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This dissertation argues that mid-century liberalism provided the philosophical rational and basis for sex education, and that sex education was cumulatively institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling between 1955 and 1988 as the result of incremental, technocratic policy-making. School-based sex education – an extension of the welfare state – was a technocratic solution to socio-sexual problems such as venereal disease and teenage pregnancy. Sex education was conceptualized as a program of disease prevention and health promotion with the added objective of promoting sexual responsibility amongst students. While school-based sex education was ostensibly a form of sexual regulation, it also conformed to the purpose of liberal education: the development of the critical autonomous capacity of each and every individual student. The sex education that students received, therefore, was a medico-scientific study of sex that stressed prevention and early treatment, but which also emphasized the centrality of individual choice in place of the imperatives of a single standard of behaviour or morality. Sex education policy was shaped by a succession of incremental changes to better remedy both longstanding and emerging socio-sexual problems. When AIDS education was mandated for the 1987–88 school year in response to the AIDS crisis, sex education was further institutionalized. This decision, however, was only reached as a result of the past three decades worth of technocratic policy-making. Social scientific studies had provided evidence, albeit limited, of sex education’s effectiveness in ameliorating socio-sexual problems and reducing government spending. Moreover, empirical evidence indicated that most Ontarians were accepting of sex education – or at worst apathetic about it. While mandating AIDS education was the result of a catalyst, it did not represent a major shift in sex education policy when looked at over the longue durée. AIDS education was largely built upon established policy. By 1988, many aspects of contemporary sex education policy had been established. Ultimately, the ministry’s sex education policy reflected its burgeoning technocratic liberalism amidst an increasingly secular, pluralistic, and sexually permissive society. As a result of incremental, technocratic policy-making between 1955 and 1988, sex education – under conditions of liberal modernity – was institutionalized as part of Ontario public schooling. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis advisor: Susan M. Shell / This study looks to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant to investigate the relationship between anthropology (i.e., an account of the human) and politics, and, in particular, to think through what sort of human being liberalism at its best (or most civic-minded) requires or seeks to form. Chapter II turns to Kant’s idea of historical progress to draw out the link between his account of the human and his liberal republican politics. The role of hope, as a necessary product of our reason, proves to be central both to Kant’s politics and to the question of human nature. For Kant, we are above all defined by our striving to remake the world.Focusing primarily on the A Preface of the 1781 edition, Chapter III argues that the Critique of Pure Reason can be understood to be advancing a “transcendental anthropology” (which is distinct from Kant’s later anthropology from a “pragmatic point of view”) in that it seeks to provide “the conditions of the possibility” of human experience. The tension between freedom (or morality) and nature (or self-interest) emerges as the defining characteristic of human life. Chapter IV takes up Kant’s attempt to bridge this “gulf” between freedom and nature in the third Critique, specifically by examining Kant’s aesthetic theory to understand how the human being might be represented indeterminately through a regulative principle of reflective judgment. It argues that employing his aesthetic theory, Kant offers throughout his late writings symbolic or even poetic images that depict the human being’s unity and the moral striving toward such unity. Chapters V and VI consider two such images. The former returns to the question of progressive history. Now integrated into Kant’s critical system through an “as if” postulation of reflective judgment, the idea of history encourages an “admiration” and gratitude for the natural order that counteracts the harmful moral and civic effects of reductive materialism. In Chapter V, however, we face Kant’s less sanguine notion of “radical evil,” an apparent obstacle to progress that emerges from within his own philosophy. And yet, I argue that one can understand radical evil as a symbol of Kant’s striving human being by reading it in light of the aesthetic framework provided in the CPJ. In this way, the symbol of radical evil helps us make sense of the strife inherent in our moral experience and provides a noble, or even heroic, image of the human. The conclusion raises the question of whether the idea of progress, and the anthropology underlying it, can still grip us today and, if not, whether liberalism can do without something like the sober hope Kant seeks to inspire. As Kant himself saw in 1789, hope, when unrestrained, becomes destructive of the world it aims to overcome. Even so, Kant reminds us of the inevitability of hope’s role in human life and politics. Nonetheless, in light of the ambivalence of hope, and in the spirit of Kant’s rational questioning, one might still wonder whether the end of reason is to remake the world. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

