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Title: Religion, Sex & Politics: The Story of the Equal Rights Amendment in Florida.
Creator: Brock, Laura E., Porterfield, Amanda, Corrigan, John, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines the decade-long (1972-1982) Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) battle in Florida. It reviews the role that religion played in the political conflict. Religion had a motivating effect on ERA proponents and opponents. Women were mobilized to enter the political arena, many for the first time, on both sides of the ERA battle. Religion affected the legislative debates and public rhetoric, and had a strong role in galvanizing support and opposition. Moving beyond the...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the decade-long (1972-1982) Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) battle in Florida. It reviews the role that religion played in the political conflict. Religion had a motivating effect on ERA proponents and opponents. Women were mobilized to enter the political arena, many for the first time, on both sides of the ERA battle. Religion affected the legislative debates and public rhetoric, and had a strong role in galvanizing support and opposition. Moving beyond the description of religion in the historical narrative, this dissertation also describes how pro- and anti-ERA forces transmitted beliefs, communicated ideology, and constructed meaning through portraying, or "framing" events for public consumption. The "frames" used by each side of the debate demonstrate how moral worldviews transformed into political positions. Primary and secondary historical sources are used to trace the affect of religion on political semantics - especially the framing of legislative debate arguments, anecdotes, and rhetoric. Archival research includes information from legislative committee meetings, floor debates, correspondence, newspaper articles, and oral histories. In addition, this dissertation emphasizes the religious connection made by ERA opponents to other social concerns and how religious rhetoric obscured economic concerns that had been paramount to the conception and congressional support for the ERA. As the decade unfolded, ERA opposition fueled the rise of the Religious Right. Ratification was unsuccessful in Florida for the same reasons the ERA failed in other states. The white male-dominated southern legislature favored opponents' explicit moral framing while also implicitly following the wishes of business interests. A handful of senate powerbrokers blocked passage of the amendment for a decade, based on varying reasons, although the rhetoric followed similar religious arguments throughout the ten-year battle. The decade-long debates reveal the perpetual conflict in the political realm when religion, gender, and social issues intersect. This project attempts to make a contribution in three ways: first, by expanding the current ERA studies to include a slice of political life - the ERA battle - in the state of Florida, with its unique political demographics; second, by explaining how religion led to the failure of ratification when opponents linked the amendment to "threatening" social issues such as abortion expansion or gay rights, and forced ERA supporters into a defensive strategy; and third, by showing how Florida women used political framing in their lobbying efforts to generate support, or opposition, or resources, in the decade-long political conflict. Ironically, although the ERA was defeated, female proponents and opponents were empowered through political involvement. This was especially paradoxical for ERA opponents, who advocated traditional female roles while immersed in political activism outside the home. After the ERA battle ended in 1982, many women's issues were addressed through progressive legislation, court decisions, and administrative rulings. More female legislators were elected to political office on the state and national government levels.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7311
Format: Thesis

Title: "Parallel Lines Never Intersect": The Influence of Dutch Reformed Presuppostitionalism in American Christian Fundamentalism "Parallel Lines Never Intersect":.
Creator: Brasich, Adam S., Corrigan, John, Porterfield, Amanda, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Much of the current historiography of American Christian fundamentalism focuses solely on Scottish Common Sense Realism as an intellectual source of fundamentalist epistemology since the early twentieth century. This thesis argues against this historiographical trend by illuminating the central role of Dutch Reformed presuppositionalism in the formation of fundamentalist epistemologies. Articulated within the context of revitalization, confessional, and secessionists movements within the...
Show moreMuch of the current historiography of American Christian fundamentalism focuses solely on Scottish Common Sense Realism as an intellectual source of fundamentalist epistemology since the early twentieth century. This thesis argues against this historiographical trend by illuminating the central role of Dutch Reformed presuppositionalism in the formation of fundamentalist epistemologies. Articulated within the context of revitalization, confessional, and secessionists movements within the state Dutch Reformed Church, theologians such as Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck developed an epistemological system that stressed the necessity of correct presuppositions as a prerequisite for obtaining truth. Without correct ideas about God, in other words, one was incapable of perceiving any other truth in its fullness. This epistemological tradition was brought to North America by Dutch Reformed immigrants, who primarily settled in the Upper Midwest during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cornelius Van Til, one of these immigrants, served as a professor at J. Gresham Machen's Westminster Theological Seminary immediately following the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy and taught his unswerving presuppositionalism to several generations of non-Dutch, American Presbyterian seminarians, including Francis A. Schaeffer. Schaeffer, though rejecting the strictly Reformed strain of fundamentalism represented by Machen and Van Til's Orthodox Presbyterian Church, adapted presuppositionalism to suit his purposes, combining it with traditional Princetonian Scottish Common Sense Realism. This resulted in an epistemology that proved to be influential during the rise of the Christian Right in the latter half of the twentieth century. By investigating epistemologies that competed with Scottish Common Sense Realism or creatively interacted with it, a clearer picture appears of the diverse nature of Christian fundamentalism. It no longer seems to be monolithic, but rather it contains a plethora of theological and confessional influences that interact in numerous ways that necessitate academic investigation.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7308
Format: Thesis

Title: Hannah Arendt and the Concept of Political Thinking.
Creator: Alwahaib, Mohammad S., Dalton, Peter, Kelsay, John, Dancy, Russell, Department of Philosophy, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Many claim that Hannah Arendt's political thought was developed through various stages, and that this development took place through various confrontations with topics such as ideology, totalitarianism and her concerns with the so-called "Jewish question". Arendt's political thought is usually characterized by an early emphasis on the priority of the political over that of the mind. In other words, her work is usually read as emphasizing the priority of the mode of living-with-others; action,...
Show moreMany claim that Hannah Arendt's political thought was developed through various stages, and that this development took place through various confrontations with topics such as ideology, totalitarianism and her concerns with the so-called "Jewish question". Arendt's political thought is usually characterized by an early emphasis on the priority of the political over that of the mind. In other words, her work is usually read as emphasizing the priority of the mode of living-with-others; action, over the solitary activity of thinking. This 'early' emphasis on the priority of politics goes hand in hand with her rejection of all transcendent standards or truths in the sphere of politics. Arendt's later writings, which were devoted mainly to the life of the mind, are usually read as a reversal of thought: a priority of thinking over action. Arendt's alleged reversal of thought took place through her witnessing the trial of the war criminal Adolph Eichmann whose crime, Arendt suggested, sprang from the fact of thoughtlessness. Arendt's new emphasis on the priority of thinking is supposedly something for which her early works made no provision. Almost contradicting everything she believed in before, Arendt's new 'political thinking' allows the introduction of truth and transcendental standards into the political realm. I believe that the above interpretation does not do justice to Arendt's political thought. To introduce the distinction between 'early' and 'late' into her works obscures above all the continuity of her thought. I believe that there is a unifying thread that runs through Arendt's main works whether 'early' or 'late.' I call this unifying thread 'political thinking.' Careful analysis of Arendt's 'early' thoughts on politics shows a considerable emphasis on the importance of thinking in relation to politics or action. It is this specific kind of thinking, political thinking, that does justice to both, the demands of the mind on one hand, and the demands of experience on the other. I explore the development of 'political thinking' in Arendt's major writings beginning from her doctoral dissertation on Rahel Varnhagen to her final thoughts on The Life of the Mind.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0188
Format: Thesis

Title: Maimonides' Sons: Episodes in Modern Jewish Thought.
Creator: Lagrone, Matthew, Kavka, Martin, Twiss, Sumner, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: My thesis centers on three modern Jewish thinkers—Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Hartman and Joseph Soloveitchik—and their philosophical relationship with and use of Maimonides. Maimonides is the central thinker in and the touchstone of Jewish philosophy, matched only by Aquinas in Catholic theology. The first essay concerns the nature of halakha in the concluding chapters of The Guide of the Perplexed and Leibowitz's formalist understanding of the Law through those chapters. I defend this...
Show moreMy thesis centers on three modern Jewish thinkers—Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Hartman and Joseph Soloveitchik—and their philosophical relationship with and use of Maimonides. Maimonides is the central thinker in and the touchstone of Jewish philosophy, matched only by Aquinas in Catholic theology. The first essay concerns the nature of halakha in the concluding chapters of The Guide of the Perplexed and Leibowitz's formalist understanding of the Law through those chapters. I defend this reading of Maimonides by employing David Shatz's provocative argument that 3.51 and not 3.54 constitutes the true end of the Guide. By arguing thusly a Leibowitzean reading of the conclusion is plausible and faithful to Maimonides' purpose in the Guide. The middle essay covers Hartman's philosophy of halakha in association with Maimonides' philosophy of halakha. Three controlling aspects of Hartman's philosophy are examined: pluralism, rationalism and lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. I attempt to assess Hartman's use of Maimonides in determining these aspects, and find his interpretations of the Rambam to be generally in error. The final essay looks at neglected second part of Soloveitchik's Halakhic Man and his seamless utilization of Maimonides to shape the concepts of creation, repentance divine providence, time and prophecy. I argue that Soloveitchik's use of Maimonides is closest to the Rambam's intentions, but that it also takes the fewest risks. Instead, Soloveitchik employs Maimonides as a prop and support to defend his radically new and radically strange vision of individual observant existence in modern times.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3315
Format: Thesis

Title: Crossing the Berm: The Disney Theme Park as Sacralized Space.
Creator: Newcomb, Chris, Kelsay, John, Neuman, Robert, Erndl, Kathleen, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation proposes that the Disney theme park be approached as an agent of ritualization in the creation and experience of sacralized space: an ordered, organized space for the thoughtful, selective construction of social meaning and the mutual exercise of symbolic power, initiated in the creation of environment and experienced through ritualized activities and spatial movement, resulting in the recovery of the past and the possibility of a transformed future. This thesis will be...
Show moreThis dissertation proposes that the Disney theme park be approached as an agent of ritualization in the creation and experience of sacralized space: an ordered, organized space for the thoughtful, selective construction of social meaning and the mutual exercise of symbolic power, initiated in the creation of environment and experienced through ritualized activities and spatial movement, resulting in the recovery of the past and the possibility of a transformed future. This thesis will be pursued in four stages: first, an examination of the definitional parameters of sacralized space and ritualization, emphasizing the mutual construction of meaning and the interwoven power relationships inherent in the creation and experience of such a space; second, the application of these parameters and emphases to the Disney theme parks in terms of the creative process of park participants; third, the application of these parameters and emphases to the Disney theme parks in terms of the experiential process of park participants; and fourth, the resultant exercise of power and construction of meaning by park participants within sacralized space. Such an examination of Disney theme parks hopefully will provide a broad ground on which to place in dialogue the other interpretive proposals within contemporary Disney thought, a basis for the thoughtful discussion of these sites within Religious Studies, as well as a more flexible and coherent method of newly considering the complexity of the parks and their pervading influence, for good or for ill, on the global cultural stage.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2635
Format: Thesis

