My thesis seeks to address the continuity, change and the syncreticism of ideas regarding post-mortem existence in the wake of the Reformation. Prior to reform, the late Medieval world view of the afterlife was very straightforward. One either went to Heaven via Purgatory, or straight to Hell. In the exempla literature of the period, ghosts were seen to provide evidence of the purgatorial system. However, this doctrine was dismantled by reformers who rejected Purgatory wholesale. Reformers then put forth a multiplicity of eschatologies which included various strands of mortalism, none of which allowed for the possibility that the dead could return to the living. In theory therefore, the ghost should have disappeared from the mental landscape, yet it not only survived, but it thrived in Protestant culture. This raises three key questions which are absolutely central to this thesis. Firstly: by what mechanisms did commitment to ghosts continue in lay and elite discourses in early modern England, when religious authority denied the possibility of their existence? Secondly: what opportunities were there to incorporate ghosts into Anglican or wider Protestant belief? Finally: Why would many Protestant elites want to elide the doctrinal problem of their existence and assert that ghosts existed? The ghost must have served a purpose in a way that nothing else could. It is therefore the purpose of the thesis to examine the shifting role of the ghost in early modern Protestant England.

Objet sculpté ou gravé, associant l’image et le texte, le monument funéraire se charge des aspirations spirituelles, sociales et artistiques de groupes sociaux divers. Dans un souci de préservation mémorielle, gisants, dalles à effigie, sarcophages ossuaires, bas-reliefs aux représentations diverses (funérailles, absoute, Christ de pitié, crucifixion, Vierge de la Chandeleur), tombeaux monumentaux ou épitaphes, mettent le défunt en scène au terme d’un cheminement de vie culminant à la quête du salut éternel de l’âme. Cette volonté de laisser une trace, de perpétuer son souvenir au-delà de la mort, pousse le commanditaire à mettre en ordre ses affaires, avant d’immortaliser ses derniers espoirs et ses dernières volontés dans la pierre. La grande variété typologique du territoire étudié, compris entre la Petite Camargue et la Catalogne du Nord du XIe au XVe siècle, met en évidence les traditions artistiques funéraires locales, et les apports septentrionaux et plus méridionaux (Espagne, Italie) qu’elles intègrent. Cette approche globale du patrimoine funéraire du littoral méditerranéen et de la société apporte une meilleure compréhension des mentalités religieuses, des pratiques juridiques (testaments) et économiques (dons, legs pieux, fondations de chapelles et d’anniversaires) et enfin esthétiques (somptuosité, ostentation), au seuil du trépas. Le croisement de différentes sources écrites et numériques (base Palissy) conduit à l’élaboration d’un corpus prenant en compte les monuments funéraires retrouvés, mais également disparus dont on garde traces dans les productions anciennes. / Carved ou engraved objet, associating the image and the text, funeral monument embodies the spiritual and artistic aspirations of various social groups. In order to preserve memory, recumbent statues, tombstones with effigy, sarcophagus ossuaries, low-reliefs with various representations (funeral, absolution, Christ of pity, crucifixion, Virgin of the Candlemas), monumental tombs or epitaphs, present the deceased at the end of his journey through life, peaking at the quest of the eternal salvation of the soul. This will to leave a trace, to perpetuate one’s memory beyond death, pushes the one who ordered such tombstone into putting one’s affairs in order before immortalizing his last hopes and his last wills in the stone.The large typological variety of the studied territory, between little “Camargue’ and the north of “Catalogne”, of the 11th to the 15th centuries, highlights the local funerary artistic traditions and the northern contributions or the more southern ones in Europe (Spain, Italy) which they integrate. This comprehensive approach of the funeral heritage of the Mediterranean coastline and the society brings a better understanding of religious mentalities, legal practices (wills), and economic (gifts, pious legacy, foundations of chapels and death birthdays) and lastly esthetic ones(sumptuousness, ostentation) at the threshold of the death. The crossing of various written and digital sources (Palissy bases) has led to the development of a fascinating corpus taking into account the monuments that were found again, but also the ones that disappeared, whose traces are found in the old productions.

