The samurai has been viewed as the Oriental equivalent of the feudalistic knights of Europe ever since the Europeans of old first landed on the shores of Japan in the 16^th century. This comparison was not only because of their positions as the military class of their respective societies, but also because of the similarities in ethics and morality causing them to personify the concept of chivalry. The code of moral principles, based on the influences of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism, which the samurai was either instructed or required to observe, is called Bushidō or the Way of the Samurai. By the application of the theory of conceptual history, the study analysed the three works The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, Hagakure – The Way of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, and Bushido – The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe. The purpose of the essay was to analyse and discuss how bushidō has been defined and explained by the three sources written in different time periods and how these three authors differ in their definitions of bushidō. Furthermore, the definitions were contextualized based on the societal changes of Japan between the time of writing the sources. The results showed how the authors focus on different aspects of what is included in bushidō and how the samurai was supposed to act for the benefit of society. Musashi added more focus on the way the samurai was supposed to excel on the battlefield. Tsunetomo, however, wrote his work while peace in Japan had established itself and thus focused on how the samurai was supposed to behave outside of the battlefield. Nitobe’s definition of bushidō also showed implications of a change in society based on how he chose to explain the concept of what bushidō was, and how it had evolved without the knights who had fostered it.

Lastly, the study was discussed within an educational context. The samurai have seen a rise in popular history through games, film, advertisements, and more, and thus the curiosity of students, not only in Oriental culture, but Japanese culture in particular has been acknowledged. Therefore, teachers need further development of their own knowledge within the field of Oriental culture, which this study hopefully succeeds in.

Reflecting on the political nature of literature and its relation to modern democracy, the essay begins by problematizing any notion of commitment in literature. However, irresponsibility found in literature, far from undermining the political process, is what animates the political field seen as an endless contestability of our social practice. The way our notion of modern democracy informs our understanding of literary practice is explored through a selection of Derrida’s writings where democracy emerges as the possibility of imagining alternatives to the world and “of thinking life otherwise,” as Derrida (2004) says, which is to say that democracy cannot be thought without the possibility of literature. Democracy implies not political stability but a continuous call for unrest that prevents its atrophy, and literature, in its unconditional right to call everything to account, is its rearguard work as it were, keeping democracy forever open, for better or for worse.

The thesis investigates the origins of the American entrepreneur, what popularly has been called the self-made man. It traces the building of the self-made man as a commercial ideal self, leading to the narratives of US entrepreneurship and the road to ‘success’.

With the demands and opportunities that grew out of the US move from mercantilism to capitalism, model male commercial self behaviour surreptitiously split into two sides during the 19th century. The idealised side comprised a rhetoric of hard work, self-improvement and thrift, whereas the economic/pragmatic side embraced evolutionary theory and laissez faire. American society in general held on to idealised narratives of the self-made man and failed to expose the destructive side, which was to form the economic/pragmatic self.

In the analyses of literary texts emerging between 1873-1914 in the US, the thesis mainly focuses on the narration of the masculine achiever, or the self-made man. American realist and naturalist authors were certainly part of the American post-1865 bourgeois, professional culture, and they also witnessed the professionalisation of literature. However, in the distribution of notions of idealised self, the binary link between destruction and creation, prevalent in the economic/pragmatic side of male commercial selves, is not recognised by realist authors. Further, it is primarily in Theodore Dreiser’s fiction that the boundaries between these two aspects of late 19th century male selves are psychologised and, in effect, rendered meaningless. Whilst realist texts build characters that exercise responsibility and choice, naturalist fiction more successfully targets the destructive side of the economic/pragmatic self.

This study of the former secretary-general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld’s Vägmärken (“Markings” or “Waymarks”) explores the influence of Meister Eckhart von Hocheim’s doctrine of the eternal birth in the formation of a life stance within Vägmärken. Hammarskjöld himself singles out this particular doctrine as being of paramount importance for his life, however without any explicit comments on the nature of the influence of this doctrine on his thinking. The purpose of this essay is therefore to discern and reveal the subtle ways in which the doctrine of the eternal birth is rendered and reflected in Vägmärken. A hermeneutic method of thematical close reading and a circular oscillating discussion of chosen passages of Vägmärken in relation to an account of the doctrine of the eternal birth, is employed in that attempt. The findings of this essay suggest the prominence, in Hammarskjölds thinking, of the idea of the eternal birth in the human soul as conveyed by the eckhartian metaphor of the chalice, which is emptied in order to be refilled by God with God’s own divinity through His word, which issues forth from the profound, dark and tranquil inner depths of the individual human soul. The findings are also related to the concept of bildung.