their common attempt at giving new impetus to the emancipatory thrust of Enlightenment modernity. Chapter 5 elaborates a much overdue evaluation of their responses to the ethico-political challenges of the present through a juxtaposition of Adorno’s minimal ethics of resistance with Foucault’s late ethical reflections on the ancient practices of care of the self, which lie at the source of his more ambitious politics of the governed. The chapter closes by proposing a possible way of integrating Foucault’s call for creative resistance with Adorno’s politics of suffering. In conclusion, my dissertation assesses Adorno’s and Foucault’s merits in the construction of a critical “ontology of the present” that stands opposed to the neo-Idealist turn of much of contemporary critical theory with its separation of normative and empirical claims from the material forms of power shaping individuals’ subjectivity, cultural patterns, and institutional structures, while eventually arguing that Foucault gives us a more effective toolbox not only to comprehend who we are, but also to imagine ourselves otherwise.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
42

Hristov, Gorge [Verfasser], Karlfriedrich [Akademischer Betreuer] Herb, and Barbara [Akademischer Betreuer] Weber. "Politics and Immanence: State and History in Hegel and Deleuze / Gorge Hristov ; Karlfriedrich Herb, Barbara Weber." Regensburg : Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg, 2016. http://d-nb.info/1137701722/34.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
43

Rubio, Diego. "The ethics of deception : secrecy, transparency and deceit in the origins of modern political thought." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3e92fabc-9e47-41a5-a739-00a0f67d6dcf.

Full text
Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to reflect on the importance that deception has had on the efficient functioning of societies and the development of individuals. I attempt to do so by adopting an historical perspective, analysing the development of the notion of lawful deception during the Middle Ages and, mainly, the Early Modern Age through theological and political discourses. The scope of my investigation is pan-European. I examine sources from the major Western territories, but I pay special attention to those produced in the Spanish-Habsburg Empire, which was a major political and cultural entity during this period. My claim is that between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, the West witnessed the formation of what I call an "Ethics of Deception:" a trend of thought that, without challenging the Augustinian prohibition of lying, recognised deception as intrinsic to nature and mankind, thereby justifying its use from moral and political perspectives. I explain how this intellectual process was conducted, fostered by new social realities, and helped by the flourishing of casuistry, tacitism and neostoicism. Furthermore, I argue that the acceptance of deception contributed to the creation of a new view of the world, language and human interaction. A view that is in the very basis of some of the most characteristic features of Baroque art and that opened the door to some of the most transcendental cultural changes of the period, such as the creation of politics governed by reason rather than faith, the secularisation of social behaviour, and the emergence of the notions of individualism, privacy and freedom of thought. For these reasons, I claim that deception played an important role in the shaping of Modernity.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
44

Court, Simon Edward. "Non-cognitivism and liberal-individualism : philosophy and ideology in the history of contemporary moral and political life." Thesis, Durham University, 1989. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/6440/.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis is about the character of the non-cognitivist theory of ethics and its practical impact on contemporary moral and political life, It is suggested that non-cognitivism, understood as a distinct style of ethical theorising advanced most notably by Ayer, Stevenson, Hare and Mackie, has both a philosophical character, and an ideological character of a liberal-individualist kind. In the first four chapters the philosophical nature of the non-cognitivist account of ethics is critically examined. In chapters five and six it is argued, following Maclntyre, that there is a need to sketch out the historical context of the emergence of the theory in order to gain a complete understanding of its character. This is undertaken by drawing upon previously unpublished or unavailable material by such thinkers as Duncan-Jones, Barnes and Stevenson. In chapters seven and eight the ideological character of the theory is examined by indicating that philosophy and ideology constitute two logically different forms of understanding. It is suggested that the philosophical arguments advanced within non-cognitivism serve the purpose of giving coherent expression to a presumed ideological liberal-individualist conception of man and his relation to others in the world. Chapters nine and ten considers the implications for contemporary liberal theory of the non-cognitivist dominance of the moral philosophy and political practices of the Western democracies. It is claimed that the attempts of Dunn, Forty and Rawls to justify liberal theory and practice are unsuccessful because non-cognim has effectively undermined the distinction between morality and prudence upon which such a justification is grounded. The conclusion reached is that liberalism is in a state of crisis.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
45

Bryant, Cheney Matt. "Modern Charity: Morality, Politics, and Mid-Twentieth Century US Writing." UKnowledge, 2019. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/101.

