Beyond Christianity: CS Lewis’ Analysis of Marital Commitment

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Description
This thesis aims to delve into the multifaceted views of renowned author and theologian C.S. Lewis on the institution of marriage, as presented through his literary works. Although Lewis does not dedicate one single work to the importance of Christian

This thesis aims to delve into the multifaceted views of renowned author and theologian C.S. Lewis on the institution of marriage, as presented through his literary works. Although Lewis does not dedicate one single work to the importance of Christian marriage, he does provide various insights throughout his fictional and nonfictional works, which, when considered within his philosophical, moral framework, offer a compelling case for why marital commitment is conducive to helping shape moral individuals regardless of faith or background. This research seeks to synthesize Lewis’ nuanced perspectives on marital relationships through a comprehensive analysis, shedding light on their significance within his broader theological and philosophical framework. The objective of this thesis is not to defend Lewis’ (or the Christian) conception of marriage but merely to attempt to show that his rational arguments, bridging the gap between faith and reason, can appeal to a larger audience.
Date Created
2024
Agent

Christianity, the Founders, and American Liberalism

Description
The Founders of the United States prioritized individualism and natural rights, yet they also enshrined religious morality and deemed it to be essential for the maintenance of a liberal nation. Scholars have offered many explanations for this dichotomous relationship and

The Founders of the United States prioritized individualism and natural rights, yet they also enshrined religious morality and deemed it to be essential for the maintenance of a liberal nation. Scholars have offered many explanations for this dichotomous relationship and numerous variables have been credited with being the most significant in shaping the Founding, including the lack of a feudal tradition and the influence of John Locke. I will argue that Christianity influenced the Founders and their formulation of American liberalism as advanced by Locke, resulting in a liberal democracy guided by Christian morality. First, I will examine several religious experiences that occurred within the colonies prior to the Founding, starting with an analysis of the Puritans and their communities. I will also discuss the persecution of the Quakers and the role that it played in shaping the colonial religious landscape. I will similarly use the revivals of the Great Awakening to explain both the religious landscape that influenced the Founders and the acceptance of Christian morality by colonial society at large. I will then look at the period of the Founding, introducing Deism and showing that its endorsement by some of the Founders did not detract from the unique Christian morality that guided early America. I will closely examine the work of John Locke and his philosophy of natural rights and liberalism in relation to the contemporaneous Christian morality that was dominant within the colonies. Finally, the various channels through which Christianity influenced the Founders will be summarized and an alternative thesis advanced by various scholars will be presented.
Date Created
2024-05
Agent

Solving the Citizenship Deficit: Restoring the Intended Vision for American Civic Education

Description
Active and healthy citizenship in America has diminished greatly in recent decades. On the whole, Americans do not have the relevant information for participating in civic life while symptoms of a declining American political society, such as heightened polarization and

Active and healthy citizenship in America has diminished greatly in recent decades. On the whole, Americans do not have the relevant information for participating in civic life while symptoms of a declining American political society, such as heightened polarization and declining community engagement, have become widespread. These trends highlight the failure of American civic education and formation in recent years. This paper argues that American civic education was originally intended to be an enterprise focused on fostering quality citizenship, utilizing both academic instruction and social and political institutions to instruct and shape Americans, and proposes returning to this model to address the adverse trends currently affecting citizenship and civic life.
Date Created
2023-12
Agent

Conflict Is Necessary for Virtue

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Description
Aristotle’s great work, Nicomachean Ethics, presents a complex and sometimes overwhelming account of ethical virtue and the perfected nature of man. However, if one looks at the conflict inherent in ordering oneself to a telos, such as the pursuit

Aristotle’s great work, Nicomachean Ethics, presents a complex and sometimes overwhelming account of ethical virtue and the perfected nature of man. However, if one looks at the conflict inherent in ordering oneself to a telos, such as the pursuit of happiness or eudaimonia in Aristotle’s terms, then the prospect of sharing in or attaining Aristotelian virtue becomes less overwhelming and perhaps even inspiring for modern readers.
Date Created
2023
Agent

Conscientious Communitarianism

Description

When former President Donald Trump declared that the “American Dream is dead” during his campaign launch in June 2015, for many Americans, that was simply the case. Somehow, a multi-billionaire intuited a truth that the American elite had ignored for

