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<p>This thesis deals with Soren Kierkegaard's understanding of reason and· faith. Whereas the reader may be unfamiliar with his works, I have elected to begin my discussion with an introduction to their authorship. Bringing knowledge of the authorship to bear on the question at hand, I aim to elucidate the respective viewpoints of three of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authors, namely: Johannes de Silentio, Johannes Climacus and Johannes Anti-Climacus.</p> <p>Summarizing these three presentations finally with reference to the major autographic works, including his Journals and Papers, I aim to clarify Kierkegaard's point of view and understanding respecting the nature of reason and faith and their relation in a Christian's life.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

This project outlines, through a discussion of Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of sadistic and masochistic manifestations of embodiment as forms of bad faith, relationships to clothing, especially those conditioned by the fashion industry. Through an analysis of the concept of a disguise, I argue that the fashion industry encourages consumers to play what I call a game of fashion. This game involves hiding from one's freedom through self-deception while interacting with seemingly replaceable others. Clothing enables one to engage in a two-fold disguise - hiding one's freedom from oneself and evading intersubjective relations with others. In bad faith, one wears the self falsely while immersing oneself in a game of false interactions with others. Bad faith is a two-fold assault on the self and the basic make-up of social life. Within the contemporary milieu of Western consumer society, fashion is a ready accessory for the performance of bad faith. This study is an examination of such phenomena. A contemporary attitude toward clothing, or fashion, is that particular garments are able to "remake" the self - as if what adorns the body were all there is - and that it can hide the self through such adornment because the "real self" supposedly exists elsewhere. This perspective on fashion, and by extension, the body, depends on a Cartesian severing of mind and body - the exact attitude that informs bad faith. These two approaches to fashion are examples of assertions of the self as a material thing on one hand and the assertion of the self as a complete transcendence on the other. Both are forms of bad faith. Instead of thinking of fashion as a mask beneath which there is either nothing or the body beyond which there is the real transcendent self, I argue for thinking of clothing as a veil where the garment naturally conceals through acts of revelation, but what is concealed and what is revealed are never complete. Such a conception involves maintaining a distinction between public and private, while acknowledging there being something beneath that could be known and, through the cultivation of intersubjective relations, offer a richer understanding of the ways in which clothing affects intimate relationships. / Philosophy

This project offers a unique contribution to the scholarship on Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of bad faith by providing a sustained exploration of bad faith in the context of contemporary tourism. More specifically, I explore the bad faith of what I call "checklist tourism," which defines the tourist trip as a rapid succession of visits from one "must-see" site to the next, snapping photos and collecting souvenirs along the way. I argue that checklist tourism offers a safe and comfortable structure for travel that protects tourists against Sartrean anguish--that is, the experience of alienation, fear, freedom, and responsibility--that travel can sometimes evoke. This analysis contributes to the literature on bad faith in three main ways. First, I provide an extended analysis of the Sartrean spirit of seriousness, highlighting part of this concept that has thus far been underdeveloped in the scholarship. I argue that checklist tourism manifests the spirit of seriousness, which accepts the obligation of "must-see" sites and belief in the transcendent value of the material objects seen on the tour. Second, I explore the embodied bad faith of the possession and appropriation of the material world (rather than studying the possession of people, as most scholars have done), arguing that the tourist attempts to appropriate tourist sites through bodily engagement with them. Third, I develop a theory of play as authenticity, and I offer a systematic investigation of it as a rejection of the ontological bad faith project to be self-identical (i.e. to be God), and a reflective conversion to self-recovery. I then explore the character of the "post-tourist," which has been developing in the tourism literature and which represents a way of touring that rejects the seriousness of the "must-see" sites in favor of an attitude of levity, spontaneity, and playfulness. / Philosophy

