Denna studie fokuserar på framställningen av sekulära livsåskådningar i läromaterial för gymnasieskolans kurser i religionskunskap mellan 1980 och 2015. Studiens huvudfokus ligger på hur framställningen av de sekulära livsåskådningarna i läromaterialen liknar och skiljer sig med avseende på denna tidsperiod. För att kunna göra denna studie valdes tre läroböcker från de tre senaste läroplansperioderna (1970-1994, 1994-2011 och 2011-nutid) ut. Metoden för uppsatsen är en beskrivande idéanalys där vissa mätpunkter i form av analysfrågor ställts upp för att stödja uppsatsens frågeställningar. Analysen påvisade att vissa saker i framställningen av de sekulära livsåskådningarna består, såsom framställningen av livsåskådningarna som –ismer. En skillnad man kan se i framställningen av livsåskådningarna är att det i läroböcker från efter 2011 finns en större betoning på det levda livet och fler exempel från verkligheten. Det finns också vissa skillnader mellan hur begrepp såsom sekulär, sekularism och sekularisering används i böckerna och vilka sekulära livsåskådningar som faktiskt lyfts fram i böckerna. Det finns också vissa skillnader i hur sekulär religionskritik tas upp i böckerna.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka unga vuxnas förhållande till och sökande efter religion och andlighet i en postmodern europeisk kontext, där kommuniteten Taizé, belägen i Frankrike, tjänar som exempel på ett fenomen. Ett fenomen av andlighet och religion i en postmodern och sekulariserad samtid, vilka tillsynes är väsensskilda. Med hjälp av en fältstudie i Taizé samlades empiri in för att kunna svara på frågorna vad besökare där söker efter, vad som driver dem dit och hur detta är förenligt med deras vardag. Genom kvalitativa intervjuer med sju personer samlades deras berättelser in, och tolkades och analyserades influerade av en narrativ analysmetod. En metodisk ansats vald för att kunna komma åt den personliga upplevelsen och erfarenheten, ett ovanligt perspektiv inom fältet. Genom postmoderna och religionspsykologiska teoretiska perspektiv samt tidigare forskning kring pilgrimsresor, religion och sekularisering i Europa och ungdomars syn på religion i Sverige, förankrades, kontextualiserades och genomlystes de personliga berättelserna. Resultaten visar på en komplex relation mellan sekularisering, postmodernitet och religion – ej uteslutande varandra, utan istället formande nya sätt att tro och utöva religion eller spiritualitet. Studien visar också att det bland informanterna finns ett stort behov av vägledning, trygghet, reflektion samt en plats att mötas och diskutera stora livsfrågor, något som ej premieras i en postmodern kontext och som de saknar i sina dagliga liv.

Essay I analyses a sample of corporate codes in the Swedish banking sector. The purpose is to investigate the codes’ ethical status. Are they consistent with the values of fairness or are they instead at a risk of harming the employees? With regard to employees, eight of the nine codes in the material were found to (a) focus one-sidedly on their duties and responsibilities, (b) lack statements regarding their value to the firm, while carefully stating the importance of several other stakeholders, (c) have an anonymous or authoritarian tone, (d) say little regarding the substantial reasons why certain behaviour is forbidden or expected; some of the codes also (e) contained problematic freedom restrictions. The empirical investigation of code content and design leads us to the normative issue of whether such a design can be unfair and risks harming the employees. Departing from the values of equality, reciprocity, care and respect, eight of the nine codes are found to be at risk of being in conflict with these values. The socially responsible firm, which avoids risking employees’ welfare and self-respect, must consider rewriting such corporate codes. Essay II seeks to provide a richer moral assessment of the transactions, offers and working conditions in the labour market. Some of the most influential accounts have focused on either the act of consent (Nozick), the background conditions (Peter) or the quality of the offers (Olsaretti). I argue that all these aspects are ethically relevant and necessary to make agreements morally justified. This leads me to the conclusion that (a) unreasonable offers remain ethically flawed regardless of employees’ consent and adequate background conditions; (b) the mere act of consent is, nonetheless, ethically valuable; (c) there exist different kinds of demands, affected differently by whether they are properly consented to. Then, in a well-ordered liberal democracy (which constitute the necessary background conditions), to ascertain whether a firm’s offers and working conditions are morally sound, we need to know both their quality (how reasonable they are) and whether they have been properly consented to. A firm ends up with three moral responsibilities: (i) not to exploit the workers’ disadvantaged position in the labour market, which requires that they are offered only reasonable proposals, (ii) to inform employees in the contract situation of all the relevant aspects and working conditions associated with the job, thereby enabling proper consent, and (iii) once the worker is employed, to only implement working conditions of the kind that are possible to justify and consistent with treating the employees as persons. / <p>QC 20131010</p>

