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Concerning Mostly Nonacademic Aspects Of My July 2006 Visit To Salzburg, Austria For The 6th International Whitehead Conference At Salzburg University, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Here are travel notes concerning mostly nonacademic aspects of my July 2006 visit to Salzburg, Austria for the 6th International Whitehead Conference at Salzburg University. These travel notes supplement the book Whiteheadian Ethics: Abstracts and Papers from the Ethics Section of the Philosophy Group at the 6th International Whitehead Conference at the University of Salzburg, July 2006 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) edited by Theodore Walker Jr. and Mihály Toth.

An Archaeology Of Contemporary Speculative Knowledge, Justas Patkauskas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigates contemporary speculative knowledge grounded in the immanence episteme, which is struggling to emerge as a foundation for a new kind of absolute knowledge. Regarding method, I use Michel Foucault’s concept of archaeology, situating archaeology in the context of deconstruction. In general, by delineating the various differences and genealogies within immanence theory, I show that immanence is neither a monolithic homogeneity nor a schizophrenic multiplicity but a coherent, if troubled, ground for speculative thought.

In Chapter 1, I define deconstruction as a broad philosophical project concerned with the order of knowledge and the University and its disciplines. I …

A Theodical Invitation, Joseph Carson

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

While analytic philosophy has led the charge in answering the problem of evil (i.e., POE), postmodern theology and movements like radical orthodoxy incite a response to POE from a postmodern perspective. With skepticism toward purely metaphysical answers to evil, this essay relies on the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and James K.A. Smith in order to offer a social, ecclesial, and non-rational response to the POE; furthermore, continental philosophy, postmodern theology, and social theory play a significant role in this paper. Supporting the conclusion that the Church is a heuristic, embodied answer to the POE, three contentions form the backbone of …

A Dilemma For Buddhist Reductionsim, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This article develops a dilemma for Buddhist Reductionism that centers on the nature of normative reasons. This dilemma suggests that Buddhist Reductionism lacks the resources to make sense of normative reasons and, furthermore, that this failure may cast doubt on the plausibility of Buddhist Reductionism as a whole...Can Buddhist philosophy make sense of reasons? In this article, I have examined whether one important Buddhist view—Buddhist Reductionism— has the resources to justify the existence of reasons. My diagnosis is pessimistic. I have argued that Buddhist Reductionism lacks the resources to make sense of reasons and, furthermore, that this failure casts doubt …

Stop Making Sense: Hegel’S Critique Of Common Understanding, Daniel A. Burnfin

Masters Theses

This thesis presents Hegel’s account of abstract ‘understanding’ (Verstand) and asserts that his thought is to be read as primarily presenting a critique of abstract understanding. Verstand involves the methodological supposition of a self-subsistent fundament of what it speaks of, and hence the critique of understanding is the critique of the supposition of self-subsistent fundaments. Grasping his account and reading him in its critical light yields a very different image of Hegel than the caricature of ‘totalizing systems’. The dimension of the Verstandeskritik has been relatively neglected in Hegel-reception and misunderstandings result from trying to ‘understand’ Hegel, by …

The Political Aesthetic Of Hannah Arendt: Modernity, Judgment, And Culture, Quixote R. Vassilakis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The plan of this thesis is, first, to interpret Arendt’s critique of the modern age. Next, this paper outlines Arendt’s reconceptualization of Kant’s theory of judgment as the basis for a novel model of the public sphere in light of the conditions of modernity. Finally, this paper explores Arendt’s poetics as a means of activating the faculty of judgment in order to reconcile with the modern world. In order to address the political crises of modernity, Arendt develops a political aesthetic alive to the role of narrative and culture in reconstituting political communities. I argue that Hannah Arendt develops a …

Nietzschean Problematics, Jacob Vangeest

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is a commentary and exegesis on François Laruelle’s 1977 text Nietzsche contre Heidegger with a focus on the concept of the ‘Nietzschean problematic.’ It explores Laruelle’s use of Nietzsche by comparing his reading with that of Gilles Deleuze. This relation is explored in Deleuze and Laruelle’s reading of the Nietzschean problematic through the distinction between complementarity and supplementarity to enable a reading of Laruelle’s text as an extension of Deleuze’s project. This extension is one that simultaneously overturns what it extends. Laruelle’s aim is presented as a ‘machinic materialism’ infused with Derridean différance. Over the course of the …

Foucault, Affect, History: On The Art Of Feeling, Austin Chisholm

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While the work of Michel Foucault has not generally been thought to engage in questions of affect, I argue that his work entails a meaningful engagement with such questions but in a way that challenges how we tend to think about affect. Drawing from Foucault’s oeuvre, I enter a series of dialogues with thinkers of affect, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Brian Massumi, in order to understand to what extent the turn to affect—especially for Sedgwick and Massumi—represents an attempt to work through a number of difficulties and tensions in Foucault’s thought and writing. I argue …

