This investigation looks into the ethics surrounding Nuclear Armament and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.
I shall be focusing on the Cold War and more specifically, the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. I shall be analysing the potential ethical decisions made by President Kennedy with regards to Nuclear armament against the Soviets
I shall draw on the normative ethical approached of Kant as well as classical utilitarianism
I shall also draw strongly on the work of Peter Singer and Bertrand Russell
I shall conclude that The insufficient buffer of mutually assured destruction cannot shroud the egotistical, proud political aims of the world leaders at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis as adversaries of indisputably immoral nuclear programmes.
Month: January 2021
Concept: Memory
Philosophical Thinkers: Locke and Freud
Aims:
1. To highlight the malleability of memory
2. Argue the dangers of using memory as evidence within law- e.i. eye witness testimonies without empirical proof.
3. Analyse true case studies that indicate the ruining of people’s lives due to memory and the manipulation of it.
Aims:
This project aims to explore the concept of genius, in relation to education, to make a distinction between an educated and an exception. It will look at education and determine its impact that it has on individuals. And it will, lastly, attempt to address the question of what it means to be a genius and the possibility of becoming one.
Object: The concept of genius
Territory: Education defined as institution
Concepts:
Nietzsche’s Noble and Slave Morality
Rousseau’s General Will and The Role of The Legislator
Kierkegaard’s Despair and The Self
Sources:
Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals
Rousseau’s The Social Contract
Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death
Credit will, in all likelihood affect everyone at some point in their lives. Whether it be a student loan, a mortgage, a credit card or buying a car ‘on finance’, the possibilities are vast.
I will look at the ideas of Hegel, who subscribes to the view that it is property is the embodiment of freedom, as well as that it is essential to the development of one’s personality, individuality and Asking whether credit can be seen to enhance one’s access to private property and therefore enhance their freedom.
I will then look at Lazzarato, who explores the debtor creditor relationship arguing that everyone, in the neoliberal age, has become debtors through a process of subjectivation by their creditors. But is this the case?
Progressively foregrounded precisely in its lack of coming to presence is the operation by which an individual’s human or non-human, inhuman, status is delineated. It is thus that the margin of delineation by which the propriety of a human being’s humanity is decided becomes questionable and prompts further reflection. Receiving its impetus from Martin Heidegger’s Letter on ‘Humanism’, the following essay shall take the ‘human’ as galvanized in the thought of Marcus Tullius Cicero as its object, foremost reflecting on the human is discursively constituted in the complementary texts De Republica and De Legibus. This essay thus contends that Cicero’s thought constitutes the exemplary object of the critique Heidegger’s letter poses, and as such provides an essential foil to Heidegger’s proposal as to how the notion of νόμος (nomos) should be uptaken in light of the truth of being.
The private prison industry has expanded into immigration detention in return for money and is using the forced labour of their inmates to return a sizeable profit to their shareholders. Is this a justifiable punishment for illegal immigrants making the crossing into the USA, or does it constitute a form of modern-day slavery? This research will determine that through its investigations into deontology, consequentialism, retributivism and anti-foundationalism that the industry is fundamentally founded on concepts that do not relate to justice and so its form of punishment cannot be justified but must rather be considered a form of slavery.
Totalitarianism and Technocracy: A Jungian and Huxleyan analysis of the Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, the distortion of Myth, and the path to Liberation
My project seeks to chart out an account of Dewey’s philosophy of education, relating to its practical application in the work of Lipman. I then present various current trends in the way that learning environments have changed both over the past few decades with reference to technological development, and in the last year with reference to the coronavirus pandemic. Ultimately, I argue that the main thing preventing a realization of Dewey’s democratic ideal is ‘datafication’, the phenomenon of reducing educational efficacy to quantifiable metrics and abstract information. Due to the insistence of Dewey and Lipman on education as a facilitation of meaningful experience, I hold, datafication makes the manifestation of any true practice of Deweyan pedagogy impossible.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French existentialist philosopher and a leading figure in the second-wave feminism movement. Beauvoir’s seminal book The Second Sex (1949) is widely considered as the first major study of women’s oppression in contemporary western feminist theory. The aim of my project is to examine Beauvoir’s central ideas in The Second Sex and subsequently demonstrate the topicality of Beauvoir’s manifesto on the feminist movement today.
