This essay examines Aaron Stalnakers,” Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine”; with respect to how he manages to avoid misinterpretations and anachronism in the face of handling two separate traditions of thought, as is required in comparative studies.

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This essay explores Operation Cobra based on a social constructivist perspective, according to social constructivist Ian Hacking. To do this, I examined newspaper articles from that event. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the border between extortioners and terrorists was constructed during the Swedish 80's and to examine why the perpetrator was constructed as a extortion and not a terrorist. I also examined how a terrorist from the eighties differs from the present-day terrorist. My result shows that the limits of what the perpetrator is being constructed depends on the newspaper articles and how the journalists have described him. He was designed as a terrorist, extortionist, correct, pedant, and also a madman. Operation Cobra took place in Sweden in 1983-1985 and has been described as Sweden's biggest extortion event.

This dissertation examines the aesthetics of Adam Smith. It argues that, despite appearances to the contrary, Smith not only articulated ideas on the subject and was engaged in the aesthetic debates of his time, but that he in many ways innovates on and challenges received opinion—he thus differs significantly from some of his better known contemporaries, including Edmund Burke and David Hume. For this reason, he is not merely a major thinker who happened to dabble in aesthetics; on the contrary, he considered the subject, which appears in nearly all his works, important, and often interrogates its issues in a more studied way. My project thus makes a case for Smith as a significant thinker in the history of aesthetics, one who merits renewed attention. This study does so by investigating the major aesthetic issues of the day, which Smith in fact discusses. It begins by examining Smith’s remarks on taste—the aesthetic issue of the century—which occur largely in Theory of Moral Sentiments. Though seemingly tangential, his discussion of taste is significant as it argues against the predominant eighteenth-century current that maintained the existence of a standard. He also challenges theorists such as Hume who made aesthetic experience classless and, especially via sympathy, disinterested. The study next investigates Smith’s aesthetic normativity and what are for him valid aesthetic judgments, which can be reconciled with his remarks problematizing taste. Here too, Smith appears to argue against the predominant impulse that sought to ground valid aesthetic experience in the immediate; in doing so, Smith demystifies and democratizes aesthetic experience. Finally, the dissertation investigates tragedy, by far the literary genre that most interested Smith, and which also drew attention from better known theorists. The paradox of tragedy—why readers and spectators are attracted to painful representations—was an aesthetic issue that vexed many thinkers of the century, and although Smith appears to ignore the issue, we have in his moral theory a solution to the paradox, one that is unique and more satisfying than those of his contemporaries. The project concludes by examining Smith’s relation to neoclassical dramatic theory. Though superficially appearing complacent in uncritically adopting neoclassical doctrine, Smith, even here, is being original.

Föreliggande uppsats handlar om den svenska postmodernismen under 1980-talets senare hälft. I undersökningen analyseras debattinlägg och kritik i svensk dagspress där postmodernismen diskuteras. Syftet med uppsatsen är att belysa hur termen postmodernism konstruerades och brukades i svensk dagspress i den allmänna kulturella diskussionen.                       I undersökningens första del visar jag på hur den mediala diskussionen rörande postmodernism fungerar som en slags konstruerande process där den massmediala bilden av postmodernismen skapas. Kulturella aspekter av begreppet synliggörs där moderniseringsprocesser och teknologiska framsteg blir viktiga för att förstå vilken roll postmodernismen fick i sin samtid. Jag visar hur postmodernismen diskuterades utifrån två skikt, det rörde sig inte enbart som en estetisk kategori utan även om en kulturell förändringsprocess. I den andra delen konkretiseras och kontextualiseras den första delen genom en analys rörande den postmoderna konstdebatten där de kulturella aspekterna av begreppet blir tydligare. Jag argumenterar för att de två skikten av postmodernismen är sammankopplade på en implicit grund, där de kulturella aspekterna av begreppet konstrueras i relation till de estetiska diskussionerna. Jag lanserar därför två begrepp för att åskådliggöra begreppets två skikt, den estetiska postmodernismen och den kulturella postmodernismen. Skikten fungerar som ett åskådliggörande verktyg för att visa på hur begreppets användning bör tolkas som något större än enbart en benämning för ett estetiskt uttryck.

This thesis aims to study notions of the USA in Aftonbladet and Expressen, the two major Swedish evening papers, during the American presidential elections of 1984 and 1996. This thesis examines how the predominance of Ronald Reagan's neoliberalism in the 1980s, the US victory in the ColdWar and the success of Bill Clinton's New Democrats in the 1990s affected the notions of the USA expressed in the a forementioned Swedish newspapers. In 1984 the notions were widely different between the two newspapers. Aftonbladet (socialdemocratic) had a very negative view of the USA. American politics was described as fundamentally corrupt, while the American society was seen as violent and harsh. Globally the USA was a destabilizing force and was primarily to blame for the escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. Expressen (liberal) had a more positive notion of the USA. American politics was seen as modern but shallow and callous, the last trait made even worse by the politics of Reagan. USA had a tremendous potential to do good in the world, but lacked the progressive leadership needed to do so. By 1996 the notions of the USA were interchangeable between the two papers. Both papers described American politics as shallow, unsympathetic and pandering to the middle-class. Neither corruption nor violence were mentioned. Under the leadership of Bill Clinton the USA was seen as a guardian of peace in the world.

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Since 1902 conscientious objectors in Sweden could apply for civil military services without arms, based on religious convictions. A new law in 1966 gave legal ground to apply for non-military service also based on ethical convictions. The number applicants increased much more than authorities expected. In the 1960s the political left also began involve themselves in pacifistic issues which has been quite studied before. But with the change of the new law, the number of applications with a religious (Christian) conviction also multiplied.With this background, this thesis set out to study two historical problems. First, it asks how the conscientious objectors from the nonconformist-churches were looked upon by the authorities. Secondly it enquires about the discrepancy between the pacifistic convictions found in the men doing non-army service from Pentecostal churches, versus the non-existing public support on a national level in the Pentecostal movement for their pacifism.3 (31)The study spans 1960-1976 and uses a comparison between four different narratives - the national military narrative, the individual-ethical narrative, the pacifistic-political narrative and the nonconformist-churches pacifistic narrative - as a method to explore different views. The thesis shows that the largest number of conscientious objectors came from the non-conformist churches and the Pentecostal movement. However, while the majority Pente-costals on grassroots level stayed true to an historical pacifism, the prominent leader, Lewi Pethrus, had a more nationalistic view accepting a militaristic narrative. This discrepancy was never publicly debated and while the Pentecostals exercised a strong pacifistic practice they never developed any formal doctrine for it. The thesis shows how grassroots pacifism was hindered to become a wider peace-vision in the Swedish Pentecostal movement.

Rötfeber (decay fever) was a category of fever illnesses mentioned frequently in Swedish district physicians’ yearly reports in the 19th century, but despite its frequency there is no real agreement on what rötfeber entails. In this thesis, I wanted to come to an understanding of how rötfeber could be defined and which people received the diagnosis. With the help of the physicians’ reports I examined how they discussed rötfeber and compared it to other diseases: Some physicians described it similarly to a common cold, while others meant it commonly resulted in death or acted as the worsening of a patient’s already terminal disease, such as cholera or typhus, or was synonymous with it. A lot of descriptions of rötfeber also coincided with descriptions of medical traditions based on one’s environment being the cause of disease, with polluted air or dirt often being named the transmitter of disease. While reading the reports, I noticed a pattern of rötfeber often being discussed in connection with a district’s poorer population. The physicians described how their way of living with unhealthy air and bad circulation, unhealthy foods, and lack of hygiene made them ill with rötfeber. The disease became a portrait of a poor person, and a rötfeber diagnosis could be used to further stigmatize already vulnerable people and survey them. Poor people were thus the people most often receiving the diagnosis and rötfeber itself was described to occur due to unhealthy living, which also defined the disease.

The Yuppie, the Young Urban Professional, is a social type closely linked to the popular historical conception of the 1980s. The type is characterized as a young person working in banking, media or finance with expensive tastes in consumption and an individualistic, vapid mindset. Considering the popular conception of the Yuppie as a sort of manifestation of all things 80s, this paper explores how the Yuppie was represented in Swedish newspapers in the period 1984 to 1991. Using Bourdieu’s concept of the classificatory struggle this study charts how the Yuppie was invoked in the social world of its day. Contrary to the mythic belief of the 1980s as the decade of the Yuppie, the social type is represented only as a culturally dominant type between 1985 and 1987 and becomes a historical concept by 1988. The Yuppie was channeled as opposed to the socially conscious Hippie-type of the 1970s and the traditional Swedish working class. Furthermore, the Yuppie was viewed by contemporary commentators as a sort of amalgamation of various social and economic trends that they meant characterized the 1980s, such as the growth and deregulation of the financial sector, rising prices of housing in central Stockholm, and the rise of new forms of labor starkly different from the traditional swedish industry. This contemporary ‘historization’ of the Yuppie attests to a view of history as a sort of pendulum of zeitgeists, where Yuppie replaces hippie, individualism replaces social conscience, seemingly of its own volition.