When former President Donald Trump declared that the “American Dream is dead” during his campaign launch in June 2015, for many Americans, that was simply the case. Somehow, a multi-billionaire intuited a truth that the American elite had ignored for decades: certain places had flourished, giving their next generation ample opportunity to succeed and community life to flourish, while certain places had collapsed, leaving their next generation hollowed out neighborhoods, broken families, and despair. As civil society and community declined in the United States after a high in the mid-20th century, a new lower class began to form. This new lower class is deprived of the institutions of civil society which form people as self-governing creatures, leaving fewer and fewer mediating layers between man and state. This stratification of social capital along class lines and the social isolation it has wrought are among the chief threats to human flourishing in the United States in the twenty-first century, depriving people of authentic freedom and supplanting it with a base understanding of liberty-as-license. The alienation facing tens of millions of Americans, and impacting our entire society, was not caused by a singular economic, social, political, or technological innovation (though plenty of these changes have accelerated and accentuated this phenomena). At the base of community’s decline is a mismanaged individualism -- a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville -- which has warped our politics, and simultaneously empowered radical self-centeredness and government centralization. This thesis builds on a large body of work surrounding Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the role of civil society in America, and the stratification of community over the last half-century, drawing on the thought of Robert Putnam, Tim Carney, Yuval Levin, Patrick Deneen, Charles Murray, and Robert Nisbet -- among others -- to build an outline of the state of civil society and meaningful community in America today. It also charts a path forward for conceptualizing the American Dream in such a way that empowers rather than demotes the role of community in human life, arguing for a conscientious communitarianism. This revised definition of the American Dream relies upon a new concept -- authentic freedom -- that contradicts freedom-as-license. Analyzing diagnoses of our current situation and proposed solutions from the aforementioned thinkers, this thesis posits that Americans must organize and reinvigorate community on a local scale in order to confront these challenges. Ultimately, while community can only be formed productively at the local, human-scale, the long-term restoration of community and civil society in the United States will rely on political reform, framed after Yuval Levin’s modernized ethic of subsidiarity and Robert Nisbet’s conception of a new kind of state. The framework for renewal presented is not simply advocacy for a greater number of voluntary associations, but the formation and maintenance of particular sorts of associations: those which are purposeful about moral formation, the inculcation of the habits and mores necessary for a free people to flourish, and ultimately the proliferation of authentic freedom. While the conscientious communitarian advocates for a politics that prizes civil society broadly, they advocate for, create, and join institutions of this particular character. This is both an argument for a more robust and diverse civil society, and an affirmative case for particular institutions of civil society which form people towards authentic freedom.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Alexis de Tocqueville's Innovation in Social Cohesion: Reforging Bonds of Community in a Modern and Democratic Age

Description

How can citizens of a political society be united? What makes them willing to sacrifice for the good of the community? How are they made to obey the laws? The ancient world approached these questions through concepts such as virtue

How can citizens of a political society be united? What makes them willing to sacrifice for the good of the community? How are they made to obey the laws? The ancient world approached these questions through concepts such as virtue and honor. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America also attempted to answer these questions in relation to newly emergent democratic societies. However, he developed new concepts to formulate his answers, including enlightened self-interest, individualism, and free associations. Essential to his argument is the role of changing social conditions. For Tocqueville, the forces which have shaped the modern world, such as democracy, have made the ancient concepts irrelevant. Indeed, the changes which he had witnessed were so revolutionary that he was compelled to say, “I am tempted to burn my books so as to apply only new ideas to a social state so new” (I.2.9, 289). It thus becomes necessary to conceive of new ways of organizing cohesive political societies. This thesis builds on Tocqueville’s theories and observations to explain how changing social conditions can shape the citizen’s ability to cooperate as part of a cohesive polity and how modern societies can promote harmony among its citizens. I first explore briefly how the ancient world inspired citizens to work cohesively and how modern changes in ideas, sentiments, and mores have challenged the efficacy of premodern traditions. I then analyze how modern conditions can limit attempts at political cohesion and the challenges of promoting acts of solidarity among modern citizens. I also consider how democratic despotism offers a vague form of political cohesion that conforms to modern conditions, but in ways that undermine good governance. Finally, I argue that Tocqueville’s theory of enlightened self-interest, bolstered by a religious spirit that combats materialism, offers the most coherent account of how modern political societies can be united justly and how citizens can act harmoniously toward a common good. While enlightened self-interest and religion may be goods within themselves, this thesis suggests that these principles are also necessary for creating cohesion in the modern age.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Remedying America's Civic Education Crisis: Finding Common Ground in a Polarized Nation

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Description

This project examines both the left and right's strategies to remedy the American civic crisis. However, both sides have diverging views on American history, society, and ideals. Ultimately, the project determines that the Educating for American Democracy initiative offers the most feasible approach in addressing this national crisis.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Freedom of Expression and Self-Censorship: A Study of Campus Expression at Arizona State University

Description
Given the importance of free speech and free expression for the learning and development of American citizens, it is important to analyze how our universities promote these principles within the classroom. In particular, it is crucial we understand how comfortable

Given the importance of free speech and free expression for the learning and development of American citizens, it is important to analyze how our universities promote these principles within the classroom. In particular, it is crucial we understand how comfortable students feel sharing their views on the toughest and most controversial issues. The rise in free speech incidents over the past 20 years on college campuses has led us to question the state of free speech and free expression on university campuses and, more importantly, within the classroom. Research on this topic has taken a broad approach in attempting to understand student attitudes towards free speech, but there has been little research done on the state of campus expression within the ASU classroom.

