History of Philosophy Commons^™

Kant's Concept Of Freedom In The Metaphysics Lectures, Alin Paul Varciu

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I argue that we can make use of Kant's metaphysics lectures to have a better understanding of the concepts of practical and transcendental freedom used within the Critique of Pure Reason. Based on Kant's metaphysics lectures I will argue that practical freedom and transcendental freedom are different predicates that apply to our power of choice and that each comprises different sorts of abilities. Practical freedom concerns the abilities we use in choosing the motives for our actions, while transcendental freedom concerns the ability to act otherwise than what nature necessitates through its causal laws. In terms of Kant's free …

The Forgetting Of Fire: An Archaeology Of Technics, Thomas A. Doerksen

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This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucault’s concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins …

The Cave And The Stars: On The People And Democracy Of Non-Philosophy, Jeremy R. Smith

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This monograph dissertation explores the work of François Laruelle and the democratic nature of his non-philosophy. In four separate chapters, this dissertation argues for identifying non-philosophy as the introduction of democracy into thought and seeks to instantiate a necessary theoretical delimitation for its programme, which explores the relationships between people, thought, and power. Chapter One analyzes previous philosophical frameworks from thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Max Horkheimer, and Louis Althusser on their respective stances toward philosophy’s role for people. Chapter Two investigates the work of François Laruelle for the past fifty years as the development of non-philosophy or “human philosophy.” …

Human Extinction In The Pessimist Tradition, Ignacio L. Moya

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Faced with countless threats that pose a danger to the continued existence of the human species, there has emerged a new field in philosophy known as Existential Risk Management. This discipline proposes to understand, quantify, classify and ultimately defeat the risks that exist and that threaten our continued existence. These philosophers accept that human life is good and that it should be promoted. And because of the tremendous value that is found in human life, they argue we should do whatever we can to avert our disappearance.

Philosophical pessimists hold that life is always filled with suffering and that …

You Unseen Cathedrals: A Study Of The Conceptual Conditions Of Negativity, Anda Pleniceanu

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This dissertation addresses a gap in contemporary negativity studies by examining twentieth-century texts that engage with negativity beyond the subject. Starting with the premise that the concepts of negativity and subjectivity are intertwined, I argue that the predominant tendency in scholarship has been to conceptualize subjectivity as a circular structure that incorporates negativity as its dynamic foundation. However, when negativity is defined in subordination to the subjective circle, its radical features are diminished, resulting in “weak negativity.” In Chapter 1, I exemplify my arguments using the works of Alexandre Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, and Judith Butler. In contrast to weak negativity, …

Craft And Virtue In Plato's Early Dialogues, Cecilia Z. Li

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Ancient philosophers are preoccupied with the idea of craft (technê)—art, expertise, skill, and not infrequently translated as knowledge or science. The idea is often seen by ancient thinkers as the pinnacle of rational agency and offers them a vital paradigm for thinking about the world and our place within it. One longstanding tradition is the view that virtue shares important features with the sort of expertise involved in practicing a craft. In this thesis, I investigate the relationship between craft and virtue in Plato, focusing especially on the early dialogues. The overarching aim of this thesis is to …

Civil War And Power: A Theoretical Inquiry, Can Guven

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This dissertation is a theoretical project that explores the conceptual nexus between civil war and power. It maps out a lineage of thought which posits civil war as a framework for explicating politics, not as a pre-political stage of savagery or a deteriorated condition of the socio-political order. Starting with Michel Foucault’s radical yet short-lived civil war thesis, which situates civil war as the matrix of relations of power, this investigation traverses the work of several theorists and philosophers who have drawn on, or departed from, this line of thought. It critically evaluates Giorgio Agamben’s use of the concept …

Imagination As Thought In Aristotle's De Anima, Matthew Small

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Aristotle appears to indicate in various passages in the De Anima that imagination is a kind of thought, and my thesis attempts to make some sense out of this claim. I examine three possible interpretations of the claim that imagination is a kind of thought and eliminate two of them. The first states that Aristotle only calls imagination a kind of thought in a superficial “in name only” sense. The second, more radical interpretation, identifies images as the most basic kind of thoughts. My final chapter defends a more moderate position—inspired by Avempace and the early Averroes—which steers between the …

