Abstract                                                                              For long the peace researchers have studied peace in relation to war or to a greater extent negative peace than a positive peace. You may ask what happened with peace? This thesis aims to gain how peace, and positive peace, may be investigated and concretized in a time when states seem more concerned to invest in international commitments like NATO and weapon arsenals than invest in solidarity, diplomatic or peaceful settlements.   Through a literary method with an exploratory design the problem statement is assayed in three different ethical perspective. The analyse of the problem statement; Based on cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and feminist peace ethics, how should positive peace be framed in a time of state emergency? is analysed, interpreted, and compared from the main perspective of cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and feminism peace ethics. Since peace ethic is not one besides a pluralistic ethic, peace ethics, the conclusion is that they all contribute to and welcome a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary development of the framework for further peace researcher. Besides some contradictions the investigated ethical perspective is unit that peace should be studied and conceptualized through peace and be framed in a nonpatriarchal language. Hence, the majority of the chosen ethical perspectives support a combination of micropolitics with the engagement of the individual to a macro politic with transnational covenants and with a greater role of responsibility for United Nation to promote and concretize peace. The ethical contradictions for peace consider the questions of responsibility, commitments, and interference how to realize peace. Future research questions should be raised whether and how diminished poverty is to embody peace? The main conclusion is that peace accelerates more peace and peace generates the benefits of prosperity and justice, why peace should be concretized and promoted in a time of stat emergency.     Keywords:  Ethics of Peace, Positive Peace, Qualitative Peace, Promote Peace, Illustrate Peace, Peace Researcher, Stat Emergency, Cosmopolitanism, Internationalism, Feminist Peace Ethics.

This thesis presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent years have seen a surge of interest in Bayle, there is as yet no consensus on how to interpret Bayle’s ambiguous stance on reason and religion, and how to make sense of the Dictionnaire: although specific parts of the Dictionnaire have received much scholarly attention, the work has hardly been studied as a whole, and little is known about how the Dictionnaire was influenced by Bayle’s polemic with Jurieu. This thesis aims to establish a new method for reading the Dictionnaire, under a dual premise: first, that the work can only be rightly understood when placed within the immediate context of its production in the 1690s; second, that it is only through an appreciation of the mechanics of the work as a whole, and of the role played by its structural and stylistic particularities, that we can attain an appropriate interpretation of its parts. Special attention is paid to the heated theological-political conflict between Bayle and Jurieu in the 1690s, which had a profound influence on the project of the dictionary and on several of its major themes, such as the tensions in the relationship between the intellectual sphere of the Republic of Letters and the political state, but also the danger of religious fanaticism spurring intolerance and war. The final chapters demonstrate that Bayle’s clash with Jurieu was also one of the driving forces behind Bayle’s reflection on the problem of evil; they expose the fundamentally problematic nature of both Bayle’s theological association with Jurieu, and his self-defence in the second edition of the Dictionnaire. The title of this thesis comes from Herman Melville’s novel: ‘Pierre, or the Ambiguities’.

This thesis places Chaucer within the tradition of philosophical poetry that begins in Plato and extends through classical and medieval Latin culture. In this Platonic tradition, poetry is a self-reflexive epistemological practice that interrogates the conditions of art in general. As such, poetry as metapoetics takes itself as its own object of inquiry in order to reinforce and generate its own definitions without regard to extrinsic considerations. It attempts to create a poetic-knowledge proper instead of one that is dependant on other modes for meaning. The particular manner in which this is expressed is according to the idea of the loss of the Golden Age. In the Augustinian context of Chaucer’s poetry, language, in its literal and historical signifying functions is an effect of the noetic fall and a deformation of an earlier symbolism. The Chaucerian poems this thesis considers concern themselves with the solution to a historical literary lament for language’s fall, a solution that suggests that the instability in language can be overcome with reference to what has been lost in language. The chapters are organized to reflect the medieval Neoplatonic ascensus. The first chapter concerns the Pardoner’s Old Man and his relationship to the literary history of Tithonus in which the renewing of youth is ironically promoted in order to perpetually delay eternity and make the current world co-eternal to the coming world. In the Miller’s Tale, more aggressive narrative strategies deploy the machinery of atheism in order to make a god-less universe the sufficient grounds for the transformation of a fallen and contingent world into the only world whatsoever. The Manciple’s Tale’s opposite strategy leaves the world intact in its current state and instead makes divine beings human. Phoebus expatriates to earth and attempts to co-mingle it with heaven in order to unify art and history into a single monistic experience. Finally, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale acts as ars poetica for the entire Chaucerian Performance and undercuts the naturalistic strategies of the first three poems by a long experiment in the philosophical conflict between art and history. By imagining art and history as epistemologically antagonistic it attempts to subdue in a definitive manner poetic strategies that would imagine human history as the necessary knowledge-condition for poetic language.

