Please cite as follows:

Kourie, M 2012, _The status of love in philosophy : an examination of the role of love (eros) in the work (or works) of selected French thinkers_, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed _yymmdd_ < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11162012-145249 / >

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Please cite as follows:

Tomoka, G 2011, _The relevance of Hannah Arendts concept of freedom to African political thought_, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed _yymmdd_ < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-07262012-155534 / >

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Different moral philosophies can be identified that underlie the predominant models of corporate governance around the world. The differences between these moralities can be expressed in terms of differences in the prescribed moral obligations and objectives of corporations. The claim of Descriptive moral relativism is that there are significant differences in moral judgement between groups or individuals. In the context of South African corporate governance, the principal area of interest concerns moral judgements that reflect corporate obligations and objectives that differ from those that underlie the shareholder model evident in Anglo-American jurisdictions. This was investigated in three ways: firstly, through a literature study that identified existing evidence of moral judgements relevant to corporate governance in South Africa; secondly, through a quantitative survey of a group of professional accounting students in South Africa; thirdly, through a series of semi-structured interviews with professional accounting students in South Africa. In all three cases there was some, albeit limited, evidence to support the claim of Descriptive moral relativism.

The claim of Metaethical moral relativism is that there is no single true or correct morality, but that morality is relative to different groups or individuals. Applied to corporate governance, this claim was investigated firstly by examining the arguments that a particular corporate governance model is morally superior and thus universally applicable, as well as by considering the extent of moral agreement on the issue. Secondly, the positions of prominent supporters of moral relativism were considered in terms of how these could be applied to the issue of corporate governance convergence. It was concluded that universalist claims in support of particular models of corporate governance are largely insufficient, and that a limited relativist approach is more plausible.

The claim of Normative moral relativism is that one should not interfere with the actions of another where these are based on different moral judgements. Although the claims of Descriptive and Metaethical moral relativism have implications for the normative claim, the normative claim does not necessarily follow. Adopting a value of tolerance or accommodation (from the work of David Wong) can, however, strengthen the normative argument. It was concluded then that based on the evidence of this study, and within its limitations, it is morally wrong to impose an Anglo-American model of corporate governance on South Africa.

© 2011 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

Please cite as follows:

West, AG 2011, _Moral relativism and corporate governance convergence_, PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed _yymmdd_ < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-06162012-160509/ >

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Nietzsche, however, regards the world as the Will to Power, a monster of energy, like a storming and flooding ocean eternally changing, where harmony and order seems impossible. His mouthpiece, Zarathustra, who teaches the _Übermensch_, encourages a war-like attitude towards life. Zarathustras second metamorphosis of an evolving spirit, the warrior lion, marks the difference between the Nietzschean _Übermensch_ and the Chinese sage who attains harmony and balance within and without, a mysterious union with heaven. Zarathustras third metamorphosis, a playing child, creates itself as its own bridge through a process of self-overcoming, whereas the _I Ching_ indicates order to be the bridge over chaos, the order of the human world being expressed in the five cardinal relationships. Whereas the _I Ching_ advises its reader to follow their own nature and fate in order to lead a harmonious moral life, Nietzsches _Übermensch_ is the annihilator of morality and paradoxically the designation of a type of supreme achievement (_EH _Books 1).

With his idea of the _Übermensch_, Nietzsche indicates that morality is a pose (_BGE_ 216). He seeks to make us become aware that we should invent our own virtue and create our own way in order to become what we are. He criticizes Christian morality, calling himself the first immoralist. His shocking approach attempts to make us become aware of the possibility that a noble morality and higher moralities ought to be possible. His _Übermensch_ represents such a higher mode of existence.

Zarathustra also teaches the doctrine of eternal recurrence, implying that moment is eternity, changelessness within change. Multifarious manifestations are the expression of the Tao. Everything is interconnected and interdependent. Whereas ordinary men see the continuity of phenomena as real, enlightened beings are aware of the transitory and illusive nature of the self and all things. The Nietzschean _Übermensch_ embodies the characteristics of an enlightened being, a Buddha or Bodhisattva in Buddhist terms, characteristics such as wisdom and compassion. Therefore, the practice of the Bodhisattva is explored as a feasible way for actualizing the Nietzschean hypothetical _Übermensch_.