Thomas Reid On Language And Mind, Alastair L.V. Crosby

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The dissertation concerns Thomas Reid’s philosophy of language. In the first three chapters, I discuss his philosophy of language in relation to his developmental psychology. More specifically, I discuss his answers to two questions: (i) what does the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs make possible? and (ii) what makes the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs possible? The focus is on Reid’s claim that the mind’s ability to understand artificial linguistic signs makes it possible for it to acquire a number of distinct mental abilities, such as to conceive universals, to judge, and to reason. I argue this claim …

Vindicating Evans: A Defence Of Evans' Theory Of Singular Thought, Dylan A. Hurry

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A singular thought can intuitively be understood as a thought that is directly about a particular thing, e.g., a non-conceptual thought about B.B. King, Mont Blanc, or your most beloved pet. The consensus within the singular thought literature has been that Gareth Evans (1982) develops a theory of singular thought throughout his posthumously published work The Varieties of Reference. However, Evans never claims to be developing a theory of singular thought, nor does the locution ‘singular thought’ appear more than a handful of times throughout the work. The singular thought literature lacks any substantial exegetical engagement with the theory …

Aristotle's Account Of Time: A Moderate Realism, Pierre-Luc Boudreault

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This dissertation proposes an interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of time as a whole from a study of Physics IV. 10-14. It addresses interpretive issues and objections pertaining to Aristotle’s view about the nature of time, its existence, as well as its unity and universality. In response to these problems, the interpretation of some ancient and medieval commentators – Themistius, Simplicius, Philoponus, Albert the Great and in particular, Thomas Aquinas – is by and large defended against recent interpretations. It is argued that by defining time as “the number of movement with respect to the “before” and “after” (Phys. IV. …

An Archaeology Of Contemporary Speculative Knowledge, Justas Patkauskas

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This dissertation investigates contemporary speculative knowledge grounded in the immanence episteme, which is struggling to emerge as a foundation for a new kind of absolute knowledge. Regarding method, I use Michel Foucault’s concept of archaeology, situating archaeology in the context of deconstruction. In general, by delineating the various differences and genealogies within immanence theory, I show that immanence is neither a monolithic homogeneity nor a schizophrenic multiplicity but a coherent, if troubled, ground for speculative thought.

In Chapter 1, I define deconstruction as a broad philosophical project concerned with the order of knowledge and the University and its disciplines. I …

"Second Sight": Acknowledging W.E.B. Du Bois's "Double Consciousness" As A Step Towards Dissolution, Alexandra M. Hudecki

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This project examines American scholar W.E.B.’s DuBois’ idea of “double consciousness”, from his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The idea of “double consciousness” has and continues to be utilized by Black scholars and artists in literary, theoretical, and psychological contexts, some of which I hope my paper will adequately survey. I begin by examining “double consciousness” from the perspective of particulars by understanding Du Bois’s original idea and the specificities of the American context he himself was a part, considering the legacy of slavery. Then, by focusing primarily on writers such as Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright and Paul …

Cognition Without Construction: Kant, Maimon, And The Transcendental Philosophy Of Mathematics, Nicholas A. J. Birmingham

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In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant takes the ostensive constructions characteristic of Euclidean-style demonstrations to be the paradigm of both mathematical proofs and synthetic a priori cognition in general. However, the development of calculus included a number of techniques for representing infinite series of sums or differences, which could not be represented with the direct geometrical demonstrations of the past. Salomon Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy addresses precisely this disparity. Maimon, owing much to G. W. Leibniz, proposes that differentials of sensation achieve what Kantian constructions could not. More importantly, Maimon develops a kind of symbolic cognition that …

Duration And Depravity: Religious And Secular Temporality In Puritanism And The American Gothic, Taylor Kraayenbrink

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Duration and Depravity identifies a temporality of “sinful feeling” operating in the archive of Puritan writings of personal piety, such as diaries, autobiographies, conversion narratives, and sermons, and persisting into early American gothic literature. This temporality of sinful feeling is an attempt to discipline the self through temporal projection oriented towards the theological fact and religiously experienced feeling of sinfulness. Duration and Depravity engages with the proliferation of postsecular criticism in American literature studies generally, and Puritan studies more specifically. Postsecular criticism in literary studies is a style of historicism that reconsiders its primary archive’s position in newly complicated narratives …

