Continental Philosophy Commons^™

Symbolic Violence As Subtle Virulence: The Philosophy Of Terrorism, Jonathan Beever

Re-visioning Terrorism

Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.

Negotiating The Anthropological Limit. Derrida, Stiegler, And The Question Of The Animal, Nathan Van Camp

Between the Species

Although much has been written about the so-called political, ethical and religious turns in the thinking of Jacques Derrida, few have noticed that his late writings were marked by what we could tentatively call a “zoological turn.” This is surprising given that in The Animal That Therefore I Am Derrida clearly stated that the question as to what distinguishes the human from the animal has for him always been the most important question of philosophy. This essay will attempt to offer a preliminary exploration of this still largely uncharted aspect of Derrida’s thought. Starting from a brief overview of Derrida’s …

The Quantum Dialectic, Logan Kelley

Pitzer Senior Theses

A philosophic account of quantum physics. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I is dedicated to laying the groundwork of quantum physics, and explaining some of the primary difficulties. Subjects of interest will include the principle of locality, the quantum uncertainty principle, and Einstein's criterion for reality. Quantum dilemmas discussed include the double-slit experiment, observations of spin and polarization, EPR, and Bell's theorem. The first part will argue that mathematical-physical descriptions of the world fall short of explaining the experimental observations of quantum phenomenon. The problem, as will be argued, is framework of the physical descriptive schema. Part …

Marcuse On The Two Dimensions Of Advanced Industrial Society And The Significance Of His Thought Today, Michael C. Hartley Mr.

Senior Honors Projects

Herbert Marcuse was a philosopher and social theorist who wrote extensively about the dynamics of social change in the technologically advanced societies of the Western world. Motivated by the desire to see humanity develop societies that would allow for individuals to live a free and happy existence, Marcuse critiqued the existing societies of his time. Although Marcuse’s main work, One-Dimensional Man, is over forty years old, it can continue to offer us new insights today. I believe that Marcuse’s thought offers a powerful framework for analyzing our contemporary society. In this project I distill this framework, what could be …

The Mind In Motion, Shayan A. Gates

Senior Honors Projects

The Mind in Motion

Shayan Gates

Faculty Sponsor: Galen Johnson, Philosophy

The origin of most scientific disciplines can be traced back to a few philosophical insights posed by a few curious thinkers throughout time, and cognitive science is no exception.While intrigue has nearly always surrounded the human mind and its relation to the brain, validation of this relationship has not been so easy to come by, and there are still areas of contention during this time of advancement in neurological sciences and related technologies.

This topic is very broad (to say the least) so I decided to confine this paper …

The Implications Of Merleau-Ponty For The Human Sciences, Ryan Marcotte

Senior Honors Projects

The Implications of Merleau-Ponty for the Human Sciences Ryan Marcotte Cobb Faculty Sponsor: Galen Johnson, Philosophy The American Anthropology Association (AAA) made headlines in November 2010 due to a controversial change in their 'Long-Range Plan.' The revised AAA mission statement omits all mention of the word 'science' and this omission has sparked a fierce debate within the anthropology community. The debate reveals that the study of social phenomena can be approached from two competing points of view – a scientific and a non-scientific perspective.  This project is concerned with the historical and intellectual developments that led to this competition between …

Zu Nietzsches Statuen: Skulptur Und Das Erhabene, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Metaphern aus dem Feld der Bildhauerein kommen überraschend oft bei Nietzsche vor: von der Statue als einem Ideal von Unweglichkeit ebenso wie von der Skulptur als einer Metapher der Selbst-Darstellung, bis hin zu Nietzsches ikonoklastischer Klärung: wie mit dem Hammer zu philosophieren sei.

In Bezug auf die griechische Platik sowie Nietzsche’s Texte argumentiert die Autorin mit Nietzsche gegen eine damals und noch heute weit verbreitete Auffassung, wonach wir solche Statuen fast unvermeidlich aus einem jüdisch-christlichen Gesichtspunkt betrachten. Außerdem geht sie besonders ein auf Nietzsches Beschwörung der Skulptur in dem Zarathustra-Abschnitt Von den Erhabenen.

Adorno On Science And Nihilism, Animals, And Jews, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No less than Heidegger or Nietzsche, Adorno had his own critical notions of truth/untruth. But Adorno’s readers are unsettled by the barest hint of anything that might be taken to be anti-science. Thus it is argued that Adorno opposes not science but scientism. But, and here not unlike Arendt, Adorno argued that so-called “scientistic” tendencies are the very conditions of society and of scientific thought.” I ask how we are to read Adorno by exploring his thought on animals and nihilism.

