Yes / The Gambia has experienced three significant political crises in its history: the attempted coup of 1981, the successful coup of 1994, and the latest events in 2016-17 when President Yahya Jammeh, having exercised semi-authoritarian power since 1994, was defeated at the ballot box but refused to step down until he was finally forced to do so. Using academic, media, social media and interview material, this article examines all three processes and their aftermaths, in particular the latter, through the lens of ‘small state’ politics. The article demonstrates that the small size of the population, elite, and landmass indeed matters in driving Gambian political processes. In 2023, several post-2017 processes, including constitutional change, transitional justice and elections, are playing out within the confines of the small state. This article then assesses to what extent a ‘New Gambia’, to use current President Adama Barrow’s phrase, has emerged. / The full-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 21 Aug 2025.

Thesis advisor: Marina B. McCoy / Thesis advisor: Peter Kreeft / An in-depth study of Karol Wojtyła's creative synthesis of medieval and modern thought, in which he brings together 1) traditional Thomistic metaphysics and anthropology and 2) the insights of contemporary phenomenology, in order to understand the reality of man as person in his integral totality. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Issued also as thesis, Paris. / Bibliography: p. [349]-356.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-155).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1994. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-104).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-155).

Thesis (Ph. L.)--Catholic University of America, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-101).

Thesis (S.T.D.)--Catholic University of America, 1933. / Bibliography: p. 133-137.

Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms fails to account properly for personalized experiences; it cannot provide a basis for understanding how some experiences become personal while others do not. Our account of personalized experience will remain lacking as long as we follow Cassirer in viewing personalized experience as a non-necessary feature of other symbolic forms such as myth, language, religion, or art; instead it must be understood that personalized experience is grounded in an independent symbolic activity as basic to human cultural life as language, myth, or objectivating knowledge. This basic personalizing symbolic function is best understood as that same activity articulated in Gabriel Marcel’s phenomenological descriptions of the act of “creative fidelity.” Once this relationship has been grasped, it becomes possible to articulate a symbolic form of personalized experience by describing the unique way in which creative fidelity (as the personalizing symbolic function) spatializes, temporalizes, numeralizes (and as a result subjectifies/objectifies) its own distinct horizon of meaning (or: cultural world). The result will be a symbolic form, as Cassirer understands it, that is as far-reaching and fundamental to human cultural life as the three symbolic forms elaborated in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. By articulating this fourth symbolic form, we will have taken a significant step toward Cassirer’s ultimate goal of a robust philosophical anthropology.

Dans quelle mesure les fondements et les concepts essentiels du personnalisme français (1930-1950) permettent-ils d’envisager la compassion comme une voie de connaissance de la personne ? Tel est le problème auquel ce travail se confronte. La première partie analyse l’expérience de la compassion, à travers plusieurs de ses figures et de ses formes. Après avoir exposé les axes fondateurs du personnalisme français, la partie II montre que la compassion fait difficulté pour ce courant de pensée car elle met au jour ses tensions internes. La partie III confirme et nuance ce diagnostic à l’aide de l’étude de la place de la compassion dans l’œuvre de M. Nédoncelle et dans celle d’E. Mounier. La partie IV s’appuie sur la pensée de S. Weil pour proposer un renouvellement de ce personnalisme afin de remédier à cette minoration de la compassion. Enfin, dans la perspective d’un tel renouvellement, la dernière partie interroge le rapport du personnalisme et du christianisme. / To what extent do the foundations and essential concepts of French personalism (1930-1950) make it possible to consider compassion as a way to know the person ? Here is the problem this work faces. The first part analyses the experience of compassion through several figures and forms. After explaining the fundamental axes of French personalism, the second part shows that compassion is problematic to this current of thought because it brings to light personalism inner tensions. The third part confirms and tempers this diagnostic studying the role of compassion in M. Nédoncelle’s and E. Mounier’s works. The fourth part builds on S. Weil’s thought to offer a renewal of this personalism so as to remedy this underestimation of compassion. Finally, in the perspective of such a renewal, the last part questions the relation between personalism and Christianism.