O objetivo da tese é mostrar, através da análise dos textos da obra Contra Academicos de Agostinho, o estamento da verdade: a sua situação e o seu valor. Para isso começamos por contextualizar a obra, fazendo uma divisão em três momentos importantes que a retórica usa na construção do discurso e que encontrariam uma certa correspondência com o percurso da vida de Agostinho. Deste modo, chegamos a compreender a importância de sua análise da verdade e o porquê da argumentação usada contra os acadêmicos, destacando a tríade Filosofia e Sabedoria, Razão e Autoridade, Platão e Cristo. / On the basis of a textual analysis of Contra Academicos, this thesis seeks to show the role of truth: its status and its value for Augustine. To accomplish that goal, I will, first of all, present the work in its context, dividing it into the three most important components which rhetoric utilizes in the construction of a discourse - components which to some degree correspond to the stages of Augustine\'s life. In that way, this thesis will seek to understand the importance of his analysis of truth and the reason for the kind of argumentation he follows, highlighting, as he does, the triad of Philosophy and Wisdom, Reason and Authority, Plato and Christ.

No description available.

This thesis deals with Martin Heideggers critique of the Cartesian problem of scepticism in Being and Time. In addition to the critique itself, Heideggers position with regards to the sense and task of phenomenological research, as well as fundamental ontology, is discussed as a necessary underpinning of his critique. Finally, the objection to Heideggers critique that is raised by Charles Guignon in his book, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, (namely, that it suffers from the problem of reflexivity) is evaluated.

O objetivo da tese é mostrar, através da análise dos textos da obra Contra Academicos de Agostinho, o estamento da verdade: a sua situação e o seu valor. Para isso começamos por contextualizar a obra, fazendo uma divisão em três momentos importantes que a retórica usa na construção do discurso e que encontrariam uma certa correspondência com o percurso da vida de Agostinho. Deste modo, chegamos a compreender a importância de sua análise da verdade e o porquê da argumentação usada contra os acadêmicos, destacando a tríade Filosofia e Sabedoria, Razão e Autoridade, Platão e Cristo. / On the basis of a textual analysis of Contra Academicos, this thesis seeks to show the role of truth: its status and its value for Augustine. To accomplish that goal, I will, first of all, present the work in its context, dividing it into the three most important components which rhetoric utilizes in the construction of a discourse - components which to some degree correspond to the stages of Augustine\'s life. In that way, this thesis will seek to understand the importance of his analysis of truth and the reason for the kind of argumentation he follows, highlighting, as he does, the triad of Philosophy and Wisdom, Reason and Authority, Plato and Christ.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze whether the relationship between structural domains represented by CAATs and judgment represented by professional scepticism is related to auditors’ individual characteristics, trait scepticism. Methodology: This study is based on a quantitative method in the form of a questionnaire sent to all Swedish authorized auditors. The response rate was 16.8 per cent. The responses were analyzed by Spearman correlation matrix, principal component analysis, multiple linear regression analysis, and hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis. Moreover, this thesis is based on a positivistic perspective to get a general picture of professional scepticism. A deductive approach, going from theory to empirics, has been implemented. Findings: The results showed a positive relationship between judgment represented by professional scepticism and structure represented by CAATs, where auditors’ individual characteristics, trait scepticism, have a positive moderating effect on the relationship. Theoretical perspectives: We apply the profession theory, comfort theory and structure and judgment at Swedish authorized auditors with diverse experience.

In recent decades, a debate has arisen within analytic philosophy concerning the nature, validity and possible uses of Kantian transcendental arguments. This thesis examines two of the main questions within this debate: (i) what is a transcendental argument, and (ii) could there be a successful transcendental argument. The first chapter surveys some recent attempts at definition. A general lack of consistency in the literature makes it impossible to reach any precise conclusion about what a transcendental argument is, but a two-fold working definition is proposed on the basis of two identifiable general approaches to this question. The second chapter looks at two forms of scepticism about our knowledge of the external world in order to set up in a Kantian way the two epistemological problems to which transcendental arguments have been proposed as solutions. One problem concerns how it can be known that the external world exists; the other concerns conceptual relativism and the possibility of transcendental justification of a particular conceptual scheme. The third chapter examines and expands upon Stephan Korner's forceful argument to show that transcendental arguments are impossible. This argument counts decisively against the possibility of a transcendental solution to the problem of conceptual relativism, but does not touch arguments to demonstrate that we have knowledge of the existence of the external world. The fourth chapter examines several transcendental arguments which attempt the latter demonstration, beginning with Kant's Refutation of Idealism and then turning to some recent variations on this argument. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

Le titre anglais de cette thèse, Soyinka’s Language – calqué sur celui de l’ouvrage de Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language – est traduit librement en français par Les mots de Soyinka en mouvement pour évoquer la richesse poétique de ‘language’ dans ce contexte littéraire. Cette étude adopte l’approche de Kermode pour analyser un corpus d’oeuvres de Wole Soyinka (neuf pièces de théâtre et deux essais), dans la tradition critique anglaise de ‘close reading’. Les mots nous pénètrent malgré nos efforts pour nous tenir à l’écart de l’expérience (The Lion and the Jewel; le diptyque Jero). Ils peuvent également rendre concret le passage d’un monde à un autre – par exemple, à travers un vocabulaire pédagogique qui tombe rapidement en désuétude (The Road; Madmen and Specialists). Comment exprimer, comment articuler sur scène la notion ambivalente de la distance – d’un côté, la distance de la théorie, de l’objectivité; de l’autre, l’absence d’empathie, de compréhension humaine – (The Strong Breed, A Dance of the Forests, The Bacchae of Euripides, et The Burden of Memory)? Il s’agit d’un problème rhétorique qui s’apparente à un risque d’autarcie ou de solipsisme. Désamorcé dans la prose de The Man Died, ce risque sert de repoussoir, pour Soyinka dans Myth, Literature and the African World, à l’articulation d’une conception (yoruba) de l’existence, dont les tensions constitutives s’expriment à travers les ressources rhétoriques de la poésie orale. Cette étude se termine par une lecture de Death and the King’s Horseman, expression exemplaire de la tension entre l’affirmation de soi et le retour à la communauté, entre l’être et le non-être. / The title of this thesis is an allusion to Frank Kermode’s Shakespeare’s Language. There, Kermode directed his attentions to Shakespeare’s dramatic verse, its poetry, demonstrating how the demands which words make on the ear might attune us to the insinuating possibilities of language, if attended to by a patient reader. This thesis adopts the same methodological principle, in approaching a number of Wole Soyinka’s dramatic and prose works in English. Throughout, it is concerned with his intelligence as expressed through literature. To this end, it does not hesitate to speculate, in the manner of Shklovsky, as to schemata which Soyinka might have used in order to ‘make’ his works. At the same time, it sees in formalism, for writer and would-be critic alike, the danger of words’ being cut off from the common human constituency and experience which assure their meaning. Words penetrate us, undermine our attempts to stand apart, draw us into a realm of consequence (The Lion and the Jewel; the Jero plays). Consequence, in turn, implies passage between two distinct moments, inviting us to reflect on how language can become strange (The Road; Madmen and Specialists). What happens to words in one who is content to look on from a distance, instead of participating? This is the starting point for a discussion of Soyinka’s interrogations of justice in The Strong Breed, A Dance of the Forests, The Bacchae of Euripides and The Burden of Memory. Implicit in onlooking is the risk of self-sufficiency. Warded off in the prose of The Man Died, self-sufficiency provides a foil to a Yoruba conception of being and tragedy, as articulated in Myth, Literature and the African World. The study culminates in Death and the King’s Horseman, which best enacts the tension between self-assertion and commonality, departure and return, being and non-being, in and through poetic language.

Notre étude s'attache à interroger les rapports entre rationalité philosophique et théâtrale dans l’œuvre de Shakespeare, et à montrer comment la théâtralisation peut contribuer à la conception de l'idée vraie. La métaphore du théâtre du monde permet d'exprimer un doute quant à notre capacité de connaître. De même qu'au théâtre, tout n'est que feinte et apparaître illusoire, il se pourrait que nous ne puissions jamais atteindre l'être des choses, mais seulement une apparence mensongère. Cependant, nous ne lisons pas ici dans le texte shakespearien un appel au scepticisme, mais le lieu de construction d'une pensée critique. Notre propos est de soutenir que le discours vrai requiert le travail de l'illusion, parce que la vérité ne peut pas être simplement dévoilée, qu'elle exige d'être mise en scène, jouée, afin d'être comprise, et que l'illusion théâtrale peut être véridique. Nous cherchons ici à analyser les différents outils propres au théâtre, qui lui permettent de dire aussi bien les difficultés à atteindre le vrai, que les conditions qui permettent de le faire. Notre travail renvoie ainsi à trois enjeux, épistémologique (quelle conception de la vérité se dégage du texte shakespearien ?) ; historique (comment cette conception peut-elle nous permettre de concevoir la formation à l'âge classique d'un modèle de représentation rationnelle de la vérité ?) et méthodologique (quelle approche la philosophie peut-elle faire des textes dramatiques, et que peut-elle en attendre ?). Nous cherchons ainsi à évaluer comment le théâtre, comme spectacle, peut servir de modèle à une pensée critique et distanciée, capable de saisir l'apparaître du monde dans sa rationalité. / Our purpose is to question the relationship between philosophical and theatrical rationality in Shakespeare's work, and to show how dramatization can contribute to the conception of a true idea. The metaphor of the world as a theater enables one to express a doubt related to one's capacity to knowledge. Since everything in theater is guise, semblance and illusion, one could expect not to be able to reach the reality of things – never getting beyond mendacious appearance. Nevertheless, in Shakespeare's plays there is no plea for skepticism, but rather stage is set for the development of a critical thought. Our argument is to sustain that true discourse requires the work of illusion, since truth cannot be simply unveiled, but needs to be staged and played out to be understood, and that theatrical illusion can be truthful. We intend to analyze the different tools specific to theater, which enables it to tell not only the difficulties inherent in reaching the truth, but also the conditions necessary to do so. Our work refers to three viewpoints, the first being epistemological (what conception of truth can be inferred from Shakespeare's plays?) ; the second historical (in what way does this conception help us understand how a model for the rational representation of truth was founded during the modern age?) ; methodological (how can philosophy approach dramatic texts, and what can be expected from this approach?). We intend to assess in what way theater, as a display, can be used as a model for critical, distanced thought, capable of grasping the appearance of the world as a rational phenomenon.

A tese defende a ideia de que uma compreensão adequada da suspensão cética de juízo (epokhé) pressupõe o estudo dos textos de Sexto Empírico que, direta ou indiretamente, abordam o problema da concepção pirrônica da linguagem ou discurso (lógos), e também daqueles que fornecem elementos para a compreensão da posição sextiana acerca da linguagem cotidiana das pessoas comuns. Os primeiros capítulos lidam com a conhecida distinção entre as assim chamadas interpretações rústica e urbana da filosofia pirrônica. A seguir, o texto discute o problema do lógos quando considerado a partir de uma perspectiva pirrônica, onde uma nova argumentação em favor da interpretação rústica é desenvolvida, baseada na ideia de um percurso cético. No quarto capítulo, é examinada a noção de phainómenon e sua relação com o lógos cético, através da formulação de uma interpretação mais geral do ceticismo antigo e do seu discurso fenomênico. O quinto e último capítulo procede então a uma avaliação da força filosófica tanto da filosofia pirrônica como da neopirrônica / The dissertation defends the idea that an adequate understanding of the sceptical suspension of judgement (epoché) presupposes the study of the Sextus Empiricus texts which, either directly or indirectly, address the problem of the pyrrhonian conception of language or discourse (lógos), and also the study of those texts that provide elements for the understanding of the Sextian position about the everyday language of common people. The first chapters deal with the well-known distinction between the so-called rustic and urbane interpretations of the pyrrhonian philosophy. In the sequence, the dissertation discusses the problem of the lógos, as viewed from a pyrrhonian perspective, also by developing a new argument in favor of the rustic interpretation, based upon the idea of a sceptic path. Subsequently, the notion of phainómenon and its relation to the sceptic lógos are analyzed through a general approach to ancient scepticism. The fith and last chapter proceeds to an avaluation of the philosophical strength of both the pyrrhonian and neopyrrhonian philosophies