Latin erotic poetry is an important genre recording surviving examples of male friendship. This report argues that a specific group of poems involving the poet and his powerful friend should be identified and studied separately as a sub-genre. Drawing examples largely from Horace, Catullus and Propertius, I argue that homosocial erotic poetry exploits the same repertoire of generic conventions as erotic poetry, but reshapes some of them for different functions. To articulate the erotic emphasis and the generic concern of this report, Eve Sedgwick’s notion of “homosocial desire” (1985) is introduced. The concept of homosociality is useful in revealing how male desire in our sub-genre has an erotic tinge and functions to foster the social bond of male friendship, but precludes the homoerotic possibility. Chapter One introduces the important terms and methodology chosen for this study, while Chapters Two to Four define and describe three distinctive features of the sub-genre. Chapter Two is devoted to showing that sermo amatorius, the “love speech” often featured in romantic relationships, can be assimilable to the structure of male homosocial relations. Chapters Three and Four examine how the sub-genre reshapes the recusatio and the topos of wealth to negotiate the tension of desire between the poets and their powerful friends. Ultimately, this report argues that male homosocial desire motivates the sub-generic conventions and thereby the seemingly disparate poems constitute a coherent sub-generic classification. / text

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Special operations are those operations that conventional units are not considered capable of preforming. Although the importance of special operations has increased, there are limited theories about these operations. Furthermore, the theories that do exist are considered too low empirically tested. In addition, there is a debate about whether more theories about special operations should be developed or whether there are enough theories for research of special operations. The purpose of this study is to contribute to this debate. To do this, Leong Kok Wey's theory is tested against two cases.  Wey uses 2,000-year-old principles to explain how a special operation should be successful. The method used is a theory-testing two-case study where the cases are examined based on qualitative text analysis. The two selected cases are Operation Deadstick, the British airborne assault during D-Day, and Operation Prelim, the British SAS sabotage of eleven aircraft during the Falklands War. Both cases are considered successful special operations. The results show that most of the principles can be identified in both cases and therefor strengthens Wey’s theory. However, one of the principles cannot be identified at all in any of the cases.

There have been recent explosions of interest in two fields: Madhyamaka-Pyrrhonism parallels and Pyrrhonism itself, which seems to have been misunderstood and therefore neglected by the West for the same reasons and in the same ways that Madhyamaka traditionally has often been by the West and the East. Among these recent studies are several demonstrating that grounding in Madhyamaka, for example, reveals and illuminates the import and insights of Pyrrhonean arguments. Furthermore it has been suggested that of all European schools of philosophy Pyrrhonism is the one closest to Buddhism, and especially to Madhyamaka. Indeed Pyrrho is recorded to have studied with philosophers in Taxila, one of the first places where Madhyamaka later flourished, and the place where the founder of Madhyamaka, Nāgārjuna, may have received hitherto concealed texts which became the foundation for his school. In this dissertation I explore just how similar these two philosophical projects were. I systematically treat all the arguments in the Pyrrhonist redactor Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against Dogmatists and compare them to the most similar arguments available in the Madhyamaka treatises and related texts. On this basis, I ask whether the Pyrrhonists and the Buddhists would satisfy each other’s self-identifying criteria, or what characteristics would disqualify either or both in the other’s eyes. I also ask what questions arise from the linguistic and historical evidence for interactions between the Pyrrhonist school and the Madhyamaka school, and how sure we can be of the answers. Did Pyrrho learn Buddhism in Taxila? Was Nāgārjuna a Pyrrhonist? Finally I bring the insights of the living commentarial tradition of Madhyamaka to bear on current scholarly controversies in the field of Sextan Pyrrhonism, and apply the subtleties of interpretation of the latter which have developed in recent scholarship to Madhyamaka and its various difficulties of interpretation, to scrutinize each school under the illumination of the other. With this hopefully illuminated view, I address for example whether Sextus was consistent, whether living Pyrrhonism implies apraxia, whether Pyrrhonism is philosophy at all, and whether Madhyamaka is actually nihilism.

Orientador: Marcos Lutz Muller / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-15T07:16:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Martin_LuizFernandoBarrere_D.pdf: 1287336 bytes, checksum: 3ebead21d8c89e099eda7dc86e5477f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Trata-se, inicialmente, de neste trabalho analisar a leitura hegeliana da filosofia cética, especificamente, o ceticismo pirrônico. Dessa maneira, será possível começar a avaliar em que medida o ceticismo é importante para a filosofia de Hegel em geral e, em particular, para a constituição de seu método dialético especulativo. Percorreremos textos, de várias fases da filosofia de Hegel, no qual o ceticismo ou é tema central ou aparece dentro de um contexto que também nos interessa, a saber, a discussão acerca do método. No que respeita a este último, objeto da segunda parte da tese, examinaremos na Ciência da Lógica os momentos onde podemos observar de modo privilegiado a constituição do método dialético hegeliano, a saber, a seção dedicada na Doutrina da Essência às determinações de reflexão e a seção intitulada Idéia Absoluta, último capítulo do livro. A partir desse estudo da Ciência da Lógica, poderemos então julgar com maior exatidão no que o método filosófico hegeliano é devedor da filosofia cética, isto é, como esse método é formulado de modo que o ceticismo seja integrado a ele. A idéia central é mostrar que não há, da parte de Hegel, uma simples refutação do ceticismo, mas antes, que o ceticismo é a filosofia, incontornável, da qual se deve partir para que a filosofia não caia vítima das aporias céticas. Essa é a via que Hegel encontra para não se tornar cético pirrônico e, ao mesmo tempo, não ser alvo da crítica cética / Abstract: First it means to analyse Hegel's reading of the skeptical philosophy, specifically pyrrhonian skepticism. Thus it will be possible to assess to what extent the skepticism is important to Hegel's philosophy in general and, in particular, for the formation of his speculative dialectical method. We will cover texts from many phases of Hegel's philosophy, in which skepticism is focus or appears within a context that also interests us, namely the discussion of the method. Regarding this last one, subject of the second part of the thesis, we examine in Science of Logic the moments where we can observe in a special way the formation of hegelian dialectical method: the section in Doctrine of Essence that is dedicated to the determinations of reflection and the section entitled Absolute Idea, the last chapter of the book. From this study of Science of Logic we can judge more accurately what the Hegelian philosophical method is liable to the skeptical philosophy, which means, how this method is formulated in a way that skepticism is a part of it. The main idea is to show that Hegel does not try a simple refutation of skepticism, more than this he shows that skepticism is the philosophy, unavoiable, which preserves the philosophy from fall victim of skepticals aporias. This is the way that Hegel finds to not become skeptical pyrrhonian and also the subject of skeptical criticism / Doutorado / Mestre em Filosofia

Maxims, proverbs, and other forms of pithy sayings are sprinkled throughout ancient and medieval literature; polysemous and manipulable by nature, they serve as communicative tools whose precise meaning and function shifts from context to context. My dissertation explores how late antique and medieval Christians capitalized on the flexible forms of Greek and Latin aphorisms to negotiate and construct what it meant to be a Christian. Using theories and methods developed in the fields of folklore, linguistic anthropology, and ethno- and sociolinguistics, I investigate three examples in which Christians revised and reused wisdom in new contexts. First, I document the proverbial concept of gathering something useful from somewhere dangerous as expressed in sayings like “to pluck a rose from among thorns” and “to gather gold from shit,” charting how it originally went viral in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, remained in vogue well into the Middle Ages, and continued to evolve in meaning throughout its usage. I then analyze the Sentences of Sextus, a second-century collection of Greek maxims assembled from various Pythagorean aphorisms and sayings of Jesus. Whereas previous scholarship has focused on the authorship, content, and structure of the Sentences, I study the new meanings, functions, and forms the collection acquired as it underwent processes of translation, transcription, epitomization, excerption, and quotation. The text’s gnomic format and armchair morality contributed not only to its centuried popularity and widespread readership, but also to the dispersion of many of its individual sayings. In particular, I consider the extensive and unstudied reception of the Sentences of Sextus within the mid-ninth-century legal forgeries known as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. I show that the Sextine elements reveal the presence of recurring textual units across the Decretals and offer new insights regarding Pseudo-Isidore’s compositional method—a method that, in many ways, parallels the Sentences’ recycling of Pythagorean and biblical material. Ultimately, my project models how wisdom-centered investigations of late antique and medieval literature lead to new understandings of the craftsmanship of individual authors as well as to deeper understandings of the time and its culture.

[pt] Sexto Empírico não fala de dúvida, e não faz uso deste conceito em sua clássica descrição do cético pirrônico. No entanto, desde a sua redescoberta na década de 1430 no contexto do humanismo florentino e até os dias atuais, o ceticismo é interpretado através da dúvida. Na presente tese, primeiramente mostramos que não há uma conexão direta entre o ceticismo pirrônico e o conceito de dúvida. Em seguida, analisamos alguns dos modos pelos quais a dúvida é introduzida no ceticismo, particularmente no período que vai do início do século XV ao final do século XVI, conhecido como ceticismo renascentista. Sexto Empírico não fala de dúvida, e não faz uso deste conceito em sua clássica descrição do cético pirrônico. No entanto, desde a sua redescoberta na década de 1430 no contexto do humanismo florentino e até os dias atuais, o ceticismo é interpretado através da dúvida. Na presente tese, primeiramente mostramos que não há uma conexão direta entre o ceticismo pirrônico e o conceito de dúvida. Em seguida, analisamos alguns dos modos pelos quais a dúvida é introduzida no ceticismo, particularmente no período que vai do início do século XV ao final do século XVI, conhecido como ceticismo renascentista. / [en] Sextus Empiricus does not speak of doubt, nor does he use this concept in his exposition of Pyrrhonian skepticism. However, since its rediscovery in the 1430s to the present day, skepticism has been interpreted through the concept of doubt. In the present thesis, we showed first that there is no explicit connection between Pyrrhonian skepticism and doubt. Then, we analyzed some ways through which the concept of doubt was introduced into skepticism, especially in the period from the beginning of the 15th to the end of the 16th century, known as Renaissance skepticism.

This thesis explores the representation of gender, desire, and identity in elegiac discourse. It does so through the lens of post‐structural and psychoanalytic theory, referring to the works of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Jessica Benjamin, and Laura Mulvey in their analyses of power, gender performativity, and subjectivity. Within this thesis, these concepts are applied primarily to the works of Tibullus, Propertius, and Sulpicia, ultimately demonstrating that the three love elegists seek, in their poetry, to construct subversive discourses which destabilise the categories by which gender and identity were determined in Augustan Rome. This discussion is supplemented by the investigation of Ovid’s use of elegiac discourse in Book 10 of his Metamorphoses, and the way in which it both comments upon Augustan love elegy and demonstrates a number of parallels with its thematic content. This thesis focuses especially on the representation of power relations within elegiac discourse, the various levels on which such relations operate and, finally, the possibilities for the contestation of and resistance to power, in addition to the motivations that might lie behind the poet‐lover’s frequent attraction and submission to it.

In dieser Dissertation schlage ich eine neue Erklärung dafür vor, warum es in der antiken Philosophie eine tiefe Meinungsverschiedenheit in Bezug auf das menschliche Gute gab. Die Erklärung lautet, dass verschiedene Autoren verschiedene Auffassungen über die Kontexte und die Ziele von Argumenten über das menschliche Gute vertraten. Daraus ergab sich, dass sie nicht dieselben Argumente als gültig anerkannten und daher verschiedene Theorien über das Gute als plausibel erachteten. Die Texte, mit denen sich in erster Reihe beschäftigt wird, sind: Platons Gorgias und Philebos; Aristoteles’ Topik und Nikomachische Ethik, Senecas Epistulae Morales 82, 83, 87 und 120; Epikurs Brief an Menoikeus, Lukrez’ De Rerum Natura, Sextus’ Grundzüge der pyrrhonischen Skepsis. / In this dissertation, I suggest a new explanation for disagreement about the human good (I.e what makes a human life good) in ancient philosophy: namely, that differing understandings of argumentation contexts and goals shaped selection of argument schemes, which in turn influenced which theories of the good seemed plausible. The texts I primarily deal with are connections between Plato’s Gorgias and the Philebus, Aristotle’s Topics and the Nicomachean Ethics, Seneca’s EM 82, 83, 87 and 120, Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, and Sextus’ Outlines of Skepticism.

This thesis is a comparative study of the approaches to mental tranquility advanced by the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus and Huineng, the historically recognized Sixth Patriarch of the Southern Zen School. Relying on the Outlines of Pyrrhonism and the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch, the principle texts of the Pyrrhonian and Zen schools respectively, I argue that the Pyrrhonian skeptic’s method of attaining ataraxia (“unperturbedness”) via the use of opposing arguments is essentially identical to that of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng’s employment of “opposition pairs.” Finally, in addition to contextualizing the schools historically, I compare their respective positions on ethical and metaphysical statements.