Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1960. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 273-297).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

In early humanist France two debating traditions converge: one literary and vernacular, one intellectual and conducted mainly via Latin epistles. In this thesis I demonstrate how the two fuse in the vernacular verse debates of Alain Chartier, secretary and notary at the court of Charles VII. In spite of considerable contemporary praise for Chartier, his work has remained largely neglected by modern critics. I show how Chartier participates in a movement that invests a vernacular poetic with moral and political significance, inspiring such social engagements as the fifteenth-century poetic exchange known as the Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy. I set Chartier in the context of a late-medieval debating climate through the use of a new model of participatory poetics which I term the collaborative debating community. This is a dynamic and generative social grouping based on Brian Stock's model of the textual community, as well as Pierre Bourdieu's sociological categories of field, habitus and capital. This dialectical model takes account of the socio-cultural context of literary production, and suggests the fundamentally competitive yet collaborative nature of late-medieval poetry. I draw an analogy here between literary debates and game-playing, engaging with the game theory of Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois, and discuss the manuscript context of such literary debates as the materialisation of this poetic game. The collaborative debating community I postulate affords unique insights into the dynamics of late-medieval compositional and reading practices.

This thesis identifies a family of humanist presuppositions which, I argue, pervade modern Western society and are partly responsible for our inability to escape from a spiral of environmental destruction. For example, humanist ethical theories frequently assume the existence of an objective / subjective divide, autonomous rational individuals and a neutral rationality. I argue that these assumptions, which are peculiar to our society, provide a wholly inappropriate basis for the expression of many environmental concerns. Humanism imposes particular taxonomies and interpretations on social and environmental relations; these facilitate the treatment of nature as a resource rather than as a part of our (ethical) community. At the theoretical level, humanism develops explicit systems of ''formal rationaiity" which purport to be neutral e.g. axiological systems like neoclassical economics and utilitarianism. However, these systems reduce environmental evaluation to the bureaucratic application of abstract methodologies and, far from being neutral, they impose a particular humanist ideology on decision making processes which marginalises those who speak in a different voice. I develop an alternative perspective; a critical theory informed by the antihumanism of Althusser, the later Wittgenstein and Bourdieu. This post-humanist theoretical problematic works in two ways. First, it explains how ideologies interpellate individuals into social structures and reproduce current social values. Second, it advocates an alternative "ecological paradigm", embedded in anti-humanist and radical traditions which would give due regard to the constitutive role of 'nature' in the formation of our moral values.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1991. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-126).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of History, March 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation examines Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of culture. Nietzsche held that all beliefs were arbitrary and culturally contingent; cultures were distinct, organic, homogeneous entities, whose values were mutually incommensurable. I trace the origins of this theory to Nietzsche's experience as a philologist; but I claim that, in deriving his theory from historical data, Nietzsche drew false conclusions. As a mature philosopher, Nietzsche developed a somewhat more subtle theory, according to which cultures functioned like the underlying rules of a game. Thus any cultural world-view was arbitrary, but served as a necessary precondition for thought and communication. I argue that Nietzsche's mature theory led to contradictions and depended upon false inferences which he drew from history. Several of Nietzsche's doctrines including perspectivism, the Eternal Return, and the Overman depend upon his mature theory of culture. A similar theory underlies the work of two representative followers of Nietzsche, Leo Strauss and Jacques Derrida; and I discuss its consequences for their work. I then propose an alternative theory which explains the phenomenon of historical diversity without invoking Nietzsche's picture of reified cultures. Instead of imagining cultures as organic wholes, this alternative paradigm views the cultural background of any person as a heterogeneous collection of ideas and prejudices, often derived from diverse sources. Thus "cultures" are simply ways of categorizing people according to similarities in their backgrounds; and we belong simultaneously to numerous overlapping cultures. This paradigm, I argue, provides support for pluralist and democratic cultural ideals which Nietzsche and his followers have repudiated. Finally, I trace Nietzsche's reasons for criticizing humanistic scholarship to his theory of culture; and I defend humanism on the basis of my alternative paradigm.

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