The goal of this paper is to create a positive account of Masahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley. A theory wherein Mori speculated on the relationship between one’s perceived affinity for a robot and the human-likeness of that same robot. Mori believed that the closer to a human a robot looked, the higher one’s affinity for it would be, until a certain point where the robot looked close enough to a human without being fully convincing. When this happened one would feel a negative affinity for the robot. Mori called this phenomenon the uncanny valley.  In later years, Mori’s theory has gained more popularity and is now applied outside of robotics. Most notably it is often applied to the medium of 3D animation and CGI, which is what this essay will be discussing when trying to create a positive account of the uncanny valley. To do so it will discuss the phenomenon in relation to some examples of 3D animation and CGI that critics have claimed reside in the uncanny valley. This essay will give an overview of what the uncanny valley actually entails as well as give an explanation of how the uncanny valley can be applied to 3D animation.  In order to create a positive account, this essay will claim that the positive aesthetic value that the uncanny valley can lead to is akin to that of Brecht’s idea of the distancing effect. This essay argues that the uncanny valley distances the viewer from what they are viewing and that makes the viewer gain didactic knowledge of both CGI and their own relationship to technology. This essay will argue that this is a positive aesthetic experience that is unique to the uncanny valley.

In this essay I try to understand the philosophical value of Nietzsche's critique of morality in Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, a book that in the context of Nietzsche studies has often been overlooked. I do this by examining the way in which he criticizes the ungrounded assumptions or so-called prejudices of moral objectivity and the idea that there exists an absolute morality. I also explore the positions from which he criticizes these prejudices, namely from ideas of subjectivity and history, and their respective relation to morality. Finally, I reflect upon what Nietzsche has to say about the possibility of a new understanding of ethics by exploring the implications of his view of bodily affections and linguistic concepts.

Essän handlar framför allt om tre teman, förutom själva sakfrågan om huruvida jag ska läsa till präst eller inte. Det första jag tänker på är att den har handlat om att vi alla är berättelser och att även Bibeln är berättelser och att det finns lika många ingångar att läsa dessa texter som det finns vinklar att närma sig vad en människa är. Det andra är tilliten och känslan av att vara buren och där tänker jag att det handlar om att lita på att vi i grunden är goda, att världen vill oss väl, när vi låter livet hända oss och när vi känner oss älskade och trygga. När vi kan säga nej kan vi säga ja. Och att vi behöver vara i den sortens trygghet för att kunna älska. Och det tredje jag tänker att det har handlat om är mitt möte med mig själv. Hannah Arendt talar om att vara två-i-en. Och det har givit mig otroligt mycket att möta mig själv på det här sättet. Som att jag förstått att jag kan leda mig själv, att jag kan ha en verklig dialog med mig själv.Det har framför allt handlat om vikten av process, om att få tvivla och få reflektera och att i det uppstår något som är lugnt. Lugnare.”Ibland måste man dra ut ett uttryck ur språket, lämna in det till rengöring, - och sedan kan man igen sätta det i omlopp.”  Och ett sådant uttryck är ”reflektion”.

