Philosophy Commons^™

Tracing The Dispossession Of The Enslaves Black Woman And A Potential For Resistance., Lila R. O'Conell

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

Philosophy Of Agency In Studies Of Alcoholism: A Generalizable Paradigm For Overcoming Spiraling Habits, Paul Patrick De Tournemire

Senior Projects Fall 2023

This study considers several of the most successful attempts to understand alcoholism and some of the more successful rehabilitation strategies from the perspective of the philosophy of agency. Puzzling behaviors of the alcoholic are clarified by considering how an individual’s associations between behavior and reward are impacted by the delay of the particular reward, and how this relation is situated by the sober life that serves as a motivation for the alcoholic to drink. Far from being niche interventions, George Ainslie and Hanna Pickard present notable rehabilitation strategies that could have broad applications, particularly in relation to behaviors that involve …

Existential Analyses: Freud And Camus On Suffering, Blake Anthony Masi

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

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.

Ethical Anxiety: Establishing Morals In An Amoral World, Gabriel Jay Hummel

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a project founded on uncertainty. How can we ever judge anyone else when we can never know them as we do ourselves? How can we say that someone does wrong when they believe themselves to be doing right? Since at least the nineteenth century ethics, and philosophy as a whole, carved a new path without the aid of stabilizing pillars of objective, eternal truths. The following work demonstrates how a sense of vertigo descends on one who is forced to question the existence of those objective truths and how that fearful confusion can lead to dangerous refuges, yet …

Art And The Inescapable Spell Of Mimesis, Ziyuan Tao

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

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 …

Cutting The Puppet Strings: Confronting The Singularity, Gabriel Joesph Weiss

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Modern technology has excelled at an unprecedented rate. The rise of artificial intelligence raises many ethical questions and concerns for humanity, as it has incited many pressing debates between philosophers, computer scientists, and social critics who share concerns for the future of humanity but conflict with one another regarding whether or not we should rely on technology to govern human affairs and control society's infrastructures. Drawing from Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Hubert Dreyfus, and others, this project weighs out the probabilities and problems of the technological singularity posited by Ray Kurzweil, confronting our habits of addressing technology and the way …

Plato And Trumpism: Look At Trumpism Via The Lens Of Plato’S Republic, Yuchen Zhou

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This paper offers Plato's Republic as a lens to understand Trump Movement in today's America. On this basis, my paper has been divided into three parts. The first presents a political model to explain the underlying force beneath the degeneration of the political regime in Plato's theory. The second applies that model to conclude political features of populist movements and psychological traits of the tyrant. The last part applies above conclusions to offer a way to interpret the formation of Trumpism and offer possible solution to it.

Nothing Happens Here, Kai Diego Parcher-Charles

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Selfish, Jacopo Mavica

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

Balancing On The Edges: The Phenomenological Children Of Children's Literature, Zoe Stone

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

They Yearn So High That They Have Sprouted Wings, Blake Anthony Masi

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Auf Die Schiffe!, Koben Morgenthaler

Senior Projects Fall 2023

I argue that metaphors of water and fluidity are essential to both the content and form of Nietzsche’s work. In regards to the content, many important ideas such as a healthy response to the death of God and a philosophy of the future are, at their core, characterized by embracing fluidity. As for the form, just as Zarathustra tells us his teachings have become a river, Nietzsche’s work uses metaphor, aphorism, and poetic language to embody the qualities of dancing water. Consequently, it defies rigid interpretations that would turn it into a system and avoids falling prey to its own …

The Freedom Handbook, Sydney Oshuna-Williams

Senior Projects Fall 2023

"The Freedom Handbook." This autobiographical exploration is not only a personal endeavor but a response to the critical framework presented by Frank Wilderson in his book, “AfroPessimism”. For those unfamiliar with AfroPessimism as a theory, it ultimately positions Black people as socially dead, prompting me to challenge the conventional understanding of it solely as a critical theory. If we accept the claims that human life hinges on the complete objectification of a distinct people, the implications extend far beyond the realm of theory, urging us to confront the very essence of freedom itself. As you embark on this journey with …

Wisdom Of Nature: Finding Tao In Water, Ziyu Xu

Senior Projects Fall 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Do Androids Dream Of Improvisation?, Aidan J. Samp

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Decentered, Together, Alone: Thinking The Virtual World With Heidegger’S Being And Time, Margaux Juliette Suinat

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

A Look At Sex Work And Onlyfans Through Self-Definition And Hegelian Dialectic, Morenike Ea Fabiyi

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

Creativity As Potential: Humanity’S Most Important Trait Reimagined, Jess M. Berkun

Senior Projects Fall 2022

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

When Words Fail: Towards A Subversive Account Of Gender Theory, James Toomey

Senior Projects Fall 2022

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

The Artist's Diary, Anamae Gilroy

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Confucianism And Pragmatism: Similarities In Notions Of Selfhood And Society, Zephyr Hrechdakian

Senior Projects Spring 2022

There are a number of similarities between pragmatism and early Confucianism regarding their views of the self and society. I explore these, as well as some key differences, by comparing texts associated with Confucius with the work of three notable pragmatists: William James, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey. I find that all four thinkers view human experience as intertwined with nature which leads them to form relational understandings of the self, ultimately sparking in them a tendency to view societies as communities that should by kept harmonious through various processes of cooperative social interaction. However, I find there are …

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 …

A Wordless Wild Cadence, Isaac Alexander Zaslow King

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

Toward A Common Notion Of Authority, Tanner James Sheldon

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

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 …

Psychoepistemology And Subjective Determinism, Kenneth Park

Senior Projects Fall 2022

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

Thinking On Animation:The Problem Of Specificity Thesis, Wandi Liang

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

A Re-Examination Of The Problem Of Universals, Jimmy Berger

Senior Projects Spring 2021

My aims in this project are to address what the problem of universals is, to provide a comprehensive account of its major solutions, to evaluate those solutions, and to provide my own conclusions about the problem. My primary thesis is that philosophers have been wrong to look for a universally applicable theory to account for the problem of universals, and instead should accept the profound complexity of reality and develop more modest theories that are applicable in limited domains.