This thesis examines the concept of Madhyama Pratipad in light of the interpretations given by the Yogacara thinkers Vasubandhu and Asanga and by the Madhyamikas Nagarjuna: and Candrakirti. I also discuss madhyama pratipad in relation to the concepts of Sunyata, trisvabhava, and pratitya samutpada, and attempts to show in what ways the Yogacara acaryas differ from the Madhyamikas, and in what ways they are similar. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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Many contemporary theologians and political thinkers find in the life and writings of Reinhold Niebuhr the strong critique of complacency and evidence of an unrelenting quest for social justice. Others, however, interpret Niebuhr in the light of neoconservative tenets, and see him as one father of American political realism with its appreciation for stable community life and tradition. These two polarities of interpretation highlight the split between left-liberal sympathies for a theology and politics of liberation and the right-liberal disposition toward values expressed most fully in a democratic capitalism. That thoughtful people of both political and/or theological stripes can trace their intellectual roots back to Niebuhr is witness to the complexity of Niebuhr's thought. Within the broad agenda suggested by these observations, this study seeks to develop and analyze Niebuhr's position on 20th century liberal pacifism. Specifically, it is concerned to trace Niebuhr's reaction against older styles of liberal theology which lent credibility and theoretical support to, among other things, the liberal pacifism which achieved some status in the political and theological debates of wartime North America. The concluding section of the thesis attempts to draw from the study of Niebuhr's criticism of liberal pacifism certain principles which hint at the resolution of the polarities of interpretation of Niebuhr's corpus.I would not deny, however, that although I should not have been among the crucifiers of Jesus, I should also have not been among his supporters. For I cannot help withstanding evil when I see that it is about to destroy the good. I am forced to withstand the evil in the world just as the evil within myself. I can only strive not to have to do so by force. But if there is no way of preventing the good, I trust I shall use force and give myself up into God's hands ... If I am to confess what is truth for me, I must say: There is nothing better for a man than to deal justly -unless it be to love; we should be able even to fight for justice -but to fight lovingly. Martin Buber (1939) In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune, But this is reality so give me some room. Billy Bragg ("Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards", 1988) / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis advisor: Robert J. Starratt / This thesis is a descriptive and analytical study of the complete works of Michael Fullan as a scholar of educational change. Fullan is one of the foremost individuals who have helped established the field of educational change and who continues to push the field forward. This dissertation investigates, articulates and interrogates the intellectual and strategic contributions of Fullan in the scholarly field of educational change. This is a critical description and examination of the historical events and trends that influenced his research and to which he was responding. It provides insight into a significant area of practice and research in educational administration by looking at the development of a field through the intellectual contributions of one of its most important authorities. The main purpose is to highlight the development and cogency of Fullan's ideas in the field of educational change through an examination and exploration of his intellectual underpinnings. This study was grounded in the qualitative research tradition, particularly rooted in a conceptual framework of hermeneutics. The task was to search for an understanding rather than explanation and for interpretation rather than prediction. Thus, in this study the researcher was the primary instrument for data collection and analysis. Data was using collected various artifacts, namely: books, journal articles, scholarly papers, technical reports, conference papers, dissertations about Fullan, web-site reports and/or papers, newspaper articles and publicity material. More specifically, Fullan's writings were primarily accessed through various venues: the internet (especially his website: http://www.michaelfullan.ca/), college libraries and professors who use his books. One person-to-person interview was conducted to clarify. Data was critically analyzed and reported thematically and chronologically in order to position Fullan's works within those historical periods and to identify the development and evolution of his theory of change. Findings indicate several periods of education reform: innovation and diffusion, school effectiveness and school improvement, restructuring and reculturing, large-scale reform and post-standardization. Fullan's assessments of each period revealed that he has been more influential in the large-scale reform period than the others. Themes unfolding highlighted the importance of stakeholders (students, teachers, principals, parents and community, district administrators, consultants) and concepts (process, objective and subjective assumptions, moral purpose, relationships, knowledge, sustainability, complexity/chaos & evolutionary theories, systems, paradoxes, coherence and theory of action. Connections to key thinkers in sociology, educational change and mentors as well as Fullan' unique approach to the change process among various other change process models, definitions and perspectives were highlighted. Development and evolution of Fullan's theory of education is underscored by the influence of early mentors in sociology as well as decades of emphasis on certain critical issues within the literature: namely, the absence of the implementation perspective (1970s), meaning-making (1980s), capacity-building (1990s), systems-leading (2000s) and a more recent post-standardization era. Critical and positive commentaries on particular Fullan's works reveal multiple and often opposing values, assumptions and purposes of education that characterize scholar's experiences and advocacy. The paper concludes with a brief personal and critical reflection on Fullan's educational change literature highlighting strengths, weaknesses and the future challenges for scholars in the field. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration.

