Philosophy Commons^™

Negative Psychology Of Anti-Semitism: Fear Of The Uncategorizable, Benjamin Strosberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anti-Semitism is a pervasive global issue, particularly prominent in the United States. Studying and defining anti-Semitism prove remarkably challenging for scholars, leading to inadequate understanding and exclusion from contemporary academic discourse and social justice initiatives. In this dissertation, I made the case that anti-Semitism is hard to categorize, stemming, in part, from the difficulty in categorizing what it is to be Jewish, which seems to be multi-form (a figure of thought, a race, an ethnicity, a religion, a nation, none of the above). In thinking about the difficulty in categorization, I constellated various instances of anti-Jewish practices across historical epochs …

Giving Death To The Production Of Knowledge: Collective Resistance Through Testimony, Mitch De Lange

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis describes the structures an institution, specifically the university, deploys to absorb testimonies of violence in order to strengthen its existing policies, norms, and operations. I consider testimonies by survivors of sexual violence, who demand the end of the current order of the university and its existing policies. Some of these structures are symbolic exchange, the production of knowledge, the logic of repression and liberation, and the work of mourning. I suggest these discursive structures protect the existing boundaries of universities while lending them the authority to speak on behalf of survivors. Therefore, rather than engage in an archeology …

The Basic Dualism In The World, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Graham Harman writes that the “basic dualism in the world lies…between things in their intimate reality and things as confronted by other things.” This paper supports Harman’s assertion from a systems theoretic perspective and illustrates it with some examples, including conceptions about truth, ethics, value, and intelligence. But dualism implies irreconcilable difference; what Harman points to is better expressed as a dyad, where the two components not only imply one another but are related, and where this spatial dyad is usefully augmented with a temporal dimension, expressed in a third component or an additional orthogonal dyad.

Bloody Rationality: The Dialectic Of Modern Reason And Sacrifice In Hegel, Adorno, And Horkheimer, Cara S. Greene

Philosophy ETDs

In my dissertation, I argue that Hegel, Adorno, and Horkheimer develop theories of modern sacrifice grounded in their critiques of modern reason—what Hegel calls “the Understanding” and Adorno and Horkheimer call “instrumental reason.” I contend that these thinkers recognize the process of rational cognition, which abstracts conceptual data from empirical reality and establishes the dominance of the universal over particular phenomena, as a sacrificial process—a view supported by their routine description of this process using the language of violence and death. However, this sacrificial conception of modern reason isn’t metaphorical: when read alongside their analyses of discursive cunning, an instrumental …

The Embodied Rhetoric Of Cognitive Labour, Shubhayan Chakrabarti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation traces the roots of neoliberal selfhood to the rationalist ontology of modernity in the 1600s. The historical tension between materialism and immaterialism is expressed in the historicisation of work into Fordism and post-Fordism where embodied factory toil is apparently replaced by immaterial work, recalling Descartes’ mind-body split. If post-Fordist work addresses the Marxist critique of alienation in its emphasis on entrepreneurial inner selves, it does not explain the post-Fordist preoccupation to efficiently “Taylorise” the body through obsessive productivity. I argue that the factory prevails in the entrepreneur’s adoption of factory efficiency as a learnt behaviour from the Fordist …

Algorithmic Hypnosis, Suarjan Prasai

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is about futures which are inscribed in the present. It is about the past determining the future and the future determining the present. It is also about artificial intelligence, algorithmic learning and the politics of mediums as they curate our sense of time. Today’s landscape is curated by algorithmic machines that are quickly taking over all aspects of social relations. Looking at media-theorist Wendy H.K. Chun’s analysis of homophily (i.e., love of sameness; commonality), I observe the regionality of standard critiques of capital and feel out new modes of resistance which do away with the discourse of the …

The Gaze And The Other On Social Media: Reexamining Existence As Human Beings In The Digital Age, Yuki Yokoi

Philosophy Honors Projects

Social media is now a prevailing tool for people and we often interact with other people on social media. Human interaction takes place both in face-to-face settings and on social media and becoming so-called influencers is a dream among teenagers. However, using social media necessarily entails exposure to the other people and social media companies. Then, is using social media existentially beneficial? I explore this question by employing arguments from Erving Goffman, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Guy Debord to explicate the existential issues which social media entails. From Sartre and Debord’s perspectives, we are inevitably objectified by the gaze when using …

The Forgetting Of Fire: An Archaeology Of Technics, Thomas A. Doerksen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucault’s concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins …

Hypo-Cathexis And Impotence In The Facilitating Environment Of The Anthropocene: Towards Digital Humanities, Brian W. Millen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is an attempt to understand why there does not seem to be enough will to take proper action in light of the information we have about the destructive effects of the Anthropocene, in particular: climate change and the destruction of biodiversity. It is an attempt to follow the injunctions of French philosopher Bernard Stiegler to re-examine and re-evaluate knowledge in terms of the primary role of technics in human experience, and to preliminarily situate the digital humanities within such a project. In this paper, I investigate Sigmund Freud's concepts of cathexis, decathexis, and hyper-cathexis as psychic mechanisms whereby …

