Magister Legum - LLM / This mini-thesis makes a claim that when Rwanda established the rule of Gacaca court system as a communal mechanism of transitional justice in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, it accordingly enabled space for the ‘social truth’ to take centre stage as opposed to the legal truth. As such, testimonies by perpetrators and accounts by witnesses could only be permissible in Gacaca courts if they were socially acceptable by the community, and any evidence only needed to be orally validated by community members but not verified through formal legal procedures. The principal objective of this mini-thesis, therefore, is to examine how the ‘social truth’ was employed by Gacaca courts and how this kind of truth resonated with the communal nature of the courts.

The early Husserl wants to know what logic is, or what we should call ‘logic.’ He poses the question in a way that knowingly encompasses both what the 19th century (after Kant but before Frege) and the 20th century (since Frege) call ‘logic.’ But that he asks the question, and with such scope, has yet to be widely recognized. In particular, Husserl scholars still lack an overview of how Husserl’s early, explicitly logical inquiries, driven more by this single question than any worry about doctrinal consistency, does at least two things at once: probe what will later be called ‘pure phenomenology’ or ‘transcendental logic,’ and delimit logic as a positive yet mathematical discipline. With the aim of providing the neglected overview of this project, this dissertation takes the measure of Husserl’s two-volume Logical Investigations (1900-01) in four studies. Chapter I argues that the first volume, the Prolegomena to Pure Logic (1900), intends at once to resolve a 19th-century conflict and to establish logic’s possibility as its own discipline, all by means of demonstrating the confusion of psychologism (the view that empirical psychology could set the terms for logic as a discipline). Chapter II then contends that most of the Prolegomena’s first chapter falls outside this intention, departing from the book’s Bolzano-inspired argumentative framework yet thereby anticipating Husserl’s later ‘transcendental logic.’ Chapter III presents Frege and Husserl as two images of indecision as to how it falls to logic to know truth’s laws. Chapter IV concludes by expounding Husserl’s conception of logic as noetics, the self-clarification of knowing, thus completing the picture of Husserl’s indecision, while also laying groundwork to track the development of his thinking after the Logical Investigations.

Masters of Art / At a lecture presented in London on June 5, 1994, Jacques Derrida discussed the complexities of the meaning of the archive. He described the duality in meaning of the word archive-in terms of temporality and spatiality-as a place of "commencement" and as the place "where men and gods command" or the ''place from which order is given". As the place of commencement, "there where things commence" the archive is more ambivalent. It houses, what could best be described as 'traces" of particular objects of the past in the form of documents. These documents were produced in the past and are subjective constructions with their own histories of negotiations and contestations. As such, the archive represents the end of instability, or the outcome of negotiations and contestations over knowledge. Yet as sources of evidence the archive also represents the moment of ending instability, of creating stasis and the fixing of meaning and knowledge.

In this dissertation, I explore global diffusion, rationalization, and the role global professionals play within both these processes. The main question I explore in this dissertation is: What role do global professionals play in the global diffusion and rationalization of formal structures? Within global diffusion studies, professions and professionals feature prominently. However, the literature says little about how formal structures become rationalized or, in other words, the process by which organizations, principles, and practices are rationalized. In addition, the specific, concrete ways that global professionals contribute to and partake in this diffusion is left relatively vague. My dissertation fills this gap in the literature. To do this, I focus on the new global professional field of transitional justice and, specifically, the diffusion and rationalization of truth commissions, a main mechanism of transitional justice. I draw on ethnographic and archival data derived from a year of internship within a leading transitional justice organization that works on truth commissions. I discuss the unintentional role that values play in provoking global professionals to rationalize and the consequences this rationalization has had on the diffusion of truth commissions, the values and culture of the organization, and the identity of the professionals. Theoretically, the dissertation contributes to scholarship on global diffusion and global professionals, specifically world polity theory. Empirically, the dissertation illuminates possible pitfalls non-profit organizations may fall into that subvert their foundational values and therefore offers a different approach to understanding organizational 'failures' and their potential fixes. Throughout the dissertation, I hope to highlight the import of values, both in being a driving force behind social action and within organizations, particularly those with humanitarian objectives. I also aim to make clear the precariousness of values and thus the critical need to think seriously about how they can be maintained as organizations grow, mature, and diffuse principles and practices.