Nietzsche And Lou, Eros And Art : On Lou’S Triangles And The « Exquisite Dream » Of Sacro Monte, Babette Babich

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

The Giffords Shooting: Who’S The Fall Guy?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author explores the concept of ‘the fall guy’ from a political philosophical perspective.

Thoughts On Wisdom And Its Relation To Critical Thinking, Multiculturalism, And Global Awareness, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

We want to propose a conception of wisdom with a view to exploring what insights it can give us into some basic dimensions of teaching in contemporary higher education. We hope to show that this conception allows us, on the one hand, to see some crucial inadequacies of existing approaches to critical thinking, multi-culturalism, and global awareness or internationalism. On the other hand, we believe that it also gives us some insight into the existentially or spiritually meaningful dimensions of learning. In this way, it bridges the most contemporary and practical foci of teaching and its most fundamental and timeless …

The Ister: Between The Documentary And Heidegger’S Lecture Course Politics, Geographies, And Rivers, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The Ister, the 2004 documentary by the Australian scholars and videographers, David Barison, a political theorist, and Daniel Ross, a philosopher, appeals to Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne «Der Ister»and the video takes us «backward» as the river flows: beginning from the Danube’s delta where it ends in the sea and «journeying» with it to its source in the Alps.

the value of the Barison/Ross documentary for both political theory and philosophy is its illustration of the technological incursions or assaults on the river itself, that is to say: its representation of the ‘uses’ and hence …

The Gaze Called Animal: Notes For A Study On Thinking, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

Over the course of several days in1997, JacquesDerrida delivereda long lecture to attendees of a conference in Cerisy called “The Autobiographical Animal.” As part of his opening remarks, the philosopher recounted a curious little scene that served to introduce the central theme of the larger address that followed. The scene begins when Derrida reports that each morning, with an almost ritualistic regularity, he is followed from his bedroom into the bathroom by his cat, an unnamed feline, he insists, that is a real little cat, not the mere figure of a cat: “It doesn’t silently enter the bedroom as an …

The Philosopher And The Volcano, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

The 'Death Of The Author' In Hegel And Kierkegaard: On Berthold's 'The Ethics Of Authorship', Antony Aumann

Faculty Works

In The Ethics of Authorship, Daniel Berthold depicts G. W. F. Hegel and Søren Kierkegaard as endorsing two postmodern principles. The first is an ethical ideal. Authors should abdicate their traditional privileged position as arbiters of their texts’ meaning. They should allow readers to determine this meaning for themselves. Only by doing so will they help readers attain genuine selfhood. The second principle is a claim about language. To wit, language cannot express an author’s thoughts. I argue that if the claim about language holds, the ethical ideal becomes superfluous. In addition, if Berthold has identified Hegel and Kierkegaard’s views …

Nietzsche’S Aesthetic Critique Of Darwin, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

Despite his position as one of the first philosophers to write in the “post- Darwinian” world, the critique of Darwin by Friedrich Nietzsche is often ignored for a host of unsatisfactory reasons. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of Darwin is important to the study of both Nietzsche’s and Darwin’s impact on philosophy. Further, I show that the central claims of Nietzsche’s critique have been broadly misunderstood. I then present a new reading of Nietzsche’s core criticism of Darwin. An important part of Nietzsche’s response can best be understood as an aesthetic critique of Darwin, reacting to what he saw as …

Towards A Critical Philosophy Of Science: Continental Beginnings And Bugbears, Whigs, And Waterbears, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Continental philosophy of science has developed alongside mainstream analytic philosophy of science. But where continental approaches are inclusive, analytic philosophies of science are not – excluding not merely Nietzsche’s philosophy of science but Gödel’s philosophy of physics. As a radicalization of Kant, Nietzsche’s critical philosophy of science puts science in question and Nietzsche’s critique of the methodological foundations of classical philology bears on science, particularly evolution as well as style (in art and science). In addition to the critical (in Mach, Nietzsche, Heidegger but also Husserl just to the extent that continental philosophy of science tends to depart from a …

The Yemen Narrative: Cargo Cults And Cargo Security, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author gives a psychological perspective on the security of aviation cargo shipments.

