The thesis argues that for Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, the free will debate has been rendered intractable by a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms involved. This is exacerbated by a failure to identify and adopt an appropriate methodological approach to the problem. Both philosophers argue that this error in the free will debate is symptomatic of a broader misunderstanding of philosophical enquiry and the method it necessitates. For Heidegger, the entire history of ‘analytic/western' ontology has been fatally misconceived as a result of an effort to define the being of entities in static terms. The insistence on the question of what a being ‘is' obstructs any meaningful enquiry by conceding its existence at the outset of the investigation. Sartre's project is founded on Heidegger's argument, pushing it into a definitive claim about the nature of consciousness. He argues that as the only being for whom ‘meaning' is possible, consciousness is distanced from beings by ‘nothingness' which ensures its ontological freedom. The thesis will argue that Sartre has misconstrued Heidegger's work, making comprehension of his freedom all the more complicated. We propose that a thorough investigation of their projects will reveal an account of ontological freedom that does not suffer from the shortcomings of existentialism whilst avoiding the methodological missteps of the traditional discourse.

ABSTRACT THE GROWING DESERT: NIHILISM AND METAPHYSICS IN HEIDEGGER&rsquo / S THOUGHT Duman, Musa Ph. D., Department of Philosophy Supervisor : Prof. Dr. Ahmet inam March 2009, 209 pages In this study, we explore Heidegger&rsquo / s understanding of nihilism as the essential dimension of metaphysics, of metaphysical experience of Being, and in the following, we address his responses to it. Heidegger takes nihilism as rooted in the metaphysical way of thinking, hence metaphysics and nihilism standing in a primordial identity. Such metaphysical way of thinking as a framework in which Being is experinced and articulated, explicitly or implicitly in all areas of Western culture, from art to science, gives us the deep history or movement of Western tradition. Heidegger considers such movement to be presenting an ever growing threat, indeed as something to be consummated in the eeriest possibility of world history, that is, total destruction of human essence as an openness for the disclosure of Being. He points out to this underlying phenomenon with various designations: forgetfullnesss of Being, abandonment of Being, darkening of the world, Gestell and devestation are some of them. In this tradition, Being, from Plato and Aristotle onwards, becomes nothing at all, that is, excluded from any thoughtful consideration, reduced to a mere abstraction. Anything nihilistic, if fully delved into, would prove to conceal at its heart an alienation to the true sense of Being. Therefore, we need to develop a way of thinking outside the dominion of metaphysics, which should not only discover No-thing as the concealment dimension of Being, thus be deeply open to our finitude, but also learn to respond thoughtfully and thankfully to the gift of Being in, through and towards which we ex-sist as human beings. Vis-a-vis the futural potentials of nihilism in this long end of Western history, the futural character of Heidegger&rsquo / s thinking, his search for a new way of thinking that would incipate the other beginning, harbours a strange Tension that is characteristic of his whole philosophy.

The main topic of this diploma thesis is support of informal caregivers taking care for dying loved ones or loved ones with life-threatening illness in the home environment. The theoretical partis focused on informal carers, the quality of life of informal carers, the quality of life of dying people and quality of life of people with life-threatening diseases, death and the stages of coping with death. It also deals with hospice and palliative care, their forms, methods and uses. The practical part is focused on the analysis and evaluation of questionnaires filled out by informal carers. The aim of my diploma thesis is to point out the need to help informally caring for dying loved ones or loved ones with life-threatening illnesses. Within the practical part of this thesis, it was intended to map helpful and, conversely, deficit types and ways of support. These outputs can then be the basis for improving the quality of support and services for informal carers caring for a loved one in the home environment. Keywords Informal care, formal care, hospice care, palliative care, quality of life, death.

Consistently throughout the book of Jonah, the author draws attention to matters of life and death. The present study argues that by approaching this recurring subject through a rhetorical-critical approach, it is evident that the author has intentionally constructed a motif of life and death, which they implement as the foundation for the theme of YHWH’s sovereignty that runs throughout the narrative. In this way, the motif is designed to build anticipation which comes to its climax as Jonah and YHWH converse directly in Jonah 4. This thesis argues that the presence of this motif is found in both the recurring key words and key situations connected with the concepts of life or death. Furthermore, the study identifies the purpose of Jonah as a declaration of YHWH’s sovereignty over matters of life and death, yet with a tendency toward mercy for the repentant. This is realized in and through the very motifs under examination.

