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This mini-thesis attempts to understand what it means to fear death. It does this by first investigating how Heidegger and then Freud explain fear of death. Heidegger believes that the relationship Dasein has towards its own death allows it the possibility of 'authenticity'. Death presents to Dasein its ownmost potentiality for being. Heidegger explains that this means that in facing death Dasein has the possibility of completeness and absolute individuality. Dasein is called to this possibility of authenticity by the anxiety it experiences in the face of its own death. However, Dasein does not necessarily respond to this call. By reducing anxiety to a fear it is possible for Dasein to disregard its fear of death and correspondingly not respond to the call of authenticity. Thus, for Heidegger, fear of death is symptomatic of inauthentic Dasein's relationship towards its own death. For Freud, on the other hand, death cannot be conceptualised without reference to the social world. Freud believes that the relationship we have towards our own death is learnt through living in this world. Furthermore, Freud argues that it is impossible for the human being to ever understand that death can be an annihilation. When the human being dreads, fears or even desires death, Freud believes it does so symbolically. In this regard Freud explains, by way of the death instinct, that the psyche understands death as a return to before birth. One of Freud's explanations of fear of death is that this fear is actually for the loss of Eros. This fear, however, is in conflict with the phantasy to return to before birth. One of the results of this conflict is the arousal of anxiety. The differences and similarities between Freud's and Heidegger's explanations are detailed in the final chapter. Examining these details leads to a closer investigation of Freud's and Heidegger's explanations of anxiety. On this issue this mini-thesis finds that Freud's and Heidegger's explanations of anxiety are in conflict with each other. After attempting to avoid placing Freud and Heidegger against each other, this mini-thesis demonstrates that Heidegger's explanation of anxiety is lacking in detail. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.)-University of Natal, 1999.

Given that the role of Heinrich Heine as a precursor to Charles Baudelaire has long been recognized and examined in the critical literature, this dissertation aims to explore congruities in their respective poetic universes, by conducting a parallel reading of the image of woman in their poetry. Contrary to a feminist critique, which denounces the writers' reductive and hence misogynist use of such images, we will remove the anathema momentarily in order to allow a discourse of love to be expressed, in a complex language which reveals the fears and desires of the loving subject in the 19th century. / The representation of the woman by Heine and Baudelaire points to a rupture characteristic of modern poetry. In accordance with the principle of irony, in which a strategy of evasion and detachment is employed, the various female characters presented by the two poets can never be reduced to the two-dimensionality of a pure object. The relationship to woman is marked by distance, suffering and dissonance. Occupying a liminal position between life and death, between animate and inanimate, the image of woman exercises a power of seduction which constitutes a challenge to the social order, extended from its margins. / The image of the prostitute will be analyzed in terms of its close relationship with the metropolis. Subsequently, Freudian theories will shed light on the stakes of the erotic experience which occurs in contact with the demimondaine. The symbolic exchange established with the commodified body of the prostitute ends in the transmission of illness, and ultimately, in the woman's death. In a vain attempt to control his fear of death, the modern poet displaces this fear onto an object as other: the female cadaver, whose horrible beauty emits a "disturbing uncanniness". The object of desire, put to death in this manner, returns to haunt the fetishist, even to take vengeance in the form of the vampire woman whose body resists death, but breathes it into the one she seduces. Finally, through the images of the statue and the sphinx, the poets reveal a divine and revolutionary dimension in the realm of love.

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Even if they rely on apparently quite different investigation domains and ideologies, both Freud and Bakhtin participate to that current which in the XXth century would upset the foundation of the positivist thought and would modify profoundly the traditional conception of science, language and the cartesian vision of the conscience and of the human subject. The thought of one as of the other, therefore, surpasses largely the principal reason of their research: If Freud applies the principles of the interpretation of dreams to the study of literary works, Bakhtin expands on the novel theory and questions polyphony and dialogism of all language. In conception of the literary speech of Bakhtin and of the dreams of Freud, the signs, the speeches and the multiple intentions or affects that animate them are constantly in dynamic interaction and obey it seems, to mechanism of similar transformation. The problem of interpretation is at the center of their works. The two authors are at the same time theoreticians and analysts of whom the theory of literature, of speeches, of work and dreams, pass necessarily by an act of interpretation. We are aware of the role played by the novels of Dostoievski on the theoretical work of Bakhtin. For Freud also, the principles of the work on dreams, according to his own affirmation develop with the interpretation process. We have to think that for him as for the Russian researcher, the theory is always in a link of active complicity with the interpretation; that one and the other are constantly mutually reflected and determined. A compared analysis of their texts can put in evidence the proximity of the thought processes of the thinkers, but can reveal also the differences, with their consequences from the point of view of ideology, ontology, even ethics.

