Continental Philosophy Commons^™

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Keeping The Problem Alive: Curriculum, Problematisation And The Eyfs, Claire Walsh

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

This paper explores how problems are understood in debates about England’s Early Years Foundation Stage (Department for Education [DfE], 2025). Discussions of the EYFS often focus on identifying what is wrong with it and proposing ways to improve or replace it, including both critical perspectives and alternative approaches to early childhood education. While these positions appear different, the paper argues that they share a common tendency: they treat problems as things to be solved. The paper introduces the concept of solution-binding to describe this habit.

Rather than offering another critique or alternative, the paper asks what happens if problems are …

The Urysohn Lemma: Munkres Variation, Irida Altman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

There is a tradition of Mathematics contributing to the understanding of Music. This article sets out to contribute in the other direction. It uses musical sensibilities to feel its way through a piece of mathematics called the Urysohn Lemma, suggesting the presence of rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic elements within standard proving practices of contemporary Western mathematics. This article employs a literary-philosophical technique of viewing a text in one discipline (mathematics) through the conceptual lens of another (music). As such, this article reports on no experiments—reading the article is the experiment. Each reader performs it for themselves.

Building Legal Dwelling: An Existential Analysis Of The Phenomenon Of Law, Thomas Gambino

Graduate Student Research Symposium

This paper explores the necessity of law for the existence of Dasein in the thinking of Martin Heidegger. It begins by analyzing our everyday experience of the phenomenon of law, concluding that the being of law reveals itself to us, at different times, as present-at-hand and ready-to-hand. From this realization, it grounds the being of law in the being of Dasein, describing law essentially as Dasein’s own existence, projected into the world and shown back to it as a seemingly independent phenomenon. Finally, it characterizes this projection as an act of building and concludes that Dasein dwells in the law …

A Brief Summary Of Albert Camus’S “The Myth Of Sisyphus”, Irma Mosqueda Perez

Philosophy - All Scholarship

In the first pages of The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus chooses to discuss beliefs and values, before diving deep into his theory on absurdism. His purpose is to set the groundwork for his future ideas on the meaning or rather, the lack of meaning of life. So he begins, piece by piece assembling the big puzzle that ends in his theory of philosophical absurdism and continues with an evaluation of the central question of this book: is suicide a justified approach when facing life? In this essay I plan on doing an exposition of the main points of Camus’s …

They, The People, Ammel Sharon

Socio-Legal Review

This essay engages with Rohit De and Ornit Shani’s Assembling India’s Constitution by situating it within a broader conceptual history of “the people.” While the book offers a compelling account of participatory constitution-making, the essay suggests that it opens up further questions about the conceptual and historical conditions shaping the people as a political subject. Drawing on contemporary political theory on populism, the essay explores how politics invokes the people through affective and performative practices alongside constitutional forms.

Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies, Hanyi Wang

Masters Theses

Digitization is not a modern invention. Derived from the concept of fingers, this mindset of packing information into quantifiable, interchangeable units sounds mechanical, yet eerily physical. Try to imagine: a ghostly hand with millions of fingers with the same length, likeness, and function. Under the worldview of Digital Narrative, we live in a digital simulation: everything is representable with quantifiable units, fluid across media. Yet under this spectacle of convenient abundance, something is missing. The Unknowables are replaced with arbitrary symbols, while the Uncategorizables are omitted. This is a framework that cannot accommodate human subtleties and complexities. One needs to …

Receptivity And The Thing In Itself: Allison, Allais, And The Problem Of Outer Affection In Kant’S Transcendental Idealism, Amr Elmargoushy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves within the framework of transcendental idealism, focusing on how this distinction is meant to secure objective validity while respecting the limits of possible experience. It critically evaluates two influential contemporary interpretations: Henry Allison’s epistemological reading, which understands the distinction as marking different ways of considering the same object, and Lucy Allais’s metaphysical reading, which attributes a grounding role to things in themselves. The thesis argues that while Allison’s reinterpretation successfully avoids noumenal causation by construing affection epistemically, it generates a structural epistemic circularity concerning the role of receptivity and …

The Illocutionary Constitution Of Second Nature: An Interpretive Reconstruction Of Hegel’S Philosophy Of Language, Roland William Carspecken

