Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 23-24). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 23-24). Also available on the Internet.

In this dissertation, I discuss two distributive principles in moral philosophy: Derek Parfit's Prioritarianism and Egalitarianism. I attempt to defend a version of Egalitarianism, which I call Weighted Egalitarianism. Although Parfit claims that Egalitarianism is subject to what he calls the Levelling Down Objection, I show (a) that my proposed Weighted Egalitarianism is not subject to the Objection, and (b) that it gives priority to the worse off people. The real difference between the two principles lies in how the weight of each person's well-being is determined. Prioritarianism assumes that there is a moral scale of the goodness of well-being, independently of distributions of people's well-being. I raise two objections to this claim: firstly, it is hard to believe that the choice of the level of well-being affects our distributive judgement; secondly, it is hard to believe that there is such a moral scale independently of distributions of people's well-being. On the other hand, Weighted Egalitarianism claims that the weight is given by the rank order position of the person in the ranking by well-being level. This means that, in Weighted Egalitarianism, the goodness of a distribution is an increasing, linear function of people's well-being. Weighted Egalitarianism is not affected by the choice of the level of people's well-being. Nor does it require require the moral scale of the goodness of well-being independently of distributions of people's well-being. Leximin, which might be a version of Prioritarianism, avoids my objections. But it is hard to support Leximin, because it rules out the trade off between the better off and the worse off. I conclude that Weighted Egalitarianism is more acceptable than Prioritarianism.

This thesis examines Derek Parfit's theory of personal identity. Parfit argues that what matters in the continued existence of persons through time is psychological connectedness and continuity (relation R), and that the identity relation does not matter. He makes this claim through a series of arguments which, he says, inevitably lead to the conclusions that relation R is the only relation that matters, in all cases. I argue that Parfit does not convincingly demonstrate that relation R is in fact all that matters. In examining each of Parfit's arguments, I show that it is possible to draw conclusions that are inconsistent with those drawn by him. I argue that this shows Parfit's position to be an arbitrary one. If Parfit's arguments do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that relation R is all that matters in questions of survival, then his theory is not an adequate solution to the problem of personal identity.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-265).

Tesis para optar al grado de Doctor en Literatura

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O poeta e cineasta britânico Derek Jarman, morto em 1994, aos 52 anos, vitimado pela AIDS, é uma figura controversa e polêmica no âmbito da História da Arte. Sua poética faz alusão à liberdade sexual, ao ateísmo, à anarquia e à deformação sócio-política vivida na Europa entre as décadas de 1960 e 1990. Filmes como Sebastiane (1976) e Jubilee (1978) são amostras violentas desse ataque às instituições. Por outro lado, uma observação mais atenta a trabalhos como Blue (1993), Glitterbug (1994) e, sobretudo, Caravaggio (1985), apontam para um projeto estético muito mais elaborado e ambicioso. Observamos nessas obras específicas uma tentativa de releitura da História da Arte num corte sincrônico em relação a seu próprio tempo, e além disso uma busca pela identificação do papel do artista no contexto da História em si, de maneira que vida e obra unam-se simbioticamente num projeto de totalização da poética, da estética e da fenomenologia que envolvem ambas. Este trabalho pretende resgatar a memória do artista Derek Jarman, posto que seu trabalho se perdeu no hermetismo a ele atribuído pela crítica ao longo dos anos que se seguiram à sua morte e, a partir desse resgate, examinar elementos históricos e estéticos presentes em Blue, Glitterbug e Caravaggio, que evidenciam uma releitura da História da Arte à luz da contemporaneidade com vistas a discutir o papel e o lugar do artista no contexto da vida enquanto obra aberta e como ator na transcorrência sincrônica da História. Com isto, a presente tese faz uma excursão pelos anos formativos de Jarman, quando cursou Artes Visuais e quando tomou contato com artistas da vanguarda do pós-Segunda-Guerra, em seguida examina a ocorrência dos efeitos de tal contato em suas obras derradeiras Blue e Glitterbug, para, finalmente, dissecar sua obra Caravaggio em busca de comprovações para nossa hipótese de que Jarman ocupou-se de criticar seu tempo e sua cultura fundindo-se ao personagem do pintor italiano, criando uma vida-obra indissociável em que se verifica o estudo histórico e fenomênico da Arte e, por fim, reavalia os papéis do artista Caravaggio e seu próprio papel em relação ao fazer artístico, dentro de uma compreensão metafísica. / British poet and filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died in 1994 at 52, a victim of AIDS, is a controversial figure in the History of Art. His poetics allude to sexual freedom, to atheism, to anarchy and to the socio-political deformation experienced in Europe between the 1960s and 1990s. Films such as Sebatiane (1976) and Jubilee (1978) are violent samples of this attack on institutions. On the other hand, a closer observation to works such as Blue (1993), Glitterbug (1994) and, especially, Caravaggio (1985) points to a much more elaborate and ambitious aesthetic project. We observe in these specific works an attempt to reread the History of Art in a synchronic cut in relation to its own time, and, in addition, a search for the identification of the artist\'s role in the context of History itself, so that life and work unite symbiotically in a project of totaling poetics, aesthetics and phenomenology that involve both. This work intends to rescue the memory of the artist Derek Jarman, since his work was lost in the hermeticism attributed to him by the critics throughout the years that followed his death and, from this rescue, to examine historical and aesthetic elements present in Blue, Glitterbug and Caravaggio, which show a re-reading of the History of Art in the light of contemporaneity with a view to discussing the role and place of the artist in the context of life as a work in progress and as an actor in the synchronous transcurrency of History. With this, the present thesis makes an excursion in the formative years of Jarman, when he studied Visual Arts and when he made contact with artists of the vanguard of the post-Second World War. Next, it examines the occurrence of the effects of such contact in its works Blue and Glitterbug, to finally dissect his work Caravaggio in search of evidence for our hypothesis that Jarman was concerned with criticizing his time and his culture by merging with the character of the Italian painter, creating an inseparable life-work in the historical and phenomenal study of Art and, finally, re-evaluates the roles of the artist Caravaggio and his own role in relation to artistic making, within a metaphysical understanding.