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Continental Philosophy

Theses/Dissertations

2022

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Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo Oct 2022

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …


Civil War And Power: A Theoretical Inquiry, Can Guven Aug 2022

Civil War And Power: A Theoretical Inquiry, Can Guven

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation is a theoretical project that explores the conceptual nexus between civil war and power. It maps out a lineage of thought which posits civil war as a framework for explicating politics, not as a pre-political stage of savagery or a deteriorated condition of the socio-political order. Starting with Michel Foucault’s radical yet short-lived civil war thesis, which situates civil war as the matrix of relations of power, this investigation traverses the work of several theorists and philosophers who have drawn on, or departed from, this line of thought. It critically evaluates Giorgio Agamben’s use of the concept …


The Masochian Woman: Coming To A Philosophical Understanding Of Haudenosaunee Women's Masochism, Jennifer Komorowski Aug 2022

The Masochian Woman: Coming To A Philosophical Understanding Of Haudenosaunee Women's Masochism, Jennifer Komorowski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation is a philosophical examination of women’s masochism from several different viewpoints. Beginning from a centre of Western psychoanalytic thought, I analyse what Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, and Slavoj Žižek say about women and masochistic practices, and then continue the discussion by looking at the work of several women theorists and writers, including Angela Carter, Judith Butler, Kathy Acker, and Luce Irigaray. This analysis centres around Lacan’s theorization of the death drive through the figure of Antigone, and while he does not describe her as the original woman masochist, I believe she is a central figure in …


Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen Aug 2022

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …


Inner Song Phenomenological Description Of A Musical Object Of Phantasy, Ellen Moysan Aug 2022

Inner Song Phenomenological Description Of A Musical Object Of Phantasy, Ellen Moysan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is the phenomenological description of a musical object of phantasy I call “inner song,” i.e., the music that the musician “sings in his or her head” while practicing his or her instrument. It describes the specific inner song of a single musician playing a melodic instrument, and rehearsing in a solipsistic situation. The description is based on three resources: my personal experience as a cellist; the third person experiences of other musicians I have interviewed on that topic since 2010; and the Husserlian corpus. Each chapter starts with excerpts of interviews focusing on specific aspects the inner song. …


Cultivating The Human Narrative: On Nietzsche, Science Fiction, And The Aesthetics Of Life., Derek Carpenter Aug 2022

Cultivating The Human Narrative: On Nietzsche, Science Fiction, And The Aesthetics Of Life., Derek Carpenter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I will argue that there is a specific model of morality which can account for the intuition about moral features that we take to be intrinsic to the human type. This model of morality is that of Virtue Ethics, but not a conventional kind of Virtue Ethics. Instead, I will argue that the moral philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche presents a model of cultivating narrative types that we take to be grounded in the kinds of beings we are, without resorting to any problematic metaphysical systems. This will require that I defend a novel interpretation of Nietzsche’s ethics …


Transient Constellations: Adorno, Benjamin, And The Actuality Of Idealism, Jeremy Arnott Jun 2022

Transient Constellations: Adorno, Benjamin, And The Actuality Of Idealism, Jeremy Arnott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the thought of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin in critical constellation with German Idealism, specifically G.W.F. Hegel and F.W.J. Schelling. I explore how Adorno and Benjamin deconstruct and refashion Idealist notions, while also providing the post-Idealist theoretical armature to read Idealism in speculative directions. Through this mosaic, I pose questions regarding the actuality of philosophy, considering how thought might open itself towards a fuller spectrum of experience, while nonetheless remaining systematic, creating new (inter)disciplinary models of philosophy which tarry with the para-philosophical domains of art and nature. In the first part of this project, I provide …


"You Can't Be Shakespeare And You Can't Be Joyce": Lou Reed, Modernism, And Mass Production, Daniel C. Jacobson Jun 2022

"You Can't Be Shakespeare And You Can't Be Joyce": Lou Reed, Modernism, And Mass Production, Daniel C. Jacobson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes a reevaluation of the overlooked connections between American popular music and modernist literature’s scope and formal experimentation which arose in the mid-20th century. Because Lou Reed’s ever-changing persona situates his work uncomfortably between high art and pop-culture, modernism and “post-modernity,” literature and music, and ethics and aesthetics, I intend to consider Reed as this dissertation’s empty, refracted center. One that will allow for a critique of several major intellectual movements, both inside and outside the academy, that continue to influence thinking about art, ethics, and material culture. Additionally, I hope to show that the work of a …


Time And Power: The Will To Temporalize In Digital Culture, Talha Issevenler Jun 2022

Time And Power: The Will To Temporalize In Digital Culture, Talha Issevenler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I analyze the new forms of temporalization of social media in relationship to arrangements of power through nonhuman agency of the algorithm. The new social media industry refers to the entities that make up its circulatory movement, simply as ‘content’. This suggests that scientific or empirical study of social media should deal with content and analyze this as the data of research through sampling (Manovich, 2020, p. 93-94). Yet the forms and the temporality in which the content is presented not only are open to empirical research but should be central to our understanding of the organization …


Strong Linguistic Relativity: A Continental Sense Of Language And Being, Ava Totah, Brian Treanor May 2022

Strong Linguistic Relativity: A Continental Sense Of Language And Being, Ava Totah, Brian Treanor

Honors Thesis

The theory of linguistic relativity can be divided into two hypotheses: the strong argument and the weak argument. The strong argument, often called linguistic determinism, posits that one’s native language determines one’s thought in an inescapable manner. The so-called “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” demonstrates this, though many modern linguists now believe this principle – and linguistic determinism in general – to be implausible. The weak argument for linguistic relativity states that one’s native language merely influences their worldview, such that it struggles to maintain a connection that is more than trivial. In this work, I seek a “third option” that is both …