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers an interpretive reconstruction of Hegel’s philosophy of language. Rich reflections on the nature of language and its significance to human life can be found across Hegel’s works. Many of these reflections strongly suggest that language plays a vital role in Hegel’s philosophical project. Yet surprisingly, Hegel never set down a comprehensive account of his view of language. To this day, it remains a matter of dispute whether Hegel’s writings on language are consistent enough to amount to a single ‘philosophy of language’ and, if they are, what sort of philosophy of language they might offer. In the …

The Proper Role Of Religion In Hegel's Philosophy Of Statecraft, Hunter Coates

The Corinthian

In section three of Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel lays out a theory of statecraft that comprises what he deems to be the ethical state. The ethical state is the political state that has secured the rights of its citizens through the union of state power, civil society, and absolute spirit. This paper will investigate the relationship that religion has to the ethical state in Hegel’s philosophy. First, it will be important to explain what Hegel deems absolute spirit in the Science of Logic and Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Volume 3. Next, we will briefly apply …

Phenomenological Philosophy Of Psychedelics: Psychedelic Experience In The Modes Of Saturation And Flesh, Michael V. Kramer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work seeks to develop the nascent sub-field of the phenomenological philosophy of psychedelics. Beginning with a general overview of key aspects pertinent to psychedelic studies, the focus then turns to a general disciplinary discussion of current approaches within the philosophy of psychedelics, as well as psychedelic philosophy—a distinction which is technically deployed. Special consideration is given to the specific approach known as the “natural philosophy of psychedelics,” which is taken as the philosophical foil to the preferred approach of phenomenological philosophy. A survey of the extant literature regarding the implementation of phenomenology within psychedelic discourse is then provided …

Competition And Community In Marx’S Alienation Theory: Addressing 21st Century Social Isolation Through A Laclauian Lens, Brett J. Zimmerman

Theses

Capitalism reorients human priorities by necessitating socio-economic competition and tying the preeminent priority of survival to the rate at which one accumulates material resources. The orientation of wage as the only means to survival has replaced the need for the working class to form tribes, build inter-group solidarity, and engage in their communities, resulting in a less fulfilling society. Marx is traditionally conceptualized as a political or economic thinker, and while much of his political and economic thought will be useful supplementary material, in Section I, I will be viewing Marx through a more interpersonal lens. The section will take …

Get Busy Living: Leaping Out Of Confinement With Kierkegaard In The Shawshank Redemption, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

This article offers a Kierkegaardian reading of The Shawshank Redemption (1994), arguing that the film functions not as a miracle narrative but as a cinematic enactment of existential theology. While existing scholarship frequently interprets Shawshank through biblical typology or Foucauldian notions of incarceration, few consider how the film dramatizes Kierkegaard’s categories of anxiety, despair, and the leap of faith. Shawshank presents prison as more than a space of punishment—it becomes a refuge from the “dizziness of freedom,” a structured escape from the terrifying burden of possibility. Brooks’s suicide tragically embodies what Kierkegaard calls the “despair of weakness,” the inability to …

Sapientia Ex Machina: Engaging Ai As A Meaning-Making Tool For Philosophical Practice, Austin M. Pritchett

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This paper sets out to examine whether a Large Language Model can serve as a genuine interlocutor in philosophical inquiry. With a grounding in the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in conversation with other works in philosophy on AI, language, and the mind, the author determines the extent to which an AI's contributions to conversation can be said to participate in understanding and meaning-making rather than merely simulate it, thereby making evident the extent to which it is useful in philosophical practice.

Finding Light, Jose Enrique Martinez Melgar

Posters - 2026

Finding Light is a narrative driven RPG that follows the journey of Hop, a protagonist who is navigating a fragmented world of lost memories. By exploring diverse environments and interacting with environmental puzzles, you can uncover a story of existentialism and self-discovery. This project aims to explore how interactive media can represent the process of reclaiming one's identity in moments of darkness. Moreover, Finding Light aims to promote mental health awareness.