Girls and Social Media
The Object of my project is how social media contributes towards and perpetuates the damaging social construct of femininity.
Control.
Control is the overarching force at play in this project. It refers both to capitalist and patriarchal control. Foucault explains how social media acts as a form of surveillance, policing and governing girls’ behaviour online and prohibiting their freedom.
Identity.
Identity is relevant to this project because of the identities girls form on social media. Girls internalise the sexually objectifying media content they consume on social media, which causes the development of a patriarchal construction of identity. Tiqqun is used to demonstrate how this prohibits girls from experiencing true value in a number of ways, such as the values of liberation, introspective intimacy and identity.
The theories that attempt to explain the derivation of meaning in art concerning the individual usually assume the original creator is one individual. Theatre however always contains three distinct creative groups in the formulation of a play. This dissertation aims to examine how theatre stands out amongst other art forms in the derivation of meaning due to the distinct creative groups involved in a theatre production.
I will be taking an autoethnographcial approach by applying the concepts to a performance of Hamlet that I was in and, by examining that experience, hopefully see if such theories accurately apply to theatre.
For this project I chose to explore that way that societies attitudes towards gender have shifted in the past 100 years. Through analysis of the work of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauvoir, I created an argument based upon the notion that we are defined above all else by our gender.
In order to bring my argument into the modern day, I looked into the Vogue December 2020 cover and article featuring Harry Styles and the subsequent backlash that it received.
Furthermore, I explored the territory of masculinity and femininity, referencing things such as the Mars and Venus symbols for gender and their meanings.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that gender whilst prevalent in modern society, has taken us as far as it can.
My Object is Covid-19 mental health, as I believe that mental health has not had enough importance throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. I highlight this pressing issue using psychological studies that show the link between Lockdown and mental health.
Project Aim:
To use my philosophical concepts to offer solutions at mitigating the effects of Covid-19 mental health, I shall not be suggesting that the physical effects of the virus should be disregarded.
Within my project, I use two philosophical concepts – Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism and Ayn Rand’s rational egoism.
Sartre’s existentialism focuses on our own individual freedom as he claims that we do not have a general human essence to conform to. Sartre also has insights into why we experience anxiety which include factors such as abandonment and responsibility, all feelings exaggerated within a lockdown.
Ayn Rand’s rational egoism denies selfishness as an evil motive, and instead, Rand promotes placing oneself first in order to gain a clear conscience to make rationally informed decisions. Our integrity and values will ensure that making selfish decisions will not lead to immoral acts, and therefore we should be making more selfish decisions.
Was Harry Potter predetermined to be the chosen one? Or is it down to free will.. or more fate?
Through my research into pseudo-intellectualism as it is conceptualized by today’s society, I have identified two many features that make an argument pseudo-intellectual. The first being; a foundation in some sort of reasoning or logic, and the second being the use of faulty rhetorical appeals in order to make a claim. These arguments are usually made to provide the consumers of these philosophies with a sense of both meaning and purpose; this is done in order to combat a sense of meaningless and unfulfillment in today’s modern world.
What separates an intellectual from that of a pseudo-intellectuals, is how the latter will base their argument on facts and reasoning, but will then use faulty rhetoric in the formation of their arguments. Aristotle conceptualizes rhetoric as; ethos, pathos, and logos. These three forms of rhetoric are understood as; an appeal to credibility, emotion, and logic. All forms of arguing rely on a least one of these forms, and sound arguments can be built using these three rhetorical forms. Pseudo-intellectuals, on the other hand, attempt to use these rhetorical forms, in an unjust manner in order to fully persuade the listener of their point.
In today’s pop-culture the pseudo-intellectuals that often get the most attention are the ones that use these faulty methods of reasoning to evoke a sense of meaning and purpose in the audiences that listen to them. It may seem harmless, but because they do this, they are given a lot of unwarranted attention and authority when it comes to social and academic topics. This allows them to speak on things they aren’t fully qualified on, which can divert social discussion to that of semantics, which then dissolves social discussions to that of arguing for the sake of proving a point. This in turn, creates a divide in society.