During the later part of the 13th century, two female convents of the Dominican order were founded in the realm of Sweden, both in the diocese of Linköping. The Dominican order first came to Sweden as early as in the 1220’s, and the history of the brothers’ convents has been described to a much greater extent – at least up to the end of the 14th century –than the history of the sisters. Therefore, a conclusive history of the female convents is still lacking. In this master thesis, I aim to describe the foundation and the history of the Swedish sisters of the Order of Preachers from around 1270 to the closing of the convents in the Reformation Era, around 1540, and also attempt to clarify who the benefactors of the convents were. In part due to the fervour of the reformators, there is a substantial deficiency when it comes to source material pertaining to the Dominican order’s history in Sweden and especially concerning the sisters’ convents. I will therefore try to compile all available relevant source material, in order to build a comprehensive picture of the history of the convents. This is however not enough when it comes to describing the everyday life of the sisters. To this end, it becomes necessary to partake of research concerning the female convents of the Order of Preachers and the spiritual development in the rest of Europe, mainly in France, Germany and Italy, and compare it to what the Swedish source material can reveal. This research will also be used as a comparison with prominent features in the Swedish convents. Primarily the Swedish source material consists of charters and annals, but there are also some literary sources that will come into consideration. The theoretical framework discusses the possibilities of applying gender theory to the history of the sisters’ convents, furthermore a sociological approach to networks of families as well as any possible mentalities that could have influenced medieval women in their decision to enter a monastery. Certain modern research on Swedish female monasteries of different orders, or with a different historical aim from the one applied in this thesis, will also be discussed. The conclusions reached are that a modified version of gender theory might possibly be applied to the results, furthermore that there were visible connections between the patrons of the convents even though they are difficult to interpret, and that the mentality of women has to be taken into consideration when trying to outline the history of medieval monasteries. Another conclusion is that there still remains a great academic effort to establish and write the history of the Order of Preachers in Sweden in the middle ages, and the Orders’ impact on society, in its entirety.

Several studies have argued that there exists a hegemonic, secularist discourse within Swedish classrooms, which implies a way of talking about religion as something irrational, outdated and restrictive in concern for individual freedom. Within this discourse, a non-religious or atheistic position is seen as neutral and unbiased, whereas a religious position is considered the opposite. This, I mean, is problematic against the background of the Swedish curriculum, where it is stated that some of the main goals with religious education (RE) is to help students develop tolerance and understanding for other people, with other beliefs than one’s own. Thus, the aim with this paper is to investigate if and how, a teaching material that is being used within the Swedish RE education, can express a secularist discourse and what implications the results may have for a neutral RE. By using a modified version of discourse analysis together with theoretical contributions from Karin Kittelmann Flensner, I have analyzed four episodes of the audiovisual teaching material/reportage series Från Sverige till himlen to try to answer how one, from a critical perspective on a secularist discourse, can interpret representations of religion in the reportage series. The conclusion is that the series portrays religion in accordance with especially four themes within the secularist discourse, namely; Criticism of Religion, Prime Time of History, Individualism and a Neutral Position. These results indicate that students need to be trained to critically examine not only religion, but also, and maybe in particular, what is taken for granted as the normal and neutral in a secular culture.

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ABSTRACT OCH NYCKELORD    Böneutrop har debatterats mycket i Sverige sedan våren 2018, en bidragande orsak är stiftelsen Växjö muslimer som fick tillstånd av polismyndigheten att ha högtalarsända böneutrop. Syfte är att studera religionens plats i det offentliga rummet genom att analysera böneutrop i Växjö. För att belysa händelsen använder jag kvalitativ metod, baserad på överklagan till tingsrätten, mediedebatten samt lagstiftningen. Min uppsats visar på att religionen har ett stort utrymme i det offentliga rummet i Sverige, oberoende om individen är troende eller inte.