Gregor Samsa’S Pagkagimata (Awakening) In Bikol: A Becoming-Minor In Translation, Victor John M. Loquias

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Kristian Cordero’s translation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis instantiates what the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call minor literature. Preferring the Bikol term Pagkagimata—the literal event of Gregor Sama’s becoming-animal in the novel as title of the translation and the utilization of the Rinconada Bikol language for the transformed Samsa—Cordero has typified a perspective of translation that challenges the popular view of fluent translation from the source text to the target language. Exemplifying the concept of becoming-minor of Deleuze and Guattari and deploying Lawrence Venuti’s notion of the “remainder,” An Pagkagimata ni Gregor Samsa exhibits a deterritorialization of Bikol …

Mapping The Multifarious Image In Time Of Globalization, Anne-Laure Oberson

Artl@s Bulletin

Abstract: In this paper, I examine the evolving concept of the image, exploring the philosophical implications of its complex, multifaceted nature. I question the value of terms such as icon, simulacrum, and image in reference to Gilles Deleuze’s text Difference and Repetition. I argue for a pluralistic approach to understanding images as they embody more than a duality of visible-invisible dimensions. I seek to capture the multifariousness of the image to understand its transformative power. In conclusion, the paper suggests reevaluating image discourse to better engage with the evolution of its implications in a global context.

Résumé: Dans cet …

Cormac’S Court: Knights Without God In A Savage Land; Or, Chivalry And Existentialism In Cormac Mccarthy’S The Road, Zoë Margaret Metelerkamp

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cormac McCarthy scholars have examined the influence of romantic grail quest literature and existential philosophy on McCarthy’s oeuvre, but they have treated these subjects independently of each other. This thesis offers a novel exploration of McCarthy’s use of these specific philosophical and literary precedents by focusing on the ways The Road unifies medieval literary principles in Chretien’s Perceval with the existential chivalry Søren Kierkegaard extrapolates in Fear and Trembling.

Beyond The Veil: Critical Black Kantianism And The Ethics Of Structural (In)Visibility, Paradise A. Stanford

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation develops what I call Critical Black Kantianism, a reconstructive approach to Kantian moral philosophy that centers race, recognition, and the structural conditions under which moral agency is formed. While Kantian ethics typically presumes idealized agents operating within just social contexts, this project argues that such abstraction obscures how racial domination actively shapes autonomy, dignity, and self-consciousness. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ account of double consciousness, Black feminist thought, and contemporary theories of recognition, I show that moral agency is not merely exercised within social environments but is constituted through them—often under conditions of misrecognition that fracture autonomy.

Against …

The Aporia Of Divinity: Hegel's Metaphysics In Conversation With Spinoza And Schelling, Abhinav Ganesh

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the intersections between the metaphysics of Spinoza, Hegel, and Schelling, as seen through their engagement with the concept of immediacy. I aim to show that this perspective offers a fruitful way of understanding the arguments of these three figures, while also complicating our understanding of the nature of immediacy and its importance to metaphysical systems.

Who Cares? A Critique Of Digital Classrooms In K–12 Education And What It Means For Students And Teachers, Jade R. Mccobb-Pratt

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis presents a critical analysis of digital classrooms, i.e., pre-made digital curriculum modules being used in in-person K–12 schools as a replacement for face-to-face instruction. By applying Martin Heidegger’s critique of modern technology, I will demonstrate that digital classrooms fundamentally alter the traditional classroom structure, centering it around domination and exploitation. I will expand Heidegger’s critique by drawing on Albert Borgman’s work to explain how digital classrooms commodify education, thus removing the possibility of a meaningful and enriching educational experience. These critiques run parallel to Michel Foucault’s critiques of discipline in schools. I will recount Foucault’s critiques, apply them …

The Signature Of The Self: Toward A Critique Of The Phenomenological Origins Of Self-Constitution, Dylan Mendez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis is primarily concerned with how the narrative self emerges, as conceptualized in literature spanning phenomenology, philosophy of identity, and psychology. The first chapter focuses on an argument given by Dan Zahavi, in which he claims that an account of narrative self-constitution necessitates an account of minimal subjectivity, which he terms the “minimal self.” I argue against this claim on the grounds that an account of minimal intersubjectivity is a far more pragmatic and compatible model in determining how the narrative self emerges and develops throughout the lifespan. The model of minimal intersubjectivity that I propose is Trevarthen’s primary …

Being-Online: Towards A Phenomenological Account Of Virtual Place And Narrative Selfhood, Ben Runey

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to explore and explicate a phenomenology of virtual place by investigating how environments motivated by computers and smart devices appear within lived experience as well as how these virtual places found and mediate interpretative narratives of self-identity. Many individuals today spend vast portions of their waking hours concerned with or engaged within virtual domains. While contemporary scientific research aims to uncover the effects of this on human psychology, physiology, and social structures, phenomenology must be utilized to reveal the existential, lived dimensions of virtual places. This investigation will be founded upon, but not limited …

Discussion Of Living Through Capitalism, By James A. Chamberlain, James Chamberlain

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

A discussion of Chamberlain's recent book, Living Through Capitalism: Resisting Devastation Through Communities of Life .

