Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2022, Theology

This dissertation is about the problem of history in modern theology. It describes early Christian conceptions of history and truth and sketches a genealogy of the impact of modern historical consciousness on Christianity. By focusing on Third Republic France, and then the work of the bible scholar Alfred Loisy, this dissertation seeks to situate the Modernist Crisis, where the conflict between history and theology erupted most violently. In so doing, the way in which conceptions of doctrine are embedded within histories, contexts, and politics is revealed. To flesh out this same point, in its later chapters, this dissertation shifts its attention to Catholic engagement with the right-wing and fascist movements of the twentieth- century. To this end, the career of Jacques Maritain (d. 1973) proves particularly important. His move from reactionary politics in his youth toward the articulation of a “New Christendom” reveals the extent to which theology and politics co-constitute each other. More than that, this dissertation looks at Maritain's role in the religious freedom debates of the Second Vatican Council. The final thesis of the dissertation is that the thinking Maritain utilizes in articulating his New Christendom - what he calls “prise de conscience” or “awareness” - offers a contribution to the ongoing conversations about continuity and discontinuity that mark Catholic reflection on the problems of history and doctrine.

Committee: William Portier (Advisor); Jana Bennett (Committee Member); Thomas Guarino (Committee Member); Vincent Miller (Committee Member); Dennis Doyle (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Philosophy; Political Science; Religion; Religious History; Theology

BA, Oberlin College, 2022, Russian and East European Studies

The Siberian punk movement of the 1980s is often regarded as the Soviet Union's most aesthetically and politically iconoclastic rock underground. Amidst the numerous bands the scene produced, none has matched the notoriety of Grazhdanskaia Oborona (Civil Defense) and its leader Egor Letov. At first glance, Letov's songs declaring hatred for the “totalitarian” Soviet Union and its destruction of the individual evoke associations with the previous generation of Soviet dissidents, who used the term “totalitarianism” to contrast the Soviet system with the Western democracy they admired. Yet Letov, who rejected democratic reforms and after the collapse of the USSR proclaimed himself as an ardent communist, described totalitarianism not as a form of government but as an inborn state of being. Accordingly, resistance toward the Soviet state became a manifestation of the struggle against human nature. Totalitarianism thus serves as a lens through which to examine the role of radical politics in Grazhdanskaia Oborona: a reflection of existential rebellion. By analyzing his interviews and musical output in the mid- to late-1980s, I argue that Letov manipulates listeners' understandings of what it meant to be “against” in the Soviet Union by drawing from existing rhetoric of political protest, replacing the image of the liberal dissident with that of a rebel whose radical politics reflect an existential struggle. I demonstrate his conception of totalitarianism as a line of continuity between his “anti-Soviet” and “pro-communist” years. In doing so, I present Letov as a figure whose works defy conventions of liberal political resistance traditionally employed by Western scholars of the Soviet Union.

Committee: Vladimir Ivantsov (Advisor); Thomas Newlin (Committee Member); Nicholas Romeo Bujalski (Committee Member) Subjects: East European Studies; Russian History; Slavic Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2014, Philosophy, Applied

This dissertation addresses how commodification as a seductive practice differs from commodification as a coercive practice, and why the distinction is ethically significant. Although commodification is often linked with technological progress, it has nonetheless been the focus of critiques which assert that many commodification practices can be considered coercive and, as such, are ethically suspect. Markedly less philosophical attention has been devoted to seductive practices which, despite their frequency of occurrence, are often overlooked or considered to be of little ethical concern. The thesis of this essay is that, in regard to commodification, the structural discrepancies between seduction and coercion are such that in widespread practice they yield different degrees of ethical ambiguity and without proper consideration this significant difference can remain undetected or ignored, thus establishing or perpetuating systems of unjust domination and oppression. I argue that a paradigm shift from coercion to seduction has occurred in widespread commodification practices, that seduction is just as worthy of serious ethical consideration as coercion, and that any ethical theory that fails to take seduction into account is lacking a critical element. Drawing on Theodor Adorno's aesthetic methodology as an approach to working with coercion and seduction within the framework of commodification, I begin by clarifying the main concepts of the argument and what is meant by the use of the term "critical" in this context. Next I present evidence for a paradigm shift in the systemic structure of commodification and argue for the need to recognize the ethical significance of seductive practices. I then apply the main argument to issues of freedom in contemporary bioethics by examining narratives pertaining to pharmaceutical development and sales. The aim of this dissertation is to show that by distinguishing between seduction and coercion as distinct modes (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Donald Callen PhD (Advisor); Michael Bradie PhD (Committee Member); Marvin Belzer PhD (Committee Member); Scott Martin PhD (Other) Subjects: Aesthetics; Ethics; Gender; Medical Ethics; Philosophy

