Philosophy Commons^™

Plurality, Precarity, Nos/Otras: Searching For A New Guarantee Of Dignity In The Contemporary World, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

One cannot comprehend the topography of our contemporary globe without seeing the chain-link lines that fractalize sand, sea, and soil. Contemporary global politics is marked by a refugee crisis of colossal proportion. At its core, the contemporary refugee crisis is perpetuated by the fact that there is no framework to apprehend the personhood of the refugee, let alone an organized and attentive global process for directing the flow of vulnerable persons toward safety.

I argue that in order to ease the burdens placed on vulnerable people we must return to philosophy and look at the refugee crisis for what it …

Decentralized Perfectionism: A Critique Of Contractarianism And Bureaucracy Through The Inspiration Of Nietzsche, Felix George Newton Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The goal of this project is to articulate a critique of contractarianism and it links to the modern system of bureaucracy through a commitment to individual valuation and pluralism. This work illustrates the core of both contractarianism and bureaucracy as security and through this identification demonstrates the inability to consider social, political, and economic alternatives. This critique is based on the contractarianism of Thomas Hobbes and John Rawls, both demonstrating the deep contractarian need for security. This is extended further into a modern critique of bureaucracy as an extension of the contractarian framework, a system dependent on limiting conceptions of …

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 …

Revolutionaries In Form: The Russian Futurist Poets In The Cultural Politics Of The Early Soviet Union, 1917-1928, Noah Wurtz

Senior Projects Fall 2020

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

Punishing Assemblages: A Queer, Decolonizing Theory Of The American Prison, Liam Hopkins

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Political Modernization In Atatürk’S Turkey And The Shah’S Iran And The Struggle For Meaning, Ethan Jacob Hornk Evans

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Humans desire meaning in life, and achieve it by satiating their thymos. This is the part of the mind which desires pride, whereas the rational part of the soul desires reasoned thoughts, while the survival part of the soul desires food, water, and necessities. Furthermore, humans desire to show their lives have meaning in front of others, or seek recognition. They do this by risking their lives or livelihoods for the sake of satisfying their thymos.

The shah of Iran and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk tried to modernize their countries during the 19th Century. The shah was deposed in …