In this study, the relationship between medical thought and philosophy is investigated through the works of the famous Islamic thinker, Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariya al-Razi (ca. 250-323/864-935). In one of the texts we shall be examining Razi thought that he could resolve the problem of the world's creation through allegory. Razi's interlocuter was concerned to defend the idea of epistemological "revelation." Although Razi agrees that the Intellect was sent by the Creator, he insists that this was done primarily for the benefit of the "self," which had become entangled in "material confusion." He is particularly concerned to counter the authoritarian implications of his opponent's epistemological position, which appears to emphasize doctrinal truth at the expense of all other considerations. These considerations are taken up by Razi in another work, the Kitab al-tibb al-ruhani. There, he draws on the science of medical treatment for application in ethics, but with some interesting implications for the problem of knowledge. The real object must be to bring man to his proper destination, and in this Razi's views coincide with the early mystical tradition in Islam, from al-Hujwiri to al-Ghazzali, where the problem essentially consists of existential realization rather than a merely abstract or intellectual process.

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This Study shows that the Shehu's social writings are the reflection of his concept and method of implementation of tajdid. The basic goal of the tajdid was to recreate what he considered the ideal Sunni Islamic society. In order to achieve his objective he unfolded a plan of action which aimed at winning the support of the common people and the 'ulama'. For the people, he mounted a mass mobilization to boost religious learning, acquaint them with local beliefs adjudged as bad innovations, and exhort them about the impending End of Time. For the 'ulama', his plan was a reorientation of their attitudes toward moderation in theological and doctrinal matters, and accommodation of legal and religious views other than those of the Maliki School of Law. Further, he expected them to persuade the rulers of Gobir to change their un-Islamic ways and support the new movement. But when the 'ulama' chose not only to adopt a confrontational attitude but to prevail upon the rulers to take hostile measures against his followers, the Shehu took up arms against them and finally established a Caliphate.

Database systems employ physical structures such as indexes and materialized views to improve query performance, potentially by orders of magnitude. It is therefore important for a database administrator to choose the appropriate configuration of these physical structures (i.e., the appropriate physical design) for a given database. Deciding on the physical design of a database is not an easy task, and a considerable amount of research exists on automatic physical design tools for relational databases. Recently, XML database systems are increasingly being used for managing highly structured XML data, and support for XML data is being added to commercial relational database systems. This raises the important question of how to choose the appropriate physical design (i.e., the appropriate set of physical structures) for an XML database. Relational automatic physical design tools are not adequate, so new research is needed in this area. In this thesis, we address the problem of automatic physical design for XML databases, which is the process of automatically selecting the best set of physical structures for a given database and a given query workload representing the client application's usage patterns of this data. We focus on recommending two types of physical structures: XML indexes and relational materialized views of XML data. For each of these structures, we study the recommendation process and present a design advisor that automatically recommends a configuration of physical structures given an XML database and a workload of XML queries. The recommendation process is divided into four main phases: (1) enumerating candidate physical structures, (2) generalizing candidate structures in order to generate more candidates that are useful to queries that are not seen in the given workload but similar to the workload queries, (3) estimating the benefit of various candidate structures, and (4) selecting the best set of candidate structures for the given database and workload. We present a design advisor for recommending XML indexes, one for recommending materialized views, and an integrated design advisor that recommends both indexes and materialized views. A key characteristic of our advisors is that they are tightly coupled with the query optimizer of the database system, and rely on the optimizer for enumerating and evaluating physical designs whenever possible. This characteristic makes our techniques suitable for any database system that complies with a set of minimum requirements listed within the thesis. We have implemented the index, materialized view, and integrated advisors in a prototype version of IBM DB2 V9, which supports both relational and XML data, and we experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of their recommendations using this implementation.

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This study proposes to investigate the central metaphors of journey and silence as they as found in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. Relying primarily on Paul Ricoeur's corrective to the tradition of metaphor theory, The Rule of Metaphor, Kierkegaard's use of these metaphors will be analysed for the way in which the nature of faith is depicted in this difficult, highly lyrical text. Key features of this study include a consideration of the role of "possibility" and "indirect communication" in the language of faith and, by extension, metaphor. Ricoeur's theory helps to connect what he terms the "work" of the text with the "world" of the text.

This work, the Nature and Value of Scepticism, shows that the metaphilosopby arising from what David Hume calls "true scepticism," is of use and value, refuting three standard objections to sceptical philosophy: the charges of unlivability, of idleness and of being dangerous and destructive. / The unlivability charge is refuted with an examination of the work of a self-proclaimed extreme sceptic, Sextus Empiricus. The idleness charge is answered by questioning its assumption that if scepticism does not lead to an extreme conclusion, it must be idle and without philosophical interest. The destructive charge, that the acceptance of scepticism would result in the death of rationality, is countered in reviewing the work of Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein, showing that their outlook is not against philosophy but only a particular type of philosophy, namely dogmatic philosophy. / Chapter 1 argues that two reasonable interpretations of Sextus's writings yield a scepticism that is livable and philosophically important. Chapter 2 shows Hume's philosophy is livable and not destructive. Chapter 3 examines the connection between Hume's philosophy and his sceptical approach, arguing that his true scepticism informs his philosophical outlook. Chapter 4 argues that Wittgenstein shares much with Hume's "true scepticism," and that his work is not anti-philosophical as widely supposed. Chapter 5 provides examples of how a sceptically informed metaphilosophy can help address questions in epistemology and metaethics.

This dissertation argues that a pervasive ethical vision underlies the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): a concern for the possibility of human flourishing, in the modern world. Notwithstanding Nietzsche's celebrated claim to be "beyond good and evil", and against the standard interpretation of his "perspectivism", it is argued that Nietzsche makes qualitative, normative distinctions between higher, admirable modes of human existence and lower, contemptible ones, and that he wishes through his writings to foster the former and discourage the latter. Furthermore, it is argued that Nietzsche believes human excellence to be the property of a small minority of "higher" human beings, and that he identifies the project of encouraging human excellence with a political imperative of cultivating this gifted elite. The dissertation also argues that Nietzsche's picture of the fully flourishing human life suffers from a number of inconsistencies that may be traced back to his vacillation between two incompatible moral discourses: an Aristotelian discourse emphasising the importance of certain "external goods" (e.g. friendship, recognition, community) in a fully flourishing life, and a rival, Stoic-influenced discourse stressing the virtuous individual's total self-sufficiency. An examination is made of Nietzsche's stance towards the following key concepts and questions: truth, morality, virtue, instinct and "bodily" knowledge, nature, creativity, rationality, discipline and self-mastery, freedom, solitude and sociability, friendship, community, pity, breeding and heredity, women and gender relations, and domination.

This thesis attempts a critical analysis of modern individualism through an examination of its origins in the seventeenth century. In this thesis I discuss the notion of autonomous and self-responsible individuality as a culturally constructed and culturally specific idea. Furthermore, I describe autonomy as only one of a complex of related features of the modern individual, including a withdrawn and objectifying stance toward the natural world, values and other human beings. / In this thesis, I examine two seventeenth-century authors--Robert Burton and John Locke--each of whom represents a different conception of individuality. Burton emulates communal conceptions of identity characteristic of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, while Locke describes an essentially modern, analytical individuality based on the control and possession of an objectified "other". / The theoretical framework for this analysis is derived from Michel Foucault and Timothy Reiss' description of the transition from the Renaissance to the seventeenth century as a transition between different epistemes or discourses. Throughout this thesis, I supplement this essentially structuralist approach with perspectives from Medieval, Renaissance and seventeenth-century cosmology, literary theory, political theory and epistemology.