© University of Pretoria 2009

Please cite as follows:

Ku, HLH 2009, _The hidden/flying dragon : an exploration of the Book of Changes (I Ching) in terms of Nietzsches philosophy_, DPhil thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed _yymmdd_ < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-05302009-115911/ >

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© University of Pretoria. (shrink)

The reason that I make mention of this is to briefly illustrate the depth and complexity of this "little" work. Hence, in this essay, it has been my aim to thoroughly explore all four aspects of the work and to demonstrate how each holds as much significance as the other in considering the work as a whole. In terms of methodology, I have actively refrained from limiting my investigation to one particular approach. Instead, I have endeavoured to explore Haufuiensis' _The Concept of Anxiety_ from a myriad of different angles, including the analytical, existential, theological, linguistic and deconstructive interpretations. Furthermore, in my opinion, any sound investigation of _The Concept of Anxiety_ cannot proceed along the lines of isolating one specific aspect of the work as being of greater significance than any other. This is in contrast to the earlier scholars of Kierkegaard, who tended to categorize him chiefly as a Christian writer, greatly at the expense of all the other facets of his work.

The influence of Kierkegaard's work on the existentialist movement is well known and is encapsulated in his being cast as "the father of existentialism". In my opinion, this constitutes yet one more attempt to categorize both the man and his work, and as such constitutes a reductionism and an untenable approach to the work of this important thinker. My motivation in conducting an investigation into Kierkegaard's conception of anxiety is two-fold. Firstly, I am of the opinion that anxiety is a universal and, at the same time, intensely personal experience. As such, _The Concept of Anxiety_ is an indispensable, and often overlooked part of Kierkegaard's philosophy. My second reason is to demonstrate, by simply concentrating on one aspect of Kierkegaard's work, the depth and scope of his corpus.

_The Concept of Anxiety_ is notoriously known as being Kierkegaard's most inaccessible work, due chiefly to the difficulty experienced in its interpretation, and the subsequent plethora of misinterpretation. It is my opinion that the principal cause of this problem is the failure on the part of readers to take heed of the fact that Haufuiensis' work is conducted by means of indirect communication and as such is fraught with irony.

Finally, my conclusion after examining the conception of anxiety, as put forth by Haufniensis, as well as the reactions and influences it has elicited in the years since its publication, is that the work of the Danish author is as relevant and as important today, as it was upon being published.

© 2000, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

Please cite as follows:

Cahl, GE 2000, _Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety : a philosophical-psychological investigation_, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed _yymmdd_ < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-07212006-122036/ >

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_Chapter 1_ is an attempt to show that what we understand by 'the subject' is by no means static or universal, different ages and cultures developed radically different conceptions of self - alternatives that could provide the necessary inspiration for the revival of a flagging political tradition. One such alternative is self-conception in antiquity. The usage of the word 'subject' is inappropriate to refer to any pre-Christian Greek concept of self, because no single word refers to Homeric Man as a unity. Instead, Homer, who employs no non-material language, depicts parts of characters that are always more than the whole. There is not even a single word that could roughly be taken as a synonym for 'mind'. The Homeric self was an assemblage of various narratives and impressions, without an inner core or 'self', loosely held together by the broad narrative that is an individual's life. For this reason, it could offer an alternative politics to an age weary of the discipline that accompanies the rigidly defined modernist subject. I deal with the ambiguity and slipperiness of the classical subject, and illustrate its complex 'superficiality' at the hand of a number of relevant Greek concepts including _splachma, poiésis, daemon, psuché, phrenes, nóós, thumos_ and _até_.

If there was no rigid distinction between self and world in the ancient Athens, the same cannot be said of the public and private domains into which the _polis_ was divided. Difference was spatially, not morally defined. After her horrific experience with totalitarianism in Nazi Germany during the 1930's, Hannah Arendt drew on the Greeks to show that the public space was the unique space of appearance where a public actor could show off his _virtù_ on stage in front of his peers. Her usage of masks indicate the _impersonal_ dimension to acting. Far from wanting to give us a theory of self-_expression_, she constructed a philosophy that is in many ways the opposite of the Rousseauian politics of authenticity. I explore the ways in which Arendt questioned the traditional philosophical hierarchy between the _vita contemplative_ and the _vita activa_, and her re-evaluation of the activities of the _vita activa_, namely labour, work and action.

In addition to my brief exposition on the Homeric world, I briefly examine the shift from acting to thinking man as it occurs in the _Republic_. I address Plato's reaction to the political decay in which Athens found itself after the Golden Age of Pericles. I argue that, already in the _Republic_, there are signs of a certain impatience towards the hidden, and a desire to 'bring things to the light', a desire that would never leave Western man again, but would grow into an all-consuming passion. After the hermeneutical turn we know that no literary work allows a definitive interpretation. This is especially true of great masterworks, and the _Republic_ is no exception. Although I think that Arendt is justified in locating in Plato one of the sources for the anti-political character of our philosophical tradition, it is necessary to distinguish between 'Plato', and Platonism. Anticipating the argument put forward in chapter 4, I argue that the multivocity inherent in Plato may make him more political than Arendt initially took him to be.

