An important question for general jurisprudence concerns method: what is the right way to form a philosophical understanding of law? Exploration of this question has, in one form or another, featured as a constant part of the work of those within the discipline, and many different answers have been given. The aim of this thesis is to argue that a controversial conception of philosophical method – as an investigation into our rule-bound conceptual practices and uses of language – is the appropriate means of understanding the nature of law. The first three chapters establish the initial connection between conceptual or linguistic analysis and the ability to gain insight into the social reality of law. I argue, in chapter one, that institutional concepts have a linguistic basis and, in chapters two and three, that legal systems are borne out of the shared use of certain basic concepts on the part of those who make up their law applying institutions, i.e. the courts. To understand the rules according to which such concepts are deployed, I suggest, is to understand the essential structure of legal practice. An assumption of that argument is tested in chapter four by considering Ronald Dworkin’s famous claim that certain forms of disagreement between lawyers and judges are incompatible with a picture of law dependent upon their agreement in the use of basic legal concepts. Chapter five takes up the question of whether the account of social ontology contained in the thesis is compatible with the fact of philosophical disagreement about the nature of law. Finally, chapters six and seven discuss alternate models of theoretical success in general jurisprudence, the first inspired by externalist views of linguistic and mental contents, and the second dependent upon a naturalistic conception of philosophy.

This dissertation is a set of three essays connected by the common theme of our epistemic fragility: the way in which our knowledge – of our own minds, of whether we are in violation of the epistemic and ethical norms, and of the philosophical truths themselves – is hostage to forces outside our control. The first essay, “Are We Luminous?”, is a recasting and defence of Timothy Williamson’s argument that there are no non-trivial conditions such that we are in a position to know we are in them whenever we are in them. Crucial to seeing why Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument succeeds, pace various critics, is recognising that the issue is largely an empirical one. It is in part because of the kind of creatures we are – specifically, creatures with coarse-grained doxastic dispositions – that nothing of interest, for us, is luminous. In the second essay, “What’s in a Norm?”, I argue that such an Anti-Cartesian view in turn demands that epistemologists and ethicists accept the ubiquity of normative luck, the phenomenon whereby agents fail to do what they ought because of non-culpable ignorance. Those who find such a view intolerable – many epistemic internalists and ethical subjectivists – have the option of cleaving to the Cartesian orthodoxy by endorsing an anti-realist metanormativity. The third essay, “The Archimedean Urge”, is a critical discussion of genealogical scepticism about philosophical judgment, including evolutionary debunking arguments and experimentally-motivated attacks. Although such genealogical scepticism often purports to stand outside philosophy – in the neutral terrains of science or common sense – it tacitly relies on various first-order epistemic judgments. The upshot is two-fold. First, genealogical scepticism risks self-defeat, impugning commitment to its own premises. Second, philosophers have at their disposal epistemological resources to fend off genealogical scepticism: namely, an epistemology that takes seriously the role that luck plays in the acquisition of philosophical knowledge.

This thesis provides a theoretical framework that brings the unity of Kierkegaard’s ‘middle period’ into relief. I will analyse Kierkegaard’s writings between 1846 and 1852 when, I argue, the socially constructive dimension of his thought comes to prominence, involving two dialectical aspects of religiousness identified by Kierkegaard: the edifying and the polemical. How these two aspects come together and get worked out in the lives of individuals form the basis of what can be called a Kierkegaardian ‘social praxis’. I conclude that the tension between the edifying and the polemical can be coherently maintained in a communicative life that is also characteristic of a militant faith. This militant faith and life is presented as a critical guard against absolutisms, fundamentalisms, and intellectual aloofness; but the ‘militant’ individual is also utterly dependent, in need of edification and critique, and therefore chooses the risk of encountering others, seeking relationships out of a commitment to the development of persons and communities in co-operation. Therefore, not only does this dialectic provide readers with an important theoretical framework for understanding Kierkegaard’s ‘middle period’, but it is also a valuable resource for a constructive analysis of active social living suitable for theology in the twenty-first century.