Wilhelm Von Humboldt And The Idea Of The Modern University: The Unity Of Bildung And Wissenschaft, Ken Udas

Graduate Masters Theses

Wilhelm von Humboldt and the Idea of the Modern University examines Wilhelm von Humboldt’s contribution to shaping a philosophical ideal that has profoundly influenced the concept and identity of the modern research university for over two centuries. It highlights Humboldt’s position as a key figure in the Prussian reform movement and as the founder of the University of Berlin. Specifically, it addresses a question raised in the late twentieth century as part of the Mythos Humboldt revision: why has the Humboldtian Ideal maintained such lasting influence over the German university system, even as its practical realities have increasingly strayed from …

To Us For Every Decision We Make: A Deleuzian And Guattarian Criticism Of The Films "To Me The One Who Loved You And To Every You I'Ve Loved Before", Elstenn Nicholas Misa, Chino Samuel C. Sta. Ana, Ayed Anthony N. Velasco, Nathaniel Rey D. Ferrer

Sinaya: A Philippine Journal for Senior High School Teachers and Students

Anime has emerged not only as a form of entertainment but also as a cultural and philosophical medium exploring concepts such as identity, decision-making, and existential dilemmas. Despite its growing influence in both global and Filipino contexts, little scholarly attention has been given to how philosophical frameworks like Deleuze and Guattari’s can be applied to analyze such narratives. The study analyzed To Every You I’ve Loved Before (2022) and To Me The One Who Loved You (2022) while applying Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical approach to understand how decisions, with identity formation and social norms, affect character development. The research applies …

Nature Naturing In And As Place, Edward S. Casey

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

In this brief article, I single out two distinctly different kinds of natural place, attempting to show how these not merely contrast with each other but display larger patterns or tendencies that are also found in many other sorts of place. This is to take one integral step to a larger ecology of places provided by the natural world and from which human and nonhuman beings draw life and motion that sustain and support many ways of existing on earth. Without such places, we—and every other form of life—would perish or would not even exist to begin with. It is …

"Let Your Body Do The Talkin'": An Investigation Of Aesthetic Experience Through Phenomenological Psychology, Tone Roald, Anders Essom-Stenz

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

How does the experience of one’s own body contribute to aesthetic experience? This article answers the question from the point of view of phenomenological psychology by portraying how the body is lived from within in intense experiences with works of visual art. Based on descriptions of aesthetic experiences juxtaposed with phenomenological insights about the body and, in particular, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on concrete and abstract movement, it is shown how the lived body gives form to the experience. The experience of one’s own body reflects the expressions of the works of art and comprises not only movement, and with it …

Emotions As Work Material: On Dancers' Refined Use Of Affectivity, Camille S. Buttingsrud

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

As part of their professional practice, dancers allow their affectivity to enhance their kinesthetic work. Their intentional and disciplined use of personal, emotional resources ensures both creativity, interpretation, absorption, and connections in ways that extend beyond the traditional phenomenological understanding of affectivity as pre-reflectively based. The affective regulations dancers employ can be seen as an “artistic epoché,” and their layered performance awareness corresponds with Edmund Husserl’s descriptions of “image-consciousness.” Through qualitative interviews with three professional dancers, phenomenological theory, and additional supportive literature, this article shows how affectivity can be experienced through high-order levels of Leib, constituting states of “bodily …

Participatory Presence In Aesthetic Experiences Of Performance, Sophie Morrissey, Shaun Gallagher

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

In the context of the performing arts, presence can generally be thought of as an experienced connection between performer and audience that heightens the affective impact of the performance. Explorations of how presence is experienced during live performance contribute to our understanding of the relation of presence to participants’ overall aesthetic experience and participation in the performance. However, they also reveal the complex phenomenology of presence and the challenge of offering a unified framework that can account for its various phenomenal manifestations. In this article, we conceive of presence as a recursive dynamical feedback loop that emerges through and modulates …