Continental Philosophy Commons^™

Entropy And Incarnation In The Duchamp Room: An Inquiry Into Aesthetic Time, Jesse Goodman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the posthumous installation of Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés, as a test case for how particularly historically situated artworks may or may not change over time. It begins with an overview of Duchamp’s biography, and his own theories of art’s relationship to temporality (which influenced the piece’s construction). It then moves through contrasting accounts of aesthetic time from Adorno and Robert Smithson. Section two works with Walter Benjamin’s writing on photography and aura to produce an account of estrangement between the piece and the viewing subject induced by the historical development of the artwork’s “translation” and “replication”—through …

On The Deconstruction Of Nothingness In Digital Communication, Matthew S. Lindia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project argues that digital technologies call for a new problematic of communication, centered around the conditions of (im)possibility for creating perfect digital profiles of users as generated from user data. Beginning with Edmund Husserl’s analysis of essentially occasional expressions, this dissertation posits that user data occurs on three levels: (1) the level of expression, where a user wants-to-say something through their inputs, (2) the level of facticity, where biometric data are involuntarily produced by the user, and (3) the level of nothingness, where the user’s inaction, such as not-answering, is taken as data. Moving beyond what Husserl’s framework can …

The Publics Of Hannah Arendt And Jürgen Habermas, Andrew Heggie

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Hannah Arendt’s and Jürgen Habermas’s accounts of the public are notable and important cornerstones in contemporary western political philosophy. This thesis will offer characterizations of Arendt’s account of the public realm in The Human Condition, and Habermas’s account of the public sphere in The Structural Transformation of The Public Realm, comparing and contrasting these accounts to each other in order to highlight the uniqueness of each account; as well the possible contemporary political relevance of these accounts.

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

The Grand Narratives: The Rise And Fall Of Universal Philosophical Systems, Gavin S. Litchford

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis reviews the development of narrative and systematic methods of argumentative legitimation in the Western tradition of philosophy from its conception until the present day. Utilizing both primary sources from central figures in key movements within this development process and supplementary secondary sources, this analysis notes which systems were used as appeals to higher authority and the trends in the adoption and transformation of new models. It is demonstrated that the Enlightenment era punctuated a progression begun in the premodern era from simple, cultural narratives to individualized, subjective, and self-perpetuating Grand Narrative systems, and that it generated the preconditions …

Günther Anders’S “Promethean Shame”: Technological Ressentiment And Surveillance, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Günther Anders’s philosophy of technology, particularly his complex notion of ‘Promethean shame,’ or technological ressentiment, may illuminate questions of surveillance and AI ethics. As a critical philosopher of technology, radically so, his emphasis on the negative or downside of technology distinguishes Anders’s thinking on technology from future-focused and mainstream technological messianism. Key to Anders’s notion of ‘Promethean shame’ was his observation that we adapt ourselves to our technology, not the other way around. Provocatively, Anders argued that while the populace in the past—referring to Nazi Germany—required the techniques of mass psychology and mass gatherings for the purposes of manipulation and …

What's The Art In Artificial Intelligence?, Emily Verla Bovino

Open Educational Resources

This workbook learns from Black and Indigenous artists working with Artificial Intelligence to confront issues of ethics and aesthetics in its technologies. It features guided learning activities with links to publicly available video lectures and online articles, and includes options for experiential learning through both a tutorial in Midjourney and a visit to the public art collection at York College in Jamaica, Queens. Featured artists include: American Artist, Rizvana Bradley, Beth Coleman, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Suzanne Kite, Sondra Perry, Mimi Onuoha and Alisha B. Wormsley. Works by Martin Puryear and Maren Hassinger are explored in the Midjourney exercise.

About …

Clark Moustakas’ Husserl, Thomas Byrne

The Qualitative Report

This paper critically examines Clark Moustakas’s presentation of Husserl in Phenomenological Research Methods. I argue that Moustakas’s account misrepresents two core elements of Husserl’s phenomenology – intentionality and the transcendental reduction – in ways that directly compromise the foundations of qualitative phenomenological research. First, Moustakas treats intentional meaning as something private, located within the individual, rather than as given in the world. This misreading severs the connection between experience and a shared world of meaning, leaving qualitative researchers unable to clarify participants’ accounts beyond private expression. Second, Moustakas reduces the transcendental reduction to introspective reflection, overlooking its function as a …

A Benjaminian Rumination Of Grasses And Tomatoes In Contemporary Anatolian Film, Ceren Izci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis interprets the intersection of history, ecology, and politics through two contemporary Anatolian films: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses and Murat Fıratoğlu’s One of These Days When Hemme Dies. We focus on the films’ portrayal of social relations and relationships to other living beings through interpreting the temporal layers and historical tensions present in the plots of the films. We introduce the paper by pondering over the question of whether these films are political. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s concepts of “first nature” and “second nature”, the first chapter introduces the philosophical framework for understanding the connection between …

Johann Georg Hamann And The Liberal Project, Jesse D. Ansley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the political thought of Johann Georg Hamann, his relationship to liberalism, and the importance to modern concerns for consensus formation and intercultural dialogue. This contributes to the line of literature sparked by Isaiah Berlin debating the political legacy of Hamann and its relation to the development of modern politics. Berlin labels Hamann an anti-rationalist whose current developed into the ideology of the Nazi party. My work supports the countervailing arguments that Hamann’s work is importantly different from the Romantics he inspired and even more so from the Nazis. By examining two complete works and a number of …

Embodied Mythology Of Rhetoric: The Dialectic Of The Gender Binary Logos, Isaac A. Lacap