From Case Study As Symptom To Case Study As Sinthome: Engaging Lacan And Irigaray On "Thinking In Cases" As Psychoanalytic Pedagogy, Erica Freeman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation accomplishes two goals. First, this dissertation articulates a Lacanian account of the epistemological and historical presuppositions of the psychoanalytic case study genre, while engaging reflexively with extant Foucauldian scholarship on this genre as well as feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray’s criticisms of Lacan. Irigaray’s critique is engaged in order to tarry with its implications for a Lacanian approach to the psychoanalytic case study genre. Second, this dissertation critically examines the significance of Lacan’s (re)reading, in Seminar V, of Joan Riviere’s (1929) “Womanliness as Masquerade” in the midst of his oral teachings on the psychoanalytic concepts of castration and …

The Dialectic Of Naturgeist In Hegel’S Anthropology: Soul, World, And Bodiliness, Jiho Oh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary concern of the “Anthropology” section in Hegel’s Encyclopedia of 1830 is the relationship between soul and body: how the soul gains an immediate, bodily existence through embodiment, why and how this immediate mode of the soul’s bodily existence is precarious, and how the soul becomes second nature by overcoming the immediate, bodily existence through habit, more precisely. Importantly, the “Anthropology” is the place in Hegel’s Encyclopedia system where the Philosophy of Nature ends, and the Philosophy of Spirit begins. The thematization of the soul-body relationship in the “Anthropology” is thus essentially framed by a broader, systematic problem concerning …

Merleau-Ponty's Poetic Of The World: Philosophy And Literature [Table Of Contents], Galen A. Johnson, Emmanuel De Saint Aubert, Mauro Carbone

Philosophy & Theory

Merleau-Ponty’s Poets and Poetics offers detailed studies of the philosopher’s engagements with Proust, Claudel, Claude Simon, André Breton, Mallarmé, Francis Ponge, and more. From Proust, Merleau-Ponty developed his conception of “sensible ideas,” from Claudel, his conjoining of birth and knowledge as “co-naissance,” from Valéry came “implex” or the “animal of words” and the “chiasma of two destinies.” Thus also arise the questions of expression, metaphor, and truth and the meaning of a Merleau-Pontyan poetics. The poetic of Merleau-Ponty is, inseparably, a poetic of the flesh, a poetic of mystery, and a poetic of the visible in its relation …

‘I Have Regained Memory’ (Smṛtir Labdhā): The Bhagavad Gītā As A Parrhesiastic Journey Against Forgetfulness, Raquel Ferrández-Formoso

Comparative Philosophy

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary reading of the Bhagavad Gītā, presenting it as a parrhesiastic dialogue between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, and focusing on the importance attached to memory. Foucault’s studies on the exercise of parrhesia (“true speech”) in the Greco-Roman context, but also Heidegger's views on the original memory, and Abhinavagupta’s commentary to the Bhagavad Gītā have been used as important tools of interpretation. Devotion is described as the constant memory of Kṛṣṇa, through which the practitioner succeeds in substituting some subconscious dispositions (saṃskāras) for others, building a psychic memory that allows for liberation at the time of …

Dancing Across Difference: Transforming Habitual Modes Of Being In The World Through Movement, Kimberly Dority

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Although some important scholarly work has been done on race, and whiteness, in relation to habit, my account addresses the role of movement in habit through dance. Dance is well-suited for exploring habit since dancers cultivate an intimate knowledge of their bodies as habitual dancing bodies. I argue that dancing can offer critical insight into how habitual modes of being in the world may be shifted and changed. Dancers’ mastery of movement not only consists in sedimenting habits within the body, but also involves actively exploring how one’s own bodily movement can be altered (Ravn 2017; Damkjaer, 2015; Ingerslev, 2013; …

Questions Concerning Attention And Stiegler’S Therapeutics, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The article sets out to develop the concept of attention as a key aspect to building the possible therapeutics that Bernard Stiegler’s recent works have pointed to (The Automatic Society, 2016, The Neganthropocene, 2018 and Qu’appelle-t-on Panser, 2018). The therapeutic aspect of pharmacology takes place through processes that are neganthropic; therefore, which attempt to counteract the entropic nature of digital technologies where there is flattening out to the measurable and the calculable of Big Data. The most obvious examples of this flattening out can be seen in relation to the use of natural language processing technologies for …

“Identity-Based” And “Diversity-Based” Evidence Between Linear And Fractal Rationality, Maurizio Manzin

OSSA Conference Archive

I identify two types of evidence: one based on “linear” rationality (LR) and the other based on “fractal” rationality (FR). For LR, evidence depends only on systematic coherence, and all other sources of knowledge (intuitive, perceptive, symbolic, poetic, moral, etc.) are marginalized. For FR, evidence requires an approach more adherent to the “irregularities” of life. LR philosophically entails a Neoplatonist and Cartesian account on identity, whereas FR entails Plato’s account on identity and diversity as coessential.