This dissertation is a philosophical examination of the concept of reincarnation from an African point of view. It does so, largely, from the cultural perspective of the Akan people of Ghana. In this work, reincarnation is distinguished from such related concepts as metempsychosis and transmigration with which it is conflated by many authors on the subject. In terms of definition, therefore, the belief that a deceased person can be reborn is advanced in this dissertation as referring to only reincarnation, but not to either metempsychosis or transmigration. Many scholars would agree that reincarnation is a pristine concept, yet it is so present in the beliefs and worldviews of several cultures today (including those of Africa). A good appreciation of the concept, it can be seen, will not be possible without some reference to the past. That is why some attempt is first made at the early stages of the dissertation to show how reincarnation was understood in the religious philosophies of ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Chinese and the Incas. Secondly, some link is then established between the past and present, especially between ancient Egyptian philosophy and those of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. In modern African thought, the doctrine of reincarnation has not been thoroughly researched into. Even so, some of the few who have written on the subject have denied its existence in African thought. The dissertation rejects this denial, and seeks to show nonetheless that reincarnation is generally an irrational concept. In spite of its irrationality, it is acknowledged that the concept, as especially presented in African thought, raises our understanding of the constitution of a person as understood in the African culture. It is also observed that the philosophical problem of personal identity is central to the discussion of reincarnation because that which constitutes a person is presumed to be known whenever a claim of return of a survived person is made. For this reason, the dissertation also pays significant attention to the concept of personal identity in connection, especially, with the African philosophical belief in the return of persons. / Philosophy & Systematic Theology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)

This thesis examines six factors that helped to shape beliefs and expectations about death among evangelical Nonconformists in England from 1830 down to 1880: the literary conventions associated with the denominational magazine obituaries that were used as primary source material, theology, social background, denominational variations, Romanticism and the last words and experiences of the dying. The research is based on an analysis of 1,200 obituaries divided evenly among four evangelical Nonconformist denominations: the Wesleyan Methodists, the Primitive Methodists, the Congregationalists and the Baptists. The study is distinctive in four respects. First, the statistical analysis according to three time periods (the 1830s, 1850s and 1870s), close reading and categorisation of a sample this large are unprecedented and make it possible to observe trends among Nonconformists in mid-nineteenth-century England. Second, it evaluates the literary construct of the obituaries as a four-fold formula consisting of early life, conversion, the living out of the faith and the death narrative as a tool for understanding them as authentic windows into evangelical Nonconformist experience. Third, the study traces two movements that inform the changing Nonconformist experience of death: the social shift towards middle-class respectability and the intellectual shift towards a broader Evangelicalism. Finally, the thesis considers how the varying experiences of the dying person and the observers and recorders of the death provide different perspectives. These features inform the primary argument of the thesis, which is that expectations concerning death and the afterlife among evangelical Nonconformists in England from 1830 down to 1880 changed as reflections of larger shifts in Nonconformity towards middle-class respectability and a broader Evangelicalism. This transformation was found to be clearly revealed when considering the tension in Nonconformist allegiance to both worldly and spiritual matters. While the last words of the dying pointed to a timeless experience that placed hope in the life to come, the obituaries as compiled by the observers of the death and by the obituary authors and editors reflected changing attitudes towards death and the afterlife among nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformists that looked increasingly to earthly existence for the fulfilment of hopes.