Title: They Are Men, and Not Beasts: Religion and Slavery in Colonial New England.
Creator: Reed, Monica C., Porterfield, Amanda, Gray, Edward, Corrigan, John, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation investigates the relationship between religion, slavery, and evolving notions of humanity in eighteenth-century colonial New England. During the seventeenth-century, New Englanders largely conceived of slavery in terms of their communal notion of society, which was characterized by a high degree of collective solidarity, and within this context the humanity of slaves went largely unquestioned. This communalist view of New England was gradually displaced by a more commercial...
Show moreThis dissertation investigates the relationship between religion, slavery, and evolving notions of humanity in eighteenth-century colonial New England. During the seventeenth-century, New Englanders largely conceived of slavery in terms of their communal notion of society, which was characterized by a high degree of collective solidarity, and within this context the humanity of slaves went largely unquestioned. This communalist view of New England was gradually displaced by a more commercial ethos, expedited and then reinforced by commerce, the law, and travel narratives, in which slaves became dehumanized. Religion played a key role in this process as it mediated the shift toward a more individualistic view of Christianity, in which moral virtue and the treatment of slaves became something more associated with the lives of individual Christians rather than the larger society. This project discusses how many eighteenth-century New Englanders came to think about the humanity of African slaves in order to understand the influence that this thought had on their embrace of the institution of slavery. In order to do this, this dissertation investigates how New Englanders' original religious understanding of Africans as human beings who should be converted and integrating into the society, albeit at a much lower status, conflicted with social traditions that described them as animal-like, a legal system that came to define the majority of blacks in the region as property, and an economic system that encouraged thinking about African slaves as just another form of chattel. Rather than assuming that Christianity and slavery were inherently incompatible, this dissertation looks at how the religious convictions of many colonists changed to allow for the dehumanization of slaves, while others came to reject the institution of slavery instead. The first chapter of this project aims to situate its contribution by discussing works on slavery in the colonial period, religion in the colonial Northeast, and studies that focus on the evolution of slavery in the early Republic. Chapter two begins a discussion of eighteenth-century change by investigating how debates about slavery in colonial New England evolved. Both published supporters and opponents of slavery during the colonial period largely agreed that slaves were fully human, but by the time of the American Revolution, claims of their natural inferiority had gained support as people began to print tracts that explicitly questioned Africans' humanity. Chapter three begins a three-part discussion of how colonial culture functioned to distinguish blacks from whites and how this gradually led many colonists to accept the view that Africans were innately different than Europeans. The third chapter focuses on how Africans were portrayed as animal-like in many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century travel narratives, and chapter four goes on to discuss Massachusetts' legal codes and explains how the law there changed the status of slaves in New England over time, dehumanizing them by categorized them primarily as property. Chapter five adds to this discussion by explaining the relationship between the changing religious and economic cultures in New England and how these changes led colonists to embrace the dehumanization of slaves and the slave trade. The final chapter investigates how the above-mentioned changes influenced arguments about the validity of slavery in the early Republic. By the time of the Revolution, debates about the right to own slaves focused much more on whether Africans were best understood as humans or as lesser beings.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7986
Format: Thesis

Title: Faith in Freedom: Religion, Politics, and War in Mid-Twentieth Century America.
Creator: Polk, Andrew, Porterfield, Amanda, Jumonville, Neil, Corrigan, John, Piehler, Kurt, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation describes the creation of a myth of America's religious heritage. This myth revolved around an assertion of foundational religious principles that established and supported American freedom. These values and the freedom they engendered were ambiguous, but necessitated a love of both God and nation, a commitment to free market economics, and a large, global military force. Finally, the myth's contributors constantly warned of both external enemies who sought to destroy...
Show moreThis dissertation describes the creation of a myth of America's religious heritage. This myth revolved around an assertion of foundational religious principles that established and supported American freedom. These values and the freedom they engendered were ambiguous, but necessitated a love of both God and nation, a commitment to free market economics, and a large, global military force. Finally, the myth's contributors constantly warned of both external enemies who sought to destroy America's guiding principles and the erosion of those principles by Americans who either forgot or denied the country's religious heritage. Americans have advocated for aspects of this myth through much of the nation's history, most notably the idea that God imbued America with a special status and destiny in world affairs. However, American leaders only developed this myth into a paradigmatic impetus for governmental action during the Second World War and early Cold War. Various political, religious, military, and business leaders developed and employed this myth for both similar and cross purposes. Although their efforts were not a direct collusion, their tendency to build on each other's rhetoric and resources often made them beholden to each other's interests. Most notably, their consistent elevation of religion in a narrative of American dominance played a principal role in the emergence of the United States as the world's foremost military power. The contributors to the myth of America's religious heritage cast freedom as a divine gift that the nation had to both ardently defend and compassionately export abroad. They then almost unanimously identified the military as the nation's stalwart defenders and the epitome of all that made America righteous and good, thus making the military an essential aspect of America's material and spiritual security. This development disabused many Americans of their traditional distrust of large standing armies and made a massive military presence an essential part of the nation's structure. American leaders' mutual use of the myth provided a common vocabulary, grammar, and collection of themes that they could use to locate and place themselves in comparison with others. These contributors, eager to command followers and craft a national identity consistent with their interests, also fashioned characterizations of American religion that shifted away from traditional institutions toward a more general sphere of public and private influence. Eschewing former theological, doctrinal, and liturgical distinctions, religious groups subsequently positioned themselves based on their stances toward militarism, free market capitalism, and "social" issues, a category created during the myth's construction. Such positioning contributed to the increased polarization of American religious communities in the following decades. This polarization and the establishment of America's enormous military apparatus are the enduring legacies of mid-twentieth century America's faith in freedom.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7972
Format: Thesis

Title: Return to Carmel: The Construction of a Discalced Identity in John of the Cross.
Creator: Neal, Thomas J., Corrigan, John, Warren, Nancy, Porterfield, Amanda, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines the John of the Cross' (1542-1591) construction of a uniquely "Discalced Carmelite identity" in his writings, with particular emphasis on his works, the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night. The focus of this study is placed on John's interpretation of Teresa of Avila's version of Discalced reform that she founded, with its special emphasis on reform as the quest for mystical union with God at the center of the Carmelite soul. To this end, John appropriated...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the John of the Cross' (1542-1591) construction of a uniquely "Discalced Carmelite identity" in his writings, with particular emphasis on his works, the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night. The focus of this study is placed on John's interpretation of Teresa of Avila's version of Discalced reform that she founded, with its special emphasis on reform as the quest for mystical union with God at the center of the Carmelite soul. To this end, John appropriated scholastic, monastic, apophatic and erotic traditions to define the reform, and to distinguish it from the many competing identities in sixteenth century Spain. Previous studies have examined John's construction of the self within theological, philosophical and literary contexts, and have located many of the influences on John and Teresa's conception of the self, its structures and trajectories. As this dissertation reveals, however, most of the studies on John, unlike so many recent studies done on Teresa, fail to embed his texts in the thick context of his historical world. This study seeks to link John's unique conception of the self and its construction with the many related conversations in Spain to which John was privy. Of particular importance to this study is the impact of this context with John's attempt to trace a Discalced Carmelite identity capable of bearing the weight of a Teresian model of reform.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2706
Format: Thesis

Title: Ghost Dance Religion and National Identity.
Creator: Heise, Tammy Rashel, Porterfield, Amanda, Frank, Andrew, Corrigan, John, Kelsay, John, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: Revising earlier historical interpretations of the Ghost Dance, this dissertation traces the religion's emergence as an American Indian prophet movement and describes its intersections with evangelical Protestantism and Mormonism in the Far West from the mid-nineteenth century to the late-twentieth century. This project problematizes earlier studies by taking a longer view of Ghost Dance religion and incorporating its engagement with and resistance to Protestantism and Mormonism into the...
Show moreRevising earlier historical interpretations of the Ghost Dance, this dissertation traces the religion's emergence as an American Indian prophet movement and describes its intersections with evangelical Protestantism and Mormonism in the Far West from the mid-nineteenth century to the late-twentieth century. This project problematizes earlier studies by taking a longer view of Ghost Dance religion and incorporating its engagement with and resistance to Protestantism and Mormonism into the narrative. It also seeks to correct interpretations that focus solely on the Ghost Dance's 1890 manifestation and the violence of federal suppression at Wounded Knee, thereby eliding the movement's broader cultural context before and after the massacre. By examining the confluence of historical encounters, political forces, and the perceptions they engendered, this study distinguishes Ghost Dance religion from other American Indian prophet movements and demonstrates how its 1890 and 1973 manifestations marked crisis points in American history through which national authority was exerted and thereby consolidated. By reconceptualizing American history through Native American history, this dissertation also discloses the union of religion and politics at work in the Ghost Dance and the prophetic traditions of its major competitors as they sought to enshrine their own versions of American nationalism in the West. The first chapter of this project aims to situate its contribution by discussing how reactions to the violence at Wounded Knee in 1890 shaped the historiography of the Ghost Dance movement and constrained interpretations of the movement in significant ways. Chapter two traces the emergence of Ghost Dance religion to the activity of the Bannock Prophet and his efforts to forge an alliance between American Indians and Mormons in opposition to U.S. rule at the start of the Utah War in 1857. Chapter three details the general war against whites in the West that results from the collapse of Bannock and Mormon efforts to unite as a single people through their perceived prophetic affinities. Through the examination of this conflict, the study reveals how religious identities are performed through violence – a process that results in the emergence of highly politicized and radicalized national identities. Chapter four connects manifestations of the Ghost Dance in the late 1860s and early 1870s to this tradition of spirited resistance to U.S. authority, demonstrating how Ghost Dance adherents ordered their opposition to white rule through a powerful fusion of religious and social realities that galvanized collective identity and motivated action to create a new world. Chapter five adds to this discussion by narrating Ghost Dance manifestations of the late 1880s and early 1890s within this context to reveal the revolutionary potential inherent in Wovoka's prophetic ministry. This focus works to erode lines between militancy and quietism as well as politics and religion drawn in earlier studies, revealing how prophetic religion functions to create and to sustain national identity. The final chapter investigates the persistence of Ghost Dance religion into the twentieth century, tracing its history through the Saskatchewan Dakota's New Tidings community and the American Indian Movement's 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee. In examining how both groups express their connection to the radical millennialism of the nineteenth-century Lakota Ghost Dance, this study reveals how prophetic religion works to mediate political engagement in complex ways and further confirms the union of religion and politics within the Ghost Dance movement.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2016SP_Heise_fsu_0071E_12930
Format: Thesis

Title: Raymond Browm "The Jews," and the Gospel of John.
Creator: Cronin, Sonya, Levenson, David, Marincola, John, Kelley, Nicole, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines published work of Raymond Brown, a prominent Catholic New Testament scholar, between the years 1960–1998 in regard to his analysis of anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John. It contextualizes his work by putting Raymond Brown's own publications in their modern historical context and examining his work in relationship to scholars working in the same period, Church statements, and other social and academic influences that might have contributed to his overall thought. Of...
Show moreThis dissertation examines published work of Raymond Brown, a prominent Catholic New Testament scholar, between the years 1960–1998 in regard to his analysis of anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John. It contextualizes his work by putting Raymond Brown's own publications in their modern historical context and examining his work in relationship to scholars working in the same period, Church statements, and other social and academic influences that might have contributed to his overall thought. Of particular focus, this study analyzes Brown's perspective on various strategies biblical scholars have used to address the problem of potential anti-Judaism in the Gospel. Until the mid-1960s, while most interpreters of the Gospel of John were aware of a polemic against the Jews, they did not discuss it as an ethical issue of potential anti-Judaism, nor did they relate it to a concern for the modern day. However, a shift in focus in Johannine scholarship is noticeable beginning in the mid-1960s and 1970s and continuing to the present. The goal of this project is to gain insight into this shift and understand how one's analysis of the historical situation behind the Fourth Gospel is related to an ethical concern about potential anti-Judaism.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3010
Format: Thesis