Modes Of Argumentation In Aristotle's Natural Science, Adam W. Woodcox

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Through a detailed analysis of the various modes of argumentation employed by Aristotle throughout his natural scientific works, I aim to contribute to the growing scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s theory of science and his actual scientific practice. I challenge the standard reading of Aristotle as a methodological empiricist and show that he permits a variety of non-empirical arguments to support controversial theses in properly scientific contexts. Specifically, I examine his use of logical (logikôs) argumentation in the discussion of mule sterility in Generation of Animals II 8, rational (kata ton logon) argumentation in his discussion of cardiocentrism throughout …

In Search Of Psychiatric Kinds: Natural Kinds And Natural Classification In Psychiatry, Nicholas Slothouber

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In recent years both philosophers and scientists have asked whether or not our current kinds of mental disorder—e.g., schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder—are natural kinds; and, moreover, whether or not the search for natural kinds of mental disorder is a realistic desideratum for psychiatry. In this dissertation I clarify the sense in which a kind can be said to be “natural” or “real” and argue that, despite a few notable exceptions, kinds of mental disorder cannot be considered natural kinds. Furthermore, I contend that psychopathological phenomena do not cluster together into kinds in the way that paradigmatic natural kinds (e.g., chemical …

A Deleuzean Poststructural Deconstruction, Adam Nadir Mohamed

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This project seeks to reconceive a poststructural form of deconstructive criticism as a Deleuzean deconstructive commentary. I first explore the way Derrida’s concept of différance is confined to a deconstructive criticism which solely traces it in order to critique metaphysical concepts. As an alternative to the confined use of différance in deconstructive criticism, I develop a deconstructive commentary which deconstructs the primacy of a commentated text. Instead of using différance solely to trace the limitations of philosophical concepts (Hegelian in particular), it can serve as a plane of immanence that track a multitude of differently configured philosophical concepts in their …

Unread: The (Un)Published Texts Of Romanticism, Marc D. Mazur

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This dissertation reads the unpublished texts of Romanticism not as fragments on the road to publication but as psychoanalytic “partial objects” that re-figure our understanding of the relationship between Romantic authors and publication. Against positivist interpretations of literary production that limit writing to the professionalization of the author and to a sociology of texts, Unread develops the concept of the (un)published whose parenthetical bracketing signals an unstable suspension of textual instability that is at once prior to and yet persistently remains a part of the writing of the published text. I argue that non-publication also arises from the author’s relation …

Kant And Tetens On Transcendental Philosophy, Richard D. Creek

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This dissertation examines the significance of Johann Nikolas Tetens, a German empiricist philosopher working in the 1770's, to the theoretical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. I begin by examining Tetens' discussion of philosophical methodology in his 1775 essay \textit{Über die allgemeine speculativische Philosophie}. I make the case that Tetens' criticism of the methodology of the Scottish common sense philosophers and his subsequent attempt to incorporate what he takes to be their valuable insights into the approach of the broadly Wolffian philosophical tradition provides important context for interpreting Kant's methodology in the \textit{Critique of Pure Reason}. I then examine two different cases …

Monuments Of The Present: The Document And Monument In Michel Foucault's Archaeology, Alexander Walker

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This thesis interrogates Michel Foucault’s distinction between the monument and the document in his key methodological text The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), originally released in French as L’Archéologie du Savior in 1969. Foucault attempts to formulate a new form of history based on the examination of the monument, where previous methodologies had examined the document.

The thesis first examines Foucault’s theorization of this distinction and then questions the stability of these two categories through the comments of art critic Erwin Panofsky. I propose that the monument and document distinction implicates the historian in the power-relations that Foucault articulates later in …

The Foundations Of Revealed Religion 100 Years Before David Hume: The Contribution Of Anthony Collins, Nicholas Bryant Nash

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In this dissertation I examine the contributions of Anthony Collins (1676-1729) to the eighteenth-century debate about the grounds of Christianity. I show that by the early eighteenth-century British philosophers addressing this topic had begun to abandon appeals to miracles in favor of appeals to the completion of Old Testament prophecy. I argue that this alternative was short lived, in large part because of the critical work of Anthony Collins. This episode in the debate is often overlooked but without it, later discussions of miracles, including those of David Hume in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, would have been anti-climactic. …

The Ontological-Ontic Character Of Mythology, Jeffrey M. Ray

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This thesis interrogates the concept of mythology within the opposing philosophical frameworks of the world as either an abstract totality from which ‘truth’ is derived, or as a chaotic background to which the subject brings a synthetic unity. Chapter One compares the culturally dominant, classical philosophical picture of the world as a necessary, knowable totality, with the more recent conception of the ‘world’ as a series of ideational repetitions (sense) grafted on to material flows emanating from a chaotic background (non-sense). Drawing on Plato, Kant, and Heidegger, I situate mythology as a conception of the false—that which fails to …