The purpose of this study is to present the different approaches, which Hegel and Marx have developed regarding the relation between consciousness and life, consistent with their aims. Hegel&rsquo / s aim is to combine all the opposed ideas and beliefs proposed throughout the history of philosophy into a unified whole. Hegel&rsquo / s dialectics which is immanent to life can also explain the opposition between consciousness and life. Self-consciousness, which appears as subjectivity in Hegel&rsquo / s philosophy, at first, treats the life as an object of desire. Later, however, self-consciousness which cannot thus realize itself desires another self-consciousness who will recognize itself, so it relates with an other self-consciousness. This relation is defined as a &ldquo / life and death struggle&rdquo / . At the end of the struggle, there arise new forms of self-consciousnesses, Master and Slave. While the Slave produces for its Master, it relates itself to Life and this relation between Slave and Life brings about Slave as self-consciousness. On the other hand, the aim of Marx is not only to combine the oppositions but also to create a worldly philosophy. To this end, Marx puts economic relations of human beings at the centre of his theory. According to Marx, relations of production condition classes. While one class produces, the other exploits the productions of the former class. In Hegel, the Slave obtains its certainty as self-consciousness while it produces, whereas in Marx, the worker, who produces, is alienated form him/herself in the capitalist mode of production. To sum up, both Hegel and Marx emphasize the mutual relation between consciousness and life, but their divergent aims lead to them constructing this relation with different concepts on different foundations.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:35:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ValdeciS.pdf: 571587 bytes, checksum: 5b1f79ea57b1f1783ecefd3cb316e648 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-09-18 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / This study - Biologist s formative speech about death. Nuances and metaphors from knowing that the subject of do not want to know - shows a marginal cognitive construction in scientific education from biologist - death. It considered as obvious that death is a theme that covers both the scientific education from biologist and the division of the subject, and concerns the splitting of the double life-death and the principles of inclusion and exclusion of the subject. Part of sensitive question: What is the epistemological weave who supports biologist's speech about death? It is constituted an object of study of the biologist s speech on death. It is advocated the thesis that: Death is an epistemological obstacle announcing for something always aims to escape from the perspective of knowledge, especially of scientific knowledge because, since it is understood as cognitive learning about the disruption of biological phenomenon life which is involved on weave of imaginary and symbolic constructions about the finiteness of life; it has constituted a metaphorical knowing - encouraged by the noisy silence - which does not allow to know in full, mobilizing hence subject in searching for transitional truths that reduce the ontological being-mortal anguish centered in subjective dimension involved in the act of knowing. From this movement of search that the object mental life after death wins a symbolic value that requires a real-looking multi-referential for the study of biology - life - and its implications: the finiteness of life, especially by moving the omnipotence of scientific objectivity expressed by signs and symbols that seek say the completeness of scientific knowledge-, signaling thus the existence of the dynamics of incompleteness implicit in subjectivity that supports knowledge relating to the double, life and death, and to the temporality of the existence of Homo sapiens sapiens, with the axis guiding the desire of the subject, do not want to know about death, implicit in the mechanisms objective-subjective founded by non-said of death is the epistemology of the existence of objective-subjective subject, whose core is the negation of death. The theoretical methodological knowing web is anchored in the multi-reference which favors a transit by theoretical current, as the Psychoanalysis, bachelardian philosophy, the epistemology of complexity, the Thanatology, the Social Psychology, and Etnocenology, and Understanding Interview. The unveiling of the study object from the analysis of oral speech of eleven biologists who serve in high school, from three main guiding: Death in the history of life,Death in biologist s academic education and, Conceptions about concepts / Este estudo - O discurso formativo do bi?logo sobre a morte. Matizes e met?foras do saber que o sujeito n?o deseja saber - evidencia uma constru??o cognitiva marginal na forma??o cient?fica do bi?logo - a morte. Considera como evidente que a morte ? um tema que abrange, simultaneamente, a forma??o cient?fica do bi?logo e a cis?o do sujeito, e diz respeito ? cis?o do duplo vida-morte e aos princ?pios de inclus?o e de exclus?o do sujeito. Parte da quest?o sensibilizadora: Qual a tessitura epist?mica que fundamenta o discurso do bi?logo sobre a morte? Constitui objeto de estudo o discurso do bi?logo sobre a morte. Defende a tese que: A morte ? um obst?culo epistemol?gico anunciador de que algo, sempre, escapar? na perspectiva objetiva do conhecimento, especialmente do conhecimento cient?fico, visto que, compreendida como a constru??o cognitiva sobre a ruptura do fen?meno biol?gico vida, est? implicada na tessitura de constru??es imagin?rias e simb?licas sobre a finitude da vida; constitui-se um saber metaf?rico fomentado pelo sil?ncio ruidoso -, que n?o se permite conhecer por inteiro, mobilizando, assim, o sujeito ? busca/procura de verdades transit?rias que reduzam a ang?stia ontol?gica de ser-mortal nucleada na dimens?o subjetiva implicada no ato de conhecer. ? nesse movimento de busca/procura que o objeto mental vida p?s-morte ganha um valor simb?lico-real que requer um olhar multirreferencial para o objeto de estudo da Biologia a vida e a sua implica??o: a finitude da vida, especialmente, por deslocar a onipot?ncia da objetividade cient?fica expressa por signos e s?mbolos que procuram dizer da completude do conhecimento cient?fico -, sinalizando, assim, a exist?ncia da din?mica da incompletude impl?cita na subjetividade que fundamenta a constru??o de saberes relativos ao duplo vida-morte e ? temporalidade da exist?ncia do Homo sapiens sapiens, tendo como eixo norteador o desejo do sujeito, de n?o desejar saber sobre a morte, impl?cito nos mecanismos objetivos-subjetivos fundamentados pelo n?o-dito da morte que constitui a epistemologia da exist?ncia do sujeito objetivo-subjetivo, cujo n?cleo ? a nega??o da morte. A teia epist?mica te?rico-metodol?gica ancora-se na Multirreferencialidade que favorece um tr?nsito por correntes te?ricas, como, a Psican?lise, a filosofia bachelardiana, a epistemologia da complexidade, a Tanatologia, a Psicologia Social, e a Etnocenologia, e na Entrevista Compreensiva. O desvelamento do objeto de estudo parte da an?lise dos discursos orais de onze bi?logas que atuam no Ensino M?dio da Educa??o B?sica, a partir de tr?s eixos norteadores: A morte na hist?ria de vida, A morte na forma??o acad?mica do bi?logo e, Concep??es sobre conceitos

