Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis investigates the social context of the Apostle Paul and the communities to which he preached with the aim of showing that early Pauline Christianity was shaped by a social milieu that included: first, a Greco-Roman and particularly Stoic philosophy, second, a universalizing Jewish movement and third, an overarching Roman political framework. Paul’s philosophy was built on a foundation of Judaism, interpreted with the tools of Stoic philosophy, and communicated to a largely Roman audience. Chapter One presents the figure of Paul as a Jew and Roman citizen with a Greek education, a product of three cultural worlds. Chapter Two argues that through allegory, Paul replaced Jewish nationalistic and ethnocentric aspects with symbolic ones, and communicated its ethical core with Stoic language and concepts to a primarily Roman audience. Chapter Three examines this audience and determines that they were largely Roman citizens who were both steeped in the prevalent philosophy of the time, Stoicism, as well as being associated with the Jewish community as sympathizers, God-fearers, or “Highest-God” worshippers, as a result of the popular Judaizing movement in the first century. Through the study of Paul, his letters, and his audience, this thesis argues that Pauline Christianity was, at its core, a Stoic interpretation of Judaism. / Graduate / 0579 / dcoad@uvic.ca

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1933. / At head of title: L'Universit ̄catholique d'Amérique.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, 1966. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis offers new philosophical and literary interpretations of Seneca's 'De ira'. It takes as its starting-point the observation that both the philosophical position on which the text relies and the way in which it is organised appear to be chaotic, and it investigates how far and why this is the case. It shows that a coherent philosophical position underlies the text but that the text presents it as incoherent, and that it does this for therapeutic purposes. Similarly, it shows that the text is organised in a far more orderly way than has been previously appreciated, and it explains how the (apparent) disruption of that organisational system serves the text's therapeutic function. In making these arguments, it presents new readings of the De ira that reveal the text's philosophical and literary qualities, arguing that it constitutes a more sophisticated response to Seneca's philosophical predecessors than previous accounts have claimed, and that the text, as it progresses, introduces new therapeutic strategies that provide 'safety nets' should its earlier principal strategies have failed. The thesis aims to be methodologically innovative in using Seneca's descriptions of emotional responses as well as more explicit theorising to reconstruct his philosophical position and in suggesting a new approach to interpreting the role of interlocutors and addressees in didactic and dialogic texts.

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the Stoic influences in the Jacobean drama. Although the Stoic figure and references to Stoicism appear frequently in this drama, there has never been a comprehensive study of the Stoic element in the drama of this period. This study will fill this scholastic gap.

Critics who have noted the importance of Stoic constancy in Shakespeare 's Roman plays have failed to recognise the full complexity of the idea. It has two forms, both derived from the Stoic principle of homologia (consistency), and centred on the ideal of being always the same: Seneca's constantia sapientis, the rocklike or godlike virtue of the Stoic sage who is unmoved and unchanged by external circumstances; and Cicero's decorum (De officiis I), virtue as the consistent playing of an appropriate part. Seneca is more concerned with heroic self-sufficiency, Cicero with social virtue, but both forms of the ideal contain a tension between concern for inner truth and external appearances. In the late sixteenth century Stoic constancy becomes a subject of fierce debate as it is revived by the Neostoics, who stress the opposition of constancy and "opinion." Shakespeare's view of this debate may derive particularly from Montaigne, who moves from a Neostoic position to a sceptical critique of constancy as unattainable by inconstant man, and as less desirable than self-knowledge and flexibility. Reading North's Plutarch with these themes in mind, Shakespeare sees in the lives of Brutus, Antony, and Coriolanus an Aristotelian pattern of ideal, defective, and excessive constancy - a pattern which he modifies, in the light of his understanding of Seneca, Cicero, and Montaigne, in the three Roman plays. He explores the tension which exists between the Senecan and Ciceronian forms of constancy, and indeed within each of them: a tension between heroic Stoic virtue ("untir'd spirits") and public role-playing ("forrral constancy"). Julius Caesar shows Roman constancy as essentially "formal," resting on pretence and self-deception; in Rome, ironically, constancy depends on "opinion." Coriolanus, by taking constancy to an extreme, demonstrates the self-destructive contradictions within it. Antony and Cleopatra, by contrast, embrace a Montaigne-like ideal of "infinite variety" and inconsistent decorum; Antony fails, but Cleopatra achieves in death a paradoxical fusion of constancy and mutability.