Dirty Modernism: Ecological Objects In American Poetry, Michael D. Sloane

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines how early-to-mid twentieth century American poetry is preoccupied with objects that unsettle the divide between nature and culture. Given the entanglement of these two domains, I argue that American modernism is “dirty.” This designation leads me to sketch what I call “dirty modernism,” which includes the registers of waste, energy, animality, raciality, and the sensual. Reading these registers, I turn to what I call “ecological objects,” or representations of how nature and culture come together, which includes trash, natural resources, inanimals, and tools. Through an ecocritical mode of analysis, I introduce dirty modernism with the Baroness Elsa …

Love And Ethics In The Works Of J. M. E. Mctaggart, Trevor J. Bieber

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation attempts to make contributions to normative ethics and to the history of philosophy. First, it contributes to the defense of consequentialist ethics against objections grounded upon the value of loving relationships. Secondly, it provides the first systematic account of John M. E. McTaggart’s (1866-1925) ethical theory and its relation to his philosophy of love.

According to (maximizing) consequentialist ethics, it is always morally wrong to knowingly do what will make the world worse-off than it could have been (i.e., had one chosen one of the other courses of action available to one at the time). Many consequentialists also …

Space, Territory, Occupy: Towards A Non-Phenomenological Dwelling, Brett Mommersteeg

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis analyzes the relationship between the body and space through the works of Henri Lefebvre, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The aim of the project is to move beyond Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, which relies on a phenomenological understanding of the body and space. In order to do so, it will find in Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘territory’ a non-phenomenological and constructivist concept of space that does not posit the ‘lived body’ as a transcendent ground. As a result, it will also attempt to trace out a non-phenomenological concept of ‘dwelling’ that is not …

Epistemology Of The Cartesian Image, Mikhail Pozdniakov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study is an examination of the epistemological history of the image. Its first strands are to be found in the Christian concept of profanity, in the difference of the world to the divine. The highest form of intelligibility profanity could have, second only to theology, was mathematics. Derived from the problems surrounding this concept are the techniques of inquiry that eventually resulted in the development of analytic geometry by Descartes. The latter marked a new sensibility regarding the physical universe and its constitution, one that is coterminous with the development of exact procedures in science. Being that exactitude regards …

Experiencing Nothing: Anxiety And The Philosophy Of Alain Badiou, William E. Rankin Iv

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis proposes to supplement the philosophy of Alain Badiou with an existentialist account of anxiety. After identifying a “phenomenological deficit” in Badiou’s thought, I argue that Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre provide the conceptual resources for theorizing the affective emergence of subjectivity from within the confines of a determinant situation. My contention, simply, is that anxiety is a rare and unsettling experience of nothing that makes apparent the underlying contingency of all situations, thereby prompting new modes of subjective behavior. In this sense, I treat anxiety as the in-situation experience of an event that may occasion the transition from a …

Literature In The Archive Of Terror: Badiou, Blanchot, Beckett, Christopher Langlois

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation conjoins the two most dominant trends in the secondary criticism of Samuel Beckett today: the philosophical and historicist approaches to his work. It explores how the Reign of Terror that erupted during the French Revolution acts as a traumatic catalyst for key developments in modernist literature and continental philosophy of which the philosophical writing of Alain Badiou, the literary-critical writing of Maurice Blanchot, and the literary-narrative writing of Beckett are perhaps the most exemplary expressions. The overarching thesis that this dissertation defends is that Beckett’s post-war prose work in The Unnamable and Texts for Nothing is overshadowed by …

Deleuze's Apocalypse, Grant Dempsey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Deleuze refers to the apocalyptic both positively, declaring retrospectively that Difference and Repetition was apocalyptic in its purpose, and negatively, sharing the horror expressed in D. H. Lawrence’s Apocalypse. Deleuze scholars, for their part, tend either to find in Deleuze a manner of living resistance that compels a certain apocalyptic appreciation, or to fear in Deleuze the very same and wonder how a philosophy that seems largely purposed for the promotion of disruption could be anything but escapist at best and socially-politically counterproductive at worst. This thesis is a Deleuzian investigation into the concept of apocalypse: how apocalypse can …

Crossing The Law: Trans Activism, Aleatory Materialism, And The Analyst's Discourse, Christopher M. Bomba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines contingency to elucidate transgender activism’s leadership in radical politics. I take up Louis Althusser’s theory of aleatory materialism to politicize everyday encounters. Trans activists gain a parallax view through gendered (mis)recognition that reveals the structure of ideology’s vanishing points. By contrast, I criticize a cisgendered viewpoint and demonstrate the logical errors that result in transphobic behavior through Jacques Lacan’s version of the prisoner’s dilemma. I conclude to theorize trans activism’s engagement with the state through Lacanian analytic technique. This technique does not result in traditional “treatment,” but instead fuels activism with knowledge of the structures that must …

