A great virtue of our fairly liberal society is its willingness to allow, legally and socially, individuals to choose their own lifestyle, free from interference or coercion. For this reason, there is rightly a strong resistance and hostility to government regulation of wholly self-regarding behavior – acts which only affect the actor. Whether justified by an appeal to sovereignty or utility, that which one does to oneself is seen as beyond the jurisdiction of government. Yet the problem of the so-called obesity "epidemic" – the explosion in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in recent decades – is a case of self-harm which does indeed warrant government intervention. This thesis considers utilitarian and autonomy-based arguments against interference in self-regarding action, then show why obesity merits intervention nevertheless.

An instrumental defense of a right to do wrong is plausible because we cannot directly intervene in an individual's choices so as to effectively promote that individual's moral good, if her moral good is conceived as being some form of individual autonomy. An epistemic defense is also plausible if we reorient J.S. Mill's epistemological argument for his Harm Principle in "On Liberty" to center on the agent's knowledge, rather than on the interfering observer's knowledge. Restrictions on harmless acts that are imposed because the acts are wrong are only justifiable to that individual if she herself knows that her acts are wrong. Both approaches depend upon the limited subjectivity and fallibility of the agent or interfering observer. Moreover, both approaches make the justification for a right to knowingly do wrong problematic.

Univ., Habil--Tübingen, 2000.

Univ., Diss.--Helsinki, 2006.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, 1997. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation explores a portion of the life, travels, and political activities of nineteenth century British traveler and Arabist, Lady Anne Blunt. Lady Anne held independent and, by the standards of the time, radical ideas about the need to respect Arab culture and to deal with the Arabs as equals. With an encompassing knowledge of the region, she challenged prevailing assumptions and exerted influence in high British political circles. Lady Anne's aristocratic heritage as the granddaughter of celebrated poet Lord Byron, helped her gain access to the political circles that were gaining power in the Arab world Lady Anne's journeys, through much of the Mediterranean region, North Africa, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Persia, became the basis for her broad knowledge of the Arab world. She pursued an intimate knowledge of Bedouin life in Arabia, the town Arab culture of Syria and Mesopotamia, and the politics of nationalism in Egypt. Lady Anne developed an important worldview, egalitarian in its outlook, with a consistent, even cosmopolitan, set of social and moral parameters that knew no skin color or race. Lady Anne's well-known husband, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, developed a reputation as an anti-imperialist, political activist, and political writer. Anne was her husband's partner in marriage, politics, and travel, and her numerous journals provide a record of their journeys and political activities offering an original new look at her virtually unknown work, while bringing new perspective to his. This dissertation focuses primarily on Lady Anne's most politically active decade, 1880-1890, along with biographical details that influenced her political persona. Lady Anne Blunt and her husband made a substantial contribution to the Egyptian National Party, the defense of Egyptian revolutionaries after their defeat, and the restoration of nationalistic pride in Egypt during the British occupation. Lady Anne's influence reached beyond Egypt as well, as she partnered with indigenous inhabitants for justice and liberty in the so-called jewels in the imperial crown.