Title: The Fragmentation of Moral Psychology: Reason, Emotion, Motivation and Moral Judgment in Ethics and Science.
Creator: Zarpentine, Christopher, Mele, Alfred R., Kelsay, John, McNaughton, David, Ruse, Michael, Department of Philosophy, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Increasingly, psychologists and neuroscientists have become interested in moral psychology and moral judgment. Despite this, much of moral philosophy remains isolated from this empirical research. I seek to integrate these two literatures. Drawing on a wide range of research, I develop an empirically adequate account of moral judgment. I then turn to issues in philosophical moral psychology, arguing that empirical research sheds light on old debates and raises new questions for investigation....
Show moreIncreasingly, psychologists and neuroscientists have become interested in moral psychology and moral judgment. Despite this, much of moral philosophy remains isolated from this empirical research. I seek to integrate these two literatures. Drawing on a wide range of research, I develop an empirically adequate account of moral judgment. I then turn to issues in philosophical moral psychology, arguing that empirical research sheds light on old debates and raises new questions for investigation. The neuropsychological mechanisms underlying moral judgment exhibit a large degree of complexity. Different processes contribute to moral judgment under different conditions, depending both upon the kind of case under consideration and on individual differences. Affective processes subserved by a broad base of brain regions including the orbitofrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and basal ganglia are crucial for normal moral judgment. These affective processes also provide an important link to motivation. More explicit cognition dependent upon areas of the medial temporal lobe and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex also play a crucial role in some kinds of moral judgment though they exhibit less direct connections to motivation. The descriptive account of moral judgment I defend makes sense of debates in moral psychology over two influential views: motivation internalism, according to which moral judgment necessitates motivation to act accordingly and the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which belief and desire are distinct and motivation requires both a desire and an appropriate means-end belief. Moral judgments that derive from affective processes exhibit a connection between motivation and moral judgment. However, not all moral judgments derive from such processes. More explicit representations are not closely connected to motivation, thus motivation can come apart from moral judgment. While explicit beliefs are distinct from desires, affective representations have both cognitive (albeit nonpropositional) content and direct connections to motivation. This challenges Humean theories of motivation. This account helps resolve these traditional disputes. Anti-Humean, internalist theories offer an approximately accurate account of these affective mechanisms. Externalist, Humean theories offer an approximately accurate account of more explicit cognitive processes. Thus, several prominent philosophical theories offer a plausible account of some aspect of moral psychology. Because of the complexity of moral psychology, none of these accounts offers a complete account. This account also raises new questions for investigation. Some researchers have argued that the representation of a moral rule like the Doctrine of Double Effect helps explain the pattern of judgments in response to different kinds of Trolley cases. I argue that these judgments are better explained in terms of the details of the associative mechanisms underlying these judgments and not in terms of the representation of a moral rule. These findings raise a unique concern about the evidential value of our intuitions in these cases—a concern that could not arise from armchair reflection alone. The approach taken in this dissertation illustrates how integrating the results of empirical research contributes to philosophical work in ethical theory.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0590
Format: Thesis

Title: "I Couldn't Help It!": Essays on Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities.
Creator: Capes, Justin A., Mele, Alfred, Kelsay, John, Clarke, Randolph, McNaughton, David, Department of Philosophy, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: According to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), a person is blameworthy for what he did only if he could have avoided doing it. This principle figures importantly in disputes about the relationship between determinism, divine foreknowledge, free will and moral responsibility, and has been the subject of considerable controversy for over forty years now. Proponents of the principle have devoted a good deal of energy and ingenuity to defending it against various objections....
Show moreAccording to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), a person is blameworthy for what he did only if he could have avoided doing it. This principle figures importantly in disputes about the relationship between determinism, divine foreknowledge, free will and moral responsibility, and has been the subject of considerable controversy for over forty years now. Proponents of the principle have devoted a good deal of energy and ingenuity to defending it against various objections. Surprisingly, however, they have devoted comparatively little effort to developing positive arguments for it, and, with few exceptions, the arguments they have proposed have received little, if any, critical attention. My dissertation is intended to help fill this gap in the literature on PAP. There are three main arguments for PAP. I critically evaluate each of these arguments, arguing that they are all unsuccessful. Where, then, does that leave PAP? I suggest that, in the absence of any further compelling arguments for or against the principle, debate over it is likely to end in dialectical stalemate. I conclude by highlighting several implications of this suggestion for recent debates about the metaphysics of moral responsibility.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0083
Format: Thesis

Title: The Controversy of Shaykh 'Ali 'Abd Al-Raziq.
Creator: Broucek, James, Kelsay, John, Ruse, Michael, Twiss, Sumner B., Gaiser, Adam, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Often regarded as the first Islamic defense of political secularism, `Ali `Abd al-Raziq's Islam and the Foundations of Government provoked emotionally-charged repudiations that culminated in his dismissal from Egypt's corps of `ulama. Setting `Abd al-Raziq's work in historical context, this dissertation explains what `Abd al-Raziq intended to do when he wrote Islam and the Foundations of Government. Most immediately, `Abd al-Raziq intended to protect Egypt's fledgling constitutional monarchy...
Show moreOften regarded as the first Islamic defense of political secularism, `Ali `Abd al-Raziq's Islam and the Foundations of Government provoked emotionally-charged repudiations that culminated in his dismissal from Egypt's corps of `ulama. Setting `Abd al-Raziq's work in historical context, this dissertation explains what `Abd al-Raziq intended to do when he wrote Islam and the Foundations of Government. Most immediately, `Abd al-Raziq intended to protect Egypt's fledgling constitutional monarchy from the threat of Egypt adopting the caliphate institution. `Abd al-Raziq's work aimed to undercut proponents of an Egyptian caliphate by demonstrating that the caliphate institution found no support in the sources of fiqh, and had no religious significance in early Islamic history. Many studies have attributed the failure of `Abd al-Raziq's work to the innovative nature of his argument. This dissertation argues that communities constantly invent traditions in order to legitimate their emerging forms. Indeed, Egyptian Muslims of the 1920s had already come to accept nineteenth-century Islamic innovations, like the Ottoman doctrine of the caliphate, Muhammad Abduh's concept of a liberal shari`a, or the novel belief in an Egyptian nation. In this context, `Abd al-Raziq's innovative reasoning cannot account for his failure. This dissertation attributes `Abd al-Raziq's failure to the threat it posed to the perceived rule of law. Like `Abd al-Raziq, `Abd al-Raziq's critics considered tyranny the result of unrestrained, despotic rule. For them, however, God's laws, expressed in the shari`a proved the only adequate limitation to fallible human authorities. The caliphate must be reinstituted, they believed, because of all the world's systems of government, the caliphate alone acknowledged the sovereignty of God's law. By rejecting the caliphate, they inferred, `Abd al-Raziq rejected the institution required for establishing a rule of law that protects citizens from the arbitrary whims and abuses of their rulers.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5322
Format: Thesis

Title: The Paradox of Feuerbach: Luther and Religious Naturalism.
Creator: Flanagan, Christy L., Kelsay, John, Maier-Katkin, Daniel, Kavka, Martin, Twiss, Sumner B., Porterfield, Amanda, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this project I call for a reconsideration of Feuerbach's place in philosophy and the study of religion. His name is recognizable in these fields usually as a marginal or "bridge" figure, facilitating a shift from one thinker to the next. I suggest that the automatic association of Feuerbach with Left Hegelianism and/or psychological interpretations of religion obscure the greater insights of his model of religious consciousness. Feuerbach's desire to revise the anti-natural and speculative...
Show moreIn this project I call for a reconsideration of Feuerbach's place in philosophy and the study of religion. His name is recognizable in these fields usually as a marginal or "bridge" figure, facilitating a shift from one thinker to the next. I suggest that the automatic association of Feuerbach with Left Hegelianism and/or psychological interpretations of religion obscure the greater insights of his model of religious consciousness. Feuerbach's desire to revise the anti-natural and speculative tendencies of both philosophy and theology was at the cornerstone of his fundamental project. This effort was first directed towards Hegelian idealism, but grew into a larger critique of Christianity and religious consciousness in general. His criticism of religion is not due to a specific condemnation of the divine, but the extent to which it is born out of speculative presuppositions. This indicates the presence of an important theme in Feuerbach's work outside of Hegel and I argue that naturalism filled this role. Interestingly, this also demonstrates a link between the seemingly disparate goals of Feuerbach's humanism and Luther's theology. Luther's observations of religious consciousness provided a vision of naturalism and passivity in his description of the human being's experience of existing before God. Feuerbach also saw in this a profound paradox regarding the relationship between God and human being. His reflections provide the contemporary theorist with ways to reconcile many of the problematic aspects of the rationalist-dualist model that pervades Western philosophy, particularly in the effort to reconsider the foundations of religious self-identity in the post-metaphysical age. Ultimately this places his project in dialogue more appropriately with contemporary studies in pragmatism and phenomenology rather than Hegelian or Freudian thought.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4443
Format: Thesis

Title: Gender Justice in a Post-Secular Age?: Domestic Violence, Islamic Sharia, and the Liberal Legal Paradigm.
Creator: Dunn, Shannon, Kelsay, John, Travis, Joseph, Twiss, Sumner B., Kalbian, Aline H., Kavka, Martin, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In liberal democracies, debates about the status of women and debates about the authority of religious legal-moral systems often converge in the area of family law. Focusing on domestic violence, I show a patriarchal bias pervades both Islamic and liberal moral discourse. In order to argue effectively for women's rights, we must address the relationship between secular law, religious identity and legal expression, and gender.
Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4812
Format: Thesis

Title: Apostles, Prophets, Geniuses: The Tragic Romantic Politics of the Extraordinary Individual in Søren Kierkegaard's Production and Weimar Reception.
Creator: Feddon, Dustin, Porterfield, Amanda, McMahon, Darrin, Kelsay, John, Twiss, Sumner B., Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This study tells the story of the political reception of Søren Kierkegaard in Weimar Europe. Much of this reception, I argue, is easily framed through the concept of tragic romanticism. While the bulk of this study is devoted to the Weimar reception, it also ventures back into nineteenth-century Denmark in order to see whether or not there are correspondences between Kierkegaard's reception and his production. I argue there are such correspondences between the tragic romantic thought of...
Show moreThis study tells the story of the political reception of Søren Kierkegaard in Weimar Europe. Much of this reception, I argue, is easily framed through the concept of tragic romanticism. While the bulk of this study is devoted to the Weimar reception, it also ventures back into nineteenth-century Denmark in order to see whether or not there are correspondences between Kierkegaard's reception and his production. I argue there are such correspondences between the tragic romantic thought of Kierkegaard's receptors and Kierkegaard himself, though these correspondences are not always easily accessible.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7793
Format: Thesis

Title: Responding to the Call: Just War and Jihad in the War Against Al Qaeda.
Creator: Zehr, Nahed Artoul, Kelsay, John, Hawkes, Lois, Gaiser, Adam, Kalbian, Aline, Twiss, Sumner B., Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This project is an examination of the War against al-Qaeda from the field of religious ethics. In response to September Eleventh, the United States has spent the last decade fighting a war against a diffuse and elusive network of militant Islamists. These events have not been neglected by the scholarly community, and a range of material on al-Qaeda and the War on Terror have been produced. However, I argue that the majority of available research does not take sufficient account of the...
Show moreThis project is an examination of the War against al-Qaeda from the field of religious ethics. In response to September Eleventh, the United States has spent the last decade fighting a war against a diffuse and elusive network of militant Islamists. These events have not been neglected by the scholarly community, and a range of material on al-Qaeda and the War on Terror have been produced. However, I argue that the majority of available research does not take sufficient account of the theological foundation that serves to give al-Qaeda meaning, legitimacy, and direction in its war against the West. As a work of religious ethics, this project begins from inquiries that seek to understand how individuals and groups are motivated, and action is legitimated, by way of religious and moral commitments. I argue that such inquiries carry particular relevance in the War against al-Qaeda, as it stands by way of clear observation that al-Qaeda is a religious, and hence, theologically driven organization. Understanding al-Qaeda's "grand strategy" – a key component in any effort to "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" the al-Qaeda network – requires an investigation into its theological underpinnings. In order to perceive the full spectrum of al-Qaeda's aims, as well as the manner in which these aims have affected its particular tactical model of war, it is necessary to examine the religious narratives and symbols that lend them both meaning and consequence. Through such an approach, this dissertation demonstrates that al-Qaeda has intentionally put forward a strategic and tactical model that is diffuse in geographical reach, decentralized in authority, and virtually indiscriminate in its application of force. Understanding Al-Qaeda's war model carries important implications for an American military response. From the inception of hostilities, major military and policy decision makers determined that this was a "different kind of war"; one necessitating a decisive shift from a focus on conventional combat to the realm of irregular warfare As a consequence the relevant decision makers have made a concerted effort to categorize al-Qaeda's structure and strategy. As discussed above, two conceptual and military models have been put forward in the attempt to both understand, and to combat, the al-Qaeda network: "counterinsurgency" and "counterterrorism." The former construes al-Qaeda as a world-wide militant Islamist insurgency that has penetrated into Iraq and Afghanistan. Relying on the classic principles of military counterinsurgency, policy and military decision makers have determined that both "fronts" must be "secured" to ensure an overall al-Qaeda defeat. The latter, and in many ways much less dominant stream, understands al-Qaeda as a network of terrorists violating both domestic and international law. An al-Qaeda defeat, under this second line of thinking, requires apprehending, detaining, or killing high-level leaders, in the hope that their absence will lead to an overall infrastructure collapse. However, once al-Qaeda's diffuse and decentralized model is illustrated, I argue that a reevaluation of both models is in order. The highly irregular nature of the al-Qaeda network requires that both military frameworks are assessed as they apply specifically to al-Qaeda. Through the application of the moral and ethical guidelines of the just war tradition, I argue that neither framework is able to provide an application of military force that is effectual and proportionate - in other words, that is just. Furthermore, noting the importance of the interpretive narratives that drive al-Qaeda, I argue that in addition to the use of military force, the Long War must take note of the theological alternatives that are presented by a variety of figures within the Muslim community. As this entity is organized and motivated by a set of theological interpretive narratives encompassing the historical and textual tradition of Islam, combating al-Qaeda requires the presence, and perhaps the engagement, of an alternative set of narratives.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0588
Format: Thesis

Title: A Student's Commentary on Heroides 5, 16, and 17.
Creator: Bebergal, Craig, Kelsay, John, Weingarden, Lauren, Boggs, George, Stover, Timothy, Desroussilles, Francois Dupuigrenet, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Florida State...
Show moreBebergal, Craig, Kelsay, John, Weingarden, Lauren, Boggs, George, Stover, Timothy, Desroussilles, Francois Dupuigrenet, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Florida State University
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Abstract/Description: This dissertation presents a thorough, line-by-line commentary of Ovid's Heroides 5, 16, and 17 (Oenone to Paris, Paris to Helen, and Helen to Paris) with an eye towards assisting the 3rd year high-school student or 3rd semester college student in translating and appreciating the grammatical, poetic, and allusory skill of Ovid, while still providing substantial textual discussion that will appeal to more advanced scholars. The introduction explains the theoretical and practical considerations...
Show moreThis dissertation presents a thorough, line-by-line commentary of Ovid's Heroides 5, 16, and 17 (Oenone to Paris, Paris to Helen, and Helen to Paris) with an eye towards assisting the 3rd year high-school student or 3rd semester college student in translating and appreciating the grammatical, poetic, and allusory skill of Ovid, while still providing substantial textual discussion that will appeal to more advanced scholars. The introduction explains the theoretical and practical considerations which shaped the commentary, which takes an in-depth view of each couplet presenting the Latin lines of the subject poems along with ad loc. discussions on grammar, syntax, allusion, intertextuality, poetic structure, and character psychology. Additionally, literal translations, tables of mythological references and stylistic devices, as well as a brief discussion on the dating and sources of these poems are included. Through this multi-faceted approach to examining these poems, the reader is able to gain greater understanding of the complexity inherent in these elegiac epistles. The introductions to each poem and the introduction to the entire dissertation are meant to provide readers insight into the psychological profiles of the characters in question, particularly where they fit into the meta-literary traditions of epic and tragedy from which they are plucked. Special attention is paid to how these characters have been shaped by their past literary lives as well as by their new-found elegiac surroundings.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8529
Format: Thesis

Title: Responsibility for the Just War: A Pragmatist-Feminist Approach to the Study of Religious Ethics.
Creator: Kellison, Rosemary B., Kelsay, John, McNaughton, David, Kalbian, Aline, Kavka, Martin, Twiss, Sumner B., Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this dissertation, I draw on feminist moral philosophy to bolster the pragmatist argument that ethics is ultimately the study of communities and the moral norms implicit in their social practices. In doing so, I offer a response to contemporary critics of the study of religious ethics by suggesting that this approach is a way of doing ethics that avoids the tendencies toward universalism and abstraction to which these critics object. In addition to constructing a new approach for the study...
Show moreIn this dissertation, I draw on feminist moral philosophy to bolster the pragmatist argument that ethics is ultimately the study of communities and the moral norms implicit in their social practices. In doing so, I offer a response to contemporary critics of the study of religious ethics by suggesting that this approach is a way of doing ethics that avoids the tendencies toward universalism and abstraction to which these critics object. In addition to constructing a new approach for the study of ethics, I apply this approach in a study of just war tradition generally as well as the ongoing war in Afghanistan in particular. The understanding of morality as historically situated leads to an understanding of the just war tradition as a diverse, contested discourse that cannot be captured in a single theory or set of principles. It also leads to a focus on human practice as the proper object of ethical study. A focus on practice has significant implications for just war reasoning. First, justice is understood as a virtue--as something human beings do in relation to other human beings. Second, what happens in war is the result of human decisions for which agents must take responsibility (not the result of necessity). Third, intention is properly understood not as a purely internal state but as a practical expression of commitments that can be inferred from agents' actions. Fourth, doing justice requires taking responsibility to repair harms caused by one's actions, even when those harms were unintended and unforeseen.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7864
Format: Thesis

Title: The Arc of American Religious Historiography with Respect to War: William Warren Sweet's Pivotal Role in Mediating Neo-Orthodox Critique.
Creator: Britt-Mills, Robert A., Porterfield, Amanda, Jumonville, Neil, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation is an examination of how American religious historians have described Protestant support for American war from 1702 through 1992. It is a historiography that contributes to the lack of recent American religious historiographies that consider church histories written prior to Sydney Ahlstrom's 1972 text. In addressing this shortfall of scholarly attention to pre-1970s church histories, this work examines what each historian wrote about war in order to trace historical trends....
Show moreThis dissertation is an examination of how American religious historians have described Protestant support for American war from 1702 through 1992. It is a historiography that contributes to the lack of recent American religious historiographies that consider church histories written prior to Sydney Ahlstrom's 1972 text. In addressing this shortfall of scholarly attention to pre-1970s church histories, this work examines what each historian wrote about war in order to trace historical trends. Starting in 1930 here is a clear shift away from the uncritical triumphal language that justified warfare as a corollary to American expansion and exceptionalism. William Warren Sweet's 1930 The Story of Religions in America is central to the more critical historical narratives within the field of American religious history. Therefore, this work indicates that those who view the histories written between Robert Baird and Sydney Ahlstrom as a monolithic group fail to recognize the shift toward critiquing Protestant support for war starting in 1930. The historians within the first chapter of this dissertation (Robert Baird, Leonard Bacon, Leonard W. Bacon, and Peter Mode) wrote unabashedly universal validation for Protestant support of war, especially wars against Native Indians. Therefore, when William W. Sweet was critical about Protestant support for war and wrote little concerning wars against Indians, he broke decisively with those Christian historians who came before him. These narrative trends indicated he was part of a new cultural and political paradigm. The new worldview called into question liberal Protestantism's ability to resist American nationalism and isolationism. Protestant liberal nationalism made it impossible for many Protestants to resist enthusiastically supporting the Spanish-American War and WWI while isolationism made it impossible for many Protestants to confront fascism in Germany even as late as 1939. While critiques of liberal Protestant theology did not appear in Sweet's work, he did provide the first significant critique of Protestant support for war. Chapter two investigates the theological developments in America during the 1920s and 1930s that William Sweet's was aware of when writing his initial critique (1930) and his updated critique (1939) of Protestant support for the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and the WWI. Sweet had knowledge of the writings of the Methodist liberals at Boston University, European neo-orthodoxy, and the Christian Century writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. Particularly influential on Sweet's concept of theology were three critiques of Karl Barth written in America in 1928 by Albert Knudson, Wilhelm Pauck and Reinhold Niebuhr. These three reviews of Barth influenced the language of Sweet in his 1939 review of theological developments in the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter three traces how Sweet's history was the first to criticize both Northern and Southern Protestant clergy during the Civil War. In addition he denounced the Protestant clergy during WWI for their turning their churches into government agencies that promoted the war. Sweet's critical narrative stemmed from and highlighted a crisis within liberal Protestantism. This crisis was magnified by the vast majority of Social Gospel liberals abandoning their pacifistic ideals to support a war that they truly believed would free the world from future war. Once the war was over, Protestants in large measure retreated to an idealist pacifist and a politically isolationist position that refused to resist the rise of fascist Nazism even after Hitler invaded Poland. To fundamentalist and Neo-orthodox Protestants these events clearly demonstrated the naïve way too many Social Gospel liberals approached war and their failure to understand the destructive power of social evil. The theological critique of liberalism that was spreading throughout American academic universities during the 1920s and 1930s provided a compelling and productive way to track the trends within the narrative accounts of American religious history. Chapter four evaluates how Clifton E. Olmstead's 1960 work made significant strides in overcoming the lack of discussion of Native Indian wars within Sweet's work. Olmstead described Protestant settlers at war against Indians, analyzed why the wars occurred, and provided a critique of Protestant support for those wars. Olmstead discussed how the settlers perceived the Indians as ignorant, shiftless, and depraved savages and pointed to these attitudes as reasons for lack of success in missions and in leading to hostilities. Earlier accounts justified settlers' attitudes toward the Native tribes but Olmstead questioned them in an attempt to critique them. He also provided the most significant analysis of neo-orthodoxy and the Niebuhr bothers' influence on American theology from the Great Depression through 1960. Olmstead's work set the stage for two historians in the fifth chapter, Martin Marty and Sydney Ahlstrom. They both wrote longer and more detailed criticism of Protestant support for war against Native Indians that led to genocide-like practices against Indians especially during Western expansion. The other historians in chapter four were Winthrop Hudson and Edwin Gaustad both of whom wrote relatively little concerning Protestant support for war. Chapter five also explored how historians Catherine Albanese and Mark Noll described Protestant support for war and how their interest in describing war paralleled their interest in writing about neo-orthodox theologies in America form the 1930s through the 1960s.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5529
Format: Thesis

Title: Individual and Collective Human Rights: The Contributions of Jacques Maritain, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and Martha Nussbaum.
Creator: May, David Keith, Kalbian, Aline, Twiss, Sumner, Goodman, Robin, Kelsay, John, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Abstract The proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations on December 10, 1948 gave birth to the contemporary human rights movement. Despite the worldwide influence the idea of human rights has enjoyed, the concept of human rights has been plagued by a number of criticisms. Among the most pervasive and persistent criticisms of human rights are that they represent an individualist viewpoint, and they are a relative product of Western society that are hardly...
Show moreAbstract The proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations on December 10, 1948 gave birth to the contemporary human rights movement. Despite the worldwide influence the idea of human rights has enjoyed, the concept of human rights has been plagued by a number of criticisms. Among the most pervasive and persistent criticisms of human rights are that they represent an individualist viewpoint, and they are a relative product of Western society that are hardly universal. One purpose of this dissertation is to challenge these criticisms. However, in recent decades the idea of human rights has been expanded past its original individual focus to incorporate the idea of collective, or group rights. The juxtaposition of universal, individual rights with particular, collective rights raises anew the issues of individualism and universalism in the human rights debate. In this dissertation, I compare the work of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, and the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum in order to yield a contextually sensitive natural law approach to human rights that will serve as a common justificatory basis for individual and collective human rights. This common justificatory basis is capable of addressing the questions of individualism and universalism generated by the theoretical tensions generated by the juxtaposition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which enshrines individual, universal rights, and the more recent United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), which enshrines more particularistic, group rights.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7497
Format: Thesis

Title: "More of the Heart than the Brain": Christian Philosophy and the Folly of the Cross in Erasmus and John Calvin.
Creator: Essary, Kirk, Desroussilles, Francois Dupuigrenet, Leushuis, Reinier, Kelsay, John, Levenson, David, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This study examines the reception of Paul's discourse on foolishness in First Corinthians alongside other Pauline christological texts in order better to understand the relationship between theological epistemology, anthropology, and ethics in the biblical exegesis of Desiderius Erasmus and John Calvin. Paul's discourse on the relationship between folly and wisdom has received scant attention in the history of interpretation, despite its potential fertility for giving rise to any number of...
Show moreThis study examines the reception of Paul's discourse on foolishness in First Corinthians alongside other Pauline christological texts in order better to understand the relationship between theological epistemology, anthropology, and ethics in the biblical exegesis of Desiderius Erasmus and John Calvin. Paul's discourse on the relationship between folly and wisdom has received scant attention in the history of interpretation, despite its potential fertility for giving rise to any number of interesting uses in several areas of philosophy and theology. In the sixteenth century, these texts are of special interest in the context of humanist biblical theology whose practitioners, as a rule, consider themselves to be positing an anti-speculative form of theological method which is at odds with their scholastic forebears. Thus the foolishness of God, which is, according to Paul, wiser than the wisdom of human beings, takes on new significance in the hands of Erasmus and Calvin, who employ Paul's paradoxical constructions in the service of their assault on overly speculative forms of Christian theology that tend toward abstruseness and thereby become inaccessible to the layperson. Moreover, both Erasmus and Calvin spend a great deal of time in their exegetical works on First Corinthians attempting to deal with the problem of Christian eloquence that arises out of Paul's claim that he himself preaches an utterly simple gospel. In this regard, both exegetes argue for a return to a Pauline simplicity of preaching, which is, of course, modeled originally on the humility of Christ. Erasmus' and Calvin's interpretations of this portion of Paul's letter, furthermore, provide for a new way of thinking about the prospects of Erasmus and Calvin embracing a theologia rhetorica--a term coined by the historian of Renaissance philosophy Charles Trinkhaus to describe the trend in (primarily Italian) humanist theology to advocate a kind of theological discourse which seeks to move the heart, so to speak, more than to convince the brain. From this perspective, I argue that Erasmus and Calvin can be situated in the same intellectual milieu, and that their fuller appreciation of Pauline simplicity might be seen as a new stage in the development of theologia rhetorica. Finally, the study analyzes the influence Erasmus--primarily his Annotations on and Paraphrases of the New Testament, but also other of his theological works--had on Calvin's biblical commentaries and his theology more generally. This is a relationship that has been long neglected among Calvin scholars, despite the fact that Calvin is repeatedly explicitly engaged with Erasmus in his NT commentaries, and despite that fact that his "humanism" is widely recognized. Calvin can be seen following Erasmus, not only in certain philological conclusions, but also, as I will try to show, in advocating a particular kind of theological method as it relates to the foolishness of the cross (and not only when considering 1 Cor. 1-4, but also Phil. 2:6f.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8774
Format: Thesis

Title: Between History and Theology: The Problem of H9 Erem in Modern Evangelical Biblical Scholarship.
Creator: Lyons, William L., Levenson, David, Walker, Eric, Kelsay, John, Burkes, Shannon, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: One does not have to read very far in the Old Testament to discover that war and warfare are frequently recurring motifs. Whether spiritualized, extolled in poetry, or reported in sparse narration, war is everywhere. One aspect of the ancient Israelite approach to war in the Bible is found in the Hebrew word herem (meaning "to place under a ban" or "devote to destruction"), a word that often calls for the complete annihilation of an enemy and is translated by some as "holy war." The practice...
Show moreOne does not have to read very far in the Old Testament to discover that war and warfare are frequently recurring motifs. Whether spiritualized, extolled in poetry, or reported in sparse narration, war is everywhere. One aspect of the ancient Israelite approach to war in the Bible is found in the Hebrew word herem (meaning "to place under a ban" or "devote to destruction"), a word that often calls for the complete annihilation of an enemy and is translated by some as "holy war." The practice of herem assaults modern sensibilities with regard to right and wrong actions in times of war and thus has proven to be a hermeneutical dilemma. How can such passages inform modern readers when the armies of Israel "completely destroyed" their enemy (often including women, children, and livestock in the annihilation), not only with impunity, but with divine direction and blessing? This dissertation examines the treatment of herem in the work of three prominent 20th century evangelical Old Testament scholars: Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Peter C. Craigie, and Tremper Longman, III. As an exercise in the history of biblical interpretation, it specifically examines how these evangelical scholars interpret a problematic biblical concept for an audience that accepts the Bible as an infallible document which is authoritative for Christian life and practice. Based on an extensive review of their writings and personal interviews with Kaiser and Longman, it takes a close look at the hermeneutical strategies they share for interpreting herem, others that they reject, and still others that are unique to each scholar. Although clearly sharing a common interpretative tradition, each scholar represents a distinct way of negotiating the simultaneous demands of historical criticism and contemporary evangelical theology. Moreover, it also demonstrates that there is no monolithic evangelical approach to interpreting this problematic military convention; rather, the works of Kaiser, Craigie, and Longman indicate that there is a multiplicity of approaches to resolving perplexing biblical stories within evangelical Old Testament scholarship.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0968
Format: Thesis

Title: March 22, 2004 Attack on the Madrid Commuter Rail System.
Creator: Levings, Robert S., Kelsay, John, Garretson, Peter, Moore, Will, Program in International Affairs, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: On March 11, 2004 thirteen terrorists attacked the Madrid commuter rail system, killing 191 people and wounding 1,741 just three days before Spanish elections. The ruling Popular Party led by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar blamed the attack on ETA, the Basque separatist group responsible for more than 800 deaths since its founding in 1959. The police investigation quickly concluded that Islamic extremists had perpetrated the terror attack. This conclusion was cemented a day before...
Show moreOn March 11, 2004 thirteen terrorists attacked the Madrid commuter rail system, killing 191 people and wounding 1,741 just three days before Spanish elections. The ruling Popular Party led by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar blamed the attack on ETA, the Basque separatist group responsible for more than 800 deaths since its founding in 1959. The police investigation quickly concluded that Islamic extremists had perpetrated the terror attack. This conclusion was cemented a day before the election when a video containing a claim of responsibility from al Qaeda was released to the press. The speaker on the videotape stated that the attack was in response to Spanish participation in the Iraq war, a decision that was overwhelmingly unpopular among Spanish voters who turned out the next day at the polls and voted Aznar's Popular Party out of office. The Spanish Socialist Workers Party won and its candidate for Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero immediately announced his intention to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. Many analysts and observers concluded that al Qaeda was behind the attack and that it had been timed to coincide with the Spanish election with the intention of unseating the Popular Party and forcing Spanish troops out of Iraq. Although the terrorists clearly aimed to bring about a Spanish troops withdraw from Iraq, to date no evidence has surfaced to suggest that al Qaeda's leadership was in anyway involved in the attack or that it was purposely timed to influence Spain's election.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3102
Format: Thesis

Title: Omission Impossible?: It Depends.
Creator: Stigall, John C., Clarke, Randolph K., Kelsay, John, Rawling, Piers, Kearns, Stephen, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy
Abstract/Description: Suppose I don’t give this dissertation a title. In such a case am I responsible for not giving my dissertation a title? Does my responsibility for not giving my dissertation a title require that I could have given my dissertation a title? Would I still be responsible if some villain opposed to ironically not giving dissertations titles were prepared to see to it that I did not give my dissertation a title if I were to show some sign of doing so? In any case, what exactly is it to not give a...
Show moreSuppose I don’t give this dissertation a title. In such a case am I responsible for not giving my dissertation a title? Does my responsibility for not giving my dissertation a title require that I could have given my dissertation a title? Would I still be responsible if some villain opposed to ironically not giving dissertations titles were prepared to see to it that I did not give my dissertation a title if I were to show some sign of doing so? In any case, what exactly is it to not give a dissertation a title? What might have caused this behavior? Is my not giving my dissertation a title the sort of thing that can be caused at all? The preceding questions concern whether I am responsible for omitting to give my dissertation a title. In my dissertation I want to show that because of certain peculiarities about the metaphysics of omissions and causation, the first three questions cannot be adequately answered without investigating the last three questions. More specifically, I want to argue for the thesis that moral responsibility requires a morally salient causal relationship between an agent and an outcome, and I want to argue further for a unique asymmetry thesis about responsibility for omissions and positive actions. The thesis will explain why Frankfurt cases differ when they describe an agent doing a positive action from when they describe an agent omitting to perform some action. If my thesis is correct, it will do the following things: (1) Give a systematic explanation of the success of Frankfurt cases. (2) Provide theoretical guidelines for evaluating Frankfurt-style omission cases independently of intuitions about moral responsibility. (3) Show why Frankfurt-style omission cases are often more problematic than positive action Frankfurt-style cases. In short it will account for the prima facie plausibility of asymmetry theses such as the following: (AT) responsibility for positive actions does not require the ability to do otherwise, but responsibility for omissions does require the ability to do otherwise.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Su_Stigall_fsu_0071E_14779
Format: Thesis

