Browsing by Subject "Individual"
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Item Building the conflicted community(Texas A&M University, 2005-02-17) Spiegelhauer, Jacob LyleThis thesis will examine the individual and the community. The question will be, what effect does the community have on the individual, and whether or not this limits individuals? development and personal freedom. I will contend that while individuals have limits placed on their freedoms by the community, they are also indebted to it, finding within it a necessary place. As such, I will examine various communal models, questioning the benefits and vices of each, hoping to draw a clearer picture of a community that allows the individual the most personal freedom, while not diminishing from the strength of the community. I will focus first on the model of Hegel and his speculative idealism, examining his method, and overarching goal, as a means to question what an idealistic society would look like, and how it would function, in order to inquire whether such a community is both plausible and preferable. And as this question was taken up by John Dewey, the thesis will also argue from his standpoint that a community such as Hegel?s was not possible. I will examine why John Dewey drew this conclusion, as it did not take into account individuals, and how they have experience, as personal and ever changing. And finally the thesis will question, was Dewey firm enough in his stance, or was his just a softer version of idealism, leading us to the present state of affairs where the community is still dominated by idealistic sentiments, favoring the community over the individual, and diminishing personal freedom. The conclusion will be drawn that a move should be made to return to individuals choice in their personal lives, as originally proposed by Dewey, both giving, and making them take responsibility for those lives. Consequently, the thesis will show that a community that allows for the most personal development of individual freedoms will also be one that thrives as a community, drawing from those individual developments a richer source of potentials, capable of changing in a more varied and expansive way that is more aptly able to accommodate both the individual and the community.Item Revelating Hicksites and prophesying Seventh-day Adventists : individual religious experiences and community ethics in antebellum America(2013-05) Ozanne, Rachel Lauren; Abzug, Robert H.Historians of antebellum America have focused on shifting social patterns caused by trends such as democratization and proto-industrialization to explain the rise of new religious communities. These studies, however, have overlooked the ways that the members of these new groups and their visionary leaders understood their goals--in particular their desire to develop new ethical systems from the religious experiences of their founders. My study combines more traditional historical understandings of community formation in antebellum American with methods employed by scholars of religion to provide a clearer picture of the development of unique groups during this era of increased religious diversity. In particular, I argue that scholars must employ both Ann Taves' and William James' methods to study visions and revelations to comprehend how communities addressed the problem of religious experiences' interiority through communal processes of evaluation. To that end, I investigate Elias Hicks, founder of Hicksite Quakerism, and Ellen G. White, the founder of Seventh-day Adventism. My work on Hicks and White focuses on the processes by which their visionary ethics were transmitted into and practiced by their communities over time. Taken together, their ministries demonstrate that the visions of founders typically spoke to ethical issues--broadly and narrowly construed. Both leaders addressed personal, interpersonal, and social ills, and they each presented themselves as the model of obedience to their own visions and revelations in their autobiographies. Yet they faced different issues in convincing people of the truth of their visions for their communities. All Quakers expected their ministers to receive revelations during worship, so Hicks only had to persuade them that following revelation over scripture represented true Quaker orthodoxy. Sabbatarian Adventists, however, came from a wide variety of denominational backgrounds, so White had to persuade some of them not only to accept her teachings, but the existence of visions in the first place. Ultimately, their different views of the trajectory of history influenced their lasting legacies to their communities: eventually Hicks' specific teachings fell out of favor among Hicksites who maintained only his commitment to continuing, progressive revelation. White's teachings, however, remain both influential and hotly contested, because her reputation as prophet is bound up in Adventists' belief in the end of days.