The aim of the thesis is to explore Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Wilfrid Sellars’s views on intentionality. In the first chapter I discuss the account of intentionality and meaning the early Wittgenstein developed in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus. I present his idea that sentences are pictures of states of affairs with which they share a ‘logical form’ and to which they stand in an internal ‘pictorial relationship’. I argue that Wittgenstein thought of this relationship as established by acts of thought consisting in the operation of mental signs corresponding to the signs of public languages. In the second and third chapters I discuss the later Wittgenstein’s criticism of ideas at the heart of the Tractarian account of intentionality, as well as his explanations of the phenomena that motivated it. In the second chapter I examine his rejection of the idea that thinking consists in the operation of mental signs and his criticism of the idea that meaning and understanding are mental processes accompanying the use of language. In the third chapter I turn to Wittgenstein’s criticism of the idea that representations stand in an internal ‘pictorial relation’ to objects in the natural order that are their meaning. I illuminate his later views by discussing Sellars’s non-relational account of meaning, in particular his claim that specifications of meaning do not relate expressions to items that are their meaning, but rather specify their rule-governed role in language. I conclude with a discussion of the later Wittgenstein’s account of the relationship between intentional phenomena and the objects at which they are directed. In the final fourth chapter I provide a detailed discussion of Sellars’s account of thinking. I conclude with some criticisms of Sellars’s views.

In this thesis I examine Schelling’s construction of symbolic language in §73 of his Philosophie der Kunst. I approach this construction in three ways. First, I compare Schellingian symbolic language to other contemporary theories of the symbol and language (in particular, those of Goethe, Kant and A.W. Schlegel). While Schelling’s theory of symbolic language possesses properties similar to these other theories (the identity of being and meaning, organic wholeness, the co-existence of opposites), I show that it differs in how they are interpreted. Second, I excavate the metaphysical and epistemological principles from Schelling’s philosophy of the period which underlie this theory of language. Three tenets from the Identitätssystem (as it is called) are crucial: formation, quantitative differentiation and construction. They illuminate why Schelling interprets symbolic language very differently to his contemporaries. Third, I consider the theological significance of Schellingian symbolic language. This significance is twofold. First, his theory gives rise to a conception of discourse without reference, and so to the notion of a theology without reference. On this basis, Schelling criticises Christian theology for remaining too concerned with referring to God, when what is at stake is rather the degree of intensity to which it produces God. Theology therefore stands in need of reformation. Second, the way in which theology is utilised by Schelling in order to construct symbolic language in §73 of the Philosophie der Kunst itself provides a model for reformed theological practice. I argue that Schelling conceives of traditional theology as material for intensifying the production of God. In this way, an ‘absolute theology’ is engendered which has no concern for reference or for the integrity of the theological tradition.

This thesis traces the development of thought in the philosophical and other writings of three nineteenth-century thinkers, whose work exemplifies that century’s attempts to think beyond the divisions of culture from nature and to reconcile empirical science with metaphysical truth. Drawing on nineteenth-century debates on the origin of language and evolutionary theory, the thesis argues that the ideas of John Henry Newman, George Eliot and Lady Victoria Welby were cultural precursors to the biosemiotic thought of the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, specifically in the way in which these three thinkers sought to find a ‘common grammar’ between natural and human practices. While only Lady Welby communicated with the scientist, logician and father of modern semiotics, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), all three contributed to the cultural sensibility that informed subsequent work in biology/ethology (Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), zoosemiotics (Thomas A. Sebeok (1920-2001), and the development of biosemiotics (Thomas A. Sebeok and Jesper Hoffmeyer (1943-present), Kalevi Kull (1952-present) among others. Each of these nineteenth-century writer’s intellectual development show strong parallels with the interdisciplinary endeavour of biosemiotics. The latter’s observation that biology is semiotics, its postulation of the continuity between the natural and cultural world through semiosis and evolutionary semiotic scaffolding its emphasis on the coordination of organic life processes on all levels, from simple cells to human beings, via semiotic interactions that depend on interpretation, communication and learning, and its consequent refusal of Cartesian divide, all find distinct resonances with these earlier thinkers. The thesis thus argues that Newman, Eliot and Welby all gave articulation to what the thesis identifies as the growth of a ‘biosemiotic imagination.’ It argues that Newman, Eliot and Lady Welby envisaged a unity, or a holistic understanding, of life based on a European developmental tradition of biology, philosophy and language which was familiar to Charles Darwin himself. This evolutionary ontology called forth a new epistemology grounded in a mode of unconscious creative inference (biosemiotic imagination) akin to Charles S. Peirce’s concept of abduction. Abduction is the logical operation which introduces a new idea and, as such, is the only source of adaptive and creative growth. For Peirce, it is closely tied to the growth of knowledge via the evolutionary action of sign relations. The thesis shows how these thinkers conceptualised their own version of what I suggest can be understood as this biosemiotic imagination and the implications this has for understanding creativity in nature and culture. For John Henry Newman, it was a common source of inspiration in religion and science. For George Eliot, it lay at the basis of any creative process, natural and cultural, between which it forged a link. Similarly to Eliot, Lady Victoria Welby saw abduction as a signifying process that subtends creativity both in nature and culture.

