Chan, Woon Ki. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-94). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract (English) --- p.i / Abstract (Chinese) --- p.ii / Acknowledgements --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- A New Understanding of Reality: Innovation within the Canon of Realism and Naturalism --- p.19 / Chapter 3 --- Sarah Kane: Bodies and Pain --- p.41 / Chapter 4 --- Harold Pinter: The Dilatory Space --- p.63 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.83 / Works Cited and Bibliography

The focus of this study is Lily Bart and how she maneuvers in the cold, competitive world of upper class New York. To create a framework for my investigation, I draw upon naturalistic readings of the story which portray Lily as an outsider or "other" in her society. Lily's ethical principles lead to her destruction. Her marriage problem is just an example of her rejection of the life that her society expects her to lead. As she becomes more aware of a different philosophy of life--characterized by Selden's "republic of the spirit"--she finds it impossible to abide by the rules and customs of her society. Ultimately she is unable to live in either world successfully. My research suggests that Lily's moral integrity prevents her from marrying only for money, but she is unable to see other choices available to her that will satisfy her need for luxury and wealth. In my study of Lily I examine the reasons why she could not reconcile the two opposing principles that lead to her downfall. My work analyzes Lily's inner struggles between her values and her ambition.

This study traces the adaptation of the traditional gathering practices of Anglo/Celtic women to the landscape of Colonial Australia, thus developing a context for contemporary land-based art practices. Traditional gathering practices became one of the important forces that influenced and shaped the work of many women artists in post colonial Australia. Interacting with the landscape on a personal level helped contextualize women's gathering role into a contemporary theme, which linked past knowledge to present day voices. The author's art work is an interpretation of this traditional gathering practice. By relating herbal knowledge to present day concerns, she is able to extend the knowledge of past generations of women gatherers into present day images. The art work is also a diary of experiments, that are concerned with preserving the dye making recipes that have been handed down for generations. These botanical experiments have enabled the author to re-present herbal knowledge that took hundreds of years to glean, and to extend the use of the dyes obtained to create the art works. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Creative Arts)

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

Naturalistic philosophers of meaning try to define the recalcitrant concept of reference in terms respected by the empirical science, such as causality or teleology. In this thesis, after a brief introduction to these trials is given, Fodors theory of content in terms of asymmetric dependence is examined in some depth. I claim that although this theory involves an important insight, it is an unsatisfactory attempt at reduction of the notion of reference. I develop a new theory of content, which does not have the defects of the analyses in terms of asymmetric dependence, and more successfully deals with notorious cases, such as pansemanticism and the possibility of misrepresentation.

Versions of naturalized epistemology that overlook or reject apriority ignore innate belief-forming processes that provide much of the grounding for epistemic warrant. A rigorous analysis reveals that non-experiential ways of viewing apriority, such as innateness, establish the domain for a plausible naturalistic theory of a priori warrant. A moderate version of naturalistic epistemology that embraces the non-experiential feature of apriority and motivates future cognitive scientific research is the preferred account.

While naturalistic theories have come to dominate the philosophical landscape, there is still little consensus on what “naturalism” means. I trace the origins of contemporary naturalism to a view, called the “fundamental naturalistic impulse,” that originates in Quine’s turn against Carnap and which I take to be necessary for naturalism. In light of this impulse, some “substantively naturalistic” theories are examined: a weak version of non-supernaturalism, Railton’s a posteriori reduction of moral terms, and “Canberra plan” conceptual analyses of moral property terms. I suggest that if we take the fundamental naturalistic impulse seriously, then there is no need to differentiate substantive versions of naturalism over and above methodological versions. Substantive thesis in ontology or semantics can be had on account of one’s methodological commitments. This not only cuts against the distinction between methodological and substantive naturalisms, but also demonstrates just how far method can reach.

In this thesis I distinguish between two conceptions of naturalism that have been offered as possible starting points for a virtue based ethics. The first version of naturalism is characterized by Philippa Foot’s project in Natural Goodness. The second version of naturalism can be found, in various forms, among the works of John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, and Rosalind Hursthouse. I argue that neither naturalistic approach is entirely successful on its own, but that we can fruitfully carve a path between both approaches that points the way to a positive ethical account. I then conclude with a brief sketch of what such a positive account of a virtue ethics may look like.

Det finns både skillnader och likheter mellan Stanislavskij och Brecht. En av de tydligaste är att de har olika ismer i grunden, Stanislavskij är naturalist och Brecht är realist. Dessa ismer gränsar till varandra i det att de båda vill ge en så realistisk bild av verkligheten som möjligt, men tar olika vägar i synen på verkligheten och hur denna ska avbildas på bästa sätt. Där Stanislavskij vill ha total inlevelse vill Brecht fjärma och hålla distans. Där Brecht bara låter skådespelaren ge utlopp för sina känslor i det inledande repetitionsarbetet låter Stanislavskij känslan vara med som en röd tråd genom hela processen från rollskapande till färdig föreställning. Jag har även kommit fram till att politiken, i synnerhet kommunismen och den socialistiska realismen, tilläts större utrymme hos Brecht än hos Stanislavskij. Vidare ansåg både Stanislavskij och Brecht att publiken hade en jämförelsevis stor roll i teaterns varande. Brecht menade att publikens möjlighet till kritisk eftertanke var det viktigaste för teatern i det stora hela, detta samtidigt som underhållningsfaktorn vägde tungt. Stanislavskij å sin sida strävade istället efter publikens beständiga upplevelse av den verklighet som skådespelarna åskådliggjorde på scenen, för honom var det viktigare att publiken trodde på vad de såg än att de blev roade.

The concept of realism in visual representation has been defined and deployed largely within the domain of the Western artistic canon. In the field of art history, the term is often used in ways that depend on implicit, culturally coded assumptions about its connection with the formal markers of optical-naturalism. The Persianate tradition of pictorial representation by contrast, has been traditionally characterized in modern scholarship as stylized and decorative, with little acknowledgment of an interest in realism in its own visual language. Furthermore, normative Euro-centric attitudes have perpetuated the assumption that an engagement with realism entered Persianate artistic practices with the advent of Europeanizing modes of depiction in Safavid and Mughal spheres of production around the late sixteenth-century. This dissertation explores the topic of realism from the perspective of Persianate visual culture. In so doing, it proposes to refine our understanding of the concept in terms that accommodate the varied artistic production of cultures that laid claims to cultivating representational realism in their own primary sources. The first chapter draws on multi-disciplinary discussions to challenge art historical treatments of pictorial realism as a style, in favor of a functional definition of the concept as an emergent quality rooted in formal strategies that activate particular patterns of mirror-response in their audiences. The second and third chapters reject the principle of evaluating the realism of Persianate representations according to their degree of proximity to European models. The second chapter discusses the structural conditions of change in visual habitus in cases of inter-cultural encounter between foreign modes of representation and the resulting works of aesthetic hybridity. The third chapter presents material evidence of early modern Safavid and Mughal albums as discourses of aesthetic heterogeneity. The fourth chapter explores the local Persianate roots of realism, including the changes these realism strategies underwent in the early modern period. The fifth and final chapter develops case studies of two seventeenth-century Mughal and Safavid drawings, which cultivate representational enlivenment in depicting harrowing moments of death. The discussion delves in greater detail into the particular patterns of realism developed in the seventeenth-century Persianate visual culture. / History of Art and Architecture