Carol Shields has not always been acknowledged as a feminist thinker by scholars, but an examination of womens work and art in her novels shows how her novels employ the feminist theories of Simon de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan in the creation of her own feminist philosophy. De Beauvoirs ideas on transcendence and immanence find expression in Shieldss novels, A Fairly Conventional Woman, The Stone Diaries, and Unless, as her female characters use work (both domestic and artistic) to transcend powerlessness.

“Irony, Finitude and The Good Life,” examines the notion that Socrates, as he is portrayed in the Platonic dialogues, ought to be viewed and interpreted as a teacher. If this assertion is correct, then it is both appropriate and useful to look to the dialogues for instruction on how to live a philosophical life. This thesis will argue that to look at Socrates as a teacher, a figure who imparts knowledge to those around him on how to live a philosophical life, misses the very conception of the good life that Plato sought to personify when he created the character of Socrates. The proceeding discussion draws upon the work of Alexander Nehamas and Drew Hyland, offering an alternate interpretation of the Symposium. This interpretation argues that viewing Socrates as a teacher falsely idealizes the philosophical life, in turn neglecting Plato’s greater legacy for his character—a legacy in which true virtue lies in exposing the creative possibility inherent in living a philosophical life and prompting one’s own expression of a life inspired by the legacy of Socrates.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Gottfried Herder unwittingly contributed to the political strands of Marxism and Fascism, respectively, but also to the gently progressing secularisation of Christian values that pervades the contemporary age. While Herder conceived of God traditionally, as a transcendent Being, he also sowed the seeds for Hegels philosophy in which God is realised immanently through the development of mans full capacities for reason. Since Hegel also posits that the end is implicit in the beginning, his scheme cannot hold without the kind of necessity that comes from a Godly (transcendent) source. At the same time, Hegels philosophy of history as revealed in The Phenomenology of Spirit and Herders Another Philosophy of History contain remarkable similarities that show how Herders and Hegels quest to reconcile the earthly and the finite with the infinite and the eternal led to the secularisation of philosophy and the beginning of the modern cultural ethos. The reader should see how Herder struggled to reconcile the many competing viewpoints of his age with his awareness that these viewpoints were limited, and how Hegel subsequently attempted to address this conundrum, along with the fundamental philosophical and theological question (left unresolved by Herder) of how man can have free will under God. The reader should realise how Gods immanence in man, partially accorded by Herder, and more substantially accorded by Hegel, leads eventually to the secular perspective of modern times, with both its negative, totalitarian and extreme manifestations, and its positive, pseudo-Christian and mildly socialist outcomes.

Carol Shields has not always been acknowledged as a feminist thinker by scholars, but an examination of womens work and art in her novels shows how her novels employ the feminist theories of Simon de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan in the creation of her own feminist philosophy. De Beauvoirs ideas on transcendence and immanence find expression in Shieldss novels, A Fairly Conventional Woman, The Stone Diaries, and Unless, as her female characters use work (both domestic and artistic) to transcend powerlessness.

