Government & Politics Theses and Dissertations
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Item Albert Camus and the Political Philosophy of the Absurd(2008-05-12) Bowker, Matthew Hamilton; Alford, Charles F; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Compared to the unmistakable impact of absurd theatre, literature, and art on contemporary European and American cultures, the philosophy, morality, and politics of the absurd have remained relatively obscure. Few interpretations of Albert Camus' philosophic contribution have successfully defined the meaning of absurdity, its components and dynamics, or its moral and political consequences. This dissertation attempts to clarify these areas of absurd thought by applying the logic of ambivalence to Camus' philosophy of the absurd, revealing its compelling diagnosis of extremism and indifference, its experiential grounding for post-traditional values, and its unique appeal for moral and political maturity. After reviewing the recent history of the concept of absurdity in Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nagel, and elsewhere (Chapter 2), I offer detailed analyses of Camus' absurd and the contributions of his scholarly critics (Chapter 3). I introduce the concept of ambivalence in the work of Eugen Bleuler, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Otto Kernberg, and relevant sociological and political researchers (Chapter 4) to argue that the absurd is best understood not in skeptical or existential terms, but as an ambivalent 'position' with respect to countervailing desires, primarily a desire for unity and a kind of principium individuationis (Chapter 5). These ambivalent desires are implicated in the moral and political tensions between self and others, absolutes and limits, creation and destruction, even good and evil. Applying this interpretation to Camus' The Stranger and its main character, Meursault (Chapter 6), and to The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, The Plague, and other works (Chapters 7 and 8), I argue that the destructive ideologies Camus decried may be understood as defenses against the ambivalence of the absurd, while an absurd morality demands mature and creative resolutions of contradiction, resistance against defensive reactions, and deliberate moral and emotional identifications with others and enemies. Analyses of two controversial cases, Camus' defense of Kaliayev and the 'fastidious' Russian assassins of 1905 and Camus' unpopular stance on the Algerian War (1954-1962), are offered as miniature case-studies to ground conclusions about the meaning of absurd morality and politics (Chapter 9).Item A POST-CONFUCIAN CIVIL SOCIETY: LIBERAL COLLECTIVISM AND PARTICIPATORY POLITICS IN SOUTH KOREA(2007-11-14) Kim, Sungmoon; Alford, Fred; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores how South Koreans have creatively appropriated the meanings of democratic civility and national citizenship using Confucianism-originated familial affectionate sentiments (chŏng), while refusing their liberal individualistic counterparts through a cross-cultural and comparative theoretical approach. By investigating four recent civil-action cases in South Korea, it argues that the chŏng-induced politico-cultural practice of collective moral responsibility (uri-responsibility), which transcends the binary of individualism and collectivism and of liberalism and nationalism, represents the essence of Korean democratic civility. It theorizes the ethical quality that uri-responsibility generates, when practiced in the public sphere of a national civil society, in terms of "transcendental collectivism," and claims that unlike a liberal civil society aiming to empower the independent self's individual agency, the post-Confucian dialectic between agency and citizenship is focused on the interdependent selves' shard cultural-political identity, collective freedom, and democratic citizenship. This dissertation generalizes the liberal yet non-individualistic political practices that transcendental collectivism promotes in terms of "liberal collectivism" as opposed to liberal individualism, and argues that liberal collectivism has great potential to contribute to both liberal nationalism and participatory democracy in post-Confucian Korea.Item For the End is a Limit: The Question Concerning the Environment(2007-06-04) Orhan, Ozguc; Conca, Ken; Butterworth, Charles E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation argues that Aristotle's philosophy of praxis (i.e., ethics and politics) can contribute to our understanding of the contemporary question concerning the environment. Thinking seriously about the environment today calls for resisting the temptation to jump to conclusions about Aristotle's irrelevance to the environment on historicist grounds of incommensurability or the fact that Aristotle did not write specifically on environmental issues as we know them. It is true that environmental problems are basically twentieth-century phenomena, but the larger normative discourses in which the terms "environmental" and "ecological" and their cognates are situated should be approached philosophically, namely, as cross-cultural and trans-historical phenomena that touch human experience at a deeper level. The philosophical perspective exploring the discursive meaning behind contemporary environmental praxis can reveal to us that certain aspects of Aristotle's thought are relevant, or can be adapted, to the ends of environmentalists concerned with developmental problems. I argue that Aristotle's views are already accepted and adopted in political theory and the praxis of the environment in many respects. In the first half of the dissertation, I explore the common ground between contemporary theorizing on the ethical and political aspects of environmental issues and Aristotelian ethics and politics. The second half of the dissertation locates the contemporary relevance of Aristotle in the recently emerging studies of "environmental virtue ethics" as well as "environmental citizenship" and "conservative environmentalism."Item Cervantes' Don Quixote and the Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry(2006-05-07) Rodriguez, Arcelia Maria; Butterworth, Charles E; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Item Being Human, Being Good: The Source and Summit of Universal Human Rights(2004-07-26) Madigan, Janet Holl; Butterworth, Charles E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation uses the concept of universal human rights to explore the relationship between the individual, society and truth. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written in the wake of World War II, was meant to provide a moral standard for judging the state's treatment of the individual. Yet to this day some contend that the principles expressed therein are not universal, but culturally relative. The dominant arguments for universality, however, are themselves relativistic because they are not grounded in the idea of a natural order that supplies objective standards of value. The result is not a morally neutral explanation of human dignity, but a new moral philosophy altogether that upholds personal autonomy as its highest good. But this position ultimately undermines human rights, for it entails that what is understood to be human is not fixed, but determined by the most powerful elements of society. How did we arrive at this point of wishing to say something universally true about human beings even while lacking the philosophical means to do so coherently? To answer this, I explore the changing relationship between truth and politics from Plato to Locke. Plato and Aristotle saw truth as essential to the proper ordering of individual and political life. Christianity concurred, but held that knowing truth was no longer the sole province of philosophers. Machiavelli rejected transcendent standards as inadequate for politics. Modern political philosophy actually begins with Grotius, who, in reaction to Machiavelli's political realism, constructs a natural law philosophy divorced from the idea of objective good. This leads inevitably to Locke's non-theistic natural law and the elevation of human will to the level of the sacred, thus resulting in the current crisis of understanding in universal human rights. The only logical ground for the concept of universal human rights is Thomistic natural law. An investigation of Aquinas's notion of being and goodness reveals that the only truly universal human rights are to life and free will. Applying this principle yields the conclusion that if human rights are to have any meaning whatsoever, there can never be a "human right" to abortion.