Topics Of The Sky: Ashbery's Involving Search For The Poem, Tom M. Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An essay lived by John Ashbery's Three Poems with special attention to the possibility of cosmic relevance. This paper attempts to imagine priorities and needs proper to celestial bodies. Three Poems is the consciousness that gives possibility to the text, while Blanchot, Nietzsche, and other thinkers ground its exploration in philosophical analysis.

Ood For The Ghosts: Reading Ruin’S Being With The Dead With Nietzsche, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

A focus on roots, localizations, usurpations, and obliterations together with commemoration and different fields of scholarly research, along with a thematic focus on Homer’s Nykia, permit Hans Ruin to revisit the foundations of history in Being with the Dead. Ruin draws on cultural sociology, including the work of Alfred Schütz, as well as Heideggerian historicity and the dead of the distant past, including archaeology and ethnography, paleography and physical anthropology. Ruin also engages Michel de Certeau’s Writing of History and its focus on the other in a necropolitical account tracked through interdisciplinary fields. In my reading I supplement Ruin’s critical …

Object-Oriented Musicology: Some Implications Of Graham Harman's Philosophy For Music Theory, History, And Criticism, Eric Taxier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation brings the ideas of the philosopher Graham Harman (b. 1968) into a musicological context. His “object-oriented ontology” is widely known in continental philosophy, but it has not yet entered rigorous contact with musicology. Certain factors pose difficulties at first glance, such as Harman’s focus on metaphysical issues (originating in his critique of Martin Heidegger) and his rehabilitation of the widely criticized concept of aesthetic autonomy. But these are also sources of novelty that could make an object-oriented encounter with musicology fruitful. In the first chapter, I outline the main features of Harman’s thought. He critiques assumptions about the …

The In/Authentic Subject: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, And Selfhood, Joseph Tighe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation represents an attempt to understand the self, what it is, what it means, and how it provides subjective identity. These concerns are situated within a personal narrative that describes the loss of self and its rediscovery subsequent to that loss. In critically examining the work of both Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger on the concept of authenticity, I have attempted to come to terms with my experience of the loss of selfhood as well as the conditions of possibility for its return. I argue that Kierkegaard’s construction of the self, while problematically religious, convincingly describes the experience of …

The Problem Of Nature In The Phenomenology Of Merleau-Ponty, Alessio Rotundo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, I show that Merleau-Ponty’s idea of nature yields a double meaning: nature as ensemble of genetic and productive processes that are attainable in experience (phenomenal nature) and nature as that which enables this experience (transcendental nature). My thesis is that the two meanings of nature, when taken together, offer a guide to Merleau-Ponty’s final philosophical formulations about “flesh” and the “visible” and the “invisible.” The aim of the dissertation is to trace the salient conceptual and methodological complications entailed by this conception. I argue that the bivalence of the problem of nature in Merleau-Ponty receives a methodological …

A Rhetoric And Philosophy Of Gifts, Mary Eberhardinger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project synthesizes a selected scope of rhetorical and philosophical perspectives of the gift. The research question is what the relationship between gifts and rhetoric might be. In order to approach this question, this project offers a review of related literature on the topic of gifts. It then provides analysis and discussion that contextualize the question. The project finally concludes by offering implications. The implications address why the question concerning the relationship between gifts and rhetoric matters for the larger landscape of international relations.

The Appearance Of The Other Ego In Edmund Husserl’S Phenomenology, Paul Zipfel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this work I investigate Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of the appearance of the other ego in order to elucidate the essential components of the sense of the other ego: co-constitution, inaccessibility, and a unique process of verification. I open with an example illustrating the way in which other egos appear to me as different from ordinary objects in the world. When one looks outside in a storm and sees a branch rapping on the window, it is not an alarming experience. However, were another person to be rapping at the window, the experience would be quite different. This is …

Relations And Folds In Leibniz: Monadological Intimacy, Jeff Lambert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My goal is to provide a clear explanation of Leibniz’s notoriously difficult system of relations. Relations among ‘windowless’ substances that exert no causal power over one another seems like a pipe dream that should be abandoned. However, I demonstrate that each substance expresses its relations only through the unique representation of all other substances. That is, any relation a substance expresses is due to this unique, perspectival, non-causal, representation of others. Because this is the case for all substances, this means that this relation of representation is an ongoing process of interconnection for all substances. This representation is not merely …