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Transitional justice as a research field has for a long time only focused on countries in conflict. However, even established democracies can undergo a process of change and reconciliationprocesses, including the reconciliation process between the Sami and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to map the process of establishing the Truth Commission for the Sami people, and to analyze this process based on central concepts of transitional justice. To examine whether these concepts are suitable for analyzing processes of reconciliation in established democracies. The central concepts of reconciliation, truth, justice, mercy, and peace have thus been used as a theoretical framework to analyze the process of establishing the Truth Commission in Sweden through a qualitative content analysis. The finding show that the theoretical framework cannot fully explain and understand processes of reconciliation in established democracies. Adevelopment of the research field of transitional justice is needed to be able to apply it to the context of established democracies.

No description available.

In this paper I examine Plato's response in the Sophist to the problem of falsity as it had developed in ancient Greek philosophy. The problem of falsity has its origins in Parmenides' absolute ontological distinction between being and not-being. This ontological distinction was translated by the sophists into an epistemological distinction between truth and falsity: a true statement says what is; a false statement says what is not. Because the problem of falsity has its roots in the views of these earlier thinkers, Plato's approach to this problem in the Sophist is historical. In this paper I attempt to trace out the ways in which Plato's response to the problem of falsity is a response to those thinkers who had made falsity so problematic, viz. Parmenides and the sophists. It has long been recognized that the first part ofPlato's Sophist is a response, indeed a challenge, to Parmenides. What has not been recognized is that the second part of the Sophist is also a challenge--to the sophists. The role the sophists played in the development of Plato's later period epistemological views has been, I think, quite underrated. Though Plato's middle period views on truth and falsity were not quite the same as those of Parmenides, they were certainly Parmenidean in spirit. In the Sophist we see a change. The Parmenides-inspired views on falsity have been quietly dropped. It is the sophists' definition of falsity-a false statement says that which is not--which is adopted, though with significant modifications. I believe it is the purpose of the second part of the Sophist to challenge the sophists by showing that they didn't understand their own definition. Though the sophists were right in holding that a false statement says that which is not, the implications they drew from this were entirely incorrect. A statement which says that which is not is no more problematic than a statement which says that which is. In this paper I examine the Sophist as a challenge directed towards Plato's predecessors. I believe this dialogue can only be properly understood against the historical backdrop ofthe problem ofnot-being and falsity as it developed out of the philosophies of Parmenides and the sophists. It is only by looking at the Sophist against this backdrop that Plato's accomplishment in this dialogue can truly be appreciated. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Before June 1905, Russell does not treat the problem of truth at length; but in the five subsquent years he devotes a number of important papers to the question: What is Truth? In his attempt to find the answer to this question in the following few years, he criticises and rejects all other prevalant theories of the time. In consequence Russell is able to establish his own view on the nature of truth in 1910. The aim of this thesis is to present a unified view of the whole period, with its different aspects and their evaluation. This unified view will represent a transition from the initial indecision of 1905 to a definite formulation of the notion of 'truth' in 1910. In the controversies of this transitional period, certain defects of the then prevalant views have been pointed out, apart from those of Russell. Certain defects in Russell's criticisms have also been pointed out. Finally it has been shown that Russell's own positive notion of 'truth' is also not an adequate one. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

In this dissertation, I defend an interpretation of Foucault’s parrhesiast (those who speak truth to power frankly) that blends it with his various methodological turns by casting the relationship as rhetorical. For that proposal, I attempt to introduce five major strategies defending the necessity of adopting a certain rhetorical standpoint, without which we cannot fully justify philosophy’s underpinnings. The opening of that rhetorical standpoint (in a special sense to be elaborated mostly in the first chapter) helps me to interpret some of the major tenets of Foucault’s philosophy, like his peculiar theory of discourse, his panoply in mapping a very specific history of knowledge (savoir), and finally the way Foucault envisages the role of the individuals in their historical predicament.