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which measures of ego strength, as conceived by Erikson (1963a) and operationalized by Markstrom, Sabino, Turner and Berman (1997), contribute to the prediction of academic achievement of high school students. At issue was whether the ego strength variables enhance prediction beyond that provided by selected demographic variables and two measures of religiosity: faith participation and faith importance. Participants included 121 Black and 131 White students of Virginia. They were in the ninth through twelfth grades and were attending a single high school in the Tidewater area of Virginia. They were administered a questionnaire that included several demographic questions, two questions regarding religion in their lives, and five subscales from the Psychosocial Inventory of Ego Strength (PIES) developed by Markstrom et al. (1997). These variables were used in a series of hierarchical regression analyses to predict grade-point-average (GPA) which was obtained from the permanent school records of each student. Significant relationships were found between and among the five psychosocial ego strengths. Several relationships were found between students’ psychosocial ego strength attributes and parents’ educational levels. A positive significant relationship was found between the total ego strength and academic achievement. Some differences were found between race and the Hope subscale, faith participation, and faith importance. Race was also found to be a significant influence on the predictive relationships between psychosocial total ego strength and academic achievement. Total ego strength was found to be a significant predictor of academic achievement. The essential finding of the study was that ego strength measures explained approximately 10% of the variance in GPA above that already accounted for by the demographic variables and the two religiosity variables. The items measuring the importance of faith and participation in faith activities did not contribute to the prediction of GPA, except for faith participation among Black students. / Ph. D.

Private aid and philanthropic charities are often considered part of a neo-liberal strategy to reduce state responsibility for the provision of many services considered essential to securing social rights, with the devolution of welfare responsibilities to non-state actors a means to minimising social expenditures. Such a construction ostensibly depicts philanthropic non-state actors as agents of social justice that, in contributing to poverty reduction, play a role in social transformation. This article questions the assumption that private aid delivered through philanthropic activities and faith-based organisations (FBOs) can fulfil the state's responsibility in terms of social protection and transformation. It questions whether partnerships between the state and institutions that are not democratically elected and do not fit within a robust accountability framework can fulfil this remit. This is examined through the prism of a case study of the relationship between the Turkish state and philanthropy, focusing on FBOs that fund poverty reducing activities.

Background: Lifestyle-related chronic disease is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the United States, accounting for more than 63% of deaths. Minority communities experience a disproportionate burden of adverse health outcomes related to these diseases. Collaborative partnerships with faith-based organizations (FBO) present a unique platform to effectively implement lifestyle-related health programs, especially in minority communities. Studies have consistently recognized a growing need to improve FBO capacity and readiness to design, deliver, and sustain programs more effectively. Methods: This research includes three phases: 1) preliminary research to gain the perspective of FBO, community, health and research partners actively involved in development and implementation of a collaborative lifestyle-related faith-based health program and to further explore capacity and readiness factors; 2) formative research to develop, pilot, revise, and improve content, format, measures, and implementation of a mixed methods questionnaire, Capacity and Readiness Church Health Assessment (CRCHA), that will further identify and assess FBO organizational capacity and readiness to implement lifestyle-related health and wellness programs; and 3) culminating research to pilot the CRCHA with descriptive and statistical analysis of associations between church characteristics and health programming. Results: Phase 1: Eighteen of 31 capacity and readiness factors were collectively rated as extremely important to participant roles and partnership experience. Qualitative analysis further contextualizes these factors. Phase 2: The CRCHA comprises four major sections with thirteen subsections to gather information about factors, characteristics, and attributes deemed relevant to FBO organizational capacity and readiness. Phase 3: Churches of varying size and capacity successfully completed the CRCHA. Data indicate potential utility for individual churches for self-assessment and capacity and readiness building and for researchers to identify church characteristics most strongly associated with effective health programming. Implications: Exploration of capacity and readiness within a larger and more diverse group of FBO will help to further identify capacity and readiness factors to facilitate active FBO participation in the development and implementation of effective lifestyle-related health and wellness programs. Thus, FBO would be better positioned to actively lead and/or partner in faith-based health programs that address their community's most pressing health issues. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this essay is to distinguish different perceptions about reason in lutheran Sweden during the 18th century enlightenment. By analyzing the discourse in the newly established scientific academy in Stockholm, I examine how the scientist valued reason and its relation to faith and science. Further I examine during which sociopolitical and theological contexts these perceptions formed and if the discourse can be explained by Lutheranism and a religious enlightenment. The study found a generally positive attitude towards reason as it was perceived as a gift from God and an important trait inherent only to humans. Reason had its limits however but these were not expressed as negatively as Luther warned during the 16th century. While Luther expressed great skepticism towards reason, especially in the realm of theology, the scientist had a more positive attitude. With previous research, this study finds that this shift in attitude, together with utilism, could be contributed to a religious enlightenment, in which a more orthodox church embrace enlightenment ideals – such as reason – to defend their faith and find a more solid ground during pressed times when criticism against religion grew and Pietism took hold.