A Space Without Memory: Time And The Sublime In The Work Of Janet Cardiff And George Bures Miller, Margherita N. Papadatos

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The central question of my investigation is: how do artists present the unpresentable when presentation itself is impossible? Concentrating solely on Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s artworks Opera For a Small Room (2005) and The Killing Machine (2007), I redevelop Jean François Lyotard’s concept of the sublime as put forth in his The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, in order to ask how Cardiff and Miller give shape to the unpresentable in their work. Opera and Killing are works that dynamically problematize and play with ideas of presentation, subjectivity, memory, and time. Thus, I explore my central question of …

Deleuze Through Wittgenstein: Essays In Transcendental Empiricism, M. Curtis Allen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis undertakes a comparative study of the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Ludwig Wittgenstein to elaborate three related problems in what in Deleuze calls ‘transcendental empiricism’. The first chapter deals with the problematic of the dimension of sense in language, and culminates in a concept of the event. The second details the immanence of stupidity within thought and culminates in a practice of showing through silence. The third investigates the consequences of aesthetics for the theory of Ideas, and culminates in the concepts of ‘late intuition’ and of a form of life. Each argues for a new way of broaching …

"The Almost Nothing Of The Unpresentable": The Experience Of "My Death" In The Thought Of Jacques Derrida, Derek Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis argues that the understanding of Derrida’s major concepts of différance, trace, and writing requires the reference to the impossible experience of my death as having always already occurred. The thesis tries to make this experience explicit with reference to the work of Blanchot and Heidegger. Having argued that an experience of “I am dead” is the bedrock of Derrida’s early concepts and the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, the last chapter shows the centrality of this experience to the undoing of the animal/human binary. Coterminous with an experience of a disjointed temporality, the radical evil and expropriation …

William James' Theory Of Emotion, James Southworth

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

William James’ theory of emotion has had a profound impact within philosophy and psychology over the last 130 years. While his counterintuitive James-Lange theory has been widely criticized, it has also had its supporters over the years, including recently. In part one, I argue that critics and advocates alike have misinterpreted James due to a neglect of his overarching framework as developed in The Principles of Psychology. The James-Lange theory remains silent on a number of philosophical questions, including the relationship between emotion and consciousness and the nature of an emotional feeling. By considering James’ views on these and …

A Philosophical Analysis Of Ethics Education In The Canadian National Coaching Certification Program For Rowing, Mark M. Williams

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation applies a conception of rationality from the philosophy of science to the coaching education context. The purpose of this dissertation is to present an account of how the exercise of judgment by coaches facing ethical dilemmas can be rational. The discussion in this dissertation begins with a traditional account of rationality that has long been a staple of moral philosophy. Next, the influence of this model in the current Canadian rowing coach education program are highlighted, as are its limitations in providing a complete account of rational ethical-decision making in the coaching context. After establishing these limitations, an …

Language, Mind, And Cognitive Science: Remarks On Theories Of The Language-Cognition Relationships In Human Minds, Guillaume Beaulac

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation establishes the basis for a systematic outlook on the role language plays in human cognition. It is an investigation based on a cognitive conception of language, as opposed to communicative conceptions, viz. those that suppose that language plays no role in cognition (its only role being to externalize thought). I focus, in Chapter 2, on three paradigmatic theories adopting this perspective, each offering different views on how language contributes to or changes cognition. In Chapter 3, I criticize current views held by dual-process theorists, and I develop a picture of the complex interaction between language and cognition that …

Hypothetical Necessity And The Laws Of Nature: John Locke On God's Legislative Power, Elliot Rossiter

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The focus of my dissertation is a general and comprehensive examination of Locke’s view of divine power. My basic argument is that John Locke is a theological voluntarist in his understanding of God’s creative and providential relationship with the world, including both the natural and moral order. As a voluntarist, Locke holds that God freely imposes both the physical and moral laws of nature onto creation by means of his will: this contrasts with the intellectualist perspective in which the laws of nature emerge from the essences of things. For Locke, there are no intrinsically necessary laws in the created …

Thinking Across Worlds: Indigenous Thought, Relational Ontology, And The Politics Of Nature; Or, If Only Nietzsche Could Meet A Yachaj, Jarrad Reddekop

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study undertakes a cultural critique of dominant, modern relationships to “nature” through a cross-cultural philosophical engagement with certain Indigenous American traditions of thought. This is done through a focus on questions of ontology: what kind of ontological presuppositions inform our own dominant, modern philosophical heritage? What kinds of relations do these at once enable and foreclose? And what alternate possibilities for thinking and living might be opened through different ontologies? I argue that grappling with modernity’s legacy of anthropocentrism and ecologically disastrous relationships forces us to rethink an existential terrain set by an atomistic ontology that reflects a Christian …

A Feminist Defense Of Moderate Moral Intuitionism, Bill Jc Cameron

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The three integrated articles of this dissertation are concerned with the epistemic status of moral intuitions. The first article argues in favour of moderate moral intuitionism, the view that while any successful moral epistemology must be intuitionist to at least some extent, it must also take intuitions to be fallible. This is accomplished by synthesizing work by Robert Audi and George Bealer into a view of moral intuitions which is capable of overcoming some major contemporary objections against intuitionism, particularly from Sharon Street and Peter Singer.