Witnessing Conspiracy Theories: Developing An Intersectional Approach To Conspiracy Theory Research, David Guignion

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation proposes an intersectional approach to conspiracy theory research that engages conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists by considering their proximity and affiliations with hegemonic power structures. Against challenges to conspiracy theories based on their lack of empirical legitimacy (Rosenblum and Muirhead 2019) and building on arguments that propound their status as “subjugated knowledges” (Bratich 2008), this dissertation argues that conspiracy theories can be vectors of anti-oppressive resistance against systemic forces that disenfranchise racial, gender, and class minorities. Conspiracy theories are not a homogenous phenomenon; they are particular instances of potentially generative suspicion against powerful forces. The dissertation deploys Kelly …

The Cave And The Stars: On The People And Democracy Of Non-Philosophy, Jeremy R. Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This monograph dissertation explores the work of François Laruelle and the democratic nature of his non-philosophy. In four separate chapters, this dissertation argues for identifying non-philosophy as the introduction of democracy into thought and seeks to instantiate a necessary theoretical delimitation for its programme, which explores the relationships between people, thought, and power. Chapter One analyzes previous philosophical frameworks from thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Max Horkheimer, and Louis Althusser on their respective stances toward philosophy’s role for people. Chapter Two investigates the work of François Laruelle for the past fifty years as the development of non-philosophy or “human philosophy.” …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

The Psychedelic Dasein: Modelling The Effects Of Psilocybin With Heidegger’S Phenomenology, Eamon Robert Stuart Macdougall

Major Papers

This paper argues that the mystical experience induced by psilocybin (understood through the tradition of Heideggerian phenomenology) modulates the attuned understanding of oneself, the world, and how the individual relates to the world. This kind of particular experience is not accessible to the individual through ordinary consciousness, therefore psilocybin may give us access to a new kind of understanding. This understanding may offer a solution to the empirical deficiencies surrounding the short-term and long-term effects of psilocybin, such as how a meagre two to three high doses have yielded unprecedented results in the treatment of tobacco addiction, and in the …

Speak Now To Forever Hold Your Piece: On Aesthetic Ownership And Interpretation, Spencer Heitman

Honors Theses

The primary objectives of this research are to describe ways in the interpretation of art-objects is shaped by their ownership and to endorse fan culture participation as a mechanism through which people might be led to aesthetic value. This analysis shall be grounded in an understanding of trust and shall point the reader toward care, noting that these phenomena positively correlate and help interpreters to receive meaning of more abundance and depth. It will be initially claimed that art interpretation is itself contribution to aesthetic dialogue with artists. This claim is grounded in an understanding of art’s communicative capacities and …

Social Pathologies As Educational Injustices, Esther Neuhann

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

For Axel Honneth, not all social problems can be understood as injustices. Therefore, he introduces the additional diagnostic concept of social pathology. In his book Freedom’s Right (FR), it is defined as an accumulation of persons’ inability to adequately participate in social institutions due to misunderstanding them. In contrast, injustices consist in the denial of access to social institutions for certain groups. According to the aim of presenting an ‘extended’ theory of justice in FR, Honneth intends to reconstruct all institutions necessary for realizing individual freedom in a liberal-democratic society. Like in the historical model of his project (Hegel’s Elements …

"Foul Death, Bitter Death": On Ivan Illich's Amicus Mortis, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

An Emergentist Critique Of The Contract Theory Of The State Of Nature, With A Consideration On Two Types Of Polity And Their Origins., Ryan A. Apperson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The theories of the state of nature provided by the political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke have made a significant impact in the general conceptions of the origin of states. Though there are many critical differences in the conceptions of the state of nature between each in their seminal works, they both possess of a view of states that is rational and constructivist.

In this paper, I use the game theory concepts of the coordination game, collective action problem, and focal point to illustrate a lacuna in this rational and constructivist conception of the origin of states, as their …

Reflections On The Heuristic Power Of Contemplative Art In Teaching And Research, Patricia Morgan

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In this article I discuss the heuristic power of combining contemplative and creative practices using different stages of my research into learning through contemplation. This began with a realisation I had, in my first meditation retreat, about the similarities between creative and contemplative consciousness. It initiated twenty-three years of applied and theoretical research that started with contemplative art workshops I ran in rehabilitation centres. In PhD research that followed I tested a hypothesis of learning through contemplation founded on the concept of an elemental ground of learning that contained an integrating force I termed the feeling nexus. In later …

You Unseen Cathedrals: A Study Of The Conceptual Conditions Of Negativity, Anda Pleniceanu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation addresses a gap in contemporary negativity studies by examining twentieth-century texts that engage with negativity beyond the subject. Starting with the premise that the concepts of negativity and subjectivity are intertwined, I argue that the predominant tendency in scholarship has been to conceptualize subjectivity as a circular structure that incorporates negativity as its dynamic foundation. However, when negativity is defined in subordination to the subjective circle, its radical features are diminished, resulting in “weak negativity.” In Chapter 1, I exemplify my arguments using the works of Alexandre Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, and Judith Butler. In contrast to weak negativity, …

