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The Nature And Role Of Phenomenology In Hegel And Heidegger, Gabriel W. Connor Apr 2023

The Nature And Role Of Phenomenology In Hegel And Heidegger, Gabriel W. Connor

LSU Master's Theses

In this work I compare Hegel and Heidegger’s conception of phenomenology and its role in their thinking. Though these two thinkers are not often examined from this angle, and though there is controversy surrounding just how phenomenological each thinker might actually be, an examination of the two thinkers in this regard serves to identify interesting connections between Hegel and Heidegger while also raising questions about phenomenology in general. In short, I seek to establish that phenomenology in both Hegel and Heidegger is not adequately understood unless it is placed in the context of each thinker’s conception of human freedom along …


Reading And Understanding: A Defense Of Heideggerian Hermeneutics And Philogy, Phillip M. Gandy Apr 2022

Reading And Understanding: A Defense Of Heideggerian Hermeneutics And Philogy, Phillip M. Gandy

LSU Master's Theses

This paper addresses methodologies espoused by the hermeneutic tradition begun under Martin Heidegger. I argue for the methodologies of Philology, Destruktion and the use of poetic language in order to understand and communicate fundamental truths about Dasein. I demonstrate that these methods provide us, hermeneutically, with a closer and more precise understanding than simple communication in common speech.


Heidegger's Phenomenology: 1919-1929, Joseph Arthur Giavotella Apr 2020

Heidegger's Phenomenology: 1919-1929, Joseph Arthur Giavotella

LSU Master's Theses

In this work, I show Martin Heidegger’s development of the phenomenological method from 1919 to 1929 as his main approach to all philosophical inquiry. In Chapter 1: Phenomenology as the Hermeneutics of Factical Life, I first show how Heidegger begins his philosophical career in 1919 with lectures that describe phenomenology as an ‘original science’ that seeks to study the structural character of life in itself. Through the four sub-sections of Chapter 1, I show how Heidegger continues to formulate distinct stages of phenomenological methodology through these early lectures that aid in his task to continue the explication of life through …


Inventing An Ethics: Existentialism And Engagement Through Literature, Michael Foster Wickham Apr 2018

Inventing An Ethics: Existentialism And Engagement Through Literature, Michael Foster Wickham

LSU Master's Theses

The existentialist ethics of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir offers a unique perspective that challenges a traditional, normative picture that has been dominant throughout the history of ethical thinking and continues to dominate in contemporary discourse. The perspective in question refuses to rely on essence to ground its positions, opting instead to focus on the contingency of the subject and the interpersonal as being fundamental in the invention of moral values and ethical practices. This thesis looks to – in the first chapter – explore the relationship between the subjective and the interpersonal through a discussion of Heidegger’s Mitsein …


Heidegger And Ethics: From Dasein As Being-In-The-World To Dasein As Ethical, Eric Robert Panicco Jan 2014

Heidegger And Ethics: From Dasein As Being-In-The-World To Dasein As Ethical, Eric Robert Panicco

LSU Master's Theses

The thought of Martin Heidegger is considered to make a drastic change from modern philosophical thought which begins with Descartes. The reason for the strong distinction that Heidegger makes between those philosophers and his own thought is a result of the way in which his understanding of the kind of being we have (Dasein) is different from conceptions of the human subject. Because traditional approaches to ethics incorporate this understanding of the human subject, an investigation of ethics from Heidegger’s presentation of Dasein is poised to lend new insights into what it means to be ethical. The point of this …


The Return To The World: Precís Of A Defense Of Heideggerian Realism, Graham Charles Bounds Jan 2012

The Return To The World: Precís Of A Defense Of Heideggerian Realism, Graham Charles Bounds

LSU Master's Theses

I defend Martin Heidegger’s philosophy from Lee Braver’s contention that it espouses or entails anti-realism, and instead contend that it strongly supports a robust realism. Realism is, in essence, the metaphysical position which states that human beings are aware—or are capable of being aware—of entities that exist independently of us. The counter-position, anti-realism, sometimes equated with idealism, holds that this is not the case. Braver breaks down these simplistic definitions into several more technical propositions, or “matrices,” and attempts to show how Heidegger rejects the realism matrices in favor of their anti-realist counterparts. I will likewise examine the matrices, arguing …


The Problem And Possibility Of Animal Minds In Brandom's Work: Revisiting Heidegger, Rationality And Normativity, Joel David Musser Jan 2012

The Problem And Possibility Of Animal Minds In Brandom's Work: Revisiting Heidegger, Rationality And Normativity, Joel David Musser

LSU Master's Theses

Robert Brandom denies animals implicit reasoning by emphasizing their inability to make inferences explicit, and in so doing, denigrates animals by likening their behavior to that of machines and artifacts. I contest, however, that animals are paradigmatically more than any similarity or analogy to mechanical processing, just as humans are paradigmatically more than any reductive analogy to animals. The human/animal distinction need not come at the cost of ignoring the difference between animals and artifacts, and I believe we can largely subscribe to Brandom’s differentiation of the human in terms of expressionism if we allow that animals can make implicit …