Negation & Acosmism: Hegel's Acosmist Reading Of Spinoza, Jared Jones May 2022

Negation & Acosmism: Hegel's Acosmist Reading Of Spinoza, Jared Jones

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, I argue that Spinoza's views on negation are coupled with a view of being which, although Hegel misunderstands it to an extent, makes it impossible for finite things to exist, as Hegel's "acosmist" reading of Spinoza maintains. I begin by arguing that acosmism would present an internal problem for Spinoza's system in the Ethics, framing the importance of the topic and showing why Hegel's interpretation, as an interpretation, does not work. After that, I first provide an account of Hegel and Spinoza's views on negation. In the process, I give an account of Hegel's views on …


What Is Assertiveness?, Mirjana Trifunovic Apr 2022

What Is Assertiveness?, Mirjana Trifunovic

Theses

My main aim is to define assertiveness, to distinguish assertiveness from aggressiveness, and to raise the question of whether we should be assertive. Most articles on assertiveness are from the field of psychology. In psychology, assertiveness is defined as a healthy way of expressing oneself. But what does assertiveness mean? How should we define assertiveness and is assertiveness desirable, or is it closely connected to aggressiveness? Should we say that assertiveness is a part of our character, an innate quality, or an acquired skill? In this thesis, I will define assertiveness and show how to distinguish assertiveness from aggressiveness. Most …


Sin Without Absolution: A Critical And Comparative Analysis Of Select Works By Albert Camus, Will Hodges Apr 2022

Sin Without Absolution: A Critical And Comparative Analysis Of Select Works By Albert Camus, Will Hodges

Honors College Theses

The Fall by Albert Camus, published in 1956, is cryptic and easily misunderstood. On first reading, it can appear to be a condemnation of modern man, a declaration that all have sinned and there is no divine absolution. However, this bleak misreading is deceptive because The Fall is not a condemnation; it is a warning. It does not condemn modern man as he is, but rather as what he could become if he succumbs to living in bad faith, a cautionary tale that resonates today. Camus presents the same message through his philosophy of revolt in The Plague and The …


The Cynics' Understanding Of And Contribution To Philosophy, Yossra Hamouda Feb 2022

The Cynics' Understanding Of And Contribution To Philosophy, Yossra Hamouda

Theses and Dissertations

The Cynics are an understudied school in the history of philosophy especially, if we compare the amount of literature written on the Cynics to the amount of literature written on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other Greek schools like the Epicureans, the Neo-Platonists and even the Stoics. The lack of research interest in the Cynics, both from the side of philosophers and historians, is possibly grounded in a lack of interest in understanding the Cynical conception of philosophy. Unless we take a serious interest in understanding the Cynical conception of philosophy, we risk reducing the Cynics to the historical clowns of …


Nauseated, Anguished And Ashamed: Where Did Sartre Go Wrong?, Douglas Contri Jan 2022

Nauseated, Anguished And Ashamed: Where Did Sartre Go Wrong?, Douglas Contri

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis examines Jean-Paul Sartre’s ontology and argues that his conception of consciousness as individuated nothingness is responsible for the discontented human condition he describes. It further argues that this ontology is at variance with our experience, and as such the human condition is not inevitably unhappy. Instead, a phenomenological description of consciousness as transpersonal and full is advanced. A transpersonal ontology of consciousness asserts that consciousnesses are not entirely individuated from one another, but constitutively constructed by “other” consciousnesses, which renders them full. Consciousness as transpersonal leads to a reconceptualization of the subject-other relationship as an I-as-other-other- …


How Aesthetics Shape Our Ethics: Exploring Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, And Digital World, Nika Kokhodze Jan 2022

How Aesthetics Shape Our Ethics: Exploring Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, And Digital World, Nika Kokhodze

Senior Projects Fall 2022

Every day, we encounter numerous amount of images, films, news and propaganda. The different forms and manifestations of aesthetics haunts our lives daily. What if I told you that Aesthetics has immense amount of power? This project aims specifically at that as it explores authoritarian states and the liberal democracies alike. How could the moral compass that we all cherish and hold dearly be predicated and shaped by something so remote as aesthetics? Exploring through examples from the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the digital world we all live in, one might find some answers and the right questions to …


Being And Historical Change In Hegel's Science Of Logic, Jarrad Felgenhauer Jan 2022

Being And Historical Change In Hegel's Science Of Logic, Jarrad Felgenhauer

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation, Being and Historical Change in Hegel’s Science of Logic, examines the immanent relationship between metaphysics and history, specifically historical change, through an examination of Hegel’s Science of Logic. It seems to me that this relationship has been under-explored both in metaphysics broadly and Hegel scholarship specifically. For instance, many authors have discussed the role of history in Hegel’s philosophy and many others have focused on his metaphysics. But only a few have discussed how these two aspects immanently intersect with one another; specifically, what the examination of metaphysics can teach us about interpreting history and historical …


The Existential Challenges Of Cyberspace, Sean Cleary Jan 2022

The Existential Challenges Of Cyberspace, Sean Cleary

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cyberspace is an emergent environment that has come to facilitate a growing range of human activity. Here, information is tightly woven, freed of unnecessary context and always within reach. This thesis explores the existential challenges that arise from increased engagement in this space and offers solutions informed by Henry Thoreau and Søren Kierkegaard. Section One offers an ontological account of cyberspace and describes its relationship to what I call the lifeworld. Section Two further examines the relationship drawn out in Section One, introduces the challenge of foreground saturation and appeals to Thoreau for solutions. Section Three introduces the concept of …