Continental Philosophy Commons^™

Cinema's Poetic Function: Creating An Amorous Distance, William Yonts

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

The aim of this thesis is to examine how cinema can embrace its poetic function to avoid its assimilation into preexisting hermeneutic structures, which would leave it vulnerable to myth as defined by Roland Barthes, and instead be a generative force, encouraging its viewer to engage with the full potential of the text. This mode of spectatorship is termed the “amorous distance,” which Barthes describes as his simultaneous fascination with the film and that which exceeds it. The amorous distance finds further articulation through the work of Roman Jakobson and Julia Kristeva. Jakobson’s schema of six language functions describes the …

Embracing The Wound Of Contingency: Transcribing Reality In Supernatural Horror And Found Footage, Mason Dax Dickerson

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

To counter both the form of critical thought first outlined by Kant that dispels absolute knowledge, as well as the dogmatic necessitarianism that asserts the universe must be one way for an absolute originary reason, Quentin Meillassoux argues for the “non-facticity of facticity” to implicate an absolute contingency or unreason structuring reality: in effect, anything could happen for no reason at all. Meillassoux suggests the trauma of the contingent event and the sudden impossibility of inductive science in its wake may be explored in an “Extro-Science Fiction” text (XSF) – but limits his examples to science fiction literature. Framing the …

Moving Back To The 18th Century View's Of Women's Role And Perception Of Their Lives: The Case Of Motherhood, Yelena Liepelt

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project will explore the role of French women of the 18th century, and specifically the problems they faced due to their gender. I will analyze the obstacles that made it difficult for strong women, such as physicist and author Madame du Châtelet, to obtain happiness. These include the complicated identity of educated and ambitious women who lived within a strict gender binary system.

I will compare Châtelet’s concept of happiness from a female perspective to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s view of women’s happiness and maternity. Rousseau believed women played an important role in society; however, their existence was always relative to …

Language, Truth, And Rhetoric, Collin Pointon

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

The words of Martin Heidegger are no example of the lowest form of wit. His sentence is meant to be interpreted in two important ways that utilize different meanings of the word "truth." Our common understanding of the word truth is not something innate but a product of history and culture that stretches back through the Romans to the ancient Greeks. Alētheia in ancient Greek was translated to veritas in Latin. The translation included an interpretation--as all translations do (which is why translation is rhetorical in nature)--of alētheia as a Platonic entity. Alētheia was interpreted as something transcendent; something that …

Rethinking Reverence For Life, Mike W. Martin

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Albert Schweitzer’s ethics of reverence for life is more complex and interesting than first appears. It contains themes relevant to contemporary environmental ethics, including a virtue-ethics approach that emphasizes personal responsibility and tolerance, empathy for living organisms, and the fundamental unity of life. Not surprising, then, Schweitzer has recently been acknowledged for pioneering a biocentric (life-centered) ethical theory.

At the same time, Schweitzer’s ethic has four unpalatable features: pantheism, anthropomorphism, excessive subjectivity, and guilt mongering. I trace these features to the metaphysical framework in which Schweitzer develops his ideal of reverence for life. I also show how the framework can …