Continental Philosophy Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

Artworks As Affective Atmospheres: Dufrenne's View Of Their Aesthetic And Philosophical Significance, Dimitris Apostolopoulos

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

This article reconstructs and critically evaluates Mikel Dufrenne’s arguments for the claim that our embodied engagement with art is the most fundamental variety of affective experience. I show how, on his account, aesthetic affectivity, or feeling, emerges in aesthetic experience, and identify the central role that aesthetic atmosphere plays in its constitution. I propose an interpretation on which aesthetic feeling, for Dufrenne, is a founded and skilled form of intentional activity that has epistemic (evidence-responsive) and metaphysical (world-disclosive) import. An aesthetic atmosphere, I contend, is an affective and perceptual context that is tied to an artwork and exercises a regulative …

Introduction: Duquesne Studies In Phenomenology Volume 5, Jeffrey Mccurry

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

No abstract provided.

Passive Listening: Exploring Interpassivity In Ambient Music, David Chechelashvili, Alan Brown

Staff Scholarship - New Zealand

The landscape of ambient music presents unique challenges for critique and classification due to its wide range of subgenres, functions and goals. Often defined by its atmospheric and immersive qualities, ambient music is traditionally seen as providing a backdrop for relaxation or as a means to block out the harsh reality of the outside world. This dominant theory, while valuable in certain contexts, tends to oversimplify the multifaceted nature of ambient music and ignores the potential for more nuanced listening experiences. The proposed alternative theory of interpassivity challenges existing understandings of ambient music production and consumption modes. Drawing on psychoanalytic …

Teaching Philosophy, Growing Child’S Empathy : Derrida’S Trace Theory For Critical Thinking And Character Education, Fatimah Fraya, Fristian Hadinata

International Review of Humanities Studies

Child bullying cases increased significantly following the pandemic and took its toll on the need for emergency tackling and preventive action. This research focused on philosophy as a an approach to character building, using the synthesis method of literature views which also inspired from previous teachings known as Philosophy for Children (P4C), combined with hands-on experiment simulation. The aim is to discover a practical learning concept to enable philosophy to be introduced in children's classrooms at a certain age. Researchers found the intersection between philosophy and child character building beneficial in refining their empathy cognitively and creating better generations in …

I Am Becoming., Dai Asano

Masters Theses

This is a collection of essays documenting my grappling with the idea that time is always in motion. When you say now, it is not now anymore, but we are still in now, a new now. How can I stay in the now without being swept away by the current of time? Describing a film by Ozu Yasujiro, Deleuze writes, “The vase in Late Spring is interposed between the daughter’s half smile and the beginning of her tears. There is becoming, change, passage. But the form of what changes does not itself change does not pass on. This is time, …

An Existentialist Love, Garrett T. Harrison

The Corinthian

This paper seeks to establish an existentialist concept of virtuous Love by discussing the works of famous modern Existentialist thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus within the realm of Love as discussed by Bell Hooks and Skye Cleary. It also seeks to express the significance of this Love within modern society. Our notion of Existentialist Love is built upon Sartre’s concept of authenticity, and branches into the inter-personal through Beauvoir’s notion of reciprocal, virtuous love. It is then expounded into the greater collective through a discussion of fear as the breeder of inauthenticity and is …

Incorporating Institutions And Ideology: Why Covid Didn't Change Anything, Cullen Kendrick

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In this paper, I investigate the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through an economic and philosophical lens to try and understand why government aid was removed. Looking at the problem as solely a structural issue, with Jurgen Habermas’ Between Facts and Norms and Douglas North’s Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance guiding my understanding, provides useful insights. Namely, how the informal and formal structures of society interact, and their cyclical nature. However, that perspective does not provide a complete picture. And so, I developed an understanding of ideology to investigate the origins of informal societal structures. To do this I …

Recognition And Domination: A Hegelian Approach To Evolving Gender And Technology Paradigms, Zachary Davis

CMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to develop a strong account of recognition. It begins with a Hegel-inspired account of recognition as a fundamental desire that drives humanity. This account establishes recognition as fundamental to the initial subject formation of independent self-consciousnesses as agents. I offer the lord-bondsman dualism to provide a critique of domination as oppositional to securing the means for recognition. This entails that, as history progresses the world ought to move towards universally adopting mutual recognition relationships without domination. I adopt this goal as an ideal form of recognition. In Chapter 2, I apply this recognitional framework to gender. Through …

Relationality In Rousseau's Philosophy Of Education, Thayne Cameron

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s assertion of Emile that “Our true study is that of the human condition” serves as the foundation for this dissertation, which examines the significance of certain kinds of basic experiential relationships in Rousseau’s philosophy of education. By analyzing the relationships between the self and objects, the self and others, and the educator and the learner, this work elucidates how these interactions underpin Rousseau’s pedagogical views and their implications for fostering personal and social virtue.

