School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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    Recompense, tension and the mean : some studies in the notion of conflict or opposition and its resolution, with regard to ancient Greek philosophy
    Harrison, M. F. W ( 1949)
    The notion of opposition or conflict is one which is fundamental to philosophy. In politics it takes the form of conflict between citizen and state, or citizen and group of citizens; in ethics it is connected with the concept of choice and free will, and also with the notion of the perpetual striving between powers of good and evil for mastery, the one over the other. In this thesis, I shall concentrate on the Greek philosophers, not because they show this notion of opposition in its clearest light, nor even because they deal with it the most fully of any other philosophers, but because I must limit my field of study, and the three solutions of the strife of opposites which I have chosen have been dealt with in some detail by philosophers closely connected by ties of race, period, and influence. By concentrating on one period of history I have made easier a study of political and social pressures, and have thus been aided in studying the soil from which the philosophical growths have sprung. The study of the resolution of opposing forces, and there are diverse means of resolution and many degrees of harmony, is in itself an interesting, research into problems of logic and methodology and psychology. Moreover - and I consider this more important from a philosophical point of view - the implications of these concepts of resolution should be examined. The harmony notion of Pythagoras has the social implication of conservatism - an insistence that people continue to obey laws, and that rulers continue to be divinely inspired by the insight their studies in mathematics give them. Lack of harmony in the soul is destructive; in the state lack of harmony means the disintegration of the good state, giving rise to oligarchic or tyrannical governments. Plato, by his insistence on harmony in the state coming as the result, of personal performance by each citizen of specialised natural function, showed Gore psychological insight than Pythagoras, but by mentioning the myth of the metallic soul shows his lack of science, although he reveals a talent for plausible propaganda, which Archytas at least of the Pythagoreans failed to possess. The implications of the resolution of conflict by a tension as in Heraclitus, are not so easy to find. It is suggested that the notion of tension is linked up with a less deterministic morality, appealing not so much to nature as to human activity. The tension causes people to regard their lot in life as being made by their own actions and fortune, rather than to accept it as final. There is no emphasis on "community" in Plato's sense, and no talk of fulfilling your real nature, although Heraclitus knows what kind of soul is best. "The people must fight for its laws as for its walls" gives one a different feeling to the fragment of Archytas: "Law must be engrained in the characters and practices of the citizens''. Heraclitus' citizens fight for what they want. Archytas' sentence is cryptic. One does not know who is to engrain the law in the practices of the citizens. To speak of such conception as Heraclitus'as "dynamic", as Cornford does, (although he is referring to Anaximander's resolution of conflict specifically), and of the Pythagorean one as static, may be prejudicial to good study and seem unduly to intrude one's own ethical feelings into the matter, if the usage of these words is not qualified. For this reason, when these words are used by me it is simply to facilitate recognition o the trends of outlook indicated in the philosophers I shall deal with. In discussing the resolutions and their implications my own predispositions towards humanism and influences of a Christian and middle class background will be seen. While these may be prevented from intruding into my discussion of the various forms of resolution, it is impossible to keep them out wholly when I am criticising (i.e. making an evaluation of) their implications. It would seem that philosophers do not champion either strife or harmony, or both, but that they attempt to resolve the strife which confronts them in the universe, the state and human life in different ways, and obtain a resolution or harmony. The important point is that these harmonies are of different kinds, and have different implications both logically and politically, What some of these methods and types of resolution are, and what implications and views of human life are involved in each I shall attempt to make clear.
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    Show business: a history of theatre in Victoria 1835-1948
    Lesser, L. E. ( 1949)
    ...The material available to the student of the theatrical history of this State and Nation, is relatively sparse, and extremely scattered. Much has been covered in newspaper articles, but no attempt has ever been made to pull the material together and show it as part of a continuous story, superimposed upon the background of the political, social and economic history of the State. That is what I now attempt to do. If it does nothing more than bring the basic information within reasonable compass, I will not feel I have failed. If, on the other hand, it should arouse an interest in either the history or the practice of Theatre, in its widest sense, so that a multitude of young men and women may be rescued from the slough of saccharine sentimentality into which Hollywood has led them, to an increasing interest in legitimate Theatre, the development of which is considered by some to be a concomitant of National greatness, then I shall feel that I have indeed succeeded. (From introduction)
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    Monism and dualism in the philosophy of Bergson
    Wilcox, Max ( 1948)
    When, in the Discourse on Method, Descartes concluded that “...’I’, that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body....” (Ital. mine), the way was opened for that dualism between body and soul, extension and thought, which was to become so typical of later French philosophy. Making so sharp a distinction, however, led to occasionalism, where we are confronted with a double series, ---‘physical-psychical’--- whose terms are not necessarily connected, though they work in perfect harmony, thanks to the providence of a thoughtful Deity,--- or should I say, dues ex machine! So that naturally enough, a reaction came: headed indeed by no less a person than Spinoza, who, when he had recovered from the Cartesian spell, became the thoroughgoing monist who declared that “..in nature only one substance exists, and... it is absolutely infinite,” that consequently, “substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute and now under that.” (Ethic, L.Schol. prop. X, II.Schol. prop. VII.). But in the writings of Bergson it is said that we can find both Dualism and Monism expressed; that in fact, he vacillates between one and the other. In the preface to Matter and Memory (Eng. trans.) he says: “This book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of a definite example, that of memory. It is, then, frankly dualistic.” He goes on to say, however, that he hopes thereby “..to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism, and which cause it ... to be held in small honour among philosophers.” His dualism, then, is supposed to be something rather different from that to which we are accustomed. But this is not all: he comes at last to a monism of a sort, in Creative Evolution and Morality and Religion, saying in the former, e.g., that the UNIVERSE endures, and that “harmony is rather behind us than before. It is due to an identity of impulsion and not to a common aspiration.” (C.E.p.54). How much more is our interest heightened, when in a letter to the R.P. de Tonquedec, he says that the argument by which he establishes the impossibility of the Nought is in no way directed against the existence of a transcendental cause of the world, but, as he has explained (C.E. p.276-9, 298), against the Spinozan (i.e. MONIST) conception of being, and again, that in his works there clearly stands out the idea of a God, creative and free, the generator of both life and matter, and hence a refutation of monism and pantheism in general. (Cp.Chevlr. H.B., p.255n & 270. Eng. trans.). But of this later. The object of this thesis, then, is to endeavour to set in a clearer light the relations of mind and matter, duration and extensity, in Bergson’s philosophy. To this end we shall investigate his works in more or less chronological order, following as far as possible the main divisions of the subject-matter, in order to trace the origin and rise of the dualism on the one hand, and its reconciliation on the other, endeavouring to show that there is a tendency towards a monism of a sort, but a monism which is not ‘static’ like that of Parmenides or of Spinoza, but ‘dynamic’: which indeed resolves into a dualism when we try to express it. To show, then, that is through trying to treat his philosophy, not as the ‘activity’ he says it is, but as a system; not as ‘open’, but as ‘closed’, that folk may see in it a vacillation between Monism and Dualism.