acase@tulane.edu

It becomes quite evident that Sartre's philosophy has received much attention among scholars and commentators alike. Most of them however, have said little about his concept of alienation. The aim of this work is to remedy this lack--to show that Sartre's theory of alienation occupies an important place in his philosophy. The attempt is made especially to distinguish two kinds of alienation in Sartre: that of the early works, which is basically put in an ontological context, and that of the later works which is put in a rather different context, namely, the socioeconomic and historical context. It is our contention in this work, however, that there is no radical change between the two theories. That is, Sartre remains true to his earlier theory and that the change is basically in the form of expression The study shows also that Sartre does not provide us with an accurate solution to the problem of alienation. Linked to this failure, we believe, is his failure to establish his long-promised ethical theory. This difficulty, we argue, is rooted in his conception of man as a lack, a being which is its own nothingness and nihilation / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

Geophysical and geological data collected during cruises conducted on the lowermost Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers from 1999 through 2004 investigated the seasonal storage patterns of fine-grained sediment and the associated terrestrial organic carbon (TOC). We found that in the estuarine section of the Mississippi River, storage was dominated by estuarine trapping associated with salt-water wedge intrusion, with rapid rates of accumulation (mm-cm/day), whereas the Atchafalaya showed little wedge intrusion or storage due to the presence of un-dredged river-mouth bars. Above the estuarine region, bathymetric trapping was observed as the major mechanism of seasonal sediment storage, and as a result of the spring freshet, up to 40% of the stored mass was eroded. As a result of total confinement of the river by a complete levee system, channel down-cutting was measured below New Orleans. The layers being eroded are peats yielded radiocarbon ages of roughly 2100--4200 yBP, and are therefore identified as a previously unknown source of old organic carbon being supplied to the Gulf of Mexico. Finally, we investigated the lignin characteristics of the TOC being transported in association with the sand dominated bed-load as compared to the mud dominated suspended load. We found a statistically significant difference between the two lignin populations, as a result of hydrodynamic sorting in the high-energy Mississippi, while samples in the lower energy Atchafalaya showed a more mixed signal as a result of no sorting / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

In this work, I discuss Friedrich Nietzsche's views on the self and on man's relationship with the natural world. I argue that one of the dominant concerns in Nietzsche's writings is the critique of the traditional conception of selfhood. I also argue that Nietzsche's concern with the self is not purely critical, for his critique is fundamentally linked to an affirmation of the movement of self-overcoming, and to a call for the transfiguration of man's relationship to the natural world. The movement of self-overcoming, and the ramifications of Nietzsche's thinking for man's relationship to nature, are also discussed in the present work This work is divided into six chapters. In Chapter One, I discuss Nietzsche's analysis of selfhood in The Birth of Tragedy, and his distinction between the discourse of scientific rationalism and the Dionysian-Apollinian dialogue. In Chapter Two, I discuss Nietzsche's radical reflection on language, and show how this reflection calls into question the traditional conception of selfhood, and offers hope for a recovery of language In Chapter Three, I discuss Nietzsche's critique of metaphysical thinking, and show that, in Nietzsche's analysis, the genesis of the fundamental concepts of metaphysical thinking are essentially linked to the objectification of the ego. I then argue that Nietzsche's thinking represents an attempt to transgress the boundaries of metaphysics, a transgression that requires the de-objectification of the ego. In Chapter Four, I closely examine Nietzsche's critique of the traditional conception of selfhood, and show how Nietzsche displaces this conception by the notion of self-overcoming In Chapter Five, I discuss the general pattern of the movement of self-overcoming found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I then examine the radical repercussions that result from the displacement of the traditional conception of selfhood by the notion of self-overcoming. In Chapter Six, I focus further on one radical repercussion that follows from this displacement--the transfiguration of man's relationship to the natural world. I conclude that Nietzsche attempts to overcome the kind of thinking that provides the theoretical foundation for the technological control and exploitation of the natural world, and that Nietzsche's philosophizing can provide the philosophical foundation for an ecologically-oriented, environmentally-concerned way of thinking / acase@tulane.edu

In this dissertation, I will argue that recent work in philosophy of mind helps to illuminate the positive ethical doctrine of Friedrich Nietzsche. The point of contact between the two lies in their respective accounts of consciousness, which can be read as complementary to one another. The first two chapters deal with Nietzsche's concepts of the eternal return and amor fati, respectively. Rather than being a statement of traditional fate, I argue that the fate of amor fati is the self, conceived as the alternative to the rejected 'soul-hypothesis.' The eternal return, in a similar manner, is shown not to be a statement of determinism, but a way of situating the self. The alternative to the 'soul-hypothesis' is a narrative conception of the self; one's fate is constituted by both one's past and one's heredity. The self is not given, however; for Nietzsche, interpretation of these elements is an important creative act. The third chapter deals with the substrate of the self, the body, and how the interpretive process is understood at this level. The work of Paul Churchland provides an important link: his State-Space Semantics shares all the relevant presuppositions of Nietzsche's account of interpretation. The subsequent chapter deals with Churchland's Moral Network Theory, an extension of his State-Space Semantics. I show that the weaknesses of the Moral Network Theory can be addressed by precisely the account of the self presented in the second chapter. Daniel Dennett's account of the self used at this point, because it is both explicitly compatible with many of the details of Churchland's conception of the mind/brain, and similar in all important respects with Nietzsche's account of the self. In the final chapter, I address the weaknesses of Dennett's account: while taking a similar attitude towards the free will/determinism debate as Nietzsche, Dennett ultimately fails to produce a robust ethical theory. Using the insights gained from Dennett and Churchland, I construct Nietzsche's positive ethical position around the notion of taking responsibility as an active, non-consequentialist part of the interpretation of one's narrative self / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu