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Sociological interest in psychoanalytic thought, which began early in this century, has thus far emphasized the implications of Sigmund Freud's clinical discoveries. However, beginning in 1912, Freud produced a series of works which addressed social themes. These works included Totem and Taboo, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Moses and Monotheism, as well as a number of papers dealing with social themes. This study began with a review of the social and intellectual influences on Freud's life and thought. Then a content analysis of Freud's social writings, identified above, was undertaken, to assess the significance for contemporary social theory of Freud's social thought. Categories for analysis were constructed: Society: Social Origins, Social Control and Social Change; Social Groups; the Family; Religion. Freud's ideas concerning these social categories and social institutions were explicated and an assessment of Freud as a social theorist was undertaken.

This thesis re-examines the writing of Raymond Williams. It has two goals. Firstly, it explores Williams's concept of cultural materialism, which theorises the role played by cultural forms in the creation and contestation of a national political order. Secondly, it extrapolates Williams's implicit critique of the unitary British state, and his theory of how cultural forms relate to that state. In Chapter One, I argue that Williams developed his theory of culture by combining a theoretical critique of national literary traditions with an interest in the emergent drama of nineteenth-century Scandinavia and twentieth-century Ireland and Wales. This theme is developed in Chapter Two, where I suggest that certain cultural and political experiences in Wales helped Williams to develop a cultural theory that was more generally applicable. Central to Williams's political aspirations was an attempt to expand and democratise the education system. In Chapter Three, I argue that Williams's novels can be understood as university fiction, providing examples of the kind of university he wished to develop. Since universities arose as institutions generating a sense of unified national culture during the imperial period, to re-think the work of the university is also to re-think the political make-up of the nation. This theme is expanded in Chapter Four, where I argue that Williams related the break-up of the British empire to the break-up of the British state, via devolution in Scotland and Wales. Williams theorised the part played by fiction and other cultural forms in enabling those nations to develop their own voices. He also showed that fiction could provide an imaginative critique of the unitary British state from a series of other perspectives, notably feminism and ethnic subcultures. Finally, in Chapter Five I argue that Raymond Williams can be understood as a film theorist, and demonstrate that a similar renegotiation of British identities occurs in contemporary film. An interest in the political make-up of the British state, and an attempt to develop alternative political and cultural formations, spanned Williams's career. This aspect of his work has hitherto received little critical attention. By discussing Williams in relation to the political break-up of Britain, this thesis makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the Williams oeuvre.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968), the American Cistercian, wrote numerous books and essays on spirituality, including both Christian and Eastern forms of mysticism, and such social concerns as racial injustice, the war in Vietnam, and the depersonalizing tendencies within a technical society. From his position of contemplative withdrawal he spoke a prophetic word to the world in which he lived, recognizing that his monastic, and eventually his eremitic life, was not so much a withdrawal from the world as it was his own place in the world. He provides, therefore, a living example of the close interrelationship between contemplation and action. Morton understood withdrawal to be movement away from the superficial and false attitudes one has of the world and of one's own self, Withdrawal is, for him, a movement away from the sharp distinction between subject and object, and a movement toward the understanding that God is the ground of all being and that all contingent beings, rooted in Him, are united. Withdrawal is the necessary prelude to effective social action, since withdrawal opens one to the truth of man's solidarity in God, who is ultimate Reality, and therefore provides the true basis for moral action. For Morton, moral theology is dependent upon ascetical theology. The closer one is to God, the closer one is to all of God's creation. Paul Tillich, too, saw the necessity for withdrawal, for an immediate apprehension of God, and for social action. Hence, it is not surprising that Tillich and Merton have numerous points of affinity. In fact, Tillich's theology can be interpreted as a theoretical statement of Merton's experience. Tillich's use of ontological language, especially his distinction between essence and existence, provides a methodical approach to the theology behind Merton's mysticism and social ethic. The purpose for withdrawal is to allow essence to become known under the conditions of existence, and one essence is know - how ever fragmentarily - it enriches existence for all, not only for the one who has experienced essentialization. Hence, even the mysticism of a hermit has an indirect effect on the entire world, and, in the case of Marton himself, a direct and explicit effect. Tillich, therefore, helps to explain Merton, and Merton's life-long attempt to balance the poles of individuality and participation provides an experiential example of Tillich's system.

