P & J

Somehow or other, it never IS the wine, in these cases. -- The Pickwick Papers

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Were We Ever This Bad?

I just got the summer issue of my alma mater's news letter. As always they have pictures of all the seniors, and their thesis titles. There were so many great titles that I came up with a great game. I will give my nominations for the Most Pretentious Thesis of 2006 award, and you guys vote for them. Note, that names are withheld, just so this isn't that mean (but if you want to know the names you can always check the news letter yourself)

1. An Exposition of Rational Sensation

2. A Metaphysical Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul

3. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: An Aristotelian Friendship of the Unqualifies Good.

4. Unity Order and Peace: On the Superiority of Traditional Hereditary Monarchy over Modern Liberal Democracy

5. An Examination of Anna Kerenina in Terms of Poetic and Scientific Knowledge


And the Award for the funniest Title 2006, goes to,

Torture: An Application of Aquinas' Theory of Punishment

Give that man a job in the Buch Administration!

3 Comments:

Blogger Andrew Simone said...

To answer your question: Yes, we were.

I vote for #4, coupling the pretentiousness of the title with the stupidity of the conclusion makes it a clear winner.

Actually, the more I look at them the more I am concerned with the lunacy of the projects than the preteniousness. Here is my running commentary:

Thesis #1: By contrast, what is "irrational sensation"?

#2: From the department of redundancy department: "Metaphysical" and "nature." (But I guess "meta" makes things cooler)

#3: Actually, that one doesn't bother me so much (I assume there is a typo)

#4: Monarchy superior to Liberal Democracy? Only in a vacuum which nature abhors, buddy.

#5: Not terrible, but the "in terms of, etc." is superfluous. Nonetheless, one is left wondering how scientific knowledge, as construed by TAC's Thomistic and Aristotlean interepration, fits with narrative intrepretation.

1:41 PM PDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

#4 was 65 pages of (mostly) genius

8:12 PM PDT  
Blogger Andrew Simone said...

I will grant that I may have been too dismissive of a work without reading it which is, incidentally, out of character.

Still, I will defend liberal democracy over monarchism to the death with the only qualification being the biblical Eschaton. This biblical picture of Christ as King is utterly different from "the traditional hereditary monarchy" proper conceived --to argue that monarchy is better than democracy assumes an ontology of violence which runs counter to biblical notions of creation.

10:13 PM PDT  

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