This thesis examines the claims of Jeffrey Timm and James Buchanan that the field of Comparative Philosophy is moving in a postmodern direction. I examine their conception of the postmodern and compare to both the most influential views of postmodernism and with my own understanding of postmodernism. To evaluate their claims I examine the journal Philosophy East and West, which I argue is representative of the field of Comparative Philosophy. I analyze the works of the editors of the journal and also do a statistical analysis of the journal to determine whether the field is becoming more postmodern. I conclude that Timm and Buchanan may be correct.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis of this dissertation is that the political dimension of Martin Heidegger's philosophical work has been widely misinterpreted in the United States, and that this misinterpretation has been caused by censorship, historical and political ignorance, and poor scholarship. This study reveals the extent to which Heidegger engaged in politically motivated editing of his work after the war, and shows how such edited German editions were used as a basis for many English translations of his work. It also shows that Heidegger suppressed the publication of some politically sensitive texts while he was alive, and that archival materials in different parts of Germany have been manipulated so as to protect Heidegger from critical scrutiny. Such practices have also been employed by (or in the service of) other philosophers who worked in Germany at the time; the manipulation of post-war editions of philosophical texts written in Germany between 1933-1945 seems to be a widespread phenomenon. To improve the US reader's understanding of the historical context of Heidegger's political thought, this study also relates Heidegger's professional and political actions to those of all of the other 213 professors of philosophy who taught at a German university between 1933 and 1945. Heidegger's political arguments are compared to those of the other philosophers who, as university Rectors, were in similar positions of political responsibility as Heidegger. The presentation of this new information allows the US reader to understand better the development of philosophy in Germany, and reveals the uniqueness of Heidegger's philosophical commitment to a particular version of National Socialist ideology. Finally, this study identifies the main sources of interpretive error in the US reception of Heidegger's political thought, and shows how philosophers can avoid such mistakes in the future.

The tendency to assume that Schiller's early works follow a pro-revolutionary program and from there to assume Schiller's positive uncritical anticipation of the French Revolution show great disregard for Schiller's highly articulated moral-philosophical concept of rebellion prior to 1789 and accordingly obscures the interpretation of Schiller's specific reactions to the French Revolution. Schiller's first writings on aesthetics and moral philosophy comprise a moral philosophical and teleological system with which Schiller analyzed the moral dynamics of political rebellions. This concept stem from Schiller's categorization of action dominated by either sensual drives or abstract reason and his use of these categories for the critical analysis of rebels and rebellion. These early categories reveal that Schiller's distance from the French Revolution should have come as no surprise, on the contrary, in light of this highly articulated concept of rebellion, anything more than ambivalence would have marked a surprising change of direction. In Chapter I, this system provides the basis for the analysis of Schiller's judgement of his own dramatic portrayal of rebels and rebellion and of those in his historical works. Schiller's portrayals of rebellion up to the execution of Louis XVI will be analyzed in order to demonstrate that his later concept of rebellion corroborates his early moral philosophy and teleological theories, and thus was not notably altered by the French Revolution. Schiller's distance shows no change in his written reactions at any point in the early French Revolution. In Chapter II examples from Schiller's most famous quotes regarding the French Revolution are discussed in context, in order to demonstrate that none of these letters, conversations, and events indicate anything but Schiller's ambivalence toward the French Revolution, in contrast to the ideologically polarized interpretations they have inspired, which have in turn clouded the understanding of Schiller's politics in general. Chapter III analyses Schiller's biography and publications from the years 1788–1796, in which Schiller's poetic and dramatic production decreased and during which Schiller undertook a study of aesthetics, years which coincidentally correlate with the French Revolution and the publication of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). This approximate synchronicity led to the theory that Schiller, disappointed by the political reality and under the dominant influence of Kant, turned his back on politics and sought refuge in the abstract world of philosophy. Since, however, Schiller was not shocked, and since his preoccupation with politics was never documentably stronger than directly after the execution of Louis XVI, it is evident that the disregard of Schiller's early writings is the prerequisite for the misleading canonical periodization of Schiller's concept of rebellion into the phases (1) hope for, (2) disappointment in, (3) flight from political rebellion.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The idea of progress found in the poetry of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley germinated in the intersection of Enlightenment philosophy and the millennial tradition. In this dissertation, I show that the spirit of scientific inquiry and the tradition of millennial prophecy come together in Romantic poetry to form a secular conception of human destiny and spiritual restoration. Mingling the spirit of anticipation and hope associated with the millennial tradition and the spirit of empirical observation found in Enlightenment philosophy, the Romantic poets reinterpret divine providence as moral and intellectual progress. In their reinterpretation of human progress, the Romantics transfer initiative from an intervening deity to the human mind itself. In Romanticism, the notion of a guiding presence in human history is replaced by a secular idea of providence based upon faith in human nature's essential goodness and potential. Examining the influence of Enlightenment philosophy on Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley, I show that the new Romantic myth of redemption was reinforced by empirical theories that promised to renovate society and the species through the rational observation of human behavior. In a reinterpretation of spiritual restoration and the millennial plot, the Romantic poets identify themselves as chosen prophets and internalize the saving and sanctifying power traditionally attributed to a divine redeemer. Combining Enlightenment philosophy's interest in cognitive processes with the millennial tradition's spirit of renewal and redemption, the Romantic poets introduce imagination as a visionary faculty capable of bringing a new world into creation. This dissertation focuses on the new myths of redemption forged by four Romantic poets. Close readings of Blake's Jerusalem, Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Wordsworth's The Prelude, and Shelley's Prometheus Unbound demonstrate how the Romantics adapt the millennial prospect and plot to a human and earth-centered theory of progress.

Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968) was a social scientist, religious reformer, photographer and Christian humanist who devoted his life to the study of Chinese urban and rural society. Gamble made four sojourns to China between 1908 and 1932. He served as research secretary for the Beijing YMCA and the Mass Education Movement at Dingxian. As a volunteer member of Princeton-in-Peking, he conducted major social-economic surveys of urban and rural north China, helped establish community service programs in Beijing, and pioneered in the teaching of sociology and social work in China. During his tenure, Gamble also used his camera to build up a visual archive of 5,000 black-and-white photographs which successfully captured the images of China during those critical years in its history. Through Gamble's life and work, the dissertation looks into the institutional history of the Princeton University center in China from 1906 to 1949, during which time its chief work was first to organize and operate the YMCA and then to run the Princeton School of Public Affairs at Yenching University. This study also seeks to analyze how Princeton-in-Peking, under the influence of both the Social Gospelers and institutional economists at home and the forces of reform and revolution in late Qing and early Republican China, shifted the focus of its efforts first to community service and social work and later to higher education in the social sciences. For the first time in the history of Christianity in China, Association work in Beijing demonstrated to the officialdom and the upper classes of the new Republic, that Christianity and the Chinese culture might not be incompatible. The motto of the May Fourth Movement, "To save China through science and democracy," and the missionary ideal of "Saving China through Christianity" for a time seemed to be united under the common goal of social uplift and reconstruction for the new Republic. In a very significant way, Sidney D. Gamble and Princeton-in-Peking reflected the rich intellectual and cultural interactions between the West and China in general and the United States and China in particular.

The main theme is the differences in response among the churches to the Shinto Shrine Issue in Korea under Japanese colonialism. The central focus is an inquiry into the possible reasons why some religious groups, including the Catholic and Methodist Churches, should choose the way of compromise, while others, such as the Presbyterian Church, represented by individual missionaries and the Non-Shrine Worship Movement and the Mount Zion Sect, chose the way of radical challenge and withdrawal. It is proposed in this study to concentrate on three major churches - the Roman Catholic, the Methodist and the Presbyterian.This study offers, firstly, a detailed analysis of the content of the debate, the attitudes and actions of the three churches towards the shrine problem in their historical evolution since 1931; secondly, an attempt is made to explain the different positions of the three churches in terms of the sociology of religion and the sociology of missions. The sociological consequences of religious experience provide a general framework. The main assumption is that the difference in ideological elements is more important in religious institutions than has been usually thought. In explaining the differences of position in the three churches, the following eight factors are proposed: (1) Theological emphasis; (2) Church structure; (3) World view; (4) Mission policy; (5) Relationship to nationalism; (6) Relationship to non-Christian religions; (7) Early historical experience; and (8) Nationalities of missionaries.The thesis is divided into two parts: (1) Part I (Chapters One to Three) reviews the theoretical and methodological literature relevant to the study of the Shinto Shrine Issue. It also surveys the introduction of the two principal forms of Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Protestantism) in Korea, and examines modern Japan, State Shinto and Christianity.(2) Part II (Chapters Four and Five) comprises a detailed analysis of the positions of the three Christian churches towards the shrine problem, and a systematic comparison of the different responses of the three churches by employing the above-mentioned eight factors.Three key factors are proposed in respect of the denominational division in the matter of the Shinto shrine question: theological emphasis, mission policy and church structure. Attention is also drawn to the historical discontinuity in motivation between the Non-Shrine Worship Movement by the fundamentalists and the recent political struggle for justice by the liberals. The legacy of the ordeal of the Shinto shrine controversy in the 1930s remains as an obstacle to the reconciliation between ultra-conservative theology and liberal 'minjung' theology. It is therefore demonstrated in this thesis that the particular form of religious outlook is a relevant factor in its own right, which is not to be reduced to other variables. Thus for the purpose of this study, the tools of Weber seem to prove more effective than do those of Marx.