This study examines the role of history in the writings of the English deists, a group of heterodox religious controversialists who were active from the last quarter of the seventeenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century. Its main sources are the published works of the deists and their opponents, but it also draws, where possible, on manuscript sources. Not all of the deists were English (one was Irish and another was of Welsh extraction), but the term ‘English Deists’ has been used on the grounds that the majority of deists were English and that they published overwhelmingly in England and in English. It shows that the deists not only disagreed with their orthodox opponents about the content of sacred history, but also about the relationship between religious truth and historical evidence. Chapter 1 explains the entwining of theology and history in early Christianity, how the connection between them was understood by early modern Christians, and how developments in orthodox learning set the stage for the appearance of deism in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Each of the following three chapters is devoted to a different line of argument which the deists employed against orthodox belief. Chapter 2 examines the argument that certain propositions were meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false irrespective of any historical evidence which could be marshalled in their support, as it was used by John Toland and Anthony Collins. Chapter 3 traces the argument that the actions ascribed to God in sacred history might be unworthy of his goodness, beginning with Samuel Clarke’s first set of Boyle Lectures and then progressing through the writings of Thomas Chubb, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and William Warburton. Chapter 4 charts the decline of the category of certain knowledge in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the rise of probability theory, and the effect of these developments on the deists’ views about the reliability of historical evidence. Chapter 5 is a case-study, which reads Anthony Collins’s Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) in light of the findings of the earlier chapters. Finally, a coda provides a conspectus of the state of the debate in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, focusing on the work of four writers: Peter Annet, David Hume, Conyers Middleton, and Edward Gibbon.

Knowing is often framed by language; this moving arrangement of parts helps us make sense of our surround, rendering possible ways of relating, acting, and responding. Situated yet unsettled, the play of language enables us to mediate distances, to make sense of our frames while seeking other ways of being with and for. Through dialogue, these works attempt to reroute and reorient so that we may learn to see each other — and to see ourselves.