This study utilized a modified survey instrument known as the Campus Expression Survey, a tool created by Heterodox Academy to gauge student perceptions of free speech and free expression within classroom environments. With a sample size of 366 ASU students across all four metropolitan campuses, students were asked a series of questions that included how comfortable they would be sharing their views on a controversial political issue as well as what consequences one might expect from other students and faculty members as a result of sharing one's views. Students were also asked about their ideological perceptions of their peers, faculty, and administrators.

Analysis of the responses found four primary conclusions. First, politically-oriented majors are significantly more comfortable expressing their views on both controversial and non-controversial issues. Furthermore, students are found to be significantly more comfortable when they believe other students and faculty members share their political beliefs. Third, students are more hesitant to speak up because of the perceived repercussions from their classmates rather than their professors. Lastly, students that identify as Republican, Independent, conservative, or moderate are far more likely to feel uncomfortable sharing their views than students that identify as Democrat or liberal.
Date Created
2020-05

That Despotism which America Today may (or may not) have to Fear: Defining, Understanding, and Measuring Tocquevillian Soft Despotism in a Contemporary Context

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Description
Alexis de Tocqueville concludes the second volume of his influential political work Democracy in America with a discussion of “What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations have to Fear.” The phenomenon Tocqueville seeks to capture in his final chapters is

Alexis de Tocqueville concludes the second volume of his influential political work Democracy in America with a discussion of “What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations have to Fear.” The phenomenon Tocqueville seeks to capture in his final chapters is often called “democratic” or “soft” despotism, and it is notably distinct from the traditional conception of despotism. The threat soft despotism represents to democracies is new to the world Tocqueville lived in, and as such, Tocqueville chose the word despotism to describe it because he felt no better word existed. So, to accurately describe the phenomenon that Tocqueville feared, he had to re-conceptualize despotism. When Tocqueville discusses soft despotism, he means a democratic state where people are incapable of being truly free. In examining this concretely, I have developed five criteria which capture all the characteristics of soft despotism: 1. The equality of conditions; 2. The destruction of social connection; 3. The creation of a centralized administrative state; 4. The fulfillment of base desires; and 5. The death of the political sphere. In “Defining Soft Despotism,” I offer explanations of what each of these five criteria means, and I discuss both how Tocqueville and later scholars view them. I offer my own understanding of each of these criteria framed in Tocqueville’s thought. Next, in “Understanding Soft Despotism,” I discuss what about soft despotism is so concerning to Tocqueville and focus on his belief that it fundamentally changes the people who live under it, depriving them of their humanity. Then, I discuss why Americans should be concerned today. Lastly, in “Measuring Soft Despotism,” I take data for each of the five criteria and examine them to see if they appear to match what Tocqueville envisioned a soft despotism would be like. In my assessment, I find that America today does not seem to be a soft despotism. America does not meet all five criteria I believe define a soft despotism. Instead, it appears America is only close to experiencing two of the five: the destruction of social connection, and the death of the political sphere. Despite these findings, there is still room for concern that America is heading towards becoming a soft despotism, or is perhaps headed in a different, but equally undesirable direction.
Date Created
2020-05

Presidential Elections: Implications of a National Popular Vote

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Description
It happened in 1824. Again, it happened in 1876. And 1888. And then again in 2000. Most recently, in 2016. Five times the president has been elected through the Electoral College without attaining the popular vote. Is this a

It happened in 1824. Again, it happened in 1876. And 1888. And then again in 2000. Most recently, in 2016. Five times the president has been elected through the Electoral College without attaining the popular vote. Is this a feature, bug, or necessary evil of the electoral system? While the support for the national popular vote movement has grown significantly in the past decade, there are many fervent opponents. Many of the adversaries to a popular vote system argue that under a national popular vote system, candidates would visit only the most densely populated areas in the country and then simply work to get all votes possible, gaining enough support to win the election without gaining much support from the rest of the country. To analyze these key arguments, this paper tests two hypotheses, the first of which is that under a popular vote system, densely populated areas are given more attention from presidential candidates than would be proportionately expected based on population. The second hypothesis is that candidates will spend more money on advertising per person in larger cities than in smaller cities. This paper will outline research from both a social media analysis and from a statistical analysis of specific state Senate elections and their media markets before concluding by refuting the two hypotheses and suggesting that a national popular vote system would not cause vast populations of Americans to be ignored any more than they currently are.
Date Created
2019-12
Agent