The Psychology Of Dystopian And Post-Apocalyptic Stories: The Proverbial Question Of Whether Life Will Imitate Art, Donna Roberts

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic genres challenge our notions of Aristotelian mimesis vs Anti-mimesis – i.e., In the study of the human condition, does life imitate art or art imitate life? Popular culture, then and now, provides us with examples to depict the circularity of these notions and the psychological importance of exploring this aspect of human nature, particularly the contemplation of our own collective demise. While we recoil in horror at the images these genres portray, we are also morbidly fascinated by them, and we can’t help but ask ourselves . . . Could that really happen? Will that happen?

Comment …

Critical Veganism: A Posthuman Understanding Of ‘Becoming With’ Others, Kensey Dressler

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis lays the groundwork for a critical vegan orientation to posthuman communication research. Critical veganism attempts to do the least amount of harm to nonhuman beings, a shift that decenters the human in scholarship and focuses on the material realities of nonhuman beings. This orientation helps create a praxis for posthuman research that is in line with a new materialist approach to ontology, is anti-capitalist, and strives to do the least harm. Previous research methods tend to be anthropocentric in nature, thus leaving out nonhuman experiences from communication research. Using both autoethnography and multi-species ethnography as my methods, I …

Cognition Without Construction: Kant, Maimon, And The Transcendental Philosophy Of Mathematics, Nicholas A. J. Birmingham

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant takes the ostensive constructions characteristic of Euclidean-style demonstrations to be the paradigm of both mathematical proofs and synthetic a priori cognition in general. However, the development of calculus included a number of techniques for representing infinite series of sums or differences, which could not be represented with the direct geometrical demonstrations of the past. Salomon Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy addresses precisely this disparity. Maimon, owing much to G. W. Leibniz, proposes that differentials of sensation achieve what Kantian constructions could not. More importantly, Maimon develops a kind of symbolic cognition that …

Language After God: Nietzsche, Lacan, And The Sinthome Of Tragic Wisdom, Dylan J. Hughes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of the “sinthome” and Friedrich Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy of self-overcoming are deeply complementary theories of linguistic subjectivity, each describing the transformative potential of a kind of art at the centre of the inherently symptomatic experience of language. Lacan’s final seminars reimagine the psychoanalytic symptom as the potential site where each subject might forge a sinthome: a singular structure of creative agency in the experience of desire and truth. Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy works to uncover the problematically aesthetic and creative character of reality, suggesting that one must affirm and cultivate such creativity in order …

Not Just Pretty Clothes: Fashion's Progressive Operationalization As Seen In Baudelaire And Benjamin; Addendum: Anna Karenina's Appropriation Of Her Mortality Through Dress, Serena Laine Trainor

Senior Theses and Projects

Throughout this double thesis, the author investigates the philosophical significance of fashion. Through her pursuit, she works through the reformulations of the experience of the beautiful as constructed by French poet Charles Baudelaire, then expands her findings with insights from Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel in their fashion theories. In working through these conceptualizations, as analyzed by fashion and philosophy scholar Philipp Ekardt, fashion's mechanics emerge as a model for time, history, and the human life. To more deeply understand these insights, and for a more insightful reading of Leo Tolstoy's famed novel, the author applies her analysis to the …

What's Past Is Prologue: Transforming Trauma, Rewriting Identity In Gloria Anzaldua's "Borderlands/La Frontera" And "Light In The Dark/Luz En Lo Oscuro", Richard Edward Riley

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera and Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro are widely acknowldged as groundbreaking texts across Latinx literary canons, invoking selfhood, spirituality, activism, and politics as a queer woman of color writer.

Her language around self-dispersion is still undertheorized in what it owes to traumatic experiences discoverable in the self, body, world, and culture Anzaldua hails from. The extent of colonizing and kyriarchal damage in her work has been recognized; but the exact character of how these breakages and corresponding imperatives to regenerate oneself resemble a traumatic shock remains to be written about.

This thesis sketches frameworks …

01. Richard C. Richards, I Hardly Knew Ye, Peter Francev

Praxis, Poems, and Punchlines: Essays in Honor of Richard C. Richards

I first met Richard Richards at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in the fall of 1996. I was a Freshman who had a curious interest in philosophy; yet, at the time, I was a Biology major planning of a life in Hawaii where I’d be conducting research on sharks while teaching at the University of Hawaii and surfing before and after work. Little did I know that my life would be changed forever, after a chance meeting with Richard. [excerpt]