The capability approach to justice, made popular by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, has been a stalwart of the human development literature for the last 30 years, and its core ideals underwrite the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. This dissertation offers a new version of the approach, rejecting many of its ideological commitments to liberal-democratic humanism and replacing them with more distinctly collectivist and communitarian ones. It contends that the capability approach, when used as a theoretical framework for global development, need not contain almost any ethical normativity with regard to a definition of justice, and indeed it is much more functional when it endorses a moderate ethical relativism. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, it shows that all existing versions of the capability approach are ideologically committed to a specific kind of liberal humanism, which its proponents consider universalist but that is actually quite provincial. Second, it argues that collectivist critiques from prominent capability theorists in the last decade have been misunderstood and their recommendations unheeded, a fact that this dissertation attempts to rectify. Third, it offers a properly collectivist account of group capabilities and group self-determination, which can do all the normative work that individual capabilities and agency perform in the approach's original versions. Finally, it introduces the notion of public objective capabilities, which justifies a higher deference to collective self-determination at the expense of some individual freedom and equitable participation in democratic polity. The overall goal of this new collectivist version of the approach is not to reject the worth of capability as a metric of global justice, but rather to reinforce it. A collectivist capabilitarianism shows that capability is so well suited to global development work that it can function across diverse political realities, without the ideological constraints of a liberal humanism that is widely accepted in the Global North but whose cross-cultural appeal has been far overstated by its proponents. / Ph. D. / For much the 20_th century, development aid to the deeply impoverished nations of the Global South has taken the form of humanitarian assistance. Development projects have been motivated, first, by a humanist principle that all people everywhere deserve basic human rights and freedom from want; and, second, by the widely accepted belief that the Global South is entitled to receive vast reparations after centuries of colonial exploitation. Together, these two views have made development work the near-exclusive province of liberal humanists, and so most development projects are designed to advance ideological positions that are popular in Western democracies: individual freedom, fair opportunity, social equality, and fair political representation. But while the liberal-humanist ideology is perfectly valid on its own merits, it is neither the only nor the best available normative framework to underwrite development work. This dissertation argues that development workers—international NGOs, transnational activists, and various humanitarians—should design projects that incorporate a communitarian, morally particularistic, and non-liberal (but not <i>illiberal</i>) ethic that respects the collective self-determination of groups without requiring the affirmation of free agency for individual persons. This proposal follows some recent collectivist shifts in the literature on Amartya Sen’s capability approach to justice, which is explicitly or implicitly adopted by many development projects based in the Global South. An increasing number of critics in the last decade have argued that the approach’s liberal-humanist foundations hinder rather than promote its usefulness in eradicating systemic poverty while respecting local communal values. This dissertation sides with these critiques and takes them a step further, suggesting that development workers who endorse the capability approach should pay more attention and give more respect to the determinations of groups as opposed merely to individuals.

In the past decade, North Dakota has experienced a substantial shift in economic and political activity due to oil. In addition to jobs and revenue, corporate interests have surged into the state with a dominating force. As players in a highly valued industry, oil companies have worked hard to protect and uphold viable markets in the state. These interests are observed in relationships with key politicians, especially among those regulating the oil industry as members of the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC). Critics label this development as misguided, as an example of big business manipulating government. This thesis, on the other hand, contends that such arguments are predicated on prevailing, yet unhelpful standards, and offers an understanding of how ND's government operates in the real world through the use of qualitative and quantitative methods. By testing the relationship between political contributions and oil spills in North Dakota and interpreting the results using three political theories—tliberalism, realism, and elite theory—tthe case study shows the allegations against key politicians and the oil industry are not substantiated. Instead of a case of political corruption, the thesis shows that the case of the NDIC is in fact a paradigmatic example of how liberal-democracy really works. / Master of Arts / In the past decade, North Dakota has experienced a substantial shift in economic and political activity due to oil. In addition to jobs and revenue, corporate interests have surged into the state with a dominating force. As players in a highly valued industry, oil companies have worked hard to protect and uphold viable markets in the state. In particular, by developing relationships with key politicians, especially among those regulating the oil industry as members of the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC). Critics view these strong relationships between oil companies and politicians as imbalanced and corrupt. In response, this thesis questions the criticisms at hand and offers an understanding of how ND’s government operates in the real world. By testing the relationship between political contributions and oil spills in North Dakota and interpreting the results using three political theories, the thesis shows that the case of the NDIC is not a case of corruption but how liberal-democracy really works.