Menetekel: Ishmael's Black Whale And The Semiotics Of Doom, Todd Tyner Cronkhite

English Language and Literature ETDs

This study employs the narrator of Moby Dick, Ishmael, as a focal critic to interpret several potential examples of ominous writing on the wall, or menetekel. It concludes that the message of such writing, owing primarily to its irrevocably deictic relationship with the surface it is written on, is fundamentally apocalyptic in nature, regardless of its explicit content. The physical walls of the “kingdom” are incorporated into the grammar of the menetekel as object, so that its elemental message, “I was here,” becomes not only an admission of criminal trespass, but also a direct threat to the current order and …

Beyond Compulsion: Félix Ravaisson's Conception Of Habit, Christopher Johnson

LSU Master's Theses

In opposition to a tendency present within the history of Western philosophy to regard ‘habit’ as a conservative force (represented by figures including Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant), contemporary philosophers working on habit (including Clare Carlisle and Catherine Malabou) have marshaled the thought of nineteenth century French philosopher Félix Ravaisson. With recourse to the ‘double law of habit,’ Ravaisson, in his 1838 doctoral thesis, depicts habit as both resistance and receptivity to change. I begin, in Chapter One, with a brief overview of the aforementioned negative evaluations of habit, as surveyed separately by Carlisle and Malabou. As these contemporary philosophers observe, …

The Possibility Of Relationships With Others, Joshua Severud

LSU Master's Theses

Levinas offers a rich philosophical insight into the kind of responsibility and ethics that we must have for the Other. This involves a certain conception of what it means to be hospitable which turns out to be impossible. In order to talk about how this impossible relationship can occur, I use Heidegger’s description of the existential Being-with structure and Derrida’s conception of the event in order to make sense of how this Levinasian relationship can possibly exist in spite of—or thanks to—its impossibility.

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 …

The Dangerous Loss Of Meaning Through Consumerist Practices, Johan Rosario

Senior Theses and Projects

The internet appears and it is a better television, a better radio, and a better way of transmitting information to one another, but is this information actually being communicated? In this essay, I will be looking at Jodi Dean’s Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive to describe how an overabundance of content provided by the internet renders all content meaningless, and the ways in which engagement with the internet generates more behaviors in people whose purpose is purely the act of communication, and not at all the contents of what is being communicated. Finally, I will …

Bergson On Poetics: Philosophy, Literature And Science, Michel Dalissier

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this paper, I analyze Henri Bergson’s insightful and contrasted vision of poetry. First, I show in what sense Bergson sympathizes with the idea that the poet must be credited to surpass the novelist in offering to us an unparalleled emotional apprehension of the world. Second, I nonetheless underline how Bergson grants the product of the poet, i.e., the poem itself, a problematic linguistic status, inasmuch as the focus of his analysis shifts from an intersubjective poetical apprehension of feelings to their individual poetic appreciation, or from the spiritual dimension of poetry to its material dimension. Third, I further suggest …

Filling The Vacant Space: A Close Reading Of Kant’S Dialectic Of Pure Practical Reason, Mae Ashraf Ali Saafan

Theses and Dissertations

The main aim of this thesis is to explore Kant’s central notion of rational belief. Kant’s account of rational belief could be viewed as the ground on which rational moral agents assent to propositions that enable them to avoid any practical incoherence as they engage in their moral duty.

The paper will offer a close reading of the dialectic of pure practical reason, particularly the doctrine of the postulates of practical reason. In this doctrine, Kant argues that although there is no theoretical proof for or against freedom, God, and the immortality of the soul, rational moral agents ought to …

Everybody Wants To Be A Fascist Online: Psychoanalysis And The Digital Architecture Of Fascism, Anthony Faramelli, Imogen Piper

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Félix Guattari and Franco Berardi have both argued that media ecologies and psychic ecologies are intimately intertwined and as such, any exploration of the collective unconscious must engage with how the mind is formed with and through media. This understanding of networks of interdependence necessitates an exploration of how platformization has impacted users” collective psyche. Drawing from psychosocial theory, psychoanalysis and the work of Félix Guattari, this article analizes the micropolitics of desire of digital platforms, with an explicit focus on how algorithmic structures amplify extreme Right content, allowing fascisms to metastasis throughout digital spaces. It will first examine the …

Retranslation And Interpellation, Andrew Brooks

Living in Languages

No abstract provided.

What Difference Does It Make? Early Reception Stories About Luce Irigaray's Writing On Divine Women, Elsa Kunz

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper examines numerous pre-texts in Anglo-American feminist theology and critical theory seminal to the establishment of feminist philosophy of religion as a distinct academic discipline. Specifically, I trace early reception of philosopher Luce Irigaray’s writing on becoming divine women in Anglo-American feminist circles, arguing that critical attention to the “horizons of expectations” around Irigaray’s person is a necessary step to the myriad readings of her work. I begin by situating my own initial expectations and encounters with Irigaray’s writing on divine women as a graduate student in theological studies cross-registered in a course on ‘French Feminism’ in the neighboring …

Poetics Of Finitude: Time And Death In The Poetry Of R.M. Rilke And T.S. Eliot, Isabel James Greene

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.