Full text
Abstract:
Scholars over the past two decades (Denning, Szalay, Edmunds, Robbins) have theorized the different ways literature of the Mid-Twentieth Century reflects the dawn of the liberal US welfare state. While these studies elaborate on the effect rapidly expanding public aid had on literary production of the period, many have tended to undervalue the lingering influence on midcentury storytelling of private charity and philanthropy, those traditional aid institutions fundamentally challenged by the Great Depression and historically championed by conservatives. If the welfare state had an indelible impact on US literatures, so did the moral complexity of the systems of charity and philanthropy it purportedly replaced. In my dissertation, I theorize modern charity as a cultural narrative that found expression in a number of different writers from the start of the Great Depression and into the early 1960s, including Harold Gray, Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, Flannery O'Connor, and Dorothy Day.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
46

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.

Full text
Abstract:
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.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
47

Giordano, John. "Between Conviviality and Antagonism| Transactionalism in Contemporary Art Social Practice and Political Life." Thesis, Union Institute and University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3663907.

Full text
Abstract:

The rise of social practice art in Europe and North America since the 1990s has provoked a variety of critical alignments and contestations around multi-authored "post-studio" artwork, aimed at collapsing the boundaries between visual and performing art, and between art and everyday life. One of the most visible and impassioned contestations has centered on the value assigned by different critics to so-called convivial and antagonistic directions for social practice art. This project enters the debate on collaborative and participatory art by highlighting the commonalities between the turn away from spectatorialism in philosophy and the politically-driven, activist social practices coming out of the visual arts. Contending that the more salient problems under debate revolve around what art historian Grant Kester has described as "a series of largely unproductive debates over the epistemological status of the work," I focus on the way different epistemological frames impact the reception of convivial and antagonistic directions in art. With attention to the theory and criticism of Clare Bishop, Grant Kester, Shannon Jackson and Tom Finkelpearl, I examine how a variety of epistemological frames both reflect the work's values around social change, and also impact the critical lenses through which such values are communicated to the public through art criticism. While Bishop raises important questions around the limits of a turn against traditional art spectatorship and singular authorship of visual art, I claim that her view of a convivial tendency in social practice art overlooks key epistemological insights embodied in feminist standpoint theory and American pragmatist epistemology. I contend that John Dewey's view of knowledge as transactional captures the epistemological framing of some of the more socially ameliorative directions social practice work has taken in recent decades because Dewey rejects a view of knowledge that divides subjective entities from each other and from their wider environments. Bishop's traditional spectatorship model fails to capture the aesthetico-political ethos of an area of art that acknowledges the fragile contingency of standpoints. I show that the criticism of Kester, Jackson and Finkelpearl recognize this contingency and then enlarge their perspectives by bringing attention to feminist standpoint theory and pragmatist aesthetics and epistemology. I conclude by claiming that a more robust way of understanding the value of social practices in art recognizes that transactional and contingent standpoints demand an ethos rooted in the continuity of convivial and antagonistic features of aesthetico-political experience.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
48

Huang, Juin-lung. "Law, reconciliation and philosophy : Athenian democracy at the end of the fifth century B.C." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/437.

Full text
Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to defend Athenian democracy against a long-established suspicion that the Athenian government, with its radical form of popular participation, was not only incompetent but also dangerous. There are two serious misunderstandings in this traditional view; one is the myth of the decline of Athens after the death of Pericles, the other being the outright denial of Athenian democracy by its philosophers, Xenophon and Plato. These two common presumptions about Athenian history and philosophy are therefore examined. The historical examination focuses on three important events: the law reform, the reconciliation and the trial of Socrates. All of them were conducted by Athenian democracy at the end of the fifth century B.C., a period of time that is often cited for the failure of democracy. However, it is found that the democracy demonstrated its excellent ability to manage political conflicts through the laws and the reconciliation. As to the infamous trial of Socrates, there were reasons for the popular suspicion of the Philosopher’s way of life. Following what we have learnt in the historical survey, we search for responses to the three events in the works of Xenophon and Plato. There are passages, though often dismissed by scholars, which indicate remarkable recognition of the democratic achievements in domestic politics. As regards the trial of Socrates, there are also signs of second thoughts in their works that reveal understandings of the democracy’s condemnation of philosophy. The works of Socrates’ pupils show mixed evaluation rather than outright denial of Athenian democracy. The traditional suspicion of Athenian democracy is therefore problematic due to its misconception of Athenian history and philosophy.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
49

Harris, Stephanie Nichole James. "The Politics of Teaching History: Afrocentricity as a Modality for the New Jersey Amistad Law – the Pedagogies of Location, Agency and Voice in Praxis." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2017. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/431936.