This dissertation is a philosophical examination of the concept of reincarnation from an African point of view. It does so, largely, from the cultural perspective of the Akan people of Ghana. In this work, reincarnation is distinguished from such related concepts as metempsychosis and transmigration with which it is conflated by many authors on the subject. In terms of definition, therefore, the belief that a deceased person can be reborn is advanced in this dissertation as referring to only reincarnation, but not to either metempsychosis or transmigration. Many scholars would agree that reincarnation is a pristine concept, yet it is so present in the beliefs and worldviews of several cultures today (including those of Africa). A good appreciation of the concept, it can be seen, will not be possible without some reference to the past. That is why some attempt is first made at the early stages of the dissertation to show how reincarnation was understood in the religious philosophies of ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Chinese and the Incas. Secondly, some link is then established between the past and present, especially between ancient Egyptian philosophy and those of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. In modern African thought, the doctrine of reincarnation has not been thoroughly researched into. Even so, some of the few who have written on the subject have denied its existence in African thought. The dissertation rejects this denial, and seeks to show nonetheless that reincarnation is generally an irrational concept. In spite of its irrationality, it is acknowledged that the concept, as especially presented in African thought, raises our understanding of the constitution of a person as understood in the African culture. It is also observed that the philosophical problem of personal identity is central to the discussion of reincarnation because that which constitutes a person is presumed to be known whenever a claim of return of a survived person is made. For this reason, the dissertation also pays significant attention to the concept of personal identity in connection, especially, with the African philosophical belief in the return of persons. / Philosophy and Systematic Theology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)

[pt] Esta dissertação analisa as reflexões de Heráclito de Éfeso sobre o par de contrários vida-morte a partir da compreensão de Alexandre Costa dos conceitos heraclíticos de logos e thanatos, descrita em Thanatos: da Possibilidade de um Conceito de Morte a partir do Logos Heraclítico (Costa, 1999). Partindo de uma ótica singular de Costa, Heráclito é destacado como o precursor das indagações a respeito das virtudes e das coisas humanas. É ressaltado um Heráclito ético e político, que estaria tentando entender a dificuldade do humano em decifrar o mundo a sua volta e a si mesmo. Esta dificuldade se daria devido a uma surdez humana, que impediria os humanos de escutar a fala do logos, isto é, a fala do cosmo, o que os tornaria uma espécie de mortos-vivos. Sublinha-se a dimensão humana do pensamento do efésio e a lógica heraclítica da contradição, que abraça a ideia da inseparabilidade e interconectividade dos contrários na compreensão do cosmo como tudo-um. Na busca pela compreensão de qual seria o lugar do humano, Heráclito estaria escutando o logos comum/universal que estaria expressando um processo inescapável de relação e cooperação entre contrários. O humano estaria diante de um aparecimento processual de interconexão e interdependência entre tudo e todos. Este trabalho que se inicia com a análise das reflexões de Heráclito, um filósofo grego do século VI a.C., acaba por se desenrolar na direção das atuais circunstâncias, quando se torna inadiável que se perceba a existência de um humano morto-vivo contemporâneo. Heráclito estaria apontando a existência de uma morte exclusiva dos humanos, uma morte ética, um humano morto em vida que estaria buscando uma gratificação imediata para si, egoísta e autocentrado, sem compromisso com o outro, separando o inseparável, isto é, que não compreende a interdependência cosmológica do tudo-um. Nesta dissertação, será descrito o morto-vivo heraclítico, mas o mesmo será facilmente identificado contemporaneamente nestes tempos de pandemia e pandemônio. E daí? disse o presidente. / [en] This work aims to analyze the heraclitic reflections on the pair of opposites life-death, from the comprehension of Alexandre Costa about the concepts of logos and thanatos developed in the work Thanatos: of the Possibility of a Concept of Death from the Heraclitic Logos (Costa, 1999). Starting from Costa’s singular perspective, the work intends to highlight Heraclitus as a precursor of the inquiries about virtues and human things. It aims to illuminate an ethical-political Heraclitus who would be trying to understand the human difficulty in deciphering themselves and the world around them. This difficulty would be due to a deafness that would prevent us from hearing the speech of the logos, the speech of the cosmos that is expressing the inseparability and interconnectivity of all beings, the difficulty in the understanding the all-one, that the human is in an unstable place between opposites which are in constant movement. The ignorance about the idea that we belong to a cosmos that expresses cooperation and not isolation. This work, which begins with the analysis of the thought of Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher from the 6th century BC, inevitably unfolds in the direction of the 21st century when it becomes unavoidable to associate the heraclitic living dead to the contemporary living dead. The current politics of separating us and them has transformed us into true zombies, deaf beings for the speech of nature that screams to be all-one. Heraclitus would be pointing out the existence of a death, exclusive of humans, that would be an ethical death, a human who would be looking for an immediate gratification for himself, who has no commitment to the Other. I will be describing the heraclitic living dead but that will be easily identifiable in our pandemic and pandemonium times. So what? asked the president.