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This writer reviews some of the most influential factors found in studies of adult childparent relationships, including divorce, surrogate parents, coresidency, caregiving, proximity, family size, and gender. Focusing on the "feminine tilt" in family relationships, research reveals explanations such as caregiving, kinkeeping, and gender identity issues. The author proposes the possibility that the female bias in parent-child relationships has more to do with subjective thought process than biological sex. An analysis was conducted on mailed-in-surveys for 264 Kentucky adults, ages 30 to 49, who completed questions pertaining to their communication and closeness with their parents, and one fourth of the Keirsey Temperament Sorter regarding decision making preferences. The study found Feelers communicate significantly more with, and feel significantly closer to, parents than do Thinkers. Feeling daughters have more communication and greater closeness with parents than Thinking daughters. Feeling sons report more closeness with mothers than Thinking sons, and more communication and greater closeness to fathers than Thinking daughters. Daughters report more communication and closeness with mothers than sons. Suggestions for future research include using a much larger sample of strong temperament typed respondents.

At the beginning of the 21st century, in the fields of philosophy of language and moral philosophy, there has been a growing interest in studies dedicated to the “second person” perspective. This attention seems to reveal a crisis in the model of identity thinking, codified by Neo-Platonism, and its multiple conceptualizations, including man, logic and law, as highlighted by Maurizio Manzin. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the researches of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Charles S. Peirce, who devoted their studies to the analysis of the crisis of identity thinking and to the formulation of theoretical proposals suitable for overcoming it, verifying their congruence and degree of adaptability to the theories on legal reasoning of an argumentative-rhetorical nature. Despite their partially different fields of research, the two authors began with the same starting point, that of pronouns, emphasizing the problematic arrangement handed down from scholastic grammar. In particular, Rosenstock-Huessy advocated a model of original social communication according to the Thou-I-We-It arrangement. The German speech thinker composes these pronouns in the “cross of reality”, a socio-linguistic model constituted by the integration between two phases (which are equivalent to two types of rationality corresponding to them) and four fronts: the event that occurs in the arc of nominal reality in the prejective front-subjective front-trajective front (by means of “fractal rationality”), is archived in the dimension of pronominal existence in the objective front (using “linear rationality”). Identitarian thinking assumes that it can study reality only from the perspective of the objective front, that is, of the individual and of deduction, of linear time and of the causality produced by the efficient cause. Peirce and Rosenstock-Huessy have expanded this monological status, placing at the center of their investigations the event as the confluence of two temporal currents, one oriented from the past towards the future (anteceptive) and the other from the future towards the past (ponecective), also contributing to proposing an original model of causality, the result of the joint effect of efficient cause and final cause. Once we have shown the form of the accomplishment of communication as a biographical and social fact based on the transformative status of linguistic propositions, we will try to apply it to the theory of law and legal argumentation, showing how a convergence is possible that corroborates the validity of the CALS (Cooperated Argumentative Legal Syllogism) model proposed by Manzin, in which rhetoric assumes a methodological and constitutive role of the internal premise, and thus of the judicial enthymeme.

Les sociétés musulmanes se sont engagées dans un processus de sécularisation qui reste encore mal assumé ou mal reconnu. Cette thèse s'attache à étudier comment les penseurs musulmans contemporains trouvent ou élaborent des systèmes de pensée qui permettent de penser cette sécularisation. La séparation du politique et du religieux reste encore ancrée dans un dogmatisme religieux que les auteurs présentés tentent d'abattre à travers divers stratagèmes intellectuels. La typologie mise en place dans ce sens permet de mieux cerner les différentes approches : historique, littéraire, épistémologique et rationnelle. Des thèmes sont ensuite abordés qui présentent de véritables enjeux pour la sécularisation et qui en sont une rude mise à l'épreuve. L'Iran et la Turquie sont les deux modèles pratiques choisis afin d'interroger ce processus de sécularisation au sein des sociétés musulmanes / The Muslim societies got involved in a process of secularization which remains still badly taken or badly acknowledged. This thesis sets out to be studying how the contemporary Muslim thinkers find or work out systems of thought which allow to think of this secularization.Separation of policy and religion still anchored in a religious dogmatism which the introduced authors try to slaughter across various intellectual stratagems. Typography set up in this sense allows to surround different approaches : historical, literary, epistemology and rationnel.Topics are then approached which introduce true stakes for secularization and which are a hard bet in test. Iran and Turkey are both practical models chosen to question this process of secularization within the Muslim societies.