Early Continental Philosophy Of Science, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Great Men, Little Black Dresses, & The Virtues Of Keeping One’S Feet On The Ground, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

One can use phenomenology, along with the usual tools of scholarship and analysis, to make the point that the promises of the 1960’s and 1970’s especially those of the women’s movement, have yet to bear significant fruit in the academy. Hence, for everybody’s non-thingly phenomenology of non-practice, a handy-dandy wiki-check on the net yields the claim that “U.S. Department of Education reports indicate that philosophy is one of the least proportionate, and possibly the least proportionate, fields in the humanities with respect to gender,” with a rather dismal addendum reporting that in “2004, the percentage of Ph.D.s in philosophy going …

"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" Or Nietzsche And Hermeneutics In Gadamer, Lyotard, And Vattimo, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Apart from reading Nietzsche's words on his characterization as an educator in suspicion with some suspicion, what does Nietzsche offer hermeneutics? This essay takes up this question by talking about the politics of interpretation, hermeneutics, and genealogy. In the process, we can address Lyotard's enthusiastic fealty to technology and offer yet once more requiem for the postmodern, understood here through (and hence contra) Lyotard as the simulacrum of communication that is the internet.

Das ‚Problem Der Wissenschaft‘ Oder Nietzsches Philosophische Kritik Wissenschaftlicher Vernunft, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Ex Aliquo Nihil: Nietzsche On Science And Modern Nihilism. Acpq, 84-2 (Spring 2010): 231-256., Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

This essay explores the nihilistic coincidence of the ascetic ideal and Nietzsche’s localization of science in the conceptual world of anarchic socialism as Nietzsche indicts the uncritical convictions of modern science by way of a critique of the causa sui, questioning both religion and the enlightenment as well as both free and unfree will and condemning the “poor philology” enshrined in the language of the “laws” of nature. Reviewing the history of philosophical nihilism in the context of Nietzsche’s “tragic knowledge” along with political readings of nihilism, willing nothing rather than not willing at all, today’s this-worldly and very planetary …

The Biopolitical Unconscious: Not-All Persons Are Political, Ross G. Shields

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

It is a tenet of post-structuralist theory that discursive series fail in their attempts to constitute themselves as totalities. A system can fail in two distinct ways—from Kant’s dynamic and mathematic failures of reason, to Jacques Lacan’s equation of the two failures of language with the two failures (male and female) of sex. Biopolitical theory offers the most recent account of failure and collapse, now on the geopolitical scale. Given that the biopolitical subject too is sexed, this thesis asks the question: How does biopolitics fail? Franz Kafka’s aborted novels offer a premonition to a possible answer.

How Greek Tragedy Inspired Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy From "The Birth Of Tragedy" To "Ecce Homo", Marc Le Voir

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Peg Birmingham: Hannah Arendt And Human Rights: The Predicament Of Common Responsibility, Dianna Taylor

Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Forgiveness As New Creation: Christ And The Moral Life Revisited, Lois E. Malcolm

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

What About The Children? Benjamin And Arendt: On Education, Work, And The Political, Jules Simon

Selected Works Temporary Series

This article is a rough draft of an article that I contributed to an edited volume of articles dealing with progressive education theory. I reflect on articles that Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin wrote that deal with educational reform and innovation, both political in nature.

Kierkegaard On Indirect Communication, The Crowd, And A Monstrous Illusion, Antony Aumann

Faculty Works

Following the pattern set by the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard conveys many of his insights through literature rather than academic prose. What makes him a valuable member of this tradition is the theory he develops to support it, his so-called “theory of indirect communication.” The most exciting aspect of this theory concerns the alleged importance of indirect communication: Kierkegaard claims that there are some projects only it can accomplish. This paper provides a critical account of two arguments Kierkegaard offers in defense of this claim. The first argument is that he needs to use indirect communication in order to discourage …

Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, And Their Aftermath, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Developments in Anglo-American philosophy during the first half of the 20^th Century closely tracked developments that were occurring in continental philosophy during this period. This should not surprise us. Aside from the fertile communication between these ostensibly separate traditions, both were responding to problems associated with the rise of mass society. Rabid nationalism, corporate statism, and totalitarianism (Left and Right) posed a profound challenge to the idealistic rationalism of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophies. The decline of the individual – classically conceived by the 18th-century Enlightenment as a self-determining agent – provoked strong reactions. While some philosophical tendencies sought to …