Det finns en utbredd kritik riktad mot Europadomstolen och dess tillämpning av religionsfriheten (artikel 9 i Europakonventionen). Akademiker har anklagat domstolen för att ha demonstrerat enbiasi fall som rör islam och slöjan. Domstolens bedömningar har upplevts som godtyckliga. Muslimer har framhävt att de upplever att de inte kan räkna med att få en rättvis domstolsprocess. Denna allvarliga kritik mot Europadomstolen ligger till grund för studiens övergripande syfte som är att undersöka vilka förutsättningar som finns för rättvisa i fall som rör religionsfriheten och slöjan.                       Forskare har uppmanat domstolen att anamma fyra proceduriella rättvisekriterier (deltagande, neutralitet, respekt och tillit) i syfte att åstadkomma rättvisa domstolsprocesser. Studien börjar därför med att analysera det huvudsakliga materialet, fyra rättsfall som alla behandlar en slöjbärande muslimsk kvinna utifrån de proceduriella rättvisekriterierna. Dessa kriterier kompletteras med en moralfilosofisk förståelse för alla individers grundläggande rätt till rättfärdigande. Studiens tes är dock att en proceduriell förståelse av rättvisa riskerar att vara otillräcklig. Det teoretiska ramverket består därför även av en substantiell förståelse av rättvisa, som istället för att fokusera på domstolens tillvägagångssätt fokuserar på utfall. Resultatet bekräftar denna tes genom att först anamma en förståelse för att vårt praktiska förnuft riskerar att vara invävt med ideologi. Det är inte förrän vi tillämpar ett dekonstruerande och dekoloniserande perspektiv som vi ser vad det är som hindrar domstolen från att upprätta substantiell rättvisa för slöjbärande kvinnor. Slöjan som symbol och sekularism som begrepp har tillskrivits särskilda värden vilket gör att domstolen förstår dessa som i direkt strid med varandra. Det är inte förrän domstolen självkritiskt reflekterar över och dekonstruerar dessa inneboende värden som substantiell rättvisa är möjligt. Studiens uppfattning är att muslimska slöjbärande kvinnor systematiskt nekas en verklig möjlighet till upprättelse i Europadomstolen. / The European Court of the Human Rights has been widely criticized regarding its implementation of the freedom of religion (article 9 in the European Convention on Human Rights). Researchers have noticed that the Court has demonstrated a bias in cases concerning Islam and the Islamic veil. The Courts judgements have been understood as arbitrary and European Muslims have argued that they do not have a fair chance to a just court procedure. This serious critique aimed at the Court grounds the aim of this study which is to explore the conditions for justice regarding freedom of religion cases and the Islamic veil in the European Court of Human Rights.                        Researchers have advised the court to apply four procedural justice criteria (participation, neutrality, respect and trust) in order to secure just and fair court procedures. Therefore, from a procedural understanding of justice, the study starts with an analysis of the main material, which is four cases, all concerning women wearing the Islamic veil. The theoretical framework is supplemented with a moral understanding of everyone’s basic right to justification and the two procedural justice criteria reciprocity and generality. However, the thesis of this study is that a procedural understanding of justice might be unsatisfying when discovering the general conditions for justice in the Court. The theoretical framework therefore needs to include substantive justice. Instead of focusing on pure procedural justice itaims at establishing substantively just outcomes. The result of this study confirms this thesis by acknowledging that our practical reason might be infused with ideology. It is not until a deconstructing and decolonial perspective is applied that it becomes clear what is hampering the court from establishing substantively just outcomes for women wearing the Islamic veil. As the veil and the term secularism has been ascribed certain values and ideas, the court put these two phenomena in direct contrast with each other. Substantive justice is not achievable until the court, in a self-critical manner deconstructs these values and ideas. The main result of this study is that until then, Muslim women wearing the Islamic veil are systematically denied substantive justice.

Through my own professional experience, the essay explores how place may have significance for exercising practical knowledge. It also sheds light on the conditions and qualities surrounding my, as therapist, presence in interpersonal meetings, as well as perspectives in relation to meetings around life issues. Of special notice is place as nature and garden. With support in stories as representations and in dialogue with philosophers, several different perspectives and analyses are shown about the place's importance for the pursuit of practical knowledge. The drive of the research is supported by three themes, place, body, meeting. They lead the survey forward in dialogue with Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Buber preferably together with geography professor, Edward Relph and researchers and writers within the fields of practical knowledge and naturebased interventions. The essay uncovers a complex area of understanding. It puts emphasis on the relationship between us as humans and our environment. In this relationship, place is of importance to practical knowledge. Interplay and movement between different approaches emerges as a common denominator.

The present study has a threefold aim: First, the theoretical aim is to give a contribution to refinement of the theory of dialogue based feminist ethics, concerning the understanding of judgment and narration within such an ethics.  The study also has an empirical aim, defined as to clarify what kind of knowledge, relevant to the moral judgment of an engaged outsider actor, can be received from dialogical interpretation and analysis of a limited selection of critically reflecting life stories. Third, a methodological aim is defined as to develop an approach to interpretation and analysis of reflecting life stories, which renders the storyteller visible as a reflecting moral subject, and makes the story accessible as a source of knowledge for the moral judgment of an engaged outsider actor. The thesis combines philosophical reflection and argumentation, with a narrative-hermeneutic method for interpretation of life stories, relating the two to each other in a hermeneutic process.  The theoretical reflection draws on Seyla Benhabibs theory of communicative ethics. A dialogue based model for moral justification and a likewise dialogue based model for political legitimacy are at the heart of this universalistic theory, although in combination with a conception of a narratively and hermeneutically constituted context sensitive moral judgment, based on Hannah Arendt’s concept “enlarged thought”. In the reflection, this model is related to other feminist theorizing within the tradition of dialogue based feminist ethics, as found in the works of Iris M. Young, Georgia Warnke and Shari Stone-Mediatore. The empirical study draws on three critically reflecting life stories from Israeli-Palestinian women activists for a just peace. The methodology for interpretation and analysis that is worked out combines dialogical interpretation as presented in Arthur W. Frank’s socio-narratology with a method for structural analysis derived from Shari Stone-Mediatores theory of storytelling as an expression of political resistance struggle. The results show that some stories drawing on marginalized experiences have a potential­ to stimulate further public debate through their capacity to enable a stereoscopic seeing, elucidating a tension between ideologically structured discourse and non-linguistic experience; implying that narrative-hermeneutic competence should be considered crucial for public debate.

