Browsing by Subject "Herodotus"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item A Pragmatic Standard of Legal Validity(2012-07-16) Tyler, JohnAmerican jurisprudence currently applies two incompatible validity standards to determine which laws are enforceable. The natural law tradition evaluates validity by an uncertain standard of divine law, and its methodology relies on contradictory views of human reason. Legal positivism, on the other hand, relies on a methodology that commits the analytic fallacy, separates law from its application, and produces an incomplete model of law. These incompatible standards have created a schism in American jurisprudence that impairs the delivery of justice. This dissertation therefore formulates a new standard for legal validity. This new standard rejects the uncertainties and inconsistencies inherent in natural law theory. It also rejects the narrow linguistic methodology of legal positivism. In their stead, this dissertation adopts a pragmatic methodology that develops a standard for legal validity based on actual legal experience. This approach focuses on the operations of law and its effects upon ongoing human activities, and it evaluates legal principles by applying the experimental method to the social consequences they produce. Because legal history provides a long record of past experimentation with legal principles, legal history is an essential feature of this method. This new validity standard contains three principles. The principle of reason requires legal systems to respect every subject as a rational creature with a free will. The principle of reason also requires procedural due process to protect against the punishment of the innocent and the tyranny of the majority. Legal systems that respect their subjects' status as rational creatures with free wills permit their subjects to orient their own behavior. The principle of reason therefore requires substantive due process to ensure that laws provide dependable guideposts to individuals in orienting their behavior. The principle of consent recognizes that the legitimacy of law derives from the consent of those subject to its power. Common law custom, the doctrine of stare decisis, and legislation sanctioned by the subjects' legitimate representatives all evidence consent. The principle of autonomy establishes the authority of law. Laws must wield supremacy over political rulers, and political rulers must be subject to the same laws as other citizens. Political rulers may not arbitrarily alter the law to accord to their will. Legal history demonstrates that, in the absence of a validity standard based on these principles, legal systems will not treat their subjects as ends in themselves. They will inevitably treat their subjects as mere means to other ends. Once laws do this, men have no rest from evil.Item Historical discourse in Herodotus: the construction of Greek identity in Book II of the Histories(Texas Tech University, 1999-05) Banta, Jason L.In order to produce a work based almost wholly on the text itself my main source will be Herodotus. I will examine key passages in Book II, transitional phrases, and specific accounts and descriptions of Egypt and Egyptian culture. I will then discuss a number of common themes expressed by these key sentences or passages. Among these themes, I will look specifically at how Herodotus uses time as a tool with which to establish the supremacy of Egyptian culture over the rest of the world. Prehistoric time becomes an actuality in Egypt, and there is a national memory stretching back beyond the mists of recorded Greek time. Also, I will look at how the physical setting is described and used in Book II and how it relates to Herodotus' agenda. How and what Herodotus describes reveals a purposeful hand moving towards an ultimate goal. In particular, I will look at how Herodotus uses his precise, if not literally accurate, measurements and his attempts at cartography to bind Egypt into the physical world, again attempting to establish the legitimacy of Egypt's presence in Greek Identity. Herodotus, in a manner similar to his attempt to separate the past from the realm of folklore, wants to remove Egypt from the mythological world and recreate it within a Greek reality. I will also explore the human actions and events eexisting in the chronotope Herodotus establishes in his narrative. Along with apparently banal comparisons of the culinary, weaving, and urinary pracfices of Greece and Egypt, I will especially examine the most important and controversial of his cultural comparisons, namely that of the religions of Greece and Egypt. Along with demonstrating how he attributes even the most tenuous thread of relationship as proof of an Egyptian origin for the parallel Greek custom, I will look at the incongmities between the two religious belief systems (insofar as we may safely create such headings as "Greek" religion and "Egyptian" religion from the numerous traditions of the respective cultures), and how this reveals the purpose and stmcture of a great part of Book H. The cmx of many of Herodotus' arguments in Book U, is the belief that antiquity equals authority, and that if two cultures share a parallel custom, then the older is the originator.Item Scripting the Persians : Herodotus' use of the Persian 'trivium' (truth telling, archery, and horsemanship) in the Histories(2011-08) Oughton, Charles Westfall; Perlman, Paula Jean; Gates-Foster, JenniferThis paper examines the relationship between Herodotus’ ethnographic account of the Persians and his narrative of their actions in the Histories. The first chapter analyzes the placement of this ethnography within the historian’s description of the fall of Croesus and the rise of Cyrus and then examines the language that Herodotus uses to describe the Persian customs. The second chapter focuses more narrowly on the elements of the Persian trivium (truth telling, archery, and horsemanship) and analyzes the way in which the historian incorporates these themes into his narrative. Finally, the third chapter of the report examines how Herodotus integrates all three elements of the trivium into an extended logos, that of the revolt of the Persian nobles against the usurper Magi and the subsequent ascension of Darius. This analysis thereby demonstrates that the multifaceted relationship between the historian’s Persian ethnography and his narrative connects the Persians’ successes with their adherence to their customs.