Well, the Sextus paper got done. If you're keeping score, that's four papers (Hegel, Aristotle on akrasia [pdf file], Kane and O'Connor on free will [pdf file], and Sextus--with one more to go, see below)--all since about a month ago. The Sextus paper got moved back originally due to my free will paper taking a week longer than planned, then moved back further due to my difficulty in formulating a thesis. I sat in front of the computer yesterday afternoon with scads of notes but bupkis in terms of an actual paper. I was doing the proverbial Big No-NoTM in writing: attempting to write a first draft as a final draft. Which is probably why I could not begin. So, I did a version of Peter Elbow free-writing, and--voila--out came a paper. As it turns out this first draft, with minor revisions, did end up being my final draft. (Hey, rubber meets road and all that.) If you want to have a look at it, I've posted it online: Sextus Empiricus and the Sceptical Critique of Ethics (pdf file). The paper is very narrowly focused on the sceptical arguments against there being any definitive ethical knowledge (or knowledge of the essence of the good), and in the paper I don't engage Sextus' epistemology, nor the "sceptical way of life" of suspended ethical judgment, in any substantive way.
What this means now is that I have one final Loyola incomplete paper to write, and a thesis rough draft for Seabury to complete, in the next nine days. Given that both are already nearly complete anyway, this is not the monumental task it might appear.
With regard to the Seabury thesis, mine is an unusual confluence of events. I started my thesis the summer before I began my PhD course work, foolishly thinking I could complete a thesis either over the summer or during the first semester of my PhD program. Silly Clifton! But that being said, my thesis supervisor, having approved my thesis topic and initial proposal, decided to accept a grant to teach in Germany the same semester I started at Loyola. Given his attention to wrapping things up over the summer, he did not have much to spare for me and my thesis. Then, being gone over the academic year, and limited communication even by email, did not make for a scenario conducive to completing the thesis. Follow all this by his leaving Seabury the year following his teaching overseas--effectively leaving me without a thesis supervisor--and I think it fair to say that I do not have to shoulder all this responsibility for an incomplete thesis myself. So I will complete it, send it to the registrar with a note saying: "What now?" And hopefully arrangements can be made to further finish it per seminary guidelines (such that they exist).
As to my next paper: It addresses the topic of my dissertation proposal, so now that all my other Loyola papers are finished (barring any unforeseen revisions/rewrites), I really feel as though I've turned a corner and can now focus my attention on the end goal: writing a dissertation on the relationship in Aristotle's De Anima and Metaphysics between divine and human intellect. So this paper will form the foundation of my dissertation proposal. It's nice--at least for now--to have my energies and attentions, academically speaking, focused on a single topic.
Posted by Clifton at May 23, 2005 08:37 AM | TrackBack