I denna uppsats har jag studerat Konflikten i Antiochia, utifrån två aktuella perspektiv på Paulus - ”Nya Perspektivet på Paulus” och ”Paulus inom judendomen”. Syftet har varit att definiera och klarlägga den huvudsakliga innebörden i de två respektive perspektiven samt att utifrån den förståelsen göra en jämförande analys med hjälp av den valda perikopen. Jag har också sökt analysera vilka konsekvenser perspektiven kan få för vår förståelse av Paulus. För att avgränsa uppgiften har jag utgått från ett urval av forskare inom respektive perspektiv. Dessa är för NPP: E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn och N.T. Wright. För PIJ har jag främst utgått från material av Mark Nanos och Magnus Zetterholm. För att kunna göra perspektiven rättvisa presenterar jag också en kort beskrivning av det ”Traditionella Perspektivet på Paulus” eftersom det är det perspektiv som i lite varierande form har varit det dominerande genom historien. Jag har också gjort några förhoppningsvis förtydligande utvikningar kring hur det gick till när judendom och kristendom skiljdes åt samt ett kort avsnitt kring begreppet bordsgemenskap. Slutsatsen i uppsatsen är att perspektiven förvisso skiljer sig åt på flera punkter men att de till övervägande del ligger nära varandra. Detta är särskilt tydligt vad gäller de vetenskapliga drivkrafterna och metoderna som respektive perspektiv använder sig av.

Joseph Butler's moral thought and the ethical rationalism of Samuel Clarke, and his followers, John Balguy and Richard Price, are frequently distinguished, as a result of: (a) Butler’s empirical method (e.g., Kydd, Sturgeon); (b) Butler's emphasis upon self-love in the 'cool hour passage' (e.g., Prichard, McPherson); (c) Butlerian conscience, where, on a neo-Kantian reading, Butler surpassed the Clarkeans by conveying a sense of Kantian 'reflective endorsement' (e.g., Korsgaard, Darwall). The neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans in (c) are consistent with (d) Francis Hutcheson's and David Hume's criticisms of the Clarkeans; (e) modern criticisms of rational intuitionism that follow Hutcheson and Hume (e.g., Mackie, Warnock); and (f) the contention that the Clarkeans occupied an uneasy position within 'post-restoration natural law theory' (e.g., Beiser, Finnis). (d)-(e) thus underpin the distinction between Butler and the Clarkeans in (a)-(c), where the Clarkeans, unlike Butler, are criticised for representing moral truth as the passive, and self-evident, perception of potentially uninteresting facts. This study responds to (a)-(f), by arguing that Butlerian and Clarkean conscience possessed more than one referent; so that conscience meant an individual's experience of his own judgement and God’s judgement and the rational moral order. As a result of their shared theory of conscience, Butler and the Clarkeans held the same theory of moral development: moral agents mature as they move from obeying conscience according to only one of conscience's referents, to obeying conscience because to do so is to satisfy each of conscience's referents. In response to (a)-(b), this study demonstrates that the Clarkeans agreed with Butler’s method and 'cool hour': natural considerations of individual judgement and self-interest were necessary aspects of the progress towards moral maturity in both Butler and the Clarkeans. With respect to (c), it is argued that Butler and the Clarkeans shared the same understanding of practical moral reasoning as part of their shared understanding of conscience and moral development. This study places limits upon proto-Kantian readings of Butler, and neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans, while making it inconsistent to divide Butler and the Clarkeans on the basis of Butlerian conscience. In answer to (c)-(f), Clarkean conscience shows that the Clarkeans were neither complacent nor ‘externalists’. Clarkean conscience highlights how the Clarkeans positioned themselves within the tradition of Ciceronian right reason and Thomistic natural law. Consequently, in both Butler and the Clarkeans, the intuition of moral truth was not the passive perception of an 'independent realm' of normative fact, but the active encounter, in conscience, with reason qua the law of God’s nature, human nature, and the created universe.