Title: A Mighty Fortress: American Religion and the Construction of Confessional Lutheranism.
Creator: Brasich, Adam S., Corrigan, John, Ruse, Michael, Kelsay, John, McVicar, Michael J., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: This dissertation focuses on the beliefs and practices of confessional Lutherans in North America (particularly those of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod) as a form of religious conservative intellectual and material production. Confessional Lutheranism distinguishes itself from other variations of conservative Protestantism through its appeals to sixteenth century sources of religious authority and the...
Show moreThis dissertation focuses on the beliefs and practices of confessional Lutherans in North America (particularly those of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod) as a form of religious conservative intellectual and material production. Confessional Lutheranism distinguishes itself from other variations of conservative Protestantism through its appeals to sixteenth century sources of religious authority and the construction of historical memory, cultural practices, and material culture. Confessional Lutherans view American religion through the lens of the Book of Concord, which, since it derives authority from the eternal Word of God, is equally applicable to twenty-first century America as it was to Germany in 1580. Since the Lutheran Confessions simply rearticulate the Bible, theology cannot progress beyond the statements made in the documents. Therefore, confessional Lutherans have judged American religion and found it wanting based upon sixteenth century standards of orthodoxy. The impact of this confessionalism is not solely theological or intellectual. Rather, it deeply impacts religious culture and practice. Liturgy, hymnals, and church architecture are defined not only by orthodoxy but by their difference from contemporary evangelical trends. As much as confessional Lutheranism is positively defined by quia subscription to the Confessions, negatively it is defined by its suspicion towards conservative American evangelicals. Through a close analysis of the Book of Concord’s role in confessional Lutheranism, theological critiques of evangelical approaches to worship and emotion, controversies regarding ecumenical participation, and descriptions of material culture in the form of hymnals and church buildings, this study describes how confessional Lutheranism is constructed in relation to other versions of American Christianity. While confessional Lutheranism’s theological isolationism may seem to sequester the community within an intellectual ghetto, confessional Lutherans are very aware of their religious surroundings and react to them. This dissertation also shows how this community’s strict adherence to their Confessions relates to American Protestant questions of authority. The Confessions’ role as a theological norm separates them from American evangelicals, who have more nebulous sources of authority. Finally, this study demonstrates the continued importance of theological orthodoxy in American religious conservatism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Confessional Lutherans separate themselves religiously from conservative evangelicals based upon theological principles. This demonstrates that one cannot reduce religious conservatism to voting patterns and political analysis. Theology continues to matter.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_SUMMER2017_Brasich_fsu_0071E_13985
Format: Thesis

Title: Soldiers of God: Sūfism, Islamist Activism, and the Tradition of Comanding Right and Forbidding Wrong.
Creator: Houston, John Samuel, Kelsay, John, Milligan, Jeffrey Ayala, Boyle, Helen N., Twiss, Sumner B., Gaiser, Adam R., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreHouston, John Samuel, Kelsay, John, Milligan, Jeffrey Ayala, Boyle, Helen N., Twiss, Sumner B., Gaiser, Adam R., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
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Abstract/Description: In this project, I contribute to ongoing debates regarding proper conceptions of “political Islam” or “Islamism” by bringing greater attention to the roles that Islamic mysticism, or Ṣūfism (taṣawwuf), has played in shaping theories and practices of virtue and character formation in Islamist movements. I do so by undertaking a genealogical study of the discourse concerning the practice of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” in classical Islamic thought as well as in that of modern Sunnī...
Show moreIn this project, I contribute to ongoing debates regarding proper conceptions of “political Islam” or “Islamism” by bringing greater attention to the roles that Islamic mysticism, or Ṣūfism (taṣawwuf), has played in shaping theories and practices of virtue and character formation in Islamist movements. I do so by undertaking a genealogical study of the discourse concerning the practice of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” in classical Islamic thought as well as in that of modern Sunnī Islamism. Figures such as medieval scholarly giant al-Ghazālī (d. 505/111), Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ (d. 1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saʿīd Ḥawwa (d. 1989), a leading thinker of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and ʿAbd al-Salam Yassine (d. 2012), who established the Moroccan Justice and Spirituality Association, all appropriated the discourse of commanding and forbidding in differing ways and for differing reasons to put forward activist visions of Islam; however, they all stressed the need for spiritual and ethical formation (tarbīya) and relied on Ṣūfism to accomplish this. Attention to the ways in which this “Ghazalian” tradition of Islamist thought and practice adopted Ṣūfī organizational structures and models of ethical formation challenges conceptual frameworks which have described Islamist groups primarily as products of modernity or as political ideologies. Additionally, study of this Ṣūfi-centric Islamist tradition offers a contrast to scholarship which has focused almost exclusively on Islamism’s exoteric scripturalism and fixation on the law. Such insights are crucial when attempting to understand and engage Islamist actors for purposes ranging from scholarly enquiry to cross-cultural understanding to policy formulation.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_SUMMER2017_Houston_fsu_0071E_13955
Format: Thesis

Title: The Trace of the Face in the Politics of Jesus: Experimental Comparisons Between the Work of John Howard Yoder and Emmanuel Levinas.
Creator: Koyles, John Patrick, Kelsay, John, Kavka, Martin, Maier-Katkin, Daniel, Kalbian, Aline, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: his project is a rereading of John Howard Yoder's work in terms of the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas. The purpose for this rereading is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Yoder's work for contemporary socio-political issues. Restating his work in terms of Levinas' phenomenological description of otherness brings out these points of relevance while simultaneously remaining faithful to Yoder's commitment to Jesus as the primary source for Christian theological and moral...
Show morehis project is a rereading of John Howard Yoder's work in terms of the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas. The purpose for this rereading is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Yoder's work for contemporary socio-political issues. Restating his work in terms of Levinas' phenomenological description of otherness brings out these points of relevance while simultaneously remaining faithful to Yoder's commitment to Jesus as the primary source for Christian theological and moral discourse. I chose Yoder's methodology and conception of revolutionary subordination as test cases for this comparative rereading. By linking Yoder's work to Levinas I showed that a "being-for-the-other" ethical structure underlined Yoder's thought. This underlying element is the key component for restating Yoder's work in relevant terms for contemporary socio-political discourse. Because of this project Yoder's work can continue to have import for socio-political discussions into the 21st century.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2854
Format: Thesis

Title: Reading Nietzsche in Light of Emerson.
Creator: O'Connell, Jeffrey M., Ruse, Michael, Kelsay, John, McNaughton, David, Stein, Nathanael, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy
Abstract/Description: This Dissertation explores the connection between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche read and admired Emerson consistently throughout his working life, but little has been done to assess why Nietzsche liked Emerson or what influence Emerson’s essays might have had on him. I argue that Nietzsche found in Emerson’s work a similar set of concerns to his own, revolving around a crises in values, and also found a solution to this problem, which he largely adopted. In short,...
Show moreThis Dissertation explores the connection between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche read and admired Emerson consistently throughout his working life, but little has been done to assess why Nietzsche liked Emerson or what influence Emerson’s essays might have had on him. I argue that Nietzsche found in Emerson’s work a similar set of concerns to his own, revolving around a crises in values, and also found a solution to this problem, which he largely adopted. In short, Emerson showed Nietzsche how it was possible to create values in a time of devalued values, and why it was necessary to do so. The influence of Emerson reveals a new way to understand Nietzsche’s thought, which contrasts with recent attempts to understand Nietzsche as a methodological naturalist.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Sp_OConnell_fsu_0071E_14325
Format: Thesis

Title: That Which They Write: Qur'Anic Healing and Material Agency in Morocco.
Creator: Riggan, James, Gaiser, Adam R., Luke, Trevor S., Hellweg, Joseph, Kelsay, John, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: Muslims in Morocco and across the globe practice a form of healing and exorcism known as al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya. The primary technique in this system of healing consists of Qur’anic recitation. In order to understand the role of the Qur’an as a healing object, this project examines the history of Qur’anic healing, classification of disease in al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya, the steps of Qur’anic operations, and the development of healing networks. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted primarily...
Show moreMuslims in Morocco and across the globe practice a form of healing and exorcism known as al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya. The primary technique in this system of healing consists of Qur’anic recitation. In order to understand the role of the Qur’an as a healing object, this project examines the history of Qur’anic healing, classification of disease in al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya, the steps of Qur’anic operations, and the development of healing networks. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted primarily in Fez, Morocco, I demonstrate that the Qur’an has material agency. Specifically, the Qur’an acts upon human and social bodies in order to heal them from a series of occult infections. I investigate the role of revelatory speech in Muslim societies and its relationship to individual human bodies. This investigation reveals not only information about how Muslims use the Qur’an in their daily lives, but also information about the relationship between the experience of human illness and a wider social environment. Al-ruqya al-shar‘iyya offers a book as a solution to these trials and tribulations. In the process, however, this system of healing demonstrates that the Qur’an in Muslim societies is a book that transcends both sound and page.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Riggan_fsu_0071E_15000
Format: Thesis

Title: Rethinking Liberal Political Thought: John Locke, Religious Forms of Reasoning, and Institutional Participation in Democratic Discourse.
Creator: Hagele, Matthew R., Kelsay, John, Ruse, Michael, Twiss, Sumner B., Kavka, Martin, Irving, Sarah, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Engaging with the many questions surrounding the proper relationship between religion and politics in a liberal democratic state, this dissertation focuses on the contribution that can be made by rethinking the tradition of liberal political thought. I explore the political vision of John Locke, which I argue grounds the possibility of incorporating religious forms of reasoning into the public sphere of democratic discourse. Distinguishing my comprehensive interpretation of Lockean liberalism...
Show moreEngaging with the many questions surrounding the proper relationship between religion and politics in a liberal democratic state, this dissertation focuses on the contribution that can be made by rethinking the tradition of liberal political thought. I explore the political vision of John Locke, which I argue grounds the possibility of incorporating religious forms of reasoning into the public sphere of democratic discourse. Distinguishing my comprehensive interpretation of Lockean liberalism from the views of significant twentieth- and twenty-first-century thinkers--whom I describe as either Rawlsian liberals, new traditionalists, non-liberal democrats, or non-Lockean liberal democrats--I discuss three conditions that are present in Locke, which make possible a form of democratic political participation that promotes the use of religious reasons in civil discourse. First, through his mature position on religious toleration, Locke constructs a civic environment in which citizens have the liberty to hold a diversity of religious beliefs and to make these beliefs public in religious practice. Second, according to Locke's views on moral epistemology, religious belief that is grounded in revelation can be entitled to supplement practical reason in order to give individuals fuller and clearer knowledge of, and motivation for obedience to, the moral law. Because Locke views political philosophy as a subset of moral philosophy, I extend the argument to conclude that Locke creates a role for the use of religious beliefs in one's determination of political matters. Third, I contend that Locke views religious communities as serving an expressive, political function by mediating individuals' interests to the larger sphere of public discourse. In this way, religious communities can be described as vehicles for citizenship. This claim for the political role of religious institutions moves beyond a mere allowance of religious reasoning in the public sphere to a specification of concrete ways in which this participation is to occur.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4884
Format: Thesis

Title: Science, Religion, and Virtue: Toward Excellence in Dialogue.
Creator: Deen, Daniel Richard, Ruse, Michael, Kelsay, John, Dancy, R. M., Rawling, J. Piers, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy
Abstract/Description: This dissertation challenges the conflict thesis between science and religion promoted by philosophers Alvin Plantinga and Philip Kitcher. I analyze their conflict thesis as an epistemological disagreement about the nature of inquiry. Alvin Plantinga argues that a fideistic method of reasoning is required to make sense of science, while Philip Kitcher promotes a scientisim as the only way to make sense of religion. I argue that fideism and scientism are acceptable in a disciplinary context of...
Show moreThis dissertation challenges the conflict thesis between science and religion promoted by philosophers Alvin Plantinga and Philip Kitcher. I analyze their conflict thesis as an epistemological disagreement about the nature of inquiry. Alvin Plantinga argues that a fideistic method of reasoning is required to make sense of science, while Philip Kitcher promotes a scientisim as the only way to make sense of religion. I argue that fideism and scientism are acceptable in a disciplinary context of inquiry. However, the investigation of the relationship between science and religion is an interdisciplinary context of inquiry where fideism and scientism instigate conflict. Therefore, conflict between science and religion is an artifact of Plantinga's and Kitcher's extension of disciplinary forms of inquiry into an interdisciplinary context. I look to the work of virtue epistemology, having identified the nature of inquiry as a primary cause of their conflict, to help distinguish disciplinary from interdisciplinary forms of inquiry. Disciplinary forms of inquiry are inquires where intellectual faculty virtues are more prominent than character virtues. Thus, one finds a consensus in disciplinary inquiry in how to proceed with research, e.g., Plantinga's fideism and Kitcher's scientism. Interdisciplinary research is a form of inquiry where the method of inquiry itself is in question, a form of inquiry has not been agreed to in terms of how to proceed with inquiry. Thus, intellectual character virtues take precedence to faculty virtues as agents are navigating the borders of different forms of inquiry. This distinction allows me to understand Plantinga and Kitcher as engaging in excellent disciplinary research but less-than-excellent interdisciplinary research. The dissertation concludes with showing how their work represents poor instances of interdisciplinary research, providing a positive example in the work of Michael Ruse.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-9589
Format: Thesis