The Goal Of Habituation In Aristotle: A Neo-Mechanical Account, Dioné Harley

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Standard interpretations of Aristotle’s ethics construe the habituation phase in his theory of moral education as markedly robust regarding the moral condition that must be achieved before the learner can attend lectures on the noble and political questions in general. These “intellectualists” argue that habituation engages the rational part of the soul so that the learner develops the capacity to identify that an action is noble, which involves taking pleasure in the nobility of the act. Practical reason will provide an understanding of why the action is noble. I argue against intellectualist readings of habituation and defend a neo-mechanical account …

Foreknowledge, Free Will, And The Divine Power Distinction In Thomas Bradwardine's De Futuris Contingentibus, Sarah Hogarth Rossiter

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Thomas Bradwardine (d. 1349) was an English philosopher, logician, and theologian of some note; but though recent scholarship has revived an interest in much of his work, little attention has been paid to an early treatise he wrote on the topic of future contingents, entitled De futuris contingentibus. In this thesis I aim to address this deficit, arguing in particular that the treatise makes original use of the divine power distinction to resolve the apparent conflict between God’s foreknowledge on the one hand, and human free will on the other. Bradwardine argues that God’s foreknowledge operates in accord with …

Species Pluralism: Conceptual, Ontological, And Practical Dimensions, Justin Bzovy

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Species are central to biology, but there is currently no agreement on what the adequate species concept should be, and many have adopted a pluralist stance: different species concepts will be required for different purposes. This thesis is a multidimensional analysis of species pluralism. First I explicate how pluralism differs monism and relativism. I then consider the history of species pluralism. I argue that we must re-frame the species problem, and that re-evaluating Aristotle's role in the histories of systematics can shed light on pluralism. Next I consider different forms of pluralism: evolutionary and extra-evolutionary species pluralism, which differ in …

The Constellations Of Empiricism, New Science, And Mind In Hobbes, Locke, And Hume, Lisa Pelot

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In this thesis, positive and negative tensions among the “unit-ideas” of New Science and empiricism are explored as they relate to explanations of aspects of mind in the Modern period. Some constellations of ideas are mutually supporting, and provide fruitful discussion on how mind can fit into the natural world. This project aims to clarify the adequacy of this type of framework in accommodating and explaining mind, and aspects of mind. I proceed by analyzing key texts via the “unit-ideas” of New Science and empiricism. The three central chapters are case studies, looking at Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. Each chapter …

Moral Sense Theory And The Development Of Kant's Ethics, Michael H. Walschots

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This dissertation investigates a number of ways in which an eighteenth century British philosophical movement known as “moral sense theory” influenced the development of German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) moral theory. I illustrate that Kant found both moral sense theory’s conception of moral judgement and its conception of moral motivation appealing during the earliest stage of his philosophical development, but eventually came to reject its conception of moral judgement, though even in his early writings Kant preserves certain features of its conception of moral motivation. In the mature presentation of his moral philosophy Kant offers detailed objections to moral sense …

Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, And The Volition Of Thought, Ben Woodard

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This dissertation examines F.W.J. von Schelling's Philosophy of Nature (or Naturphilosophie) as a form of early, and transcendentally expansive, naturalism that is, simultaneously, a naturalized transcendentalism. By focusing on space and motion, this dissertation argues that thought should be viewed as a natural activity through and through. This view is made possible by German Idealism historically, and yet, is complicated and obscured by contemporary philosophy's treatment of German Idealism in both analytic and continental circles. The text engages with the foundations of Schelling's theory of nature as well as geometry, field theory, inter-theory relations, epistemology, and pragmatism.

Philipp Frank: Philosophy Of Science, Pragmatism, And Social Engagement, Amy N. Wuest

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Philipp Frank––physicist, philosopher, and early member of the Vienna Circle––is often neglected in retrospective accounts of twentieth century philosophy of science, despite renewed interest in the work of the Vienna Circle. In this thesis, I argue that this neglect is unwarranted. Appealing to a variety of philosophical and historical sources, I trace the development of Frank’s philosophical thought and, in so doing highlight the roles played by history, sociology, values, and pragmatism in his philosophy of science. Turning to contemporary literature, I then argue that Frank’s work should be understood as an early instance of what is now called “socially …