No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation is an examination of Aristotle’s political science. The first part begins by comparing the Aristotelian conception of the human being as a political animal with subsequent conceptions, notably in the political thought of Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. This comparative analysis shows that human nature is increasingly conceived as apolitical, a major consequence of which is a rejection of the Aristotelian conception of logos (speech, reason) as a natural capacity for reasoning about justice and injustice. It is then demonstrated that modern political science rejects Aristotle’s argument that there is a good for human beings as such which is constitutive of their end (telos), in the same way that modern science abandoned Aristotelian natural teleology. While contemporary currents of political thought, including neo-Aristotelianism, republicanism and communitarianism, make use of certain elements of Aristotle’s thought, they largely fail to recover the critical notions of action and nature. Having cleared major obstacles that bar our access to Aristotle’s political science, the dissertation moves, in the second part, to a textual analysis of the Politics, which, it is argued, constitutes not a work fractured between its “realistic” and “idealistic” parts, but a unified inquiry into both defective political regimes and the best regime, the guiding question of which is: how to render human beings good. The analysis begins by a consideration of the naturalness of the city and examines the various ways in which the notion of “nature” is used by Aristotle. It is then argued that, according to Aristotle’s presentation, political life is the fulfillment of human nature insofar as it represents the possibility of an ethical and moral life. Accordingly, political science, and legislative or “architectonic” science in particular, is to be devoted to moral education. Aristotle is critical of an education that neglects the virtues necessary for leisure in favour of military virtues alone, while acknowledging that cities must be prepared for war. Through an examination of the legislative science and political prudence, it is shown that Aristotle’s political science is capable of providing action with a moral orientation, without having recourse to metaphysical cosmology.

This dissertation is an examination of Aristotle’s political science. The first part begins by comparing the Aristotelian conception of the human being as a political animal with subsequent conceptions, notably in the political thought of Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. This comparative analysis shows that human nature is increasingly conceived as apolitical, a major consequence of which is a rejection of the Aristotelian conception of logos (speech, reason) as a natural capacity for reasoning about justice and injustice. It is then demonstrated that modern political science rejects Aristotle’s argument that there is a good for human beings as such which is constitutive of their end (telos), in the same way that modern science abandoned Aristotelian natural teleology. While contemporary currents of political thought, including neo-Aristotelianism, republicanism and communitarianism, make use of certain elements of Aristotle’s thought, they largely fail to recover the critical notions of action and nature. Having cleared major obstacles that bar our access to Aristotle’s political science, the dissertation moves, in the second part, to a textual analysis of the Politics, which, it is argued, constitutes not a work fractured between its “realistic” and “idealistic” parts, but a unified inquiry into both defective political regimes and the best regime, the guiding question of which is: how to render human beings good. The analysis begins by a consideration of the naturalness of the city and examines the various ways in which the notion of “nature” is used by Aristotle. It is then argued that, according to Aristotle’s presentation, political life is the fulfillment of human nature insofar as it represents the possibility of an ethical and moral life. Accordingly, political science, and legislative or “architectonic” science in particular, is to be devoted to moral education. Aristotle is critical of an education that neglects the virtues necessary for leisure in favour of military virtues alone, while acknowledging that cities must be prepared for war. Through an examination of the legislative science and political prudence, it is shown that Aristotle’s political science is capable of providing action with a moral orientation, without having recourse to metaphysical cosmology.

