This dissertation explores how, according to Thomas Aquinas, the operations of the sensitive soul are necessary for ordinary (i.e., not mystical) human contemplation, and for the acquisition of knowledge which precedes contemplation. / The sensitive soul is the soul possessed by all sentient beings, that is, animals, and thus, in examining the role of the sensitive soul in human contemplation we learn about the way the animal side of our nature participates in contemplation. / According to Aquinas, we possess natural inclinations, which direct us to our proper ends, our proper good. Knowledge of truth is also a good to which we are naturally inclined. / Because we are sentient beings we are guided in the pursuit of our good by the cogitative power and the sensitive appetite. The cogitative power enables us to recognize objects as useful or harmful to us, while the sensitive appetite causes us to react to these objects as being attractive or repulsive. Since we are guided by these powers towards our proper good, even in the pursuit of knowledge we turn towards those objects to which our cogitative power and the sensitive appetite orient us. The sensitive appetite is the seat of passions, and among them of love, desire and delight. Love, desire and delight guide and accompany our pursuit of knowledge. The passions of love and delight also accompany the act of contemplation. / The operations of the sensitive soul enter into contemplation in two ways. On the one hand, the intellect depends on the assistance of the operations of the sensitive soul. On the other hand, the intellect influences the sensitive soul causing it to participate in the acts of the intellect in a passive way. In these two ways the sensitive soul contributes to our acquisition of knowledge and our enjoyment of contemplation.

In this dissertation I argue that Hegel and Heidegger can be best understood as engaged in an immanent critique and internal reformulation of Kant's transcendental idealism. I show that viewing their respective projects from this common ground allows one to understand the divergent paths they take in their attempt to overcome what they see as the overly epistemological and formal aspects of transcendental philosophy. While both turn to an ontological and historical understanding of the transcendental conditions encountered in Kant, Hegel attempts to further complete the critical project of self-grounding and self-determination, while Heidegger tries to show a necessary and constitutive finitude that renders any complete self-determination impossible. I conclude by arguing that the difficulty in accounting for the ontological independence of nature in both Hegel and Heidegger betray the extent to which they are still heirs to the tradition of transcendental idealism.

This work develops meta-political account of our relationships to animals that is informed by the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. While previous scholarship on Levinas and animals has underscored his ethics, I give closer attention to his political theory in this context. Chapter I shows that Levinas's discussion of our responsibilities to animals in "The Paradox of Morality" trades on a political vocabulary in a paradoxical way. I explore this paradox in logical and temporal terms in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3 I explore a third, historical permutation of this paradox, and show how it can be implemented in a radical interpretation of our own history. This reinterpretation is explored through Levinas's "The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights," and shows that our narrations of ourselves, and our human identities, necessarily conceal more primordial political and historical relationships with animals.

The aim of this paper is to illuminate the ways in which working class women are invisible within the feminist and ecofeminist movements. Using the faces and forces of oppression as presented by Iris Marion Young and Hilde Lindemann, I show how the working class experiences oppression. I also show how oppression based on class differs from that based on gender and how these differences contribute to the invisibility of working class women within feminism. In the second section, I use Val Plumwood and Karen J. Warrens versions of ecofeminist philosophy to show how working class women are again absent. Were ecofeminists to include working class women, specifically rural folks and farmers, the idea of attunedness to the land could be both better understood and incorporated within the environmental movement at large.

Through the concept of orientation, this essay attempts to establish a philosophical account of the structure of our daily lives. By examining Kants notion of orientation and Heideggers response to Kant, I highlight the importance of the fact that orientation comes from the world, not simply from our ability to determine our position in the world by means of a coordinate system. Consequently, I argue, the concrete instantiation of a life given in a narrative can supplement the structure that the theoretical framework of justice, which establishes the principles guiding the institutions of our society, claims to leave undetermined. This texture fills the space of justice and culture with tangible things and practices that make up our daily life. The novel America America is used as a diagnostic tool to illuminate the forces and opportunities found in our culture that need to be either recognized and avoided, or discovered, revealed, and spoken for. I suggest that instrumental reason and the attainment of mere pleasure, as a cultural forces guiding our practices, fail to provide a tenable answer to the question of the good life and that they should be avoided when we are considering the ultimate how and what of the practices that make up the structure of our lives. In response to the failure of instrumental reason, I propose a deepening of our practices by way of familiarity (through closeness) and accomplishment (through engagement) with the things that are integral to practices such as making maple syrup and preparing a meal.

There is a dominant conception of sex in American society that has profound effects on our sexual lives. Often this can be a negative influence because our societys conception is distorted. My thesis considers how this skewed view on sex and sexuality results in the presence of shame and guilt in our sexual lives. I first define societys conception of sex and present it visually through fashion advertising. Each of the pornographic elements (objectification, submission, hierarchy and violence) utilized in advertising are explained. The advertisements are meant to provide a visual portrayal of societys conception of sex, which is relevant to the concept of the gaze; an important aspect of shame. Second, I provide a philosophical account of shame and guilt. I illustrate how our societys conception of sex can instigate these emotions into our sexual lives even though they are often unfounded. Finally, I attempt to resolve the invalid shame and baseless guilt we experience in our sexual lives through the notion of sexual self-respect, which is a variant of the philosophical concept of self-respect. As individuals we have some influence in diminishing the invalid shame and baseless guilt we experience in our sexual lives. However, society has a responsibility to formulate a conception of sex that is more conducive to our actual lived sexual experiences. Therefore, the solution resides in the give and take relationships between the individual and society, between self-respect and respect and between society and the media. I present these changes in societys conception of sex as the possibility of seeing advertising that utilizes erotic elements rather than pornographic elements, and the use of models that more accurately portray us as sexual beings.