This study uses Frantz Fanon‟s thoughts on race and blackness, the black elite and black public intellectuals as the theoretical framework and examines the positionality of Sipho Seepe, Xolela Mangcu and Andile Mngxitama as black public intellectuals in order to understand how they view the post-1994 political discourse. Seepe, Mangcu and Mngxitama‟s views are studied by analysing themes emerging from newspaper columns they have written. This study reveals that the three black public intellectuals examined have been radical and forthright, though they display different understandings of race and blackness, the black elite and black public intellectuals. However, the study reveals that only Mngxitama‟s postionality has been consistently radical, whereas Seepe and Mangcu‟s views have been fluid and are now considered moderate. This study concludes by highlighting the relevance of Fanon‟s thoughts in enabling a new reading of post-1994 South Africa. Of central importance is the creation of the „new being‟, who is informed by the process of liberation, which is the antithesis of the black condition. / Political Sciences / M. A. (Politics)

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Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

It would indeed have been a difficult matter for anybody possessing a taste for self-expression, a facility with words and an insatiable imagination to avoid becoming involved in political controversy in England during the early part of the Eighteenth Century. For one who, in addition, was confident in his ability to solve problems of state of whatever complexity it was clearly an impossibility. Daniel Defoe's close connection with politics during the first years of the Eighteenth Century involved him in numerous hardships. In later years it brought him much less fame than his excursions into fiction; but it was the means of providing him, albeit sparsely at times, with sufficient money to keep his creditors at bay. On more than one occasion the protection he gained helped to rescue him from imprisonment. Intro., p. 1.

M.A. / Heinrich Manns Engagement als politischer Essayist zwischen 1900 und 1950 ist bedeutend. Er hat groBenteils seine Essays auf unmittelbare Offentliche Anlasse bezogen. In seinem essayistischen Werk, vor allem in den Aufsatzen und Reden der Weimarer Zeit, ist deutlich eine Parteinahme zu erkennen. Heinz Gockel benennt diese in folgender Weise: Sie ist eher eine Parteinahme fur die "Produktivitat des Menschengeistes". Auch die Essays, die sich mit einzelnen Iiterarischen Figuren befassen, sind dieser Parteinahme verpflichtet. In der Tat kann man die Diskussion Ober den Geist als ein Leitmotiv in Heinrich Manns Essayistik bezeichnen. Betont wird jedoch am starksten die Kombination von Geist und Tat, deren Fehlen in Deutschland er als einen Mange! ansieht. Viele seiner Essays haben Bekenntnischarakter, was einer unmittelbaren politischen Stellungnahme gleichkommt. Obwohl seine politischen Forderungen keineswegs verwirklicht wurden, ob im Kaiserreich oder spater, hat Heinrich Mann sein Werben fur die Herrschaft des Geistes nie aufgegeben.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / A political arrangement is an arrangement for persons. Political arrangements are assessed in terms of the extent to which they manage the affairs of persons, which includes protecting their interests and entitlements. Political arrangements which are unable to protect the interests of its citizens, or a group of citizens, are deemed unacceptable, and where appropriate, alternative arrangements which do protect the interests and entitlements of its citizens are sought. In this thesis I argue that the political arrangement of John Rawls is unable to protect the interests and entitlements of the severely cognitively disabled who are regarded as full citizens by advanced political arrangements in the world today. I argue that it is the contract nature and conception of the person in Rawls’s system which excludes the severely cognitively disabled. This exclusion goes against our widely-held intuitions about the rights and entitlements of the severely cognitively disabled. I look to the Person Life View of Marya Schechtman, a conception of the person that includes the severely cognitively disabled, to see if a conception of the person that includes the severely cognitively disabled is able to solve the gap in Rawls’s system. I argue that it is not able to do so. I then propose a new way of approaching questions of personhood and appeal to the Aristotelian conception of the soul as the basis, arguing that membership of a type of organism typically considered a person is enough to be a complete member of that type and therefore a person.