The topic of eschatology is generally confined to the field of theology. However, the subject has influenced many other fields, such as politics and history. This dissertation examines the question why eschatology remained a topic of discussion within twentieth century philosophy. Concepts associated with eschatology, such as the end of time and the hope of a utopian age to come, remained largely background assumptions among intellectuals in the modern age. Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Berdyaev, and Hans Blumenberg, however, explicitly addressed the subject in their philosophies. The impetus of this study is Heidegger's statement, "Being itself is inherently eschatological," which indicates the centrality of the subject in his understanding of Being. This statement led to the question whether eschatology played a larger role in Western thought. It also raised the question concerning the relationship between eschatology and other philosophical subjects such as teleology. Because of the multitude of assumptions concerning the meaning of eschatology, Chapter One provides essential working definitions. In order to obtain a sufficient understanding of the topic and address the use of the term among the three philosophers, it was necessary to see how eschatology was understood and acted upon in Western thought. Chapter Two addresses the history of eschatology in the West and concludes that there are two general streams of eschatological thought that explains why it continued to remain a subject for contemporary philosophers. Chapters Three through Five address how eschatology was used by Heidegger, Berdyaev, and Blumenberg respectively. Each utilized the subject in different ways: for Heidegger eschatology constitutes Dasein's existence. Futurity ("forward-directedness") is a condition Dasein as a totality. Dasein is "being-toward-the-end" or "toward-death." Berdyaev combines the eschatological tradition with philosophical achievements and offers an "eschatological metaphysics." He distinguishes eschatology from teleology arguing against teleology, noting that only a "personalist" eschatology can solve the problems of dualism and objectification. Blumenberg differs from Heidegger and Berdyaev by offering a negative evaluation of eschatological belief in the West contending that the modern secular age is the result of a failed eschatology. The conclusion of this work follows Charles Taylor's contention in A Secular Age that "our sense of where we are is crucially defined in part by a story of how we got there." The conclusion is that eschatology, throughout most of Western thought, functioned largely as a background assumption for understanding time and history. The transition from the linear concept of time to a cyclical concept defines in part the modern secular age. The notion of future time is an important and often neglected dimension of hermeneutic understanding. The continued influence of eschatological thought in Western history explains why the philosophers under consideration in this work address eschatology and signals that its influence upon philosophical thought is not likely to diminish in the future.

After a brief overview of the standard attempts to give the persistence conditions of artifacts through time and material changes, I develop and present an account which capitalizes on Koons’s theory that artifacts are in some robust and important way social practices in order to explain their persistence through time. After one unsuccessful attempt to formulate a view that is not susceptible to Ship of Theseus like problems concerning the persistence conditions of artifacts, I present the full view: artifacts become artifacts when they are arranged in a particular formal manner by someone who is engaging in a creative social practice. The artifact then remains the same artifact so long as its form is sufficiently preserved and maintained according to maintaining social practices. In this way, the social practice that unifies the artifact is like the life that unifies an organism—so long as the social practice and the form persist, the artifact is the same artifact. To conclude, I look at several problems my view cannot yet account for, such as the persistence conditions of objects that are not manmade artifacts, and the commitment to ontic vagueness that my view seems to entail. / text

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong Baptist University, 2006. / Thesis submitted to the Dept. of Religion and Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-217)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Philosophy, December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This thesis deals with the relation of Hellenic philosophy to evolutionary biology. The first part entails an explication of Hellenic cosmology and metaphysics in its traditional understanding, as the Western component of classical Indo-European philosophy. It includes an overview of the relevant contributions by the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists, focusing on the structure and origin of both the intelligible and sensible worlds. Salient aspects thereof are the movement from the transcendent Principle into the realm of Manifestation by means of the interaction between Essence and Substance; the role of the Logos, being the equivalent of Plato’s Demiurge and Aristotle’s Prime Mover, in the cosmogonic process; the interaction between Intellect and Necessity in the formation of the cosmos; the various kinds of causality contributing to the establishment of physical reality; and the priority of being over becoming, which in the case of living organisms entails the primacy of soul over body. The first part of the thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of Hellenic cosmology and metaphysics for evolutionary biology, including an affirmation of final and formal causality over and against its rejection by the modern scientific project. The second part commences with a delineation of organic form and transformation, emphasizing the mathematical foundations thereof. It continues with a critical consideration of the modern evolutionary theory on both scientific and philosophical grounds. In the process a fundamental distinction is made between micro- and macro-evolution, involving the reshuffling of existing genetic material which is acted upon by natural selection, and the production of new genetic material by means of macro-mutations, respectively. In the remainder of the thesis the macro-evolutionary process is described as mainly lawful, directed and convergent, instead of contingent, undirected and divergent as postulated in the modern evolutionary synthesis. This approach does not preclude the recognition of exceptions, due to the limitation of Intellect by Necessity – that is to say, of teleology by mechanism. / Religious Studies and Arabic / D.Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)