Full text
Abstract:
African American Studies
Ph.D.
This study examines how legislated policy, the New Jersey Amistad Bill, and the subsequently created Amistad Commission, shifted the mandated educational landscape in regard to the teaching of social studies in the state of New Jersey—by legislative edict and enforcement, within every class in the state. Through a century of debates, reforms, and legislations, there has been a demand to include the contributions, achievements, and perspectives of people of the African Diaspora that deconstruct the European narrative of history. It is my belief that the formation of an educational public policy that is reflective of the Afrocentric paradigm in its interpretation and operation, such as the Amistad law, with subsequent policy manifestations that result in curriculum development and legalized institutionalization in classrooms across the country is central to creating the curriculum that will neutralize mis-education and will help American students to obtain an understanding of African American agency and the development of our collective history. The Amistad Commission, created by legal mandate in the state of New Jersey in 2002, is groundbreaking because it is a legal decree in educational policymaking that codifies the full infusion and inclusion of African American historical content into New Jersey’s K-12 Social Studies curriculum and statewide Social Studies standards. This infusion, directed by the executive leadership team, is a statewide overhaul and redirection for Social Studies and the Humanities in all grades in every district throughout the state. The Commission’s choice of the Afrocentric theoretical construct—a cultural-intellectual framework that centers the African historical, social, economic, spiritual and political experience as pertains to any intellectual experience involving Africans and people of African descent—as its organizing ethos and central ideology was central in framing the resulting curriculum products and programmatic directives. This study’s conclusive premise in utilization of the Afrocentricity construct is evidenced in the Amistad curriculum’s Afrocentric tenets: de-marginalization of African historical contribution and agency; the importance of voice and first person narrative when transcribing history, and how shifting of —as in, correcting—the entire Eurocentric structure is important. Rather than an additive prescription of historical tokenisms, or a contributive prescription that does not allow for a centralized locality from within the culture, Afrocentricity allows for a cultural ideology when applicable to the Amistad law. Thus the use of Afrocentricity in the implementation of the Amistad law transforms the entire narrative of American history in the state of New Jersey, one of the original thirteen colonies. The study seeks to remedy the void of research as to how the incorporation of the particular theoretical framework of Afrocentricity impacted the decision guiding the policy directives, programmatic and the curriculum outcomes within the implementation of the New Jersey Amistad Commission mandate. The case study asserts that the Afrocentric theory was put into praxis when operationalizing the New Jersey Amistad law and the work of the Amistad Commission. It chronicles the history of similar mandates focused on the incorporation of African American history in American classrooms that led to the Amistad law. It also enumerates the Amistad law’s subsequent operationalization and curriculum development efforts elucidating practical application of the Afrocentric theory. It has direct implications for teacher education, practicing teachers, and policymakers interested in understanding how Afrocentricity and its tenets are paramount in curriculum development efforts, especially as it pertains to New Jersey, New York, and Illinois. These three states have passed legislations that have attempted to proactively remedy their educational policies. The disparities in knowledge and education about African diaspora people in our Social Studies classrooms are targeted by these states.
Temple University--Theses
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
50

Seylar, John. "Across Empires: A Comparative Analysis of Roman Emperors and American Presidents." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1714.

Full text
Abstract:
The influence of the Roman Republic and Empire is visible everywhere in the contemporary United States government. Some even propose a “democratic legacy” that the United States has inherited from the Roman Republic, a legacy that dooms modern America to a similar “decline and fall.” These arguments reached their apex in journalism surrounding the 2016 presidential election. A comparison between American Presidents and Roman Emperors proves that these assertions are false, employing case studies in each society’s democracy, interactions with deliberative bodies, public image management, and demagoguery. The distinctness of Roman and American social and political culture in each of these areas suggests a fundamental incongruity between the political figures of the two cultures. Even apparent commonalities can be misleading, as there are significant structural or cultural discrepancies that prevent scholars from drawing conclusions about Presidents using the Roman Imperial example. The argument of this thesis is therefore historiographical in nature: The findings this thesis contains suggest that modern scholars should not read history, specifically Roman history, to predict or justify present political circumstances. The comparisons made between Emperors and Presidents instead serve to prove the distinctness of contemporary American political culture as well as ancient Roman political culture. Acknowledgement of the uniqueness of both of these societies allows scholars to better understand both Presidents and Emperors within their own context. This separation will also lead to more directed, better informed study in the field of Roman history and in the field of modern American governmental policy.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
You might also be interested in the bibliographies on the topic 'History, Philosophy and Politics' for other source types:
Journal articles Books
We offer discounts on all premium plans for authors whose works are included in thematic literature selections. Contact us to get a unique promo code!

To the bibliography