Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, Ill., 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-124).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-56).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 269-279).

Anti-theorists claim that moral theories do not deliver all the goods we want and that consequently such theorizing is not a philosophically worthy pursuit. We suffer from certain misconceptions about the point and purpose of such theorizing and the theories it produces. In this essay, I treat moral theorizing as a genuinely theoretical enterprise that produces abstract knowledge about the general structure of morality.Moral theories should be understood as tools--intellectual and practical tools with importantly different uses. Just as with hand tools where it is useful to have hammers for one sort of job and screwdrivers for another, it can be rational to accept multiple moral theories at the same time. The idea here is that all good theories illuminate some truths about morality, but are also misleading at times. A theory that is good at solving one moral problem may be bad at solving another; a theory that is illuminating in one place may be distorting in another.Chapter one outlines the differences between moral theory, metaethics, moral metatheory, and morality itself. It argues that disagreement about moral theory need not reflect moral disagreement, and vice versa. Chapter two argues that even if moral theory turned out to be practically useless, it would still accomplish certain theoretical tasks. Chapters three and four explain how and why one might adopt different incompatible moral theories at the same time. Chapter five defends moral principles from various particularists and shows how the imperfections of moral principles mirror the imperfections of laws in other fields. Chapter six explains why philosophical inquiry is worthwhile despite the overwhelming disagreement displayed by philosophers. Chapter seven shows that moral intuitions serve as a check on philosophical methodology just as much as methodology helps us verify our intuitions. It explains why a certain sort of psychology-based argument against deontological intuitions will not work. Finally, chapter eight explores the various ways in which moral theory is and is not practical. It concludes that the practical usefulness of theory is a matter of empirical contingency that philosophers have done little to investigate.

This thesis explores the implications of the thought of Michel Foucault in relation to traditional Systematic Theology. It offers an outline of different types of theology to address the shortcomings exposed in the critique of Systematic Theology. / The first two parts of the thesis are an inquiry into the meaning of an archive. This word identifies an epoch of history, but it is a spatial rather than a chronological emphasis. An archive identifies experiential conditions that limit both the potential and sense of thinking; yet, such limitations simultaneously permit sense and thinking. An archive denies and constitutes possible sense-perception. In relation to knowledge, this calls forward several sociological and historical factors. It was Foucault's uniqueness to place great emphasis on power and on the general sense of the sociology of knowledge. / The focus of Part III rests on the critique of traditional Systematic Theology. In particular, this tradition has tended to presume the correctness of what Schleiermacher called the religious a priori. In this approach, the fact of existence demonstrates the necessity of a pregiven source of existence. But this attempt to transcend existence covered up several important questions related to the experience of the a priori from within the archive. Foucault demonstrates that the transcendental tradition did not sufficiently consider its sociological context or the spatial dynamics involved in its production. / In response, there are different types of theological practices available. The first type (called theology A) arises from the affirmation that knowledge is a dynamic archive location. From this point of view the history of Christian thought can be approached as sets of archives in which certain types of God-sense are produced. The second type of theology (called theology B) arises from the affirmation that a critical theology is possible only when, from its location, it orients itself to non-events and non-being. Theology is accomplished critically when it undertakes to affirm itself as both a product of its archive and an orientation toward the available nothingness of its archive. / The work of Michel Foucault opens to theology two different manners of approaching its history and its contemporary task.

I offer some tentative thoughts on Sto:lo relations with the forest and, in turn, suggest how those relations may inform Sto:lo views on identity and culture. While highlighting the variety and complexity of Sto:lo attitudes toward the forest, I pay particular attention to those that appear contradictory. In so doing, I suggest that such "contradictions" are instead necessary antagonisms that spring from the constantly changing pressures to which the Sto:lo have been subjected, as well as from the ways in which they have struggled to cope with such pressures. More specifically, in pointing to Sto:lo attitudes towards forest work and forest conservation, I suggest that the Sto:lo have been forced and even encouraged to make claims to their identity that do not, and need not, conform with what is considered "traditional." In this way, my discussion is structured around the relationship between a sense of Sto:lo identity and the notion of cultural continuity, while aimed at highlighting the material as well as the intellectual realities behind that relationship. In a broader context, my discussion is aimed at reinforcing the need for more flexible examinations of Native identity; those that will highlight what it means to live in a modern Native culture, and what it means to be vulnerable to power.

The Exotic World Museum is a small amateur ethnographic museum created by Harold Morgan and founded on his extensive tourist travels with his wife Barbara. It consists of over 500 pictures, photographs, labels and artifacts which cover the walls and ceiling of the back room of Alexander Lamb's Wunderkammer Antiques, where it is currently housed. Through this museum, Morgan has created an identity for himself as a world traveler and a learned man. As such, the collection stands as a narrative of Morgan's life, portraying the identity he has projected for himself. Morgan constructs this identity by establishing authenticity through the Museum and tourist experience, by using the National Geographic as a projection in which to place himself, and by creating an encounter between Self and Other. As such, the study of Exotic World has larger implications in the context of the history of museums and of collecting in general.

There is little question that Hobbes's Leviathan and Behemoth are largely responding to the civil conflicts that were tearing seventeenth-century England apart, but scholars disagree in their interpretations of Hobbes's diagnosis and prescription for the civil war. Complementing previous interpretations, my MA thesis suggests that Hobbes also traces the source of the civil conflicts to Western philosophical tradition (WPT) itself both methodologically and substantially. Methodologically, ancient Western philosophers do not start their ratiocination process with definitions of the terms used, and Hobbes argues that this lack of adequate method leads to all kinds of absurdities and consequently a whole false reference world. This critique is largely based on Hobbes's materialist accounts of philosophy and mind. Substantially, Hobbes suggests that Aristotle's natural, moral and civil philosophies in particular contribute to the chaotic opinions and the civil conflicts. After detecting this source, Hobbes undertakes perhaps the most ambitious endeavor to exorcise the demon of the tradition in Western history, by radically scientizing the philosophical tradition and establishing a science of politics.

This thesis examines Derek Parfit's theory of personal identity. Parfit argues that what matters in the continued existence of persons through time is psychological connectedness and continuity (relation R), and that the identity relation does not matter. He makes this claim through a series of arguments which, he says, inevitably lead to the conclusions that relation R is the only relation that matters, in all cases. I argue that Parfit does not convincingly demonstrate that relation R is in fact all that matters. In examining each of Parfit's arguments, I show that it is possible to draw conclusions that are inconsistent with those drawn by him. I argue that this shows Parfit's position to be an arbitrary one. If Parfit's arguments do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that relation R is all that matters in questions of survival, then his theory is not an adequate solution to the problem of personal identity.

The first part of my master's thesis in creative writing explores the way the leading character's identity is structured as a function of memory. The protagonist, limited to a confined space, does not have access to his existence other than through the senses which are drawn from different episodes of his past. These reminiscences, that open the way to experience, forge his becoming, and allow him to superimpose his own individual path to memories that he has of those persons who have shaped his experience of the world. / The critical part of my work concerns the genesis and the elaboration of the last draft of Hubert Aquin's novel entitled "Obombre" in which the fragmented identity of the protagonist is defined through the destiny of other characters with whom he shares a common experience. The genetic studies approach in literature sheds light on the creative mechanisms and, in this particular case, the construction of a literary work by the superimposition of different narrative threads in a unique discourse.