Existentialism and Monty Python: Kafka, Camus, Nietzsche, and Sartre

This essay utilizes the work of the comedy group, Monty Python, as a means of introducing basic concepts in Existentialism, especially as it pertains to the writings of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus

Analytic philosophy, 1925-1969: emergence, management and nature

This paper shows that during the first half of the 1960s The Journal of Philosophy quickly moved from publishing work in diverse philosophical traditions to, essentially, only publishing analytic philosophy. Further, the changes at the journal are shown, with the help of previous work on the journals Mind and The Philosophical Review, to be part of a pattern involving generalist philosophy journals in Britain and America during the period 1925-1969. The pattern is one in which journals controlled by analytic philosophers systematically promote a form of critical philosophy and marginalise rival approaches to philosophy. This pattern, it is argued, helps to explain the growing dominance of analytic philosophy during the twentieth century and allows characterising this form of philosophy as, at least during 1925-1969, a sectarian form of critical philosophy

Existentialism in the Writing Center: The Path to Individuality

Being a philosophy minor and English major, I constantly look at interactions that take place between the different disciplines and ways in which life can be approached from a philosophical standpoint. Existentialism is a philosophy that piqued my interest with its reliance on the precedence of the individual and the consequentiality of man’s choices. And like Jean- Paul Sartre once stated, I believe that “Existentialism must be lived to be really sincere” (47).University Writing Cente

The Impact of Theistic Existentialism in the Poetry of Antonio Machado

Undergraduate Textual or Investigativ

Preaching to Episodic Ears: Practicing a Dramaturgical Homiletic

This article is a critical attempt to develop a homiletic methodology for preaching to the episodic self of the 21st century. The British philosopher Galen Strawson contends that postmodern people today do not regard themselves as living out their lives in a diachronic or narrative sense, but rather in an episodic-existential sense. This episodic-existential way of perceiving one’s life has recently posed a significant challenge to the current preaching practice that is mostly composed and delivered from the pulpit through a narrative. This article provides a considerate response to that episodic-existential challenge. Specifically, the article proposes a dramaturgical narrative form of preaching, in close collaboration with Paul Tillich’s existential theology, as a creative alternative to the conventional narrative way(s) of preaching

Anthropology Embedded in Worldview Studies: Modernity’s Failure and the Response of Christian Philosophy of Life in a Postmodern Age of Expressivism

This thesis examines two divergent streams of thought in Christian philosophy of life represented by the works of Francis Schaeffer and James K. A. Smith in an effort to help Christians live in a postmodern culture. Schaeffer and Smith ultimately address differing, but complementary, realms of anthropology and the human experience. To see how these two authors might complement each other effectively, this thesis will analyze each author’s work and then explore whether or not the application of Smith\u27s liturgical anthropology and utilization of phenomenology can improve Schaeffer’s system of thought and the worldview concept

Situating Martin Heidegger’s claim to a “productive dialogue” with Marxism

This critical review aims to more fully situate the claim Martin Heidegger makes in ‘Letter on Humanism’ that a “productive dialogue” between his work and that of Karl Marx is possible. The prompt for this is Paul Laurence Hemming’s recently published Heidegger and Marx: A Productive Dialogue over the Language of Humanism (2013) which omits to fully account for the historical situation which motivated Heidegger’s seemingly positive endorsement of Marxism. This piece will show that there were significant external factors which influenced Heidegger’s claim and that, when seen within his broader corpus, these particular comments in “Letter on Humanism” are evidently disingenuous, given that his general opinion of Marxism can only be described as vitriolic. Any attempt to explore how such a “productive dialogue” could be construed must fully contextualise Heidegger’s claim for it. This piece will aim to do that, and more broadly explore Heidegger’s general opinion of Marxism