Thesis advisor: Nasser Behnegar / This study traces Nietzsche's understanding of the meaning of culture through his first three Untimely Observations. Its goal is to show that culture [Kultur] occupies a central place in these essays because Nietzsche thinks that the cultivation [Bildung] of humanity within enclosed and humanly created spiritual horizons can prevent the spiritual degeneration of mankind in modern times. The source of this degeneration lies in modern natural science and the scientific study of history. Taken together these two pillars of modern pedagogy erode human moral foundations and paralyze practical ambitions by teaching relativism in the form of what Nietzsche calls: "the doctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts, types, and species, [and] of the lack of any cardinal difference between human and animal." Since Nietzsche explicitly affirms the theoretical "truth" of these doctrines despite holding them to be "deadly" for mankind, the study focuses primarily on the cultural solution he proposes to the practical problem that relativism poses to the flourishing of a great people. Although this solution is a complex one which Nietzsche went on to refine and develop in almost all of his subsequent writings, its core consists of the cultivation, emergence, and activity of a rare type of individual he calls the "genius," the "true human being," and the "redeeming human being" in the Untimely Observations, and who is dubbed a "Caesarian breeder and cultural dynamo [Gewaltmenschen der Cultur]" in Beyond Good and Evil. This exceptional individual creates self-inspired works of philosophy and art that raise insulating walls around the collective mind of his people, restraining their longing for scientific and historical knowledge by satisfying or cultivating it [Bildung] with self-created metaphysical "truths" and "images [Bild]" of their past, future, and even of nature itself. When these truths and images are embraced by a people a spiritual horizon is established around them which they consider it bad taste to transcend, and inside this horizon lies a world of "creative morality [schöpferischen Moral]" and "metaphysical meaningfulness" that, under the best circumstances, cultivates healthy human life. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

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Contained within the parameters of postmodern thought, particularly feminist critical perspectives on western epistemology, this thesis proceeds from the following arguments: that knowledge is political: that it possesses a reflexive and dialectical nature and that it is based upon interpretations of reality which are in potential, indeterminate in range. Within these boundaries, knowledge is viewed as a phenomenon subject to influence from social power structures. And western culture is observed to breed situations of epistemological inequality where knowers may become unjustly privileged or oppressed. / Focusing on arguments expounded by Lorraine Code, Patti Lather and Catherine Walsh, this thesis aims to explore how western culture may be observed to impose on consciousness and thereby lead to restriction of interpretive outcomes. Following this line of reasoning, the goal of this thesis is to consider how applications in deconstructionism may be used to emancipate the position of the oppressed knower.

In his influential essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, Donald Davidson argues that we cannot make sense of conceptual relativism, the doctrine that there could be incommensurably different systems of concepts applicable to a single world. According to Davidson, there is no criterion of identity for language that does not imply or presuppose the possibility that we interpret that language by means of our own language. Given some plausible assumptions, this implies that there is at most one conceptual scheme, one way of interpreting or representing the world. But then the very idea of a conceptual scheme is empty. The dissertation is an examination of Davidson’s reasoning, and a defence of a different position regarding conceptual relativism. I reject much of Davidson’s argumentation, and his radical (subordinate) conclusion that we would be able, at least in principle, to make sense of any language. Languages that we would be unable to translate or interpret, even in principle, are at least logically possible, in my view. However, this possibility should not be thought to imply or encourage conceptual relativism. In this respect, I think that Davidson and many of his critics have conflated the notion of a difference in conceptual scheme, which requires incommensurability between languages or systems of concepts, and mere conceptual difference. I argue that a genuinely alternative conceptual scheme would be associated with language unintelligible to us because of its relation to our language. For what is at issue, supposedly, is a conceptual relation: a relation between languages, not a relation between speakers, or their capacities, on the one hand, and languages, on the other. I try to show how some of Davidson’s arguments, suitably modified, can be deployed against the possibility of an alternative scheme, so understood, and provide some additional arguments of my own. My position is thus significantly weaker than Davidson’s: there could not be languages that we would be unable to interpret because they are incommensurable with our own.

Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2007.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1986. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Ray McDermott. Dissertation Committee: Karen Kepler Zumwalt. Bibliography: leaves 247-249.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2008. / Thesis directed by Michael R. DePaul for the Department of Philosophy. "December 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-225).

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Andrew Altman, committee chair; Peter Lindsay, Dr George Rainbolt, committee members. Electronic text (70 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed May 7, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-70).

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Ideology and Law Abstract In the presented work, I examine in depth the concept of ideology in its historical changes. Afterward, I relate these various forms to law. My work aims to analyze how law and ideology interact and whether there is an inherent relationship between them. I am therefore concerned with answering the question whether law is ideological, or under what conditions law and the application of law are influenced by ideology. The work is divided into three parts. In the first part, I address the notion of ideology. Here I examine how Karl Marx and his followers grasped and elaborated on this notion. I show the transformation of the Marxist conception of ideology in the works of Lenin, Gramsci and Althusser. In the second chapter of the first part, I present a different, historically relevant tradition of understanding ideology that I call, for the purposes of this work, conservative-democratic. In the second discussed tradition, I describe the ideas of Arendt, Popper, Scruton, and Pithart. Subsequently, I compare the two negative concepts of ideology to each other. The second part is devoted to how these negative concepts of ideology can be applied in legal theory. In the first chapter, I focus on the Critical Legal Studies movement, whose proponents were inspired by the previously mentioned...