The dissertation explores the self-object relationship through affectivity, embodiment, and purposeful activity, demonstrating how direct engagement with objects shapes perceptions and behaviors. It then …

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

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Inner Song Phenomenological Description Of A Musical Object Of Phantasy, Ellen Moysan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is the phenomenological description of a musical object of phantasy I call “inner song,” i.e., the music that the musician “sings in his or her head” while practicing his or her instrument. It describes the specific inner song of a single musician playing a melodic instrument, and rehearsing in a solipsistic situation. The description is based on three resources: my personal experience as a cellist; the third person experiences of other musicians I have interviewed on that topic since 2010; and the Husserlian corpus. Each chapter starts with excerpts of interviews focusing on specific aspects the inner song. …

A Humanist's Account: Manetti On Humanism's Impact On Morality In 15th Century Italy., Connor Kurtz, Beau Kilpatrick

Undergraduate Research Events

Abstract

Religion, art, and politics were at their peak during the Italian Renaissance. However, because of the generously allocated talent of the Italian sphere at this time it is easy to overlook the contributions of those who broke away from the Catholic concentration and kick started this humanistic era. Giannozzo Manetti, an Italian politician who in 1452 wrote De Ignate er Excellencia Hominis, a challenge to Pope Innocent III’s philosophy. The text has been translated to “On Human Worth and Excellence” and describes a deep-rooted foundation of humanism in religion. He concludes a functionality of society and religion in …

The Liturgical Action Of Christ's Body: A Theo-Philosophical Extension Of Bonhoeffer's Ecclesiology, Joseph Carson

Senior Honors Theses

Bonhoeffer’s theological contributions may provide significant relevance and theoretical illumination on contemporary issues in ecclesiology. Not only did Bonhoeffer offer creative theological insights, but he also incorporated philosophy into his theological positions in a way that maintains the supremacy of theology. Specifically, Bonhoeffer develops an ecclesial theology, starting in Sanctorum Communio and extending throughout his writings, that relies on social theory and philosophy (especially Hegel) while simultaneously making theology the theoretical authority over these other disciplines. In his ecclesiology, Bonhoeffer argues for an ontological unity between the Church and Christ, which he calls the Christ-reality and Christ existing as Church-community …

A Theodical Invitation, Joseph Carson

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

While analytic philosophy has led the charge in answering the problem of evil (i.e., POE), postmodern theology and movements like radical orthodoxy incite a response to POE from a postmodern perspective. With skepticism toward purely metaphysical answers to evil, this essay relies on the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and James K.A. Smith in order to offer a social, ecclesial, and non-rational response to the POE; furthermore, continental philosophy, postmodern theology, and social theory play a significant role in this paper. Supporting the conclusion that the Church is a heuristic, embodied answer to the POE, three contentions form the backbone of …

‘I Have Regained Memory’ (Smṛtir Labdhā): The Bhagavad Gītā As A Parrhesiastic Journey Against Forgetfulness, Raquel Ferrández-Formoso

Comparative Philosophy

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary reading of the Bhagavad Gītā, presenting it as a parrhesiastic dialogue between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, and focusing on the importance attached to memory. Foucault’s studies on the exercise of parrhesia (“true speech”) in the Greco-Roman context, but also Heidegger's views on the original memory, and Abhinavagupta’s commentary to the Bhagavad Gītā have been used as important tools of interpretation. Devotion is described as the constant memory of Kṛṣṇa, through which the practitioner succeeds in substituting some subconscious dispositions (saṃskāras) for others, building a psychic memory that allows for liberation at the time of …

A Rhetoric And Philosophy Of Gifts, Mary Eberhardinger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project synthesizes a selected scope of rhetorical and philosophical perspectives of the gift. The research question is what the relationship between gifts and rhetoric might be. In order to approach this question, this project offers a review of related literature on the topic of gifts. It then provides analysis and discussion that contextualize the question. The project finally concludes by offering implications. The implications address why the question concerning the relationship between gifts and rhetoric matters for the larger landscape of international relations.