Remontar a gênese social da individualização e humanização no Ocidente moderno através das imagens da mulher (xilogravuras, artes plásticas, fotografias e cinema). Esse foi o meu desafio ao longo de oito anos realizando pesquisas de campo no exterior, passando pelos arquivos de bibliotecas da Alemanha, Suíça, museus da Europa até os Estúdios de Hollywood. Pinturas, esculturas, panfletos noticiosos e filmes foram a matéria prima para remontar as relações sociais e compreender como essas visualidades também criam interações sem precedentes. Elegi as imagens da mulher por ser ambíguas personagens que atraem, em torno de si, os mais contraditórios sentimentos sociais. Mulheres que nem sempre foram vítimas de suas representações. Conformadas em temíveis e atrativas imagens elas também souberam fazer uso e proveito do fascínio que provocaram, invertendo os jogos de poder. Para entender esse processo realizo uma sociogênese dos estereótipos femininos no Ocidente Moderno. Bruxas; Tupinambás canibais; Maria; Marias Negras na América, Maria Madalena, Cortesãs e Stars Hollywoodianas. Irei seriá-las. Aproximá-las. Contrapô-las. Pois, se, de fato, as imagens de que trato são amplamente conhecidas, falta pensá-las em conjunto, na longa série que as relaciona e tensiona dentro do processo social em que são formadas _ e que elas em grande medida conformam. Um corpo a corpo entre as imagens que traz surpreendentes elucidações sociológicas. Constato: em uma imagem, sobrevivem várias imagens. Polimagens. Apresento as continuidades, citações e parciais rupturas entre elas. Momento em que se observa a transição de uma mulher em abstrato, para uma em particular. Imagens motivadas, sobretudo, pela demanda por fazer-se ver. As pessoas passam a querer ter um retrato público. Uma imagem de si em busca de um desejo social inalterável: o olhar alheio, a estima e o reconhecimento. E são as imagens as armas simbólicas privilegiadas dessa dinâmica, acionando uma espiral de disputas por reconhecimento que conduz a uma crescente individualização e humanização das imagens. Visualidades que testemunham e instauram novas formas de organização e integração social. O que denominei de individumanização / Reassembling the social genesis of individualization and humanization in the Modern West through the Women Images (woodcuts, plastic arts, photography and cinema). That was my challenge over eight years doing field research abroad, through the files of Libraries of Germany, Switzerland, Museums of Europe to the Hollywood Studios. Paintings, sculptures, films and news pamphlets were the raw material to remount the social relationships and understand how these interactions create visualities also unprecedented. I choose the images of women by being ambiguous characters which attract, in around themselves, the more contradictory social feelings. Women were not always victims of their representations. Formed into fearsome and attractive images they knew also make use of the advantage and fascination provoked by reversing the games of power. To understand this process I perform a sociogenesis of female stereotypes in the Modern West. Witches; Tupinambás cannibals; Mary; Black Marys in America, Mary Magdalene, Courtesans and Hollywood Star. Will I serialized them. Bring them together. Contrast them. For if, indeed, the images that I work with are widely known, shortness to think of them together, in the long series that relates to and tensions them within the social process in which they are formed _ and they largely conform. A melee between images that brings amazing sociological elucidation. Verify: in an image, multiple images survive. Polimagens. I present continuities, quotations and partial ruptures between them. Moment when I observe the transition from a woman into an abstract, for one in particular. Images motivated primarily by demand for to be seen. People start to want to have a public picture. An image of themselves in pursuit of an unchanging social desire: the alien look, the esteem and the recognition. And the pictures are the privileged symbolic weapons of this dynamic, triggering a spiral of recognition disputes for leading to an increasing individualization and humanization of images. Visualities who witness and establish new forms of organization and social integration. What I have called the individumanization