Modern culture has not yet learned to live in harmony with the rest of the natural world. This is largely because we are afflicted with inadequate institutions and personal habits. These habits and institutions are also responsible for many social ills sexism, homophobia, etc. In particular, the imperium is a way of thinking and acting which encourages us to practice a heavy-handed form of standardization; it encourages us to ignore particularity. These habits and institutions the imperium are a result of, and reinforced by, our interpersonal interactions. The standardization of these interactions drains the wildness out of them. But to relate to an other in an ethical manner, I must assume that the other is wild, with its own integrity, will, and path. Because our experiences in wilderness are radically different than our experiences outside wilderness, the wilderness can instill in us different, better habits and understanding of relationships. In particular, the wildness of wilderness shows us the falseness of the standardized ideas and beliefs. This wildness also causes us to forge new habits of relating to others, and new beliefs about relationships and others. These new habits are social benefits, especially once we allow them to reform our identity.

The goal of my thesis is to understand why Kant thinks that transcendental idealism can secure empirical realism, the idea that there really exists an objective world that we can come to know through experience. I maintain that, according to Kant, the possibility of coming to know objective reality depends upon the possibility of referring to objects, which itself, Kant thinks, can be explained by transcendental idealism. The transcendental idealist worldview is supposed by Kant to explain the possibility of referring to objects because it recognizes that objects must conform to cognition and not the other way around. Therefore, I explore what Kant means by objects conforming to cognition. I start with the fact that Kant says that the conditions for the possibility of our experience of objects must be identical with the conditions for the possibility of those objects themselves. I then argue that this means that according to the transcendental idealist worldview, objective reality, if it is to be full-blooded objective reality, must be essentially able to show up for us in experience. In opposition to this worldview stands what Kant calls transcendental realism, the prevailing worldview that supposes that full-blooded objective reality simply cannot be essentially able to show up for us in experience. Kant says that the prevailing transcendental realist worldview, of which he claims all philosophies hitherto are variations, will never be able to explain the possibility of referring to objects, and that only his transcendental idealism can. Because Kant imputes so much importance to the opposition, I elaborate the distinction between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, and clarify why only the latter can, as the former cannot, explain the possibility of referring to objects and thus the possibility of knowing an objective world, and thereby secure an empirical realism.

This dissertation analyzes the doctrine of mind-body identity in Baruch Spinoza to discover if there is something in his metaphysical doctrine that is analogous to the way that Thomas Aquinas views the nature of the relationship between mind and body in human beings. The argument put forth in this work is that Aquinas’s hylomorphism, in which the human soul is the form of the human person, both bodily and mentally, is echoed in Spinoza’s doctrine of the conatus. No dependence upon Aquinas is implied in this comparative study, but merely the argument that the ways that Spinoza and Aquinas conceive of the mind-body relationship specifically, and human existence more broadly, have some very interesting parallels that have not been observed sufficiently by other interpretation of their work. Furthermore, it is a part of the purpose of this dissertation to suggest that the ways that Spinoza and Aquinas analyze the nature of human existence in the universe, especially organic existence, can provide helpful insights that could enrich contemporary philosophy as it tries to work, in conjunction with modern science, to understand the way that mind and body are present in human beings. The study is divided into six chapters which provide the following steps in the argument. The first chapter introduces the problems related to the subject of mind and body in both Spinoza and Aquinas, establishing the parameters of the research. Chapter two looks at the Aristotelian background of hylomorphism and argues that it is still a philosophically respectable theory. Aquinas’s further development of the doctrine of hylomorphism beyond Aristotle’s own foundational theory is the focus of the third chapter. Chapter four turns to Aquinas’s discussion of the nature of mind and body identity. The next chapter deals substantively with Spinoza’s doctrine and in a preliminary way points to the affinity he has with Aquinas’s doctrine. Chapter six points explicitly to their similarities and shows how each of them argued for the immortality of the human “soul.” In this chapter, suggestions are made as to how Spinoza and Aquinas can be dialogue partners in contemporary philosophy of mind.

A “moral dilemma” is a situation in which there is more than one obligatory course of action, but to act on one choice means to not act upon the others. Moral dilemma arises when an action, or inaction, results in “wrongness” because other morally correct obligations are rendered unattainable. Sometimes prolonged exposure to moral dilemma leads to a phenomenon known as “moral distress.” Moral distress is a negative feeling or state that is experienced when a person makes moral judgments about a situation in which he or she is involved, but, due to one or more constraints, does not act upon those judgments. This inability to resolve conflicting moral judgments may be caused by a conflict of duty. The United States Military acknowledges situations of moral dilemma when soldiers experience difficulty in determining a correct course of action because of “right versus right” conflict in duty or in values. This happens, for example, when physicians who join the military assume a dual role – that of physician and military officer. The military physician must sometimes act without being provided a satisfactory professional conceptual model of a moral working-self for adjudicating potential conflicts in duties. A comparison of professional duties and ethics of the medical and military professions, a critique of methods of conflict resolution, and a review of issues of conflict may provide insights into instances of perceived moral dilemma. After examining these topics, I propose a moral topology of decision-making that allows military physicians the conceptual space to preserve professional and personal integrity while upholding professional standards of competence and ethical behavior embraced by both professions.