_Chapter 2_ focus on the turn inward. Augustine, through his notion of the confessing-self, seeks to formulate an ethos that does not allow everything to revert back to the self. The self turns away from the lust to dominate the world and into the depths of the soul where it seeks to fashion even the most fleeting desires in obedience to God's truth and the standards of His morality. At this stage in the development of the self, there is no question of self-transparency - the relationship to the transcendent makes it an impossibility. For all or Augustine's profound insight into depth - remembering, willing and unifying the scattered self in confession, the inner Augustine remains a battlefield. In this respect, Augustine's confessing-self inadvertently provides a beacon of warning to an ethos that demands self-transparency at all costs.

In the second part of _chapter 2_, I compare the _Confessions_ of Augustine with those of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Living during the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Rousseau's motives are radically different from that of Augustine in the fifth century.

The revelation of self, hesitantly presented in Augustine, takes a different turn fourteen centuries later. Gone is the link with the transcendent. Augustine confessed to God, Rousseau sometimes to a filled public house, packed with enemies, sometimes merely to the shifting selves he refused to acknowledge. Augustine sought truth, Rousseau, sincerity. For Augustine the self would represent a barrier to God, Rousseau publicly created a private self. Rousseau's purpose is rather to unburden himself of shame, and to justify what he deems weak. In doing this, the 'defined self' - a self that can fall back upon himself without reference to what is perceived as a 'hostile order' - comes into being.

Drawing on Michel Foucault's analysis of the 'normalizing' tendencies that characterizes much of the concrete functioning of power in modernity, I briefly summarize his critique of modern power as it operates through 'panoptic power' and confessional strategies which assert that we harbour 'deep truths' within ourselves that we must carefully decipher and follow. I then focus specifically on the concept of the 'autopticon', and how power operates at its greatest efficiency by strategies of self-surveillance. When Foucault's theoretical work is read in terms of his genealogies, his work acquires a Nietzschean profundity.

In contrast to Augustine, for whom depth is the dimension of freedom, Foucault sees depth as the dimension of subjugation. It is this dimension in which the other is rooted out and the subject is constituted in terms of hegemonic norms and the standard of self-transparency. That we somehow fail to get to the 'bottom of things' by no means discourage the therapeutic society, it merely ensures the persistence of endless subjugation.

But Foucault was not the first to identify the self-tortured subject. This honour belongs to Nietzsche, and his response to the naked, unmasked subject of philosophy forms the topic of _chapter 3_. Nietzsche's genealogy of _Herkunft_ is not the erecting of foundations: on the contrary, it disturbs what was previously considered immobile, it fragments what was thought unified, it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself. And, one might add, it shows the folly of looking for a 'deep', liberating truth within the self when in fact, nothing but surfaces for the inscription of the social order, for the application and imposition of power exists. This is precisely what Nietzsche points to as his genealogy demonstrates the oppressive use of subjectivity as a construct of oppression in what he terms a 'hangman's metaphysics'. In addition to an analysis of Nietzsche's criticism of the modern subject, I point to his anticipation of the cure to the problem of self-transparency, namely an acceptance of the redemptive potential to be found in language.

This forms the topic of _chapter 4_. In chapter 4 I argue that the _vita lingua_ contains the possibility for at least a certain degree of relief from our culture of surveillance. Language, by its very opacity, makes the ideal of (self)transparency an utopian illusion. Every attempt to come to a final conclusion about a text is bound to fail. This aspect makes our linguistic engagement with the world tragic, yet at the same time allows for a merciful, messianic dimension that might save us from the horrific nihilism that the granting of the Enlightenment wish would entail. I draw again on Arendt, this time for her conception of the storyteller, to find a viable middle ground between the death of the author and the absolute author of the Romantic era that acted as a guarantee for the truth of his text. The linguistic turn certainly requires an altered conception of the self, but there is no need to sacrifice the self to an entirely autonomous and impersonal language system. In addition, I refer to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida, to demonstrate the alternatives suggested by the very anti-utopian nature of language.

The fact that we exist _linguistically_, a fact that appeared in more positivistic age as a curse, is now the very feature that saves us from the hell and obscenity of absolute (self)transparency. If language is indeed as opaque as Nietzsche, Lacan, Derrida and others have claimed, intentionality can play no determining role in the establishment of meaning. Nietzsche explicitly proclaimed the virtual impossibility of having his texts understood. To understand his texts the way Nietzsche understood them, one would have to _be_ Nietzsche. And perhaps, one hastens to add, perhaps not even then: If this is the case, the question arises as to _what_ a confession really reveals, and even if it does not conceal rather than reveal, makes its appearance. If the author 'disappears' behind his text, textuality appears in our time to have replaced the lost mask of antiquity and the _ancient regime_. (shrink)