In this thesis I investigate the relationship between 'I' as principle of transcendental philosophy and its ordinary use as first-personal pronoun. This relationship is a central issue in the philosophy of J. G. Fichte. Fichte was concerned to secure the gains made by Kant's Critique against what he called the 'dogmatism of the so-called Kantians' as well as against the attack of the skeptics, by grounding philosophy in a first principle which he called 'I'. To say what Fichte means by 'I' is to give an account of his philosophy, for, according to him, nothing is to be assumed outside of this 'I'. For Fichte the dogmatism of the 'so-called Kantians' consists in the idea that even when the formal conditions of experience have been established, a non-conceptualized content needs to be given to the mind from outside in order to produce empirical knowledge. This way of conceiving empirical constraints of thought, according to Fichte, threatens the results of Kant's critical philosophy, because it is inconsistent with the theoretical spontaneity and the practical autonomy that are crucial to Kant's conception of reason. Fichte argues that adequate empirical constraints can only be deduced from within the 'I'. To do this we must radically rethink our received concept of an 'I', a rethinking which in essence has already been effectuated by Kant, and which Fichte merely wants to make explicit and bring to fruition. Adequate constraints can be seen to be generated internally, once we realize that the standpoint of the 'theoretical I' is derivative from the standpoint of the 'practical I'. A result of Fichte's emphasis on the practical aspect of reason is a heightened awareness of the concept of the individual person and its status vis-a-vis the 'I' as philosophical principle. To be consistent with his principle, and indeed to prove his point, Fichte must 'deduce' the 'I' as individual. / Fichte's repudiation of dogmatism bears striking resemblances to a contemporary reading of Kant associated with the works of P. F. Strawson and John McDowell. The crucial difference is that for these philosophers the concept of a person is taken as primitive, and hence as the starting point of philosophy. At Fichte's time this position was defended by Fichte's critic, F. H. Jacobi. In the thesis I develop a position in contrast with Fichte's idealism which I call a 'naturalism of second nature' and which I use as a conceptual foil to explicate Fichte's thinking. I argue that ultimately Fichte's project fails by his own standards, in that it fails to save what we normally mean by a moral individual. I argue that in order to conceive of adequate constraints on freedom, we need to make the concept of a person as a natural individual our point of departure.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The aim of this thematic study is to examine how the water motif is used in Marguerite Duras’s literary work. The study shows that water has multiple functions in these texts: it is linked to major themes and creates an enigmatic atmosphere by its association with the unknown, the inexplicable and the unconscious. The strong presence of water in Duras’s texts is striking. References to the water element can be found in several titles throughout her career, from early works such as Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950) to La mer écrite (1996), published just after her death. Almost all of her fiction take place near water – and the rain or the sound of waves serve as leitmotifs in specific novels. The water motif can play a metonymic as well as a metaphoric role in the texts and it sometimes takes on human or animalistic characteristics (Chapter 4). Several emblematic Durassian characters (e.g. the beggar-woman, Anne-Marie Stretter and Lol V. Stein) have a close relationship to water (Chapter 5). The water motif is linked to many major Durassian themes, and illustrates themes with positive connotations, for example, creation, fecundity, maternity, liberty and desire, as well as themes with negative connotations such as destruction and death (Chapter 6). A close reading of three novels, La vie tranquille (1944), L’après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas (1962) and La maladie de la mort (1982), shows that the realism of the first novel is replaced by intriguing evocations of the sea and the pond in the second text, motifs which resist straightforward interpretation. The enigmatic feeling persists in the last novel, in which the sea illustrates the overall sombre mood of the story (Chapter 7). Finally, the role of the water element in psychoanalytic theory is discussed (Chapter 8), and a parallel is drawn between the Jungian concept of the mother archetype and the water motif in Duras’s texts. The suggestion is made in this last chapter that water is used to illustrate an oriental influence (Taoist or Buddhist) of some of the female characters in Duras’s work.

Contemporary attitudes in affluent Western societies are characterised by a growing emphasis on individual freedom. What, then, does this commitment to liberty entail for our openness to diversity; and ultimately for liberal democracy? Previous research on popular attitudes, for example by Ronald Inglehart, tends to assume that valuing freedom entails an encouragement of a plurality of life-styles. This thesis, by contrast, argues that there are several ideals of freedom in public opinion; ideals that may have opposing consequences for our permissiveness towards ways of life that differ from our own. The introductory essay in this book suggests that Isaiah Berlin’s theory of positive and negative freedom provides a fruitful analytical framework, which helps theorise and empirically nuance our picture of popular ideals of freedom. Essay I goes on to present a novel, psychological, interpretation of Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty. This essay also suggests that Berlin was critical not only of enlightened ideals of positive liberty, but also of romantic ones, which might be even more widespread today. Essay II then applies Berlin’s framework to contemporary survey data. Through confirmatory factor and regression analyses, this essay demonstrates that Berlin’s negative-positive distinction does in fact hold also in popular opinion; and that the two dimensions have rather different effects on moral and legal permissiveness. Essay III, finally, revisits a recent example of disrespect in the name of liberty: the Danish cartoon controversy. This essay develops the concept of ‘romantic liberalism’, thereby deepening our knowledge of romantic ideals of positive liberty, and their particularly disrespectful tendencies. Drawing on Isaiah Berlin, and his critique of positive liberty, the essays in this thesis together suggest that it is crucial for liberal democracy to recognise the existence of treacherous liberties: ideals that lead their supporters to ridicule, condemn, or even prohibit ways of life that differ from their own – all in the name of liberty. / The Impact of Religion