• Kant on the Human Animal: Anthropology, Ethics, Nature 

  Baumeister, David (University of Oregon, 2017-05-01)

  This dissertation gives an account of Kant’s understanding of the human animal through examination of a range of published works and lecture transcripts from the 1770s through the 1790s, with particular attention paid to ...

• What is Ethics without Justice? Reframing Environmental Ethics for Social Justice 

  Torres, Christopher (University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)

  The field of environmental ethics has been in discussion and debate the past 40 years over how to best expand the circle of moral consideration away from a privileged human perspective to encompass the rest of the non-human ...

• The Politics of Paranoia: Affect, Temporality, and the Epistemology of Securitization 

  Ibrahimhakkioglu, Fulden (University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)

  The concept of “national security” has been an essential part of the political lexicon of the United States since the aftermath of World War II. Although it could be said that security in one way or another has always been ...

• Academics No Longer Think: How the Neoliberalization of Academia Leads to Thoughtlessness 

  Pack, Justin (University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)

  In my dissertation, I argue that the neoliberalization of higher education results in the university becoming less and less a place of wonder, self-cultivation and thinking and instead more and more a place to specialize, ...

• The Enchantment of Ethics: Empathy, Character, and the Art of Moral Living 

  Parzuchowski, Kimberley (University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)

  My dissertation explores the role of narrative in the cultivation of empathy for ethical attitudes and behaviors. I begin by exploring an uncommon view of human nature, concluding that we are not autonomously individualistic ...

• Situating Vine Deloria, Jr.'s Philosophy of Science 

  Southall, Joel (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This thesis provides a view of Deloria's thoughts on science and metaphysics, presenting his criticism of Western science and of his proposed alternative to what he presents as a historically evidenced epistemic attitude ...

• Regulation of Bodies as Gendered Nationalistic Ideology: Physically Wounded Veterans as Political Props 

  Reese, David (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  Using the 2014 State of the Union Address as an example, I show that the public honoring of physically wounded veterans hides the emotional, psychological, social, and moral wounds of military service, creating a normative ...

• Poetry and Ecstasy: Thinking Bodily with Heidegger and Bataille 

  Brewer, Benjamin (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This essay explores the possibilities for thinking of the body as a site of exposure to and commingling with the world. I begin with Martin Heidegger’s engagement with the question of poetry as an encounter with the ...

• The Perils of Pluralism: An Exploration of the Nature of Political Disagreements about Economic Justice 

  Reynolds, Alan (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  Much of contemporary mainstream political philosophy operates under the assumption that if reasonable people deliberate about matters of basic justice in the right conditions, agreement will emerge. This assumption implies ...

• Gender and Time 

  Burke, Megan (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This dissertation examines how gender and temporality are co-constitutive of one another and what temporalities underlie the actuality of gendered life. I weave together the insights of feminist phenomenology and feminist ...

• Justice As Reconciliation: Political Theory in a World of Difference 

  Fourlas, George (University of Oregon, 2014-10-17)

  Divisiveness routinely turns violent, thus making research into alternative means of dealing with conflict an urgent necessity. This dissertation focuses on the politics of divisiveness and the techniques of conflict ...

• The Vulnerability of the Relational Self: G. W. F. Hegel, Simone de Beauvoir, and Nishida Kitarō Meet Patty Hearst 

  Grosz, Elizabeth (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  This dissertation examines relational models of selfhood cross-culturally through the work of G. W. F. Hegel, Simone de Beauvoir, and Nishida Kitarō. In the master-slave section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel states ...

• Creative Climate: East-West Perspectives on Art, Nature, and the Expressive Body 

  Schultz, Lucy (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  This dissertation defends the need for a renewed conception of nature as seen through the lens of an artist. By exploring how the relationship between art and nature has been conceived by 19th and 20th century European and ...

• The Echo of God's Laughter: Aesthetic Experience and the Virtue of Openness within a Pragmatist Ethics 

  Rodriguez, Aaron (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  Immanuel Kant's claim that morality is a matter of rational judgment is perhaps the apotheosis of a tradition within ethical philosophy that sought certainty with regards to how one ought to live or what one should to do ...

• The "Might Makes Right" Fallacy: On a Tacit Justification for Violence 

  Temam, Edgar (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  "Might makes right," so the saying goes. What does this mean? What does it mean to say that humans live by this saying? How can this saying that is considered by almost all as an expression of injustice play a justificatory ...

• Between Performance and Participation: The Time of Action in Hannah Arendt 

  Lipkind, Hanna (University of Oregon, 2014-06-17)

  This thesis takes up the debate between the agonal and deliberative interpretations of Hannah Arendt's conception of political action. In it, I redeem the model of action as performance found in her descriptions of agonal ...

• Gender, Alienation, and Dignity in Global Slums 

  Luttrell, Johanna (University of Oregon, 2013-10-10)

  This dissertation is a philosophical inquiry into the problem of the slums that develop in and around large cities in the Global South, considered in the context of globalization. I argue first that theories of global ...

• Impossible and Necessary: The Problem of Luck and the Promise of Kindness 

  Lundquist, Caroline (University of Oregon, 2013-10-03)

  My dissertation explores the promise of kindness as a response to the problem of luck which confronts both ancient and modern visions of the moral life. A rich articulation of kindness in the light of historical moral ...

• X-ray Scattering Techniques for Coherent Imaging in Reflection Geometry, Measurement of Mutual Intensity, and Symmetry Determination in Disordered Materials 

  Parks, Daniel (University of Oregon, 2013-10-03)

  The advent of highly-coherent x-ray light sources, such as those now available world-wide in modern third-generation synchrotrons and increasingly available in free-electron lasers, is driving the need for improved analytical ...

• A Pragmatic Realism: Events, Powers, and Relations in the Metaphysics of Objective Relativism 

  Taylor, Patrick (University of Oregon, 2013-07-11)

  The early twentieth century witnessed the emergence of "objective relativism," a distinctly American school of metaphysical realism inspired by the works of John Dewey and A.N. Whitehead. Largely forgotten, objective ...

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