Title: Ideological, Dystopic, and Antimythopoeic Formations of Masculinity in the Vietnam War Film.
Creator: Stegall, Elliott, Kelsay, John, Bearor, Karen, Erndl, Kathleen M., Edwards, Leigh H., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in Interdisciplinary...
Show moreStegall, Elliott, Kelsay, John, Bearor, Karen, Erndl, Kathleen M., Edwards, Leigh H., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities
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Abstract/Description: This dissertation argues that representations of masculinity in the Hollywood war/combat films of the Vietnam film cycle reflect the changing and changed mores of the era in which they were made, and that these representations are so prevalent as to suggest a culture-wide shift in notions of masculinity since the Vietnam War. I demonstrate that the majority of the representations of masculinity in the Vietnam War film cycle (an expression that includes all films on the Vietnam War but...
Show moreThis dissertation argues that representations of masculinity in the Hollywood war/combat films of the Vietnam film cycle reflect the changing and changed mores of the era in which they were made, and that these representations are so prevalent as to suggest a culture-wide shift in notions of masculinity since the Vietnam War. I demonstrate that the majority of the representations of masculinity in the Vietnam War film cycle (an expression that includes all films on the Vietnam War but particularly those produced in Hollywood) have achieved mythic status--accepted truths--but are often exaggerated and/or are erroneous to the point of affecting how historical events are understood by subsequent generations. Such is the power of cinema. This dissertation, then, adopts a cultural-political-historical perspective to investigate Hollywood's virtual re-creation of the Vietnam War and its combat participants as dystopic, anti-mythopoeic figures whose allegiance to patriotism, God, and duty are shown to be tragically betrayed by a changing paradigm of masculinity and has thus created a new mythos of the American male which abides in the American consciousness to this day. All of which is to ask, why was there such a significant change from admirable cinematic representations of America as a nation that represents the ideology of freedom and liberty for all and U.S. soldiers as the hallmark of strength and goodness in the WW II movies to the mostly wretched representations of both in the Vietnam War cycle? While each chapter of my dissertation will attempt to identify plausible answers to these questions, I will also seek to explore why and how these alterations from the regnant traditions of American values--honoring the military, respecting the government and other traditions, such as the nuclear family, marriage as a sacred institution, monogamy as the respected norm, children as inviolable, gender roles as fixed, separation of the races, etc.--came to such a tumultuous head in the 1960s and resulted in the significantly altered constructs of values and masculinity that have become the norm in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In order to investigate historical cinematic representations effectively, it is necessary to consider the actual events of the times and challenge the subsequent various mythopoeic formations of the Hollywood Vietnam veteran.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-9251
Format: Thesis

Title: Blameworthiness and Ignorance.
Creator: Miller, Daniel, Clarke, Randolph K., Kelsay, John, Mele, Alfred R., McNaughton, David, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy
Abstract/Description: Sometimes ignorance functions as a legitimate excuse, and sometimes it doesn't. It is widely maintained that, when the ignorance an agent acts or omits from is blameless, it excuses an agent. Call this claim the Blameless Ignorance Principle, or (BI). This principle is at the heart of questions concerning the epistemic condition on blameworthiness; my project explores a number of these with the aim of developing the literature in three areas. I first explore the epistemic condition on...
Show moreSometimes ignorance functions as a legitimate excuse, and sometimes it doesn't. It is widely maintained that, when the ignorance an agent acts or omits from is blameless, it excuses an agent. Call this claim the Blameless Ignorance Principle, or (BI). This principle is at the heart of questions concerning the epistemic condition on blameworthiness; my project explores a number of these with the aim of developing the literature in three areas. I first explore the epistemic condition on derivative blameworthiness. An agent's blameworthiness for something is derivative when it depends upon his blameworthiness for some prior thing that it resulted from. However, not just any negative consequence that a blameworthy action or omission results in is something for which the agent is thereby also blameworthy. It is often maintained that, in addition, the consequence must have been foreseeable for the agent. I develop a two-part argument against this view. First, I argue that agents can be blameless for failing to foresee what was reasonably foreseeable for them. Second, I explain that, if this is so and if (BI) is true, then the foreseeability view is false. Consequently, I consider an alternative view that requires actual foresight and is consistent with (BI).
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Date Issued: 2016
Identifier: FSU_2016SP_Miller_fsu_0071E_13207
Format: Thesis

Title: Religion and Genocide: A Comparative Study of Bosnia and Rwanda.
Creator: Temoney, Kate E. (Kate Elizabeth), Twiss, Sumner B., Maier-Katkin, Daniel, Kalbian, Aline H., Kavka, Martin, Kelsay, John, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences...
Show moreTemoney, Kate E. (Kate Elizabeth), Twiss, Sumner B., Maier-Katkin, Daniel, Kalbian, Aline H., Kavka, Martin, Kelsay, John, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
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Abstract/Description: In the inchoate field of comparative genocide studies, religion and sexual violence remain largely understudied. Using typologies as an investigative tool, this study examines the 1995 Bosnian and 1994 Rwandan genocides as case studies. It will be argued that religion--in its expression and institutionalized form--potentiates genocidal violence in significant ways, and that the mutually reinforcing concepts of "othering," justification, and authorization are ideal types for teasing out the...
Show moreIn the inchoate field of comparative genocide studies, religion and sexual violence remain largely understudied. Using typologies as an investigative tool, this study examines the 1995 Bosnian and 1994 Rwandan genocides as case studies. It will be argued that religion--in its expression and institutionalized form--potentiates genocidal violence in significant ways, and that the mutually reinforcing concepts of "othering," justification, and authorization are ideal types for teasing out the nexuses of the culture-specific logic of religion and the phenomenon of genocide. Moreover, rape and other forms of sexual violence were recently construed as "weapons of war," and four proposed genocidal rape types that align with the 1948 Genocide Convention demonstrate how this weapon furthers genocidal aims. Ultimately, it will be concluded that the comparative study of the religious and sexual facets of genocide--including the religious inflections of sexual violence--deepen our understanding of the dynamics of genocide, open up new lines of inquiry into genocide studies, and contribute to genocide prevention and prosecution efforts.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-9510
Format: Thesis

Title: The Network Theory of Well-Being, Revamped.
Creator: Lang, Martha L. (Martha Louise), Bishop, Michael A., Kelsay, John, Justus, James, Ruse, Michael, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy
Abstract/Description: A viable theory of well-being has useful applications for individuals and groups alike. Psychologists frequently refer to notions of well-being for the sake of enhancing patients' well-being when it is lacking, and public policy makers may appeal to the idea of well-being when crafting policies for the sake of the well-being of cities, counties, states, and nations. One of the problems with such endeavors is that there is no standard, agreed upon definition of well-being. After investigating...
Show moreA viable theory of well-being has useful applications for individuals and groups alike. Psychologists frequently refer to notions of well-being for the sake of enhancing patients' well-being when it is lacking, and public policy makers may appeal to the idea of well-being when crafting policies for the sake of the well-being of cities, counties, states, and nations. One of the problems with such endeavors is that there is no standard, agreed upon definition of well-being. After investigating the most common theories of well-being, I argue that Michael Bishop's Network Theory is the most reasonable starting point for a viable theory of well-being; however, I also argue that Network Theory must be revamped. Network Theory requires an essential component that is missing from its current rendition. In 2015, Bishop published The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being. Bishop's Network Theory is unique among philosophical theories of well-being. Traditionally, theories of well-being, including Aristotle's eudaimonic view of human flourishing; Roger Crisp's hedonism; James Griffin's life satisfaction theory; and L.W. Sumner's authentic happiness view, have all employed a similar method in crafting their theories: the method from the armchair. Indeed, armchair methods of philosophical analysis can yield truths, and many philosophers certainly reflect on actual, real world experiences while at their armchairs, but Bishop argues that a strong theory of well-being requires that philosophers investigate and appeal directly to scientific findings. As such, Bishop's theory of well-being is specifically inclusive in its approach to finding the truth about well-being. Bishop's theory is inclusive insofar as he includes both philosophy and science in order to craft his theory. The science to which Bishop appeals is psychology; more specifically, Bishop researches scientific studies in the field of positive psychology. Bishop explains that, in the field of positive psychology, even though there are many references to well-being, there is a wide range of definitions, with no standard theory or model of well-being to which psychologists appeal when making claims about how to address or enhance well-being in people's lives. Bishop's solution is to thoroughly investigate the scientific studies and then step back, taking a meta-view of the information and insights from positive psychology. Indeed, a pattern emerges, and Bishop articulates this pattern through his Network Theory. The central point of Network Theory is that, when positive psychologists are studying people whose lives are going well, they are studying aspects of individuals' positive causal networks (PCNs). The particular parts of PCNs are called PCN fragments, and they include specific emotions, attitudes, and successful interactions in the world. For instance, the phenomena of feeling joyous, of approaching one's day with an attitude of optimism, and then performing wonderfully during a challenge at work, each count as a fragment in an individual's PCN. My argument is that, because of the way Bishop organizes the science of well-being while also including philosophical methods and insights, Network Theory is the best starting point for a theory of well-being; however, Network Theory needs to be revised because it is missing an essential feature of well-being. In making this claim, I provide a set of counter-examples that illustrate PCNs in cases where well-being cannot reasonably be said to exist. For example, there are serial killers whose only sense of positive affect or positive attitude come about when they are planning and executing torture and murders, which are often sexually charged, thus adding more "positivity" in terms of positive affect. For such individuals, positive successes include the actual luring, torturing, and murdering of their victims. Because of the PCN that develops, the killers want to murder again; in doing so successfully, they create more positive emotions more themselves, thus supporting the homeostatic nature of PCNs. To add support for my argument, I also appeal to studies in positive psychology that indicate additional features beyond positive emotions and positive attitudes that support successes within the PCN model. In particular, I pinpoint the role of authenticity, but I also revamp the notion of authenticity so that something other than subjective authenticity is emphasized as essential for well-being. In the end, I argue that my revamped version of the Network Theory of Well-Being provides a more viable model of well-being than Bishop's original theory, although he provides the dynamic, inclusive foundation. The emergent theory has practical value and myriad applications for problem-solving in individual counseling, coaching, and/or consulting, including applications in Logic-Based Therapy. Group well-being can be explained through the revamped notion of Network Theory, too, but that is a topic for a future project.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_2017SP_Lang_fsu_0071E_13855
Format: Thesis