Relations And Folds In Leibniz: Monadological Intimacy, Jeff Lambert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My goal is to provide a clear explanation of Leibniz’s notoriously difficult system of relations. Relations among ‘windowless’ substances that exert no causal power over one another seems like a pipe dream that should be abandoned. However, I demonstrate that each substance expresses its relations only through the unique representation of all other substances. That is, any relation a substance expresses is due to this unique, perspectival, non-causal, representation of others. Because this is the case for all substances, this means that this relation of representation is an ongoing process of interconnection for all substances. This representation is not merely …

The Psychology Of Dystopian And Post-Apocalyptic Stories: The Proverbial Question Of Whether Life Will Imitate Art, Donna Roberts

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic genres challenge our notions of Aristotelian mimesis vs Anti-mimesis – i.e., In the study of the human condition, does life imitate art or art imitate life? Popular culture, then and now, provides us with examples to depict the circularity of these notions and the psychological importance of exploring this aspect of human nature, particularly the contemplation of our own collective demise. While we recoil in horror at the images these genres portray, we are also morbidly fascinated by them, and we can’t help but ask ourselves . . . Could that really happen? Will that happen?

Comment …

01. Richard C. Richards, I Hardly Knew Ye, Peter Francev

Praxis, Poems, and Punchlines: Essays in Honor of Richard C. Richards

I first met Richard Richards at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in the fall of 1996. I was a Freshman who had a curious interest in philosophy; yet, at the time, I was a Biology major planning of a life in Hawaii where I’d be conducting research on sharks while teaching at the University of Hawaii and surfing before and after work. Little did I know that my life would be changed forever, after a chance meeting with Richard. [excerpt]

African American Existential Heroes: Narrative Struggles For Authenticity, Michael Cotto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

African American Existential Heroes: Narrative Struggles for Authenticity argues for the development of existential authenticities and their impact on African American self-identity constructions in three African American literary classics:

Richard Wright’s The Outsider, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. For that purpose, the introduction puts forward the aforementioned topic; defines the major terms, authenticity, existentialism, and African Americanness; identifies the three texts to be studied; explicates its methodology; studies the anagnorisis of each text in relation to the existential crisis; accounts for the existential philosophers used, Martin …

Objectivity, Dagfinn Føllesdal

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

The “Indirect Message” In Kierkegaard And Chán Buddhism, Zdeněk Zacpal

Comparative Philosophy

The article seeks to analyse Kierkegaard’s indirecte Meddelelse, which the author proposes to translate as ‘indirect message’. It attempts to consider and illuminate this concept and its general characteristics, types and cases in Kierkegaard's work. They are to serve as a baseline for investigations of indirect messages in Buddhism, especially the famous ‘public cases’ (gong-àn / kōan 公案) of the Chán Buddhists. The author tries to specify indirect messages on both sides of the cultural divide in terms of some Western philosophers. Kierkegaard’s theoretical rationale for his indirect message is profound, sophisticated and appropriate to the theoretical …

Alejandro Napolitano Jawerbaum's Portfolio, Alejandro Jorge Napolitano Jawerbaum

Honors College Portfolios

This portfolio is a journey through my process in these first two years at Duquesne. I decided to do this now rather than later because I'm finishing my philosophy Honors Thesis and my computer science senior project, which is also a thesis, and in the following semesters I will be focusing on mathematics and computer science.

The writings are varied, reflecting the fact that I am pursuing three majors and two minors. The order will reflect my progression, but will generally correspond to topics. First will be my 'simpler' writings as I began my studies here, and are mostly composed …

A Ulysses Pact With Artificial Systems. How To Deliberately Change The Objective Spirit With Cultured Ai, Bruno Gransche

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The article introduces a concept of cultured technology, i.e. intelligent systems capable of interacting with humans and showing (or simulating) manners, of following customs and of socio-sensitive considerations. Such technologies might, when deployed on a large scale, influence and change the realm of human customs, traditions, standards of acceptable behavior, etc. This realm is known as the "objective spirit" (Hegel), which usually is thought of as being historically changing but not subject to deliberate human design. The article investigates the question of whether the purposeful design of interactive technologies (as cultured technologies) could enable us to shape modes of …