How do Waldorf schools compare to other educational philosophies? – Hollie Donnithorne
This project is centred around multiple differing educational philosophies, and will analyse how they compare to that of Rudolf Steiner and his Waldorf schools in an attempt to see how these schools may affect wider society and the individual. By using Steiner’s texts such as Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, Steiners approach to education will be dissected in order to properly understand the background to Steiner’s educational philosophy. As part of this, the project will seek to properly understand ‘anthroposophy’, Steiner’s spiritual philosophy, and how these beliefs effect his approach to education and its influence on the individual.
Once Steiner’s approach is fully understood, the aim of the project becomes understanding it in comparison to other schools of thought within the philosophy of education. By using primary texts such as John Dewey’s Democracy and Education, the project seeks to understand other dominant education philosophies of the 20th century not only to give context to Steiner’s ideas, but also to understand how Waldorf schools differ from other thinkers and how this is thought to affect the individual child and the wider society. As well as looking at other 20th century thinkers, the project will compare Steiner’s thoughts to that of philosophers such as Plato by looking at The Republic and seeing how Plato sets out a drastically different educational philosophy from that of Steiner. By looking at this, the project is able to weigh up both schools of thought and dive into how they individually may have an impact on the child and wider society.
The project also makes use of thinkers such as Karl Marx and his thoughts about how education currently works in line with capitalism in order to uphold class structures as well as maintain a lack of class consciousness. By analysing and applying Marx’s thoughts to Waldorf schools the project is better able to understand them within the context of capitalism. The project is then able to analyse Waldorf education in many different contexts and therefore better understand how they function as part of a larger society.
Month: January 2022
This essay explores the way in which humanity is ethically and politically responsible for anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. After concluding that traditional ethics is no longer sufficient for dealing with environmental and technological ethical issues, Hans Jonas’ proposes a new ethics for this technological age is in his book The Imperative of Responsibility. He argues that the most important ethical rule humanity must follow is to act so that the effects of our actions are compatible with the permanence of life in order to ensure the future of mankind. I use Jonas’ ethics to argue that humanity’s climate responsibility is inescapable; once this responsibility is established I use Giddens’ book The Politics of Climate Change to suggest that harnessing the power of politics and policy is vital for sufficiently meeting the demands that this climate responsibility places on individuals. This essay concludes that, while individuals are the primary drivers of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, a top-down approach whereby the largest organisations and emitters are targeted through policy to reduce emissions may be the most efficient and impactful way of mitigating climate change and ensuring the future of mankind.
My object is video games and my territory is philosophical aestheticism. The methodology I used was close textual analysis of primary and secondary texts across a wide range of mediums. I wanted to examine the parallels between contemporary games and early