This thesis, Böhme and Hegel: A Study of their Intellectual Development and Shared Readings of Two Christian Theologoumena, explores the connections which exist between both the intellectual development of Jakob Böhme and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and in their readings of two Christian theologoumena. As such, this thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One consists of a comparative study between the intellectual development of Böhme and Hegel. The course of this development is divided into three phases, periods in which (...) Böhme and Hegel will be shown to share. The examination begins with their reaction against Christian orthodoxy, their subsequent interest in the heterodox, and their eventual return to the Reformation. Through the course of this chapter it will be realised that the progression of Böhme and Hegel from one period to another constitutes development in language, but not in content. Both seek to find a mode of expression which adequately represents eternal truths which they consider to be perennial. Chapter Two analyses an occasion in which Böhme and Hegel attempt to render this perennial content. Through their examination of the Christian concept of God, both are endeavouring to represent a kernel of religious truth, beyond its representational trappings. As such, both Böhme and Hegel will examine, in detail, Christian notions such as the nature of the unrevealed God, the Trinity and its supposed personhood, and the doctrine of the Incarnation. Chapter Three continues Böhme and Hegel’s line of investigation, in attempting to unveil the speculative meaning between the Christian theologoumena of the creation of the world, the psychology of the first created being, and the fall from his original nature. Through the course of this chapter, Bohme and Hegel’s shared thoughts on notions of the conflicting accounts of creation, the primordial unity with the divine, and the necessity of the Fall of Man will be examined. Throughout the course of this comparative study, it is hoped that a clear and direct influence on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy of religion by Jakob Bohme will be shown. (shrink)

In the natural attitude, and in the ordinary language, religion is strictly bound to transcendence. In this paper I ask whether the concept of “transcendence” is legitimate in the phenomenological dimension, which is opened by the methodological operation of reduction to the immanence of transcendental consciousness. By examining how “transcendence” gains increasingly importance in Husserl’s thought, the necessity emerges to distinguish three levels of it: intentional transcendence, intersubjective transcendence and transcendence as “superposition”. Such distinction allows to rethink the sense, the (...) possibilities and the limits of phenomenology of religion. Keywords: Husserl, transcendence, epoché, reduction, intersubjectivity, religion. (shrink)

The study attempts to determine whether or not human fetuses have moral status. Three broad categories of answers to the question were analyzed. The arguments developed by Michael Tooley in Abortion and Infanticide are assessed as representative of the liberal view. Those of L. W. Sumner in Abortion and Moral Theory stand as moderate claims and in the position defended by William May in "Abortion and Man's Moral Being" represents a conservative position. The work of other authors is drawn upon (...) to help analyze the central arguments and to provide alternate interpretations. Among these are Jane English, Judith Thomson, Christina Hoff Sommers, Ronald Green, Joseph Donceel, Lawrence Becker, and Gareth Matthews. ;Though each of the three principal authors is found to present potentially forceful arguments, none of them is thought to provide a fully convincing account of the moral status of fetuses. Important difficulties stem from the use of particular theories of rights and from inadequate treatment of the concept of potentiality. ;The study arrives at two conclusions. The first is that arguments for or against the moral status of fetuses are grounded in more basic, conflicting moral theories about rights or moral behavior. Thus the question of the moral status of fetuses is not likely to receive a universally acceptable answer before moral philosophers come to agreement on basic moral principles. ;The second is that the discussions above have nonetheless yielded two important considerations which together form the basis of a tenable position on the moral status of fetuses. I suggest that an argument can be developed from two claims. One is a conservative claim that an embryo or fetus is the same entity as a later human being. The other is a moral principle discussed by Michael Tooley, viz. that where an entity will at some time in its life have rights, it is wrong to affect it so that the entity will be incapable of exercising those rights when the time comes. The argument supports the conclusion that, from the period of the embryo on, there is an entity that merits our moral consideration. (shrink)

Should voting be compulsory? Many people believe that it should, and that countries, like Britain, which have never had compulsion, ought to adopt it. As is common with such things, the arguments are a mixture of principle and political calculation, reflecting the idea that compulsory voting is morally right and that it is likely to prove politically beneficial. This article casts a sceptical eye on both types of argument. It shows that compulsory voting is generally unjustified although there are good (...) reasons to worry about declining voter turnout in established democracies, and to worry about inequalities of turnout as well. (shrink)

When the first joint workshop on cultural research between the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Cultural Research and the Department of Cultural Studies at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University began in July 2002, I had to admit to a little uncertainty in opening the proceedings. It was a novel experience for me to speak in Sydney as a member of a foreign delegation, and I spent an anxious moment wondering how to pitch my remarks: should I be telling old friends (...) from UWS about what we do at Lingnan, or introducing new friends from Hong Kong to the Sydney—no, the Parramatta-based environment where we would spend the next few days? (shrink)

The term ‘Hybridity’ has become one of the most persistent conceptual leitmotifs in postcolonial discourse and theory. It is intended to exclude the diverse forms of purity encompassed within essentialist theories. The concept is so recurrent and has not a unified meaning because its definition differs from a context to another, from a theorist to another, and can take political, cultural, and linguistic forms. Our paper approaches the concept of cultural and linguistic hybridity in the context of a comparison between (...) the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart and the Algerian author, Feraoun’s second fiction; La terre et le sang. To explore this contention, we shall try to show how both authors ingested and digested the coloniser’s language, selecting new ideas and reshaping them to construct their cultural identities. In so doing, they created something different, a kind of “third space”, to paraphrase Homi Bhabha. But, before dealing with the content analysis, it may be useful to explain what is meant by ‘linguistic and cultural hybridity’. (shrink)

This paper addresses the emergence of the ‘death drive’ in Sigmund Freud’s later work, and the significance of this development for his psychoanalytic theory as a whole. In particular, the paper argues that the ‘death drive’ is a pivotal concept, articulating a connection between what are commonly understood as the ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ functions of the psyche. Moreover, the death drive is pivotal in a second sense, in that it articulates a turn away from the strictly empirical realm of science, (...) to a dark and obscure field indicated, but not comprehended, by observable phenomena. Finally, the paper suggests that as Freud’s departure from his scientific methodology into the wilderness of speculation, the death drive represents his most valuable contribution to psychoanalysis. With the death drive, Freud is able to engender a new perspective of human being: one that is not already encompassed by the mechanistic neurological viewpoint from which his researches first issued. (shrink)