The next article raises a more powerful objection to intuitionism, applying feminist ethics and …

Walter Benjamin's Literary Aura: A Stylistic And Thematic Analysis Of One-Way Street, Stephanie Chapman

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

“Brevity” epitomizes Walter Benjamin's One-Way Street, an avant-garde text composed entirely of aphorisms. Benjamin's ideal of literary montage involves the utilization of ideas that he refers to as Abfall, or detritus, and rearranging them—preserved in the momentary spontaneity in which they were conceived—in order to create an entirely new meaning. Noteworthy about Benjamin's style is the manner in which the assembly of momentary thoughts and impressions creates, in a literary sense, the artistic aura of authenticity introduced in his seminal essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” By preserving the form, content, and style …

Food Ontology And Distribution: Ethical Perception And The Food Object, Siobhan M. Watters

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In predominantly service and information-based economies, the pivotal role food plays in the maintenance of life has arguably become neglected as an object of ethical and political contemplation. We often fail to realize that the incarceration of food by the commodity form degrades the food object itself as well as guaranteeing continued dependency on the wage. In a generalized commodity society, labour power is the only thing a person has to sell in order to buy her bread. This leaves us vulnerable in the event of an environmental crisis because we do not have direct access to food sources.

The …

Feelings Sustaining Text: Aphorisms And Inspiration, Mikhail Pozdniakov

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

There are genres of reflection, one of which is constituted by the aphorism. These reflections are an art of ponderance, of pensiveness. Philosophy is not necessarily the best example, nor is it identical with the genre of reflection as such; it has had a hard time breaking with its derivative moments, and its history is of a catalogue of dogmas as well as progressive critiques. In logic, one of philosophy’s products, the continuous or infinite form of knowledge is condensed into the axiom or principle or formula, which carries the appearance of a statement of fact. Contrary to the latter, …

Justification For Conscience Exemptions In Health Care, Lori Kantymir, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

Some bioethicists argue that conscientious objectors in health care should have to justify themselves, just as objectors in the military do. They should have to provide reasons that explain why they should be exempt from offering the services that they find offensive. There are two versions of this view in the literature, each giving different standards of justification. We show these views are each either too permissive (i.e. would result in problematic exemptions based on conscience) or too restrictive (i.e. would produce problematic denials of exemption). We then develop a middle ground position that we believe better combines respect for …

Conscientious Refusal And Access To Abortion And Contraception, Chloë Fitzgerald, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

’Not For The Faint Of Heart’: Accessing The Status Quo On Adoption And Parental Licensing, Carolyn Mcleod, Andrew Botterell

Philosophy Publications

The process of adopting a child is “not for the faint of heart.” This is what we were told the first time we, as a couple, began this process. Part of the challenge lies in fulfilling the licensing requirements for adoption, which, beyond the usual home study, can include mandatory participation in parenting classes. The question naturally arises for many people who are subjected to these requirements whether they are morally justified. We tackle this question in this paper. In our view, while strong reasons exist in favour of licensing adoptive parents, these reasons support the licensing not only of …

Aristotle & Cancer, John Thorp

Philosophy Presentations

No abstract provided.

Is Rawls’S Difference Principle Preferable To Luck Egalitarianism?, Taylor C. Rodrigues

2014 Undergraduate Awards

John Rawls’s difference principle and luck egalitarianism are currently two of the most popular theories of distributive justice in the philosophical literature. Many luck egalitarians have argued that Rawls outlined the fundamental arguments for luck egalitarianism in A Theory of Justice (TJ) but did not settle on the difference principle because he did not realize the full implications of his own arguments. In contrast, I believe that Rawls was too thorough of a thinker not to realize the full implications of his arguments for the difference principle. In this essay I explicate two arguments I believe that Rawls …

Cv, Devin Henry

Devin Henry

No abstract provided.

The Failure Of Evolution In Antiquity, Devin Henry

Devin Henry

This paper traces the emergence and rejection of evolutionary thinking in antiquity. It examines Empedocles' original theory of evolution and why his ideas failed to gain traction among his predecessors.

The Birds And The Bees: Aristotle On The Biological Concept Of Analogy, Devin Henry

Devin Henry

No abstract provided.