It is important to be able to identify pseudo-intellectual arguments because they can be very enticing, due to the fact that they are based on reason, and promise the listener with a sense of meaning. But because they aren’t sound conclusive arguments, if ever placed under scrutiny by anyone knowledgeable, they will crumble along with what meaning they provided.
Tattoo artistry is a form of permanent body adornment, which functions to establish as a form of art which configures a permanent establishment of meaning, expression and identity. Tattooing is a unique and heterogenous form of art which works directly upon the body as a canvas, eliciting a relationship of pain and sensation. Examples of recorded tattoo experiences and tattoo culture have been provided, both traditionally and contemporarily to establish the diversity and adaptation of historical change, as the tools and customs have been found to radically progress. The functions by which are carried out by tattoos, such as meaning, expression and identity, are able to be assessed with respect to differing perspectives. Present in discourse surrounding tattoo artistry, is how and why distinct differences in tradition and custom development are able to occur.
The application of Susan Sontag, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Fredrich Nietzche to the heterogeneity of tattoo discourse allowed for the consideration of hermeneutic culture, metaphysical expression and the re-establishment of the self as reflective functions present in the application of tattoos. These noted functions act indivisibly throughout the consideration of tattooing and the practical tattooing process. Tattooing discourse reveals the underlying difference in the conception of tattoos and its customs, with the exploration of contemporary experimental tattoo environments, displaying the developing ideologies present in the tattooing sector.
A treatise on how to ethically interact with alien life, with a focus on intelligent alien life.
My project aimed to investigate whether the theories of education in philosophy could still be found in our current education system. I chose to specifically look at the subject of Religious Studies at GCSE level as I believed it had the closest link philosophy. I also wanted to incorporate my beliefs that the current education system needs to become just as focused on making moral human beings as it is intellectual ones. I sourced my information from books, real lessons from real teachers and some articles.
Aristotle believes:
– Education should help to create good citizens.
– Education should be the bridge between family life into society.
– Virtue is the highest form of knowledge and relies on drama to be taught.
John Dewey believes:
– Education should enable us to continue to grow for the rest of our lives/there is no end to our education.
– Best way to learn is through doing/being in the lesson.
– Should adapt the way we teach to each individual child’s experiences.
Territory: Society
Object: Religious commitment/belief
Concepts: Liberalism, Pluralism, Tolerance
Today, society is more liberal than ever; everyone has an entitled opinion. Is subjectivity the inevitable result of the postmodern? This question will be answered with a focus on religious commitment, as we know it can lead to conflict. Religion has a different order of commitment than other statements; it is part of your identity. This work considers where the line should be drawn when it comes to clashing views, as we have to find ways to live harmoniously.
I consider the Charlie Hebdo shooting, what went wrong and how people reacted. John Rawls’ ‘Political Liberalism’ will follow, explaining that toleration is necessary for a stable society. Focussing on his overlapping consensus between reasonable individuals. However, it is not universal as not everyone will except putting liberalism at the centre. Gianni Vattimo’s ‘weak thought’ (il pensiero debole) wants a weaker metaphysical understanding. For him, to think correctly is to be tolerant from the beginning.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to know where the boundaries lie. Relativism still proves to be a problem with Vattimo’s argument. Both philosophers have strong ideas, yet neither approach provides a fault-proof solution to the issues that arise in this current pluralistic era.
Project aims:
• To raise awareness of the dangers facing this and future generations, such as the mental health crisis and the existential threat to society.
• To offer real world practical solutions, such as legal/governmental legislation to moderate social media and by limiting our own social media use today.
• To create a challenge for myself, by applying 20th century philosophy to a modern-day concept.
Object/territory:
• Social media: The big six include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok.
• Smartphone generation or Generation Z is anyone born between 1995-2012, this is the first generation to grow up with social media.
Sources used:
• Consciousness, Art and Technology: Karl Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ and Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The social media author is dead, and the cause is suicide.
• Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophy: Sigmund Freud, ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’. There is a drive attached to social media.
• ‘iGen’ book by Jean Twenge notices children are growing up slower and are facing a mental health crisis.
• ‘The Social Dilemma’ documents how social media is deigned to addict the user and then sell their data on. This can then end up in the wrong hands.