O donatismo, uma dissidência religiosa cristã, ocupou um lugar de destaque na cristandade africana entre os séculos IV e V, dividindo-a e polarizando-a em duas vertentes, sendo o foco da atenção de importantes pensadores do período, como Agostinho de Hipona e Optato de Milevo. Sua singularidade advém de se tratar, em sua gênese, de uma querela quanto à conduta moral do clero. Em uma época de dissidências doutrinárias principalmente trinitárias, o donatismo foi considerado como um desdobramento das perseguições perpetradas por Diocleciano; estas teriam deixado vestígios indeléveis, sementes para novos desentendimentos geradores de cismas e divisões. O presente estudo busca explorar as noções básicas de retórica, ou retórica cristã (conforme esta era entendida por Agostinho), e a delimitação do ethos constituído para a vertente donatista pelo bispo de Hipona, seu adversário. A partir da premissa de que o que estava realmente em jogo na querela era a definição de qual das vertentes era verdadeiramente a portadora do legado de Cristo, a presente pesquisa procura abordar duas questões fundamentais na gênese da mesma: a concepção de via salvífica e o batismo. Almeja-se, portanto, investigar o ethos retórico imputado aos donatistas por Agostinho por meio de uma consideração da representação e das justificativas da dissidência presentes nos tratados anti-donatistas desse tão célebre autor. / Donatism was a particularly significant Christian dissidence within African Christianity between the 4th and 5th centuries AD, one that split Christians into two highly polarized factions and became an object of study for important thinkers of the period, such as Augustine of Hippo and Optatus of Milevis. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that it originally consisted of a quarrel concerning the moral conduct of members of the clergy. At a time of doctrinarian disagreements that were mostly of a Trinitarian nature, Donatism was regarded as having unfolded from the religious persecutions perpetrated by Diocletian; the latter were seen as having left an indelible mark upon Christianity, and as having sowed the seeds for future discord and schisms. It is the intention of the present study to investigate the basic notions of rhetoric, particularly as applied to Christian values, present in the thought of Augustine, as well as the characteristics of the ethos said author gradually built for his adversaries, the Donatists. Starting from the premise that what was really at stake in the controversy was determining which of the two factions was the true bearer of the legacy of Christ, the investigation seeks to approach two issues at the heart of the quarrel: namely, the notion of a true path to salvation and the sacrament of baptism. Its aim is, therefore, to analyze the rhetorical ethos Augustine characterized the Donatists with by means of a consideration of the way this particular dissidence was portrayed in the anti-Donatist treatises produced by the celebrated bishop of Hippo.

<p><font face="Times New Roman"> <p align="left">Within this thesis, the author recognizes that the technocratic thinking about AIDS Silin warned against has become the standard upon which much of AIDS education is based today. The author demonstrates the necessity of rethinking constructions that have reduced AIDS education and the complex pandemic to simple facts about the HI virus and its transmission. Technicist understandings of the pandemic, the author suggests, have resulted in technicist approaches to AIDS education.</p> </font></p>

Plato's late works contain an unexpectedly consistent treatment of the physics and metaphysics of souls. In the course of showing this, I argue that: (1) the middle period dialogues Phaedo and Republic assume, but do not mention, a Form of Soul; (2) the Timaeus contains a physical theory according to which all changes of every kind are forms of spatial motion; (3) Plato's view of souls as self-movers is identifiable in more of his late dialogues than is usually recognized (namely, in the Statesman as well as in the Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Laws ); (9) in the definition of souls as self-movers, "motion" should be read as "spatial motion" rather than "change" in general, and (5) neither the Phaedrus nor the Timaeus contains the claim that human souls are immortal, while both dialogues contain a concept of "soul-stuff;" a material from which individual souls are manufactured.