Honors College Theses

Gender is often described as a social construct. This description usually contrasts social construction with other unchanging, unambiguous concepts. Through Chiara Bottici's analysis, I argue the concept of myth breaks us from this dichotomy. By understanding myth as the persistent creation of significance through narratives, we no longer leave myth to the ambit of untruth and unreality. Instead, we see myths as a way to direct people’s actions by giving them a way to see the world. By integrating Bottici with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, I argue the significance of myth occurs through embodiment by organizing gestures. These gestures form a system …

Hannah Arendt As Hermeneutic Phenomenologist: Natality And The Miracle Of Philosophy, Andrew H. Marquis

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

I argue that Hannah Arendt practiced hermeneutic phenomenology in the canonical mode of her mentor, Martin Heidegger. Hermeneutic phenomenology is not a philosophical school defined by methods, results, or topics. It is a practice of transformative thinking by which we work through the burdens of who and how we have been towards the possibilities of who and how we could be. Heidegger, burdened by the scientism of his philosophical milieu, articulated this practice not by rejecting scientistic philosophies outright but by interpretively recovering their most promising tendencies.

Though seldom recognized as a hermeneutic phenomenologist, Arendt’s philosophical response to Nazism reveals …

Internalism, Externalism, And The Phenomenology Of Epistemic Justification, Steven Winterfeldt

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation applies a phenomenological method of analysis to the dispute between analytic internalists and externalists regarding epistemic justification. Traditionally, the justification condition on knowledge has been interpreted as an internal condition, but the growing popularity of the externalist antithesis has placed internalism on the defensive. Ultimately, however, the dispute appears to have fallen into an impasse. I identify a set of four arguments or cases that, when taken together, prompt us to adopt a set of contradictory conclusions about the necessary and sufficient conditions for justified belief. Moreover, none of the analytic views of justification surveyed seem to be …

The Spiritual Foundations Of An Unbreakable Ukraine During The War, Olena Rohova, Tetiana Lysokolenko, Iryna Karpan

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

An analysis of the spiritual foundations of the ability of Ukrainian society to resist the illegal military aggression of a country whose resources significantly exceed those of Ukraine. Ukraine’s unbreakability is connected to the dominant values and worldview of its representatives, which include spirituality responsible for the resiliency of individuals, the plasticity to perceive challenges of fate, and the responses of radical changes of being. The central idea of resiliency includes the revival of the most important religious, cultural, and historical factors of collective spirituality in Ukrainian society. The religious values introduced into the Ukrainian culture by Christianity as a …

The Bus Stop At The Heart Of Capitalism, Jamie Van Der Klaauw, Ryan Kopaitich

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Where is the heart of capitalism today? To fight it, we must construct it. But in doing so, we can also construct a public capable of overthrowing it.

Estha And Trans Identity In The God Of Small Things, Clara Reid

Critical Humanities

Gender relationships in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy change over the course of the book. In many ways, gender and caste are inseparable from one another in how they interact; it is Estha who bridges the gap between both. Whether consciously or subconsciously, he engages in this transgressive behavior in order to become his sister Rahel. This essay positions Estha as a trans woman longing for a becoming, and it is through his successful pursuit of Rahel in both a queer and psychoanalytic sense that he becomes a woman. This pursuit manifests through transgressive behavior, putting him …

How Scientists Can Investigate Perception: Phenomenological Foundations For Qualitative Research, Kimberly Tucker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While medicine makes visible symptoms of disease, phenomenology provides a different tool for making illness experience visible. Phenomenology offers a tool for a new kind of description and a different kind of knowledge of disease. It holds a unique epistemic power through the descriptions it generates through the application of the transcendental phenomenological method. Husserl’s method, outlined in Ideas I, provides the steps for its implementation in clinical research. This dissertation explores the application of the transcendental phenomenological method as a foundation for research on perception, with the goal of characterizing phenomenological validity as a proper goal of medical epistemology. …

“Repeat A Little:” Time And Freedom In Deleuze’S Difference And Repetition, Mine Sak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of time as presented in Difference and Repetition and use it to construct a concept of freedom, which is notably absent in his work. I argue that Deleuze’s exposition of the three syntheses of time provides significant insights for exploring the ontological possibility and structure of freedom. Through an analysis of his theory of the three syntheses of time, I investigate the meanings of agency, destiny, and choice within Deleuze's framework. I demonstrate that free choice necessitates both involuntary and creative action. Given the apparent tension between freedom and involuntariness, I explore …

Clinical Applications Of Phenomenology: Analysis Of Lived Experience Of Eye Disease, Kimberly Tucker

Graduate Student Research Symposium

This paper presents a phenomenological study that explores the embodied experience of vision loss within the context of eye disease, while also providing a detailed discussion of the methodological approaches utilized in the research. Phenomenology is integrated to address clinical epistemic concerns, particularly the limitations of conventional vision tests in fully capturing perception and the lived experiences of vision loss. This interdisciplinary approach builds on the clinical understanding of eye disease by incorporating the broader dimensions of the lifeworld that intersect with visual impairment in degenerative eye diseases. While standard clinical approaches focus primarily on measurable aspects of visual function, …

On The Readership Of Spinoza’S Writing & A Poetics For Thought, Tam Pham

Honors Thesis

This paper invites attention to textual facts and other intricacies in the readership of Spinoza’s writing, which bring to the fore his thinking qua thinking under language, a consideration that seems at least underappreciated, if not misappreciated, by the very readership in question. In so doing, the paper reflects on the possibility—and perhaps necessity—of a poetological purview into a philosophical corpus, in terms of its being written under a sense of Latin as well as of other tongues, generated by and for a thinker to be the linguisticity within which he thinks. To put in differently: if Spinoza were to …