By Asam Ahmad
ABSTRACT: In April of 2008, Yale University’s Aliza Shvarts was accused of a sort of ‘insanity’ that made her unable to make sound judgements and jeopardize her own body for the sake of her art. This paper aims to explore the nature of Shvarts’ artistic project and understand the hyper-reactionary interventions that followed its appearance. I will argue that what caused this hyper intervention and the disciplinary actions that followed was more than just the project itself – it was the very ambiguity of the Event the project was …

By James Fox
Abstract
Since its publication Gettier’s Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? has become the seminal work in modern epistemology. This paper challenges the very assumptions of Gettier’s counterexamples and is therefore a radical alternative to both the proponents, and critics, of Gettier. By showing how knowledge is found, not in mere words or statements, but within the fundamental beliefs of the speaker, I expose the way in which ambiguity in language can mislead us into rejecting the traditional definition of knowledge as Justified True Belief.
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“What is truth? said jesting Pilate; …

By Said Saillant
Abstract: The death of Socrates has always been a controversial topic in philosophy, particularly the incongruity of his views on civil disobedience. In the Apology, Socrates claims that if acquitted on the condition he refrains from philosophizing, he will nevertheless continue to do so. In the Crito, Socrates argues that disobeying “the judgments the city came to” is wrong. The essay will address the inconsistency by focusing on the purpose of each argument, i.e. on the aim each argument serves. In Crito he argues against civil disobedience …

By CHRIS GRAVES
Both the philosophy of Epictetus, stoicism, and the psychology of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, offer their own unique insight into the phenomena of desire, attachment, loss and mourning. However, because Epictetus is historically and theoretically situated pre-Freud, and because psychoanalysis offers in many ways a crippling critique of stoicism, Epictetus can be too easily disregarded. However, in an effort to gain a better understanding of Epictetus and come to appreciate his unique contribution to the above phenomena, this paper will examine Freud’s “The Psychogenesis of a Case …

by MATTHEW ROWE

ABSTRACT
The following is a brief introduction to the origins and logical flaws within St. Anselm’s famous Ontological Argument for the existence of G-d. Throughout the time since Anselm first formulated his argument, logicians and philosopher, including Kant, Gödel, and Aquinas, have struggled to reveal its apparent flaws. Through the study of this complex argument in the philosophy of religion, several advances in modern logic have emerged, including an understanding of the sensitive treatment of how to classify existence, whether it is a property of an object, or a …

by LEAH TRUEBLOOD

Why Impartialists Make Good Friends:
A Defense of The Motivational Structure of Consequentalism.
Utilitarians are often thought to make bad friends and lousy lovers. Philosophical heavyweights such as John Rawls and Bernard Williams argue, respectively, that Utilitarianism destroys the distinction between persons and is an attack on our integrity. Even though, as Rawls and Williams show us, the objections to Utilitarianism vary, a common worry does emerge. This worry is something like: without family and friends our lives would be miserable. Meaningful friendships are impossible for utilitarians because their motivation …

by FAHD HUSAIN
Ethical Subjects, Empowered Subjectivities:
Individuality, Agency and Interpersonality in the late Foucault

ABSTRACT
This essay will focus on the Foucauldian notion of the ‘care of the self’, wherein care is defined as the process undertaken by the self to perpetually regenerate its own unique ‘aesthetics’ that best informs and enriches its everyday life. Foucault’s insistence on a perpetual self-regeneration hinges upon a problematization of the pre-established criteria of normality structuring the context: it involves a mode of thinking that scrutinizes the relation of the self to such yardsticks and resists the …

By Daniel Arango
In Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason Alone, Immanuel Kant considers the claim that God “arises out of mortality” without being the basis for moral obligation. “Morality thus leads ineluctably to religion, through which extends itself to the idea of a powerful moral Lawgiver, outside of mankind, for Whose will that is the final end (of creation) which at the same time can and ought to be man’s final end.” Kant develops what he calls the “pure religion of reason” and explains this true moral religion in relation …

By JOSHUA M. MITCHELL
I. Introduction
As we see from Cicero’s account of Epicureanism, its ethical system (i.e. Hedonism) revolves around the entities of pleasure and pain. As in all ethical theories, there is a “greatest good” that is the aim of life . For the hedonist, this is the absence of all pain, and they hold that this is the highest pleasure (and pleasure is equated with good for the Epicurean). There are many reasons the Epicureans give (via Cicero’s testimony) for this, which involve our senses and instinctual responses to …

By DOUGLAS JASON KEFFLER
Abstract
In this essay, I will prove that in order to couple our commonsense notion of identity with the strict philosophical notion of identity there must be a specific interpretation of the philosophical notion of identity.  The interpretation comes from a distinction between two kinds of properties of an individual- changeable and unchangeable.  A changeable property is anything that can be proven to be contingent to an individual.  An unchangeable property is anything that is necessary to an individual.  The latter will prove to be the correct …