Ecological Realism And The Tension Of Realism And Idealism In Heidegger's Thought, Gary Williams Jan 2011

Ecological Realism And The Tension Of Realism And Idealism In Heidegger's Thought, Gary Williams

LSU Master's Theses

I examine the question of realism and idealism in terms of a tension in Martin Heidegger’s thought between entity realism and being idealism. Entity realism is the idea that entities exist independently of humans, whereas being idealism is idea that the being of entities is dependent on humans in some way. The question then is how to reconcile entity realism and being idealism without collapsing to an unattractive position like subjectivism or naïve realism. I appropriate Heidegger’s tension to answer the question of realism and idealism in terms of what I call ecological realism. Ecological realism is a way to …


Concepts Of Freedom: Ethical, Epistemological, Ontological, Marijo Cook Jan 2009

Concepts Of Freedom: Ethical, Epistemological, Ontological, Marijo Cook

LSU Master's Theses

Traditionally, the defense of freedom appeals to moral responsibility: if we are not free, then we have no moral responsibility, but we believe in responsibility, so we must acknowledge that we are free. In this thesis, I show some of the ways that this argument has been attacked, both by showing that we might not be morally responsible and by showing that we might be morally responsible without being free. Then I argue that the defense of freedom needs a broader scope in order to succeed. Arguments from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason are used to show that we must …


Heidegger, Aletheia, And Assertions, Erin M. Kraus Jan 2009

Heidegger, Aletheia, And Assertions, Erin M. Kraus

LSU Master's Theses

This essay is interested in Heidegger’s radical reconception of truth as disclosure and how this reconception relates to truth as it operates in assertions. This concept of truth derives from his interpretation of the ancient Greek work for truth, aletheia, which means unhiddeness or disclosure. Heidegger appropriates this notion of truth to criticize post ancient Greek philosophy, which advocated the correspondence theory of truth. This theory contends that the locus of truth lies in an assertion’s correspondence with states of affairs or facts in the world. In contrast, Heidegger contends that, although correspondence is a way of accessing truth, it …


The Mathematical In Heidegger And Badiou, Dylan Armstrong Wade Jan 2008

The Mathematical In Heidegger And Badiou, Dylan Armstrong Wade

LSU Master's Theses

In this thesis I am tracing the historical development of subjectivity from its skeptical foundation in Descartes to Alain Badiou’s subject as fidelity to truth. Drawing from Martin Heidegger’s What is a Thing?, this history begins with the turn from an Aristotelian to a Newtonian apprehension of motion, turning towards an a priori mathematical projection of spatial uniformity, such that there are no longer different places – only quantifiable distance. It is on the basis of this turning away from tradition, or ordinary experience of different phenomena, that Descartes posits the self-certain I-pole. Heidegger criticizes modernity, defined as the merging …


Martin Heidegger's Phenomenology And The Science Of Mind, Charles Dale Hollingsworth Jan 2005

Martin Heidegger's Phenomenology And The Science Of Mind, Charles Dale Hollingsworth

LSU Master's Theses

Phenomenology and cognitive science present two very different ways of looking at mental activity. Recently, however, there have been some attempts to incorporate phenomenological insights and methods into cognitive science, drawing especially on the works of Martin Heidegger. The purpose of this thesis is to determine if a useful combination of cognitive science with Heidegger’s phenomenology is possible, and to determine the form such a combination might take. This thesis begins with a brief overview of the field of cognitive science, and of some of the problems within the field that might benefit from a phenomenological analysis. It then reviews …


Heidegger's Relationship To Kantian And Post-Kantian Thought, Ryan S. Hellmers Jan 2004

Heidegger's Relationship To Kantian And Post-Kantian Thought, Ryan S. Hellmers

LSU Master's Theses

I provide a close analysis of truth and freedom in Heidegger’s work during the passage from Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927 to the Contributions to Philosophy (Beiträge zur Philosophie) in 1938. This analysis demonstrates the passage from a Kantian style transcendental analysis of the self to an Idealist inspired study of being-historical thinking. Throughout this shift in thinking, the work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling is shown to play an increasingly decisive role in Heidegger’s thought, finally leading him to an understanding of the self in terms of freedom, community, culture, and history that carries important …


Heidegger, Levinas, And The Feminine, Andrea Danielle Conque Jan 2002

Heidegger, Levinas, And The Feminine, Andrea Danielle Conque

LSU Master's Theses

Herein, I will reconsider the works of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas with a feminist focus. Through a careful analysis of both the Heideggerian and Levinasian placement of the feminine and of sexual difference, I will suggest alternatives to some traditional readings of these two prolific figures offered by feminists and feminist philosophers. I will argue, in effect, for a Heideggerian model for re-thinking sexual difference. In addition, I will offer what I believe should be a 'new' goal toward which feminism should work, one beyond the goals that have been in place thus far and one based upon a …