den här upsatsen kommer att diskutera en helhetssyn som delas av mina informanter vilka arbetar som komplementärmedicinska terapeuter. Dessa terapeuter ser på kroppen ur tre tre olika vinklar. De upplever att människan har en fysisk, en emotionell och en själslig del som behöver ses över under en behandling och jag finner att denna syn på människan delar de med exempelvis shamaner. Jag kommer att jämnföra denna typ av helhetssyn med den västerländska medicinens helhetssyn för att se vad eller om det finns någon skillnad. / This paper will be discussing a holistic approach used by my informants who works as complementary medical therapists. These therapists looks at the body from three different angles. They tell me that the body has a physical. an emotional and a soul level that needs to be looked at during a treatment and I find that this approach is shared with for example shamans. I will be comparing this holistic approach with how the western medicine talks about holistic approach to see what or if there is a difference.

Kepler is mainly known among historians of science due to his astronomical theories and his approaches to problems having to do with philosophy of science and ontology. This thesis attempts to contribute to Kepler studies by providing a comprehensive discussion of a topic hitherto not really considered, namely Kepler’s theory of the soul, a general theory of knowledge or epistemology whose central problem is what makes knowledge possible—rather than what makes knowledge true, as happens in the case of Descartes’s and Bacon’s epistemologies. Kepler’s theory consists of four issues: the theory of the different sorts of soul—i.e. the human soul, the animal soul, the vegetable soul, and the Earth soul—concerning their faculties, the differences and the resemblances that emerge among them, the relation they maintain with their own bodies and the world, and the distinction soul-world. The thesis discusses these issues from a historical perspective, that is, it reconstructs the way they appear in three periods of Kepler’s career: the period prior to the publication of the Mysterium Cosmographicum, the period going from 1596 to 1611, and the harmonic period. Finally, Kepler’s epistemology is briefly contrasted with Descartes’s and Bacon’s in order to suggest why Kepler’s is philosophically interesting and valuable. / October 2006

This thesis analyzes pain with respect to Nietzsche&#039 / s Dionysus-Crucified distinction. This distinction, which Nietzsche underlies, reveals his philosophical project. The meaning of pain is at the core point of this distinction. These two deities symbolizes attitudes towards life and pain in it. Dionysus represents the affirmation of becoming and tragic wisdom / and Crucified (Christ) represents despise and escape from life or ascetic ideals. In this sense, the dissertation will first trace Nietzsche&#039 / s world view. Then the following discussions will present a detailed analysis of ascetic ideals (and their genealogical roots), and tragic wisdom from the perspective of Nietzsche for consideration.

This thesis analyses the concept of self with respect to Nietzsche&rsquo / s (1844- 1900) implications on the &ldquo / despisers of the body&rdquo / in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche&rsquo / s exposition of the self as a varying multiplicity neither within nor out of the body is the basic assumption of this dissertation. In this sense, the place of Nietzschean self considering the evolution of the concept of self through history will be analyzed. The concept of ego (subject) will be discussed as Nietzsche&rsquo / s critique of the so-called manifestation of self / the concept of body will be discussed as the embodiment of Nietzschean understanding of the self.

The purpose of the present study is to assess the explanatory value of the concept of the World Soul in the cosmological account of Plato&rsquo / s Timaeus. The World Soul plays a crucial role in the account of the world of Becoming in the Timaeus and in Plato&rsquo / s philosophy of science. The World Soul explains why there is motion at all in the universe and sustains the regularity and uniformity of the motion of the celestial objects. Its constitution and the way it is generated by the Demiurge endow it an intermediary status between the world of Being and the world of Becoming. Through this status the World Soul facilitates the applicability of the items of the former world (Forms and Numbers) in the explanation of the latter, hence makes natural science possible. The appreciation of the place of the World Soul in the natural philosophy of Plato leads us to a better place to view Plato&rsquo / s contribution to ancient natural philosophy and science.