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.

My dissertation The Unknown Future examines the notion of Ahnung or Ahndung (in English: premonition) in German literature, philosophy, anthropology, and the sciences around 1800. Focusing on the heated debates among philosophers, writers and intellectuals as to whether humans can attain knowledge about the future, I trace the notion of Ahnung as it traverses various discourses. In doing so, I draw on Stephen Greenblatt’s idea of a new historicism and expand studies written by Stefan Andriopoulos, Joseph Vogl, Eva Horn, Michael Gamper and other scholars, explicitly referring to and expanding the literary theory concerning “poetologies of knowledge.“ Specifically I show how after 1750 religious models of prophecy were no longer easily accepted. At the same time, new statistical and mathematical models of prognosis were rising -- even as doubts remained about their ability to fully grasp the progression of time. Within these conflicts between traditional religious models and the new exact sciences, the concept of ‘premonition’ seemed to offer various thinkers and writers evidence for a prognostic capability of the soul that challenged rational, mathematical and statistical models of probability as the sole means for predicting the future. The hope was that premonitions could provide a supersensory knowledge based on fleeting, opaque glimpses into the progression of time. In chapter 1, I examine how philosophers discussed the phenomenon of premonitions and juxtapose Johann Gottfried Herder’s supportive perspective on premonitions in his essay On Knowing, Sensing, Wishing, Hoping, and Believing (1797) with Immanuel Kant’s dismissive claims in his study Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). In chapter 2, I discuss major anthropologies and their representation of premonitions, specifically Karl Philipp Moritz’s Journal for the Experience and Knowledge of the Soul (1783-1793). Moritz not only presents interesting case studies of prognostic premonitory experiences, but also discusses them in a poetological context and defends them as valid prophetic narratives. My third chapter turns to a set of critical questions. If literary, poetic, and more generally narrative modes of expression are key instruments for articulating the prophetic power of premonitions – as Herder, Moritz and von Arnim argue – how are premonitions depicted in literature? Attending to three exemplary texts by Ludwig Tieck (The Story of Mr. William Lovell), Heinrich von Kleist (The Earthquake in Chili), and E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Sandman), the final chapter demonstrates how premonitions in literary texts question dominant mathematical and rational perspectives on the world. At the end of my dissertation, I briefly discuss the history of weather-based literary tropes between 1750 and 1850 and show why the limited ability to foresee the weather propelled discourses on supersensory knowledge, namely: premonitions. In the end, my dissertation shows how premonitions became a predominant literary technique for critically exploring the unknown progression of time and for questioning the objectifying impulses of a scientific world-view. This dissertation was advised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Andriopoulos and Prof. Dr. Oliver Simons.

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Two paradoxical elements in Camus's work, both kept at a distance by the author, are the feminine and the sacred. The feminine is paradoxical in its patterns of speech and silence, and of partial or aspectual absence and presence. Whereas feminine speech and presence are abundant in Camus's theatre, absence, silence and fragmentation of the feminine characterize his narrative works, with the exception of the short story, "La femme adultere." The sense of the sacred, which permeates Camus's work, represents a philosophical paradox. Indeed, how to reconcile Camus's agnosticism and his philosophy of the absurd, which denies transcendance, with this sense of the sacred? How to explain the experience of "La femme adultere"? For it is in this text, after having intersected in the plays, that the paradoxes of the sacred and the feminine climactically come together and approach the metaphysical. A first critical approach sets the sacred in the context of Camus's time. Juxtaposing the early Camusian essays with certain writings of contemporary authors relative to religion and the sacred, it considers the sacred from philosophical, historical and sociological as well as religious perspectives. A second approach, psychoanalytic and feminist, explores Camus's narrative works and his drama. Referring mainly to the writings of Kristeva and taking up her notion of the "myth of the feminine" as the "last refuge of the sacred", it examines the absences and silences of the mother in the narrative works before concerning itself with the speech and presence of the female companion in the plays. This difference between the two genres is analyzed. Finally, the last part of the thesis, which focuses on "La femme adultere", examines the modalities of desire. It is this context of desire, linked to the Camusian concept of the absurd, that opens the feminine to the sacred. This double paradox is examined along with the possible meaning of the unexpected alliance of the feminine and the sacred in a corpus of work mostly perceived as masculine and agnostic.

