Thesis Guidelines

In the future this page will contain a list of departmental guidelines. In the meantime there are two rules that the department would like students to keep in mind. First, a written thesis proposal and bibliography should be submitted to the department by the beginning of May. Second, those writing a full year thesis should have completed about 40 pages by the end of Winter Study. If you have more specific questions please consult the department chair.

Sample Thesis

At present we have a sample thesis by Max Weinstein. We expect to add more theses soon. Max's thesis is saved as an Adobe Acrobat file. You may view different portions of his thesis by clicking on one of the appropriate titles below. To return to this menu use the return button.

Past Thesis Topics

Name	Theses Title	Year
Raskob, Jakob Thomas	Plato's "Meno"	1979
Smith, Jeffrey Merrill	Against technological determinism	1980
Kightlinger, Mark Fred	The critique of reason in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche	1981
Adams, Philip Bratten	The problem of freedom and determinism: is soft determinism a pseudo-solution?	1982
Koessel, Michael Duane	The paradox of the other: freedom and the social vision of Jean-Paul Sartre	1982
Merims, Adam Jon	Cinematic essence, film and theater: two ways of thinking about film	1983
McCabe, David	Nietzsche, art, and the affirmation of life	1985
Stein, Edward D	On the origin of beliefs : an analysis of evolutionary epistemology / by Edward D. Stein	1987
Tae Cho	Reconciling diverse elements of meta-ethics	1987
Raymond Yau	Concepts and capacities : a defense of the dispositional answer to Kripke's problem of meaning	1988
William E. Underwood III	Hannah Arendt and human plurality	1989
David Reiss	Nietzsche's conception of the self	1989
Karen Elizabeth Bessin	Thinking bodies and other selves : women's experiences of body, relationship, and identity	1989
Michael Reisman	Communicating the ineffable : the dramaturgical theory of action	1990
Rachel Elizabeth Zuckert	Freedom and objectivity in Kant's first two critiques	1990
Robert J. McCarthy	"In the end, I blame society" : the social unification of the fragmented self	1990
Rajiv Vrudhula	The inner experience : western and Buddhist deconstruction	1990
Norah M. Vincent	Metamorphoses of fear	1990
Michael W. Swartz	Missings and mis-directions in language	1990
Kenneth M. Levy	Behind the eight ball : the mystery of the causal connection	1991
Joel McElvain	The collapse of the right and the good : a critique of liberal foundations	1991
Jeff Butler	Determinism : reviving a dead hypothesis	1991
Joseph Lewis Cruz	Epistemology/ideology : justified belief in context	1991
Michael Cole	Hegel and Nihilism	1991
Edward S. Lee	Educating Plato	1992
Margaret Kohn	The politics of bodies and pleasures	1992
Kurt Shaw	The ecstasy of the postmodern : Jean Baudrillard and late capitalism	1993
Charles H. Stevenson	The environment, attitude, and truth	1993
Michael E. Lapin	Personal identity and the brain	1993
Nicholas Kolodny	The late Foucault	1994
Michael Masterson	Pictures of captivity : escaping philosophical pictures	1994
Peter Adamson	A place to stand : reason and faith in the works of Dante Alighieri	1994
Maura Elizabeth Hedwig Tumulty	Bread alone : Wittgenstein and anorexia	1995
Charles Imohiosen	The description of nature : Kant, Bohr, and the new metaphysics of science	1997
Alexandra Natasha Steinberg	Examining multiculturalism theory and practice in the liberal/communitarian debate	1997
Karolina Hubner	Language's bewitchment : the metaphysical fallacy and Ludwig Wittgenstein	1997
Daniel P. Kray	Poetic vision and philosophic thought	1998
Christian Dankers	Incommensurability and the relationship between Chinese and Western medicine	1999
Jeffrey S. Edmonds	Metaphysics, nihilism, and style : learning from Heidegger's study of Nietzsche	1999
Jennifer Ann Smalligan	Written transformations : an approach to Michel Foucault's The history of sexuality vols. 2 and 3 : The use of pleasure and The care of the self	1999
Max Weinstein	Dialectic in context : an interpretation of Plato's Protagoras	2000
Douglas B. Marshall	Mathematical fictionalism	2000
John Morrison	Contextualism and the Neglected Question of Context	2001
Laura Zuckerwise	Answering the Normative Question:  A Critique of Reflective Endorsement	2004
Robert Hemm	Reconstructing Justice:  Critiquing Rawls on Justification and Objectivity	2005
Paul Sonenthal	The Role of the Observer in Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics	2005