Title: More than Discourse: Islam, Others, and Radicalization in the West.
Creator: Moret, Ross, Kelsay, John, Ruse, Michael, Gaiser, Adam R., Twiss, Sumner B., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: My dissertation approaches the issue of Muslim radicalization in the West from the standpoint of comparative religious ethics (CRE). As practitioners of a discipline rooted in the analysis of arguments, scholars of comparative religious ethics naturally approach issues such as radicalization by attending to the various forms of discursive reasoning involved. The best such studies historicize the discourse and attend to the kinds of procedures involved in their validation. So too, these...
Show moreMy dissertation approaches the issue of Muslim radicalization in the West from the standpoint of comparative religious ethics (CRE). As practitioners of a discipline rooted in the analysis of arguments, scholars of comparative religious ethics naturally approach issues such as radicalization by attending to the various forms of discursive reasoning involved. The best such studies historicize the discourse and attend to the kinds of procedures involved in their validation. So too, these studies generally offer a form of immanent critique and, often, work to put one tradition in dialogue with another tradition (Christian and Confucian forms of virtue, for example, or Islamic thought and human rights). My thesis is that studies in CRE could benefit from the insights of other disciplines that investigate the place of arguments in determining human behavior. More specifically, I contend that understanding radicalization requires more than the analysis of discursive reasoning. By attending to the general insights of fields such as social psychology and behavioral economics as well as specific studies that deal with radicalization, I argue that religious arguments are only part of a very large and complex set of phenomena including sociopolitical factors, developmental psychology, economics, and racism, that contribute to radicalization. At the same time, however, arguments are important, and scholars of comparative religious ethics are able to contribute to our understanding of radicalization by historicizing and analyzing the religious forms of reason-giving that are used to justify radicalization.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Sp_Moret_fsu_0071E_14376
Format: Thesis

Title: Reconciled to Liberty: Catholics, Muslims, and the Possibility of Overlapping Consensus.
Creator: Barre, Elizabeth A., Kelsay, John, Costa, M. Victoria, Twiss, Sumner B., Kalbian, Aline, Gaiser, Adam, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The right to religious liberty and the tolerance of difference that this right engenders are central components of the American national identity. As a result, many in the United States are perplexed by current events in the Middle East. Rising sectarian violence and the imposition of Islamic law throughout the region have made it clear that the values associated with liberalism are not gaining traction in this part of the world. This dissertation uses the tools of comparative religious...
Show moreThe right to religious liberty and the tolerance of difference that this right engenders are central components of the American national identity. As a result, many in the United States are perplexed by current events in the Middle East. Rising sectarian violence and the imposition of Islamic law throughout the region have made it clear that the values associated with liberalism are not gaining traction in this part of the world. This dissertation uses the tools of comparative religious ethics to challenge two popular explanations of this phenomenon. The first contends that liberalism is not gaining traction because it is incompatible with certain "exceptional" features of Islamic history and theology. The second explains the phenomenon in terms of a general incompatibility between liberalism and all religions that seek a public role for religion. To challenge these theses, I compare the arguments of John Rawls, John Courtney Murray, and three contemporary Muslim reformers: Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Khaled Abou El Fadl, and Abdulaziz Sachedina. In so doing, I show that it is possible to make religious arguments in support of liberal democracy and that Islamic struggles to do so are in no way exceptional.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1109
Format: Thesis

Title: After Essentialism: Possibilities in Phenomenology of Religion.
Creator: Lupo, Joshua S., Kavka, Martin, Williamson, George S., Kalbian, Aline H., Kelsay, John, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion
Abstract/Description: Scholars of religion and the humanities more often than not claim to engage in critical inquiry. Too often, however, these claims are not adequately justified. To resolve this problem, this dissertation turns to the philosophical movement known as phenomenology. Inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and developed by Martin Heidegger, this philosophical movement, at its best, has focused on how our consciousness of the world is structured by our intentional relation with it. At its worst, this...
Show moreScholars of religion and the humanities more often than not claim to engage in critical inquiry. Too often, however, these claims are not adequately justified. To resolve this problem, this dissertation turns to the philosophical movement known as phenomenology. Inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and developed by Martin Heidegger, this philosophical movement, at its best, has focused on how our consciousness of the world is structured by our intentional relation with it. At its worst, this tradition of philosophy has supported essentialism, that is, the belief that we can bracket our social, political, and historical contexts and in doing so attain unchanging knowledge of our world. The phenomenological method has a complex history within the study of religion. Phenomenologists of religion believed that they could discern a common essence behind different religious traditions. The phenomenological approach is no longer popular among scholars in the study of religion. Russell McCutcheon, for example, claims that the phenomenological approach has allowed scholars to implicitly protect religious traditions, and indeed the very category of religion, from criticism. For McCutcheon, when scholars essentialize religion, they place it outside the social and political realm, and make it immune from critique. On McCutcheon’s account, however, it is not simply phenomenology of religion, but the phenomenological method itself, that is to blame for this lack of critical rigor. To examine the plausibility of this claim, the first three chapters of this dissertation examine the work of three of the most widely cited phenomenologists of religion—Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and Mircea Eliade—and show how their work does and does not share in the same philosophical assumptions as Husserl and Heidegger. I contend that much of their work does suffer from the problem of essentialism that McCutcheon identifies. I also contend that some of the blame for this should be pinned on Husserl, for whom essential knowledge remained an important aspiration. This, however, does not mean that all phenomenology should be abandoned. In the fourth chapter, I argue that existential phenomenology not only allows for critical analysis, but also offers a more plausible grounding for critique. McCutcheon’s method seeks to fix our knowledge of the world by arguing that our claims about it, including our claims about religion, are constituted by power relations. But if this were the case, scholarship itself would simply be an expression of power, and for that reason its critiques could never be evaluated using criteria established by reason. Through an examination of Heidegger’s early lectures and Being and Time, I provide a justification for a critical approach to examining religious traditions. What makes Heidegger’s account useful, I contend, is his analysis of the formation of a subject who can take up and critique the norms that govern his or her life, not by placing him- or herself outside of his or her tradition, but by taking up a place within it. This grounding makes possible a non-essentialist approach to critique. It takes the content of our lives to be made up of the historically, socially, and politically contingent norms that govern us. But it also offers an account of how we can take up and critique those norms. In the final chapter of the dissertation, I cash out this approach’s usefulness by turning to recent debates surrounding natural law. As opposed to some approaches to natural law reasoning which claim that there are essential moral and ethical goods that make up the natural law and transcend our contexts, Jean Porter and Vincent Lloyd argue for a tradition-based approach to natural law that takes the content of the natural law to be dependent upon the social and historical contexts in which proponents of natural law locate themselves. I argue that John Finnis and Germain Grisez, along with two critics of Finnis and Grisez, Lisa Cahill and Cristina Traina, desire to fix the content of the natural law in an essentialist manner, and that Porter and Lloyd offer a more compelling account of natural law reasoning that is amenable to Heidegger’s existential phenomenology. This chapter thus shows how the previously proposed phenomenological account of selfhood can be used to critique a religious tradition without fixing that tradition as either a manifestation of a sacred reality or of power. The dissertation ends with a reflection on the role of irony in the study of religion, arguing that irony should be used by scholars to challenge the status quo, but should not be used cynically to suggest that there is no way to move beyond it.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Sp_Lupo_fsu_0071E_14397
Format: Thesis

Title: The Meaning of Life: What We Mean by ‘Meaning'.
Creator: Brooks, Aaron D., McNaughton, David, Kelsay, John, LeBar, Mark, Stein, Nathanael, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy
Abstract/Description: Two basic types of proposals for elucidating the concept of existential meaning have been made in the literature: 1) monist proposals; 2) family-resemblance proposals. Monist proposals attempt to give one overarching concept to which all competing conceptions of existential meaning answer. Family-resemblance proposals, on the other hand, claim that the question of existential meaning is not exhausted by any one concept of existential meaning; rather, there is a cluster or family of closely...
Show moreTwo basic types of proposals for elucidating the concept of existential meaning have been made in the literature: 1) monist proposals; 2) family-resemblance proposals. Monist proposals attempt to give one overarching concept to which all competing conceptions of existential meaning answer. Family-resemblance proposals, on the other hand, claim that the question of existential meaning is not exhausted by any one concept of existential meaning; rather, there is a cluster or family of closely-united concepts which, as a whole, exhaust the possibilities of what we mean by ‘existential meaning’, even though no particular one does so on its own. Metz (2014) examines three monist proposals and concludes that no single one entirely captures the concept of existential meaning. At the conclusion of his analysis, he argues that because they each touch on important aspects of meaning, they should be united into a ‘family’ of closely-related concepts. For Metz, only the family – rather than any particular member – does a sufficient job of making the question of existential meaning intelligible. Without going into the details here, I argue in this dissertation that Metz’s embrace of a family-resemblance view is too quick. Certainly, family resemblance may be the only way we can characterize certain concepts, like games (Wittgenstein, 2001). But, as Metz himself acknowledges, if we can find an underlying concept shared by concepts in the ‘family’ of existential meaning, then that would be preferable. In this dissertation, I claim that the three concepts offered by Metz, along with all conceptions/theories considered in this project, share the following concept of existential meaning in common: existential meaning is an appropriate connection between a life and some significant thing(s). I draw this concept mainly from the work of Robert Nozick (1981), with some modifications to account for objections raised by Metz. Nozick thinks meaning arises as a person seeks to connect to external values. I claim that meaning arises as a person forms appropriate (valuable) connections to significant things (value). More simply stated, existential meaning is about valuable connections. Therefore, I call this the ‘Connectivity Concept’ (‘CC’ for short) and offer it as a necessary and sufficient condition of existential meaning: Connectivity Concept (CC): (a) life, L, has existential meaning if and only if L appropriately connects to some significant thing(s). I argue that this concept underlies questions about existential meaning. But the question of existential meaning requires us to specify three things when discussing existential meaning. I call these three things the ‘context’ of the discussion: 1) the L that we have in mind; 2) the ‘significant things’ we have in mind; and, 3) the ‘appropriate connection’ we have in mind. What L ‘means’, then, may change depending on the context of the discussion. I further claim, as an upshot of my thesis, that ambiguity in the question of existential meaning arises precisely insofar as we fail to specify the context of the discussion. Notice that CC contains normative claims about the connection – ‘appropriate’ – and objects of the connection – ‘significant’. These notions will need to be cashed out when discussing meaning. Realizing that we are disagreeing over the context of meaning will keep us from talking past one another when conceptualizing answers to the question. In the context of the discussion, we can think of the ‘appropriate connection’, metaphorically, as a pointing-relation: if a life does in fact have meaning, then that life ‘points’, in the right ways, to significant objects of the connection. This ‘pointing’ is why I have designated the objects as “some significant thing(s)”. Among other things, they are significant in that they are signified by the connection; the subject of meaning becomes a sign of those things in virtue of making the right connection to them. Conceptions specify what these significant things are and the manner in which the subject “successfully points”. We can state the thesis of this dissertation even more strongly: the question of existential meaning is so abstract a question as to be practically meaningless until we are given its context. Otherwise, almost any answer can qualify as legitimate when we ask: “what is the meaning of life?” – even Deep Thought’s answer of ‘forty-two’ in the epigraph of Chapter 1. I take this to be Douglas Adam’s point. Unless we are clearer in asking the question, people’s answers may come as a real surprise to us, precisely because they may assume different things about the question when they ask it. Indeed, because answers to the question often disagree about the subject, appropriate connection, and significant thing(s), it is important that theorists make arguments for why their context for the question is better, i.e. for why their subject, connection, and significant thing(s) should be prioritized. For instance, some might claim that the question of existential meaning is concerned with how a person (subject) causally influences (right connection) other lives (significant things). This question’s context is vastly different from a question which asks how a person (subject) might promote (connection) states of affairs that are the objects of that person’s propositional attitudes (significant things). These contexts are so different that their answers, too, will look drastically different. And this type of disagreement is precisely what we see in the literature. So if these questions share anything at all in common, it must be very abstract indeed. My claim is that what they share in common is CC.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Fall_Brooks_fsu_0071E_15390
Format: Thesis

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