Remontar a gênese social da individualização e humanização no Ocidente moderno através das imagens da mulher (xilogravuras, artes plásticas, fotografias e cinema). Esse foi o meu desafio ao longo de oito anos realizando pesquisas de campo no exterior, passando pelos arquivos de bibliotecas da Alemanha, Suíça, museus da Europa até os Estúdios de Hollywood. Pinturas, esculturas, panfletos noticiosos e filmes foram a matéria prima para remontar as relações sociais e compreender como essas visualidades também criam interações sem precedentes. Elegi as imagens da mulher por ser ambíguas personagens que atraem, em torno de si, os mais contraditórios sentimentos sociais. Mulheres que nem sempre foram vítimas de suas representações. Conformadas em temíveis e atrativas imagens elas também souberam fazer uso e proveito do fascínio que provocaram, invertendo os jogos de poder. Para entender esse processo realizo uma sociogênese dos estereótipos femininos no Ocidente Moderno. Bruxas; Tupinambás canibais; Maria; Marias Negras na América, Maria Madalena, Cortesãs e Stars Hollywoodianas. Irei seriá-las. Aproximá-las. Contrapô-las. Pois, se, de fato, as imagens de que trato são amplamente conhecidas, falta pensá-las em conjunto, na longa série que as relaciona e tensiona dentro do processo social em que são formadas _ e que elas em grande medida conformam. Um corpo a corpo entre as imagens que traz surpreendentes elucidações sociológicas. Constato: em uma imagem, sobrevivem várias imagens. Polimagens. Apresento as continuidades, citações e parciais rupturas entre elas. Momento em que se observa a transição de uma mulher em abstrato, para uma em particular. Imagens motivadas, sobretudo, pela demanda por fazer-se ver. As pessoas passam a querer ter um retrato público. Uma imagem de si em busca de um desejo social inalterável: o olhar alheio, a estima e o reconhecimento. E são as imagens as armas simbólicas privilegiadas dessa dinâmica, acionando uma espiral de disputas por reconhecimento que conduz a uma crescente individualização e humanização das imagens. Visualidades que testemunham e instauram novas formas de organização e integração social. O que denominei de individumanização / Reassembling the social genesis of individualization and humanization in the Modern West through the Women Images (woodcuts, plastic arts, photography and cinema). That was my challenge over eight years doing field research abroad, through the files of Libraries of Germany, Switzerland, Museums of Europe to the Hollywood Studios. Paintings, sculptures, films and news pamphlets were the raw material to remount the social relationships and understand how these interactions create visualities also unprecedented. I choose the images of women by being ambiguous characters which attract, in around themselves, the more contradictory social feelings. Women were not always victims of their representations. Formed into fearsome and attractive images they knew also make use of the advantage and fascination provoked by reversing the games of power. To understand this process I perform a sociogenesis of female stereotypes in the Modern West. Witches; Tupinambás cannibals; Mary; Black Marys in America, Mary Magdalene, Courtesans and Hollywood Star. Will I serialized them. Bring them together. Contrast them. For if, indeed, the images that I work with are widely known, shortness to think of them together, in the long series that relates to and tensions them within the social process in which they are formed _ and they largely conform. A melee between images that brings amazing sociological elucidation. Verify: in an image, multiple images survive. Polimagens. I present continuities, quotations and partial ruptures between them. Moment when I observe the transition from a woman into an abstract, for one in particular. Images motivated primarily by demand for to be seen. People start to want to have a public picture. An image of themselves in pursuit of an unchanging social desire: the alien look, the esteem and the recognition. And the pictures are the privileged symbolic weapons of this dynamic, triggering a spiral of recognition disputes for leading to an increasing individualization and humanization of images. Visualities who witness and establish new forms of organization and social integration. What I have called the individumanization