This discussion aims to demonstrate how the project of identifying the nature of humanity is ongoing. The dominant models have their own flaws to contend with, and in the end we are still left uncertain of what constitutes our nature. Of the two views vying for prominence (dualism vs. materialism) neither is indubitable, nevertheless their are faithful proponents on each side. In a debate of belief vs. theory we see these seemingly disparate realms come together in a resignation to faith that their option is an adequate representation of human nature. / Religion

The intention of this project is to make a case for the cakras by finding their place in contemporary discourse. The assumption that allows for this project is that the structure and context of the cakras as psycho-physical phenomenon are not sufficiently established in scholarship. The method employed is to illuminate the cakras, which are primarily addressed as historical/textual entities, as phenomenological and psychological entities. This will be done through the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the additions to his depiction of the lived body as per YUASA Yasuo, who introduces the “unconscious quasi-body” (i.e., the subtle body) as a level of the body of which one may become aware. The cakras will also be presented as that which function similarly to psychological entities, introducing the depth psychology and commentary of C.G. Jung. By doing so, the human component of the cakras will be drawn out of historical/textual matters and into the lived experience of the human body where they may become the subject of phenomenological and psychological analysis. Through arguing for the addition of these standpoints, future dialog with other disciplines, especially contemporary cakra practitioners, may be facilitated. / Religion

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The principal aim of this work is to ascertain a clear understanding of Clarke's moral theory, one which has suffered from neglect and misunderstanding. The assumption that his 'rational intuitionism' is given little if any epistemological grounding, is shown to be erroneous. This is done by drawing on his extensive work in the Letter to Dodwell and its Defenses. The secondary aim of this thesis is to show the relevance of Clarke's work to contemporary discussions in philosophy of mind, moral theory, and moral theology. The thesis has four parts. In Part I, the works of Clarke, relevant to his moral theory, are introduced. His influence in the eighteenth century is brought out, both in Britain and on the Continent. As regards his influence in moral theory, he is the likely goad that moved Hume to formulate 'Hume's Law,' that ought cannot be derived from is. Part II is an analysis of Clarke's philosophical work on the nature of the 'rational and moral agent.' His views are ascertained, clarified, and presented as the epistemological foundation of his moral theory. One conclusion that follows from this material is that the influential work of Clarke is sharply at odds with the 'historiographic orthodoxy' that views British thought about the problem of knowledge to be progressive refinements of Locke's anti-innatism. The Defences are directed to Anthony Collins, a deist and late disciple of Locke. There are also three major historical corrections that follow from the study of Clarke's work on the nature of mind. Two ideas that are usually attributed to Joseph Butler are actually Clarke's conceptions, e.g. the distinction between 'the strict' and 'the abstract'(or 'loose') concepts of personal identity, and the notion that memory does not constitute personal identity but rather presupposes and entails it. One other idea, usually attributed to Thomas Reid, is more properly credited to Clarke, namely, the theory of agent-causation. All three of these concepts are extremely important in contemporary philosophy of mind and theory of action. They constitute the epistemological ground of Clarke's moral theory. In Part III the moral epistemology uncovered in Part II is linked with Clarke's more well known views found in the Discourse. His usually nebulous concept of 'fitness' is assessed and defended against the major criticisms of Hume (in Treatise 3.1.1) and Hutcheson. His often degraded analogy between morals and mathematics is defended, and his views are distinguished from those of Thomas Burnet, another anti- Lockean writer. In Part IV, the moral theory proposed by Clarke argues for an employment of reason and revelation. It comes under sharp and extensive criticism from the deist Matthew Tindal. His criticisms, however, employ an either/or fallacy that is wholly inadequate as a refutation of Clarke's moral theology. A comparison of key ideas in the moral theologies (metaphysics) of Leibniz and Clarke is made, and the principle of imitation of the holiness of God is found to be the coherent and full expression of Clarke's moral theology.

Thesis advisor: Peter Kreeft / In a letter dated 1939, C.S. Lewis wrote, “To me the real distinction is not between high and low, but between religion with a real supernaturalism and salvationism on the one hand, and all watered-down and modernist versions on the other.” Today, the branch of the Anglican Communion in America (the Episcopal Church, and to a less visible extent, the Church of England,) is contemplating a formal split along these very lines. It is popularly believed that the major issues in contention revolve around sexuality, but in America's sex-obsessed culture, sexuality is merely the most visible dividing-line. This dialogue seeks to create several fictional modernist bishops, based on both the writings of real Episcopal bishops and on Lewis' own writings, and put them in conversation with Lewis in order to examine their arguments and offer some of Lewis' own timeless wisdom. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

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