符艷菁. / "2001年6月" / 論文 (哲學碩士)--香港中文大學, 2001. / 參考文獻 (leaves 172-179) / 附中英文摘要. / "2001 nian 6 yue" / Fu Yanjing. / Lun wen (zhe xue shuo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2001. / Can kao wen xian (leaves 172-179) / Fu Zhong Ying wen zhai yao. / 論文摘要 --- p.i-iii / Chapter 第一章 --- 緒論 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一節 --- 自由主義在中國 --- p.1 / Chapter 第二節 --- 自由主義知識份子的類別 --- p.8 / Chapter 第三節 --- 文章內容簡介 --- p.11 / Chapter 第四節 --- 儲安平硏究回顧 --- p.14 / Chapter 第五節 --- 小結 --- p.25 / Chapter 第二章 --- 儲安平的自由主義思想 --- p.27 / Chapter 第一節 --- 儲安平生平簡介 --- p.27 / Chapter 第二節 --- 儲安平的自由主義思想根源 --- p.29 / Chapter 第三節 --- 小結 --- p.40 / Chapter 第三章 --- 國民黨統治大陸時期-儲安平與《觀察》 --- p.43 / Chapter 第一節 --- 《觀察》始末 --- p.43 / Chapter 第二節 --- 儲安平的《觀察》政論 --- p.57 / Chapter 第三節 --- 小結 --- p.78 / Chapter 第四章 --- 共產黨統治大陸時期一儲安平與「黨天下」 --- p.83 / Chapter 第一節 --- 1948年至1949年的儲安平 --- p.83 / Chapter 第二節 --- 1949年至1957年的儲安平 --- p.86 / Chapter 第三節 --- 儲安平與「黨天下」 --- p.98 / Chapter 第四節 --- 中共與自由主義知識份子 --- p.132 / Chapter 第五節 --- 小結 --- p.146 / Chapter 第五章 --- 結論 --- p.149 / 附錄 --- p.155 / 附錄一儲安平年譜 --- p.155 / 附錄二《觀察》撰稿人簡況 --- p.166 / 附錄三《觀察》封面 --- p.170 / 附錄四復刊後的《觀察》封面 --- p.171 / 參考資料 --- p.172

This paper takes as its starting point the fact of reasonable pluralism and defends political liberalism as the best means of accommodating diversity and a plurality of different conceptions of the good. I then ask what is needed for a social order characterized by diversity and a multiplicity of different ways of life to come into existence and perpetuate itself over time. First, I defend political liberalism and argue that the creation of a society that is accommodating of diversity requires that the state be mindful of the spillover effects between public institutions and the private lives of citizens. Second, I argue that the individuals living in such a society must adopt certain virtues, both publicly as well as privately. I achieve this by presenting an account of the virtues of citizens in a political liberal society. Third, I draw out the implications of having a society characterized by reasonable pluralism and many different conceptions of the good, by arguing that such a society should avoid adopting too expansive a role, since an overly ambitious conception of social justice risks stifling the diversity a political liberal society is trying to protect. I conclude with some general remarks about the current state of liberal theorizing and the need for liberal theorists to provide an account of liberalism that includes more than one’s conception of distributive justice and legitimate state coercion. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-22 21:48:39.206

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Anthropology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2006. / Sammanfattning på engelska med titeln: The state of suspension : CSA and governmentality 1901-1921.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Purdue University, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-293).