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The study of sound symbolism, phonetics and semantics has been of major concern for linguists since the Greeks and the Romans in the fifth century before AD. The idea of sound symbolism - the existence of correspondence between the sound of letters (or linguists, such as Ibn Jinni (942-1002 AD), and modern Arabic linguists, including al- Badráwi (1999), and Na'aim Alwia (1984), have attempted to elucidate this phenomenon, providing detailed description and some examples from Arabic and the Holy Qur'an. Modern Western linguists such as Magnus (1999) have discussed the correspondence between the sounds of letters and the sense in Western languages. Jespersen (1962) and Badráwi (1999) have recommended that this phenomenon needs further detailed study and have indicated the need of more examples to be used as reference theory. Using Ibn Jinni's model, this study is an attempt to build on the theory of the correspondence between sound and meaning using the Holy Qur'an as an example. While Jinni's focus was on the correspondence of sound and meaning at the word level, this study will focus on the individual sound segments within the word, and the effect of the word within the Surat. The argument is that it is the individual distinctive features of each phoneme in a word that give the word its distinctive sound quality, and also has have an impact on the meaning of the word. Any correspondence between sound and meaning in a word should therefore be assigned to a particular significant distinctive feature. Given that the focus on the presumed direct relationship between sound and meaning, recourse will be made to the principal of onomatopoeia. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between the distinctive features of the sounds that form Arabic words and the meaning of such words as used in the Holy Qur'an. In particular, the study will analyze the distinctive features, such as a sound being a consonant or a vowel, voicing, manner and place of articulation, airstream mechanism, among others (singly or combined) of the sounds in Arabic words, and relate this to the meaning of the words. This phenomenon will be investigated using descriptive methods and the Holy Qur' an as the object of study.

The current Afro-communitarianism (AC) articulation and analysis of botho is characterised by two main approaches. First it treats botho as if it is a universal concept that can be expounded independently in a theoretical manner devoid of any specific cultural perspective that give it meaning and authority. Second it abstracts the Sesotho proverb “motho ke motho ka batho” (MKKB) from the rest of Sesotho narrative elevating it as foundational to the definition and meaning of the concept, where a particular reading of this proverb has come to be taken as the quintessential articulation of the meaning of this concept. This thesis problematizes this account within the context of Sesotho culture from which the proverb derives. Firstly, it rejects the abstraction and exceptionalism of MKKB as poor scholarship and a deficiency in the knowledge of the ethical significance of narratives in Sesotho culture, arguing that this is an unjustified abstraction of MKKB from Sesotho narratives inconsistent with how proverbs are interpreted and used. It asserts that MKKB is best understood not in isolation, but within the context of the unity of African narratives and their meaning and unique role as the chief means of moral education into botho. Secondly, the thesis questions the dominance of one specific reading of Ubuntu in the current botho discourse and the privileged status this reading has enjoyed over other, equally justified, interpretations. It argues for a definition of botho (moral personhood ) based on the definition of this term as a moral statement describing good admirable moral qualities of character of motho. The study thus starts from the premise that talk about botho turns out to be talk about character of motho because botho cannot be fully realised independently of the characters of individuals who make it a reality. The study recommends a character centric definition of botho as a fresh alternative, where an understanding of the possession of botho by motho, entails inculcation of makhabane or virtues of botho, many of which are found narratives especially proverbs. Its attractiveness is that it is consistent with the nature of African ethics as character-based ethic, but also underscores important assumptions behind botho including the primacy of character and the existence of a particular social order as a prerequisite for botho to flourish, all of which are worth serious consideration in the current botho discourse. / Research Institute for Theology and Religion