Emily Dickinson, with a soul passing beyond the confines of mainstream gender ideology, religiosity, natural theology, transcendentalism, and literary conventions, creates the sublime in her poetry, which demonstrates her realization and manipulation of inspiring thoughts and liberating movements experienced where diverse conscience stirrings, ideologies, ideas, axioms and discourses intersect. Dickinsonian sublime offers an example for Jean-François Lyotard¡¦s discourses on the modern and postmodern sublime, which coincidentally mirror Dickinson¡¦s time, her personal response and reaction. Liberating herself from the confines of gender ideology as well as female literary conventions, Dickinson invents her own self and identity, suggesting differences among women, who can be discontinuous and multiple instead of being a category with ¡§ontological integrity¡¨ (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble 23). She embodies a writer who creates according to her nature and experience as a sensitive person constantly investigating inwardly and outwardly, blurring traditionally-assigned gender distinctions, alternating between various roles, and reversing gendered traits instead of just being a subordinate advocate of mainstream domesticity, gender identity, or religiosity. Not traveling on the path constructed by the traditional theological system but abolishing its authority over her thoughts, attitudes, deeds, or interpretations and manipulation of language, Dickinson interrogates received doctrines and develops her own understanding of religion, idiosyncratic employment of the Bible, and definition of language. Inspired but not dominated by new sciences, natural theology, or transcendentalism, Dickinson cultivates and reinforces her ability to analyze, judge, and examine things ¡§without respite, without rest, in one direction¡¨ but in all directions (Ralph Waldo Emerson, ¡§Intellect¡¨ 179), transcending the confines of both natural theology and optimistic transcendentalism while displaying her ¡§active soul,¡¨ "power of forming great conceptions¡¨ and ¡§vehement and inspired passion¡¨ (Longinus, ¡§On the Sublime¡¨ 80) and intending to be what is advocated in Emerson¡¦s ¡§The American Scholar¡¨¡X ¡§Man Thinking¡¨ (64). Not conforming to literary traditions, Dickinson enters a realm of artistic experiment, representing a great poet reflecting the individualism and potentiality of American poetry in her age as well as in the modern and postmodern periods. Not making her readers passive receivers of messages or meanings, her idiosyncratic methods in rhyme, language, images, and syntax promote ¡§the sense of palpitant vigor¡¨ (Amy Lowell 7) and sublimity, repeatedly challenging, deconstructing, or activating her readers¡¦ thinking and various faculties. As a self-reliant nonconformist experimenter with a Socratic philosophic spirit, her poetry of ¡§possibility¡¨ provokes ¡§polymorphous,¡¨ multiple, ¡§psychological¡¨ inspirations and creates a subjective, dynamical, and liberatory sublime.

Deleuze&#039 / s Struggle Against Transcendence and Criticisms About It TIBIK, Kamuran M.S., Department of Philosophy Supervisor: Prof.Dr. Yasin Ceylan December,2006, 128 pages In this study, I first studied the undecidability of transcendence and immanence. Then, I studied the demarcation problem between transcendence and immanence with its results in philosophy. Thirdly, I touched on the idea of the death of philosophy in relation to this demarcation problem. Fourthly, I tried to present Deleuze&#039 / s dualist approach to concepts and I also studied Hume&#039 / s effect on the emergence of this dualist approach. As the fifth, I tried to relate the demarcation problem to ethics, concepts and the future of philosophy. Finally, I presented questions and criticisms about both Hume&#039 / s and Deleuze&#039 / s views on immanence and ethics.

The purpose of this descriptive correlational study was to describe relationships among three spiritually-related variables (psychosocial self-transcendence, spiritual self-transcendence, and religious self-transcendence), and two health-related variables: illness distress (as an indicator of emotional well-being), and health-promoting behaviors in African American women diagnosed with breast cancer. A secondary purpose was to describe spiritually-related perspectives and behaviors reported by these women in reference to minimizing their illness distress and supporting healthy behaviors during their breast cancer trajectory. A convenience sample of 537 women with breast cancer completed an electronic survey. In Qualtrics, an on-line survey tool, six questionnaires: Demographic and Health-Related Questionnaire, Reed's (1991) Self-Transcendence Scale, Reed's (1986) Spiritual Perspective Scale, Spiritual–Religious Practices Scale, Distress Scale, and Walker's (1987) Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile II, were formatted to measure each of the variables stated in the research questions. In addition, a subgroup of 10 women were interviewed by phone to obtain a more in-depth understanding of the relevance of spiritually-related factors in African American women coping with breast cancer. Results of the study revealed several significant positive relationships between the independent and dependent variables. All three self-transcendence variables and many of the demographic and health related variables were found to be significant in explaining illness distress and the level of engagement in health promoting behaviors. In addition, the results of this study will contribute to better understanding of how spiritually-related variables and selected demographics may be relevant in helping African American breast cancer survivors reduce illness distress and modify health behaviors. Results from telephone interviews provide relevant data related to self-transcendence, illness distress, and level of engagement in health promoting behaviors.

The specific aims for this study were to: (a) describe positive and negative well-being in parental caregivers of children with cancer, (b) examine if parental caregivers' personal factors (i.e., resilience and/or demographic characteristics) and child-related contextual factors (i.e., ill child's cancer characteristics and/or demographic characteristics) predict parental caregivers' positive and negative well-being, and (c) test if self-transcendence mediates the relationship between resilience and well-being (positive and negative) in parental caregivers of children with cancer. Eighty parental caregivers whose children were diagnosed with any type of childhood cancer since at least two months prior to study start participated and completed a demographic instrument, the General Well-Being Schedule, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the State scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Self-Transcendence Scale, and the Brief Resilience Scale. Descriptive statistics were used to describe sample demographics, levels of positive and negative well-being, self-transcendence levels, and resilience levels. Standard multiple regression was used to examine predictors of well-being. Baron and Kenny's three-step mediation analysis was used to test if self-transcendence mediated the relationship between resilience and well-being (positive and negative). Both positive and negative well-being exist in parental caregivers of children with cancer as 47% of parental caregivers were in the `positive well-being' category with total General Well-Being Schedule scores above the positive well-being cutoff of 73, 36.3% were in the `depressed' category with total scores above the depression cutoff of 16 on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale, and 45% had scores that exceeded the mean anxiety score of 39.64 on the State Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Instrument. None of the child-related contextual factors were found to predict positive and negative well-being in parental caregivers of children with cancer. Resilience positively predicted general well-being and negatively predicted depression and anxiety in parental caregivers of children with cancer. Satisfaction with current financial status negatively predicted depression. Employment status negatively predicted anxiety such that those who were not employed had significantly lower anxiety than those who were employed part-time and full-time. Self-transcendence mediated the relationship between resilience and positive and negative well-being respectively.

This essay is a study of the portrayal of the theme of alienation in Eugene Ionesco's novel The hermit. In my study I examine the different ways in which the theme of alienation is portrayed and how the cause of the narrator's experience of alienation can be found in ideological, psychological and existential conflicts that the narrator has to face. The result is an experience of das unheimliche, a Freudian concept, which is a kind of uncanny detachment that the narrator experiences, when he is put up against an invisible force that lurks in the perifery of the world, which is portrayed in the story. The meaning of the ideological conflict is a portrayal of man's situation in a world that is ruled by capitalism, with marxism as a positive leveler and the meaning of the psychological conflict is a conflict in the narrator's own inner reality. The meaning of the existential conflict is a portrayal of man's situation in a world absent of God. The novel by Ionesco points at these conflicts and also offers a solution to the limitations, that are caused by alienation by transcending them. In my study I focus on the function of language, biblical imagery, allegory and the theories that are being used to define the ideological (marxist theory) and existential (Albert Camus' theory of the absurd) conflicts. In my analysis I have also used Camus' The stranger in comparison with Ionesco's novel.

Recent philosophers assess differently the extent to which affinity is to be found between the idealist metaphysics of G. W. Leibniz and George Berkeley. I argue that these figures’ idealisms are indeed strongly aligned. They espouse related accounts of the nature of mental substance and state. They similarly restrict the domain of causality. They each reject the Lockean primary/secondary quality dichotomy. Over against the criticism that idealisms cannot allow for a distinction to be made out between real and illusory perceptual experience, the two philosophers offer comparable solutions. Nevertheless, their ontologies are not identical, and are primarily to be distinguished in terms of their disparate characterisations of ultimate reality as being either immanent or transcendent to percipient subjects like us. This continuum of transcendentism and immanentism has further application as a conceptual tool both for tracing the rise of modern philosophy and for developing new metaphysical and epistemological accounts of the nature of the world and our relation to it.