The thesis examines the nature of political reform and the role of culture in the liberal utopia envisaged by Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Rorty's overall project is outlined, and situated within the anti-foundationalist critique that has been the hallmark of his recent career. The perilous position of nonintellectuals within the otherwise-acceptable utopia is detailed. Harold Bloom's conception of the strong poet is then examined and compared to the use Rorty makes of Bloom; I conclude that the faults of the liberal utopia lie primarily in establishing the strong poet as that culture's hero. I turn to Rorty's reading of Sigmund Freud, a reading which consistently inverts Freud's insights in order to make Freud fit into Rorty's plan. Finally, I re-examine Freud and suggest ways in which he can be used to correct the faults of the liberal utopia.

This thesis traces Freud's debt to classical Greece and argues that the development of his theory should not be considered apart from its roots in this legacy. The psychoanalytic project sheltered under the umbrella of Altertumswissenschaft and used the "ancient world to illuminate the modern". Winckelmann's Hellenism provided the foundations to German culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and dominated the educational and cultural institutions in which Freud lived and worked. Nietzsche later challenged Winckelmann's Apollian vision of Greece, and his "psychology of the Dionysian condition" acknowledged both irrational passion and sexuality. Freud is heir to both Winckelmann's and Nietzsche's Greece, and the dialectical tension between the rational and irrational, the mind and the body, that is evident in the reception of classical Greece in the nineteenth century is often paralleled in Freud's work. Hellenism is an essential element in Freud's theory of dreams and the unconscious. Greek mythology grounds the Oedipus complex, and informs his theorising on human sexuality. It plays an influential role in early sexology, and many of the challenges to psychiatry and neurology have their origin in Greek classicism. Not only does psychoanalysis rely on content drawn from this legacy, but its methodology as well as it structure are deeply influenced by Freud's knowledge of ancient Greece and his involvement in classical scholarship. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

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The purpose of this biographical study was to determine what influence Vice President Thomas R. Marshall (1854-1925) had on the events and personalities of the Wilson era. An only child and the son of a country doctor, Marshall distinguished himself early as an exceptional student and country lawyer. His political heritage was that of the Democratic party, strong in his northeastern Indiana county but weak in the larger Congressional district. An early defeat for public office (1880) convinced Marshall that he could do more for the party as a worker on the local, district, and state levels with his oratory and his legal acumen. Despite his lack of ambition to hold public office, Marshall in 1908 found himself his party's compromise candidate for governor of Indiana. Elected essentially on a platform that supported local option at the expense of prohibition, the upstate Hoosier lawyer became the head of his state for a four-year term (1909-1913), expanding the progressive or melioristic programs of his Republican predecessors.Midway through his incumbency Thomas Marshall had achieved national reputation as one of the most popular and successful Democratic governors, and supporters began to advance his cause as a Presidential nominee at the 1912 Baltimore Convention. The more active campaigning of the Woodrow Wilson forces achieved the nomination of their candidate, and the political machinations of Indiana's Thomas Taggart succeeded in placing Marshall as a running-mate with Wilson on the Democratic ticket, eventually achieving his election as Vice President.With the frugality of a Scotsman Marshall and his wife, Lois, entered smoothly into Washington society, occasionally entertaining but more often being invited as guests to state functions and private parties. As Vice President (1913-1921) Marshall proved to be an utterly loyal supporter of the Democratic administration and a capable and well-liked presiding officer of the Senate.Correspondence between Wilson and Marshall reveals the President's use as well as his appreciation of the Vice President. More often than not Marshall was a solid party asset on the campaign trail, journeying throughout the country every two years on behalf of the Democratic Congressional candidates. During the war years he was one of the active speakers at Liberty Loan drives, stimulating a patriotic and pecuniary response from the people. He provided distinctive introductory remarks for the allied war missions when they visited the United States Senate, and on occasion represented Wilson as his official emissary before foreign diplomats and monarchs.The last two dozen months in office were the most disappointing to him and the most challenging to his reputation. He was tempted by certain men to usurp the Presidency during Wilson's incapacitating illness and by others to manipulate the Senate debating procedure during discussion of the League of Nations Covenant. He refused to be a party to the former, and though a believer in the Covenant he was powerless to prevent its defeat by the Republican majority whose rights on the Senate floor he steadfastly protected.Noteworthy about Marshall were his unpretentiousness, his natural gift of humor, his exceptional speaking ability, and his occasional self-derogation. His reputation has been overshadowed by the President's personality and by other prominent persons and events of the time. Some written criticisms by administration officials, preserved and transmitted by historians, have obscured his role and personality. Thomas R. Marshall unquestionably had superior talents and did in fact use them in meaningful but unostentatious ways as President of the Senate and as servant of the President and of his country.

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