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2012, Philosophy

My thesis explicates Hannah Arendt's Socratic notion of thinking, the adversarial dialogue one has with oneself that enables one to take moral account of past and future actions. Plato's Socrates and Nazi officer Adolph Eichmann are utilized by Arendt as paradigmatic cases of thinking and non-thinking, respectively. My concern is how the thinking activity may become corrupt or even spoiled, whereby one is rendered genuinely incapable of thought, and hence, of moral action. I suspect such spoiling, if possible, could occur under one or both of the following conditions: (a) habituated refusal to engage in critical self-reflection; or (b) never developing the conceptual tools and language to adequately reflect on one's moral self. I show that if we interpret Arendt's claim that Eichmann was “never” capable of thinking to be absolute, in accordance with condition (b), then Arendt cannot justifiably levy moral and legal responsibility upon a man who helped send hundreds of thousands of Jews to their murderous death. However, if we interpret Eichmann's failure to think as the product of condition (a), it suggests that at some point in his past Eichmann was capable of thought, and hence, moral action. Under such a reading, Arendt can have her cake and eat it too.

Committee: Benjamin Grazzini PhD (Committee Chair); Renee Heberle PhD (Committee Member); Charles Blatz PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Modern History; Peace Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; Social Psychology; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Theatre

Playwright George Bernard Shaw has a reputation as a humanitarian, an indefatigable seeker of justice and, in his own words, a “world betterer.” But this reputation is difficult to reconcile with his support for the totalitarian regimes and dictators that emerged after the First World War, which is not so well known. This enthusiasm is usually dismissed as an expression of Shaw's well known propensity for comic exaggeration and hyperbole, his pugnacious rhetoric, his love of paradox, and especially his addiction to antagonizing the British political establishment. However, as I believe this dissertation proves, Shaw's support was genuine, rooted in his powerful desire for absolute control over the unruly and chaotic, in a deep psychological longing for perfection. Shaw expressed rigid control over his own bodily instincts, and looked for political rulers of strong will and utopian designs to exercise similar control over unruly social elements. It is occasionally stated that Shaw's support for totalitarianism grew out of his frustration with nineteenth century liberalism, which ineffectually culminated in a disastrous world war. Yet close analysis to two of Shaw's Major Critical Essays from the 1890s shows that even then Shaw expressed a desire for a ruthless man of action unencumbered by the burden of conscience to come on the scene and establish a new world order, to initiate the utopian epoch. Indeed, a further analysis of a number of plays from before the war shows the impulse to be persistent and undeniable. This dissertation attempts to reveal the genuineness of Shaw's totalitarianism by looking at his plays and prefaces, articles, speeches and letters, but is especially concerned to analyze the utopian desire that runs through so many of Shaw's plays, looking at his political and eugenic utopianism as it is expressed in his drama and comparing it to his political totalitarianism. Shaw considered himself a “revolutionary writer,” and his activity as a sociali (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lesley Ferris PhD (Advisor); Richard Dutton PhD (Committee Member); Beth Kattelman PhD (Committee Member) Subjects:

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2011, History

Professor Joseph Bendersky claims that Harvard Political Scientist and German emigre Carl J. Freidrich's Weimar-era constitutional ideas were "Schmittian to their core" but that Friedrich's experience as a naturalized U.S. citizen led him to embrace American liberalism. This thesis argues to the contrary that Friedrich's Weimar-era thought lacked two essential axioms of Schmitt's philosophy: that democracy requires a people who are substantively homogeneous and that sovereignty even in a democracy can only genuinely be exercised by a single individual. Friedrich, however, played a crucial role in the New Deal reconfiguration of American liberalism by leading a movement among American social scientists during the 1930s and 40s toward playing a more direct role in policymaking. ironically, the liberal ideas of Friedrich's that emerged out of this reconfiguration and would persist for decades after World War II contained strong elements of both "core" Schmittian axioms.

Committee: Kenneth Ledford PhD (Committee Chair); Theodore Steinberg PhD (Committee Member); Jonathan Entin PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Behavioral Psychology; European History; European Studies; History; Law; Legal Studies; Modern History; Philosophy; Political Science; Public Administration; Sociology; World History