Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 313-331).

Thesis (Lizentiatenwürde)--Universität Giessen. / "Die folgenden Ausführungen sind zwei Kapitel meines gleichzeitig erscheinenden Buches: 'Juan de Valdés : seine Religion, sein Werden, seine Bedeutung ... '"--T.p. verso.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2005. / Title from title page screen, viewed September 27, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Ronald Strickland (chair), Victoria Harris, Janice Neuleib. Table of contents page gives incorrect page numbers. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-138) and abstract. Also available in print.

My thesis is an attempt to show the brilliance and novelty of John Dewey's theory of knowledge, instrumentalism. The main objective of my thesis is to explain Dewey's theory of knowledge, which he coined instrumentalism, and to describe how instrumentalism as a theory of knowledge overcomes the pitfalls of competing theories within the philosophical tradition. Dewey's theory of instrumentalism does not assume that ideas are mental entities nor that ideas are true if they somehow match or fit with the object in question; thus, Dewey's theory presents a different view opposed to what we have usually called coherence, or correspondence theories of knowledge. Dewey also argued that consciousness and thinking are functions of a complex organism in transaction with its environment and thus consciousness is an instrumentality not a thing-in-itself.

The narrative structure and formal style of the director Shinoda Masahiro's films reveal his ethical objective to encourage his viewer to engage with works of cinematic representation as the creative products of human agency that they are. Within his period films, Shinoda hopes to stimulate recognition of cinema's genealogical inheritance and reproduction of the absolutist propositions underlying traditional Japanese cultural forms. He posits that these have redirected essential human drives into masochistic self-effacement in tribute to a divine ideal imaged in the Imperial polity. By disrupting the illusion of cinematic realism which simply serves to reinforce Japanese culture's existent intertextual networks, Shinoda seeks to reground cultural expressions in their material and human origins. This acts as the first step to imagining a Japanese subject outside of the limited definitions posed by nostalgic absolutism and its reactionary antithesis in the equally self-destructive mode of global capitalism.

The Theatre of the Absurd often has been considered the reflection of a deconstructionist gesture, a negation of the existent theatrical norms, therefore an end in itself without any prospect of possible alternatives or remedies. While this may be partially true, the entropy inherent to the absurd does not adhere to a mechanically formal posture; rather, the "purposeless wandering", in Eugène Ionesco's case, points, through humor (Ce formidable bordel), toward a longing for meaning, deeply rooted in the human being. This very longing is the crux of Ionesco's humanism. For him suffering (Le Roi se meurt), as the offshoot of the human being's finite condition and the affect that bonds the community, is intertwined with an unexplained feeling of wonderment--an opening to contemplation of the infinite. The merging of suffering and wonderment that suffuses Ionesco's textual and visual works presents the field in which his vision of a metaphysical humanism must find form. Art, in Ionesco's perspective, as the expression of being and the witness of its time (Rhinocéros), can be understood as a redemptive medium, a hope for humanism. Through the interplay of text (plays, reflections and short stories), image (drawings, gouaches and lithographs) and performance, this dissertation explores themes, imagery and structures that reflect Ionesco's paradoxical view on humanism. Thus, in light of interdisciplinary readings, I identify archetypal images recurrent in Ionesco's works and his subversive interpretation of these images as revelatory of the author-painter's inner search for meaning. This quest, which is the unifying principle throughout Ionesco's work, is revealed in themes spanning from the entropy of language (La Cantatrice chauve, Les Chaises) to the sacrificial act of substituting for the other (Maximilien Kolbe). In this ultimate act of testimony, Ionesco depicts Emmanuel Lévinas' ethics wherein the self becomes a "hostage" of the other, vulnerable at the encounter with the other. My analysis of Ionesco's humanism continues beyond his works with a reading of the historicized absurd and humanism in the works of two contemporary diasporic playwrights: Matéi Visniec and Saviana Stanescu.

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Social media, mainstream media and the predominance of visual engagement is contributing to a culture that is increasingly intolerant and lacking in empathy. “The hegemonic eye seeks domination over all fi elds of cultural production, and it seems to weaken our capacity for empathy, compassion and participation with the world.” Juhani Pallasmaa Recent political events and dialogue surrounding issues of identity, politics and culture in the South African media are seen as a testament to this. In response concepts of New Urbanism, Integral Urbanism and defi nitions for Civic Space are employed to create an architecture with spatial principles that encourage urban interaction and promote healthy engagement with one’s community thereby acting as a counterbalance to engagement on digital and visual platforms. The Pretoria Station site is investigated as a platform where a wide spectrum of networks can converge, thereby maximising the potential for dialogue and exchange between cultures, races, classes and with the city and the state. The proposed architectural design takes the form of a public space centred around the ‘Civic Knot”, itself a focal point of the folded landscape topology. The building is inclusive and seeks to balance urban requirements of daily needs, work and recreation by delivering a useful and fertile civic platform. / Mini Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Architecture / MArch (Prof) / Unrestricted

A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Digital Arts to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2018 / This research report presents a critical thematic analysis of Andrew Miller’s science fiction (SF) novel Dub Steps with the intention of demonstrating that the book’s central themes are interrelated and evoke various tensions between the ideological projects of western liberal humanism and critical posthumanism. Furthermore, this study examines how the novel’s setting of Johannesburg articulates with its themes and complicates the unfolding drama of the liberal humanist subject in crisis, especially in connection to South Africa’s troubled history of colonialism and apartheid. Representations of race – specifically blackness and whiteness – are at stake in the interactions between Johannesburg and the central themes of Dub Steps, and the historical and material politics of race in South Africa are brought to bear upon the novel’s depiction of a posthuman future. This study finds that Dub Steps may be read as a posthuman SF fantasy in which the vestiges of colonialism and apartheid are finally undone and socio-economic inequalities persisting in the post-apartheid sphere are finally rebalanced. However, it is also the view of this research report that the progressive potential of the novel is undermined by its technophobic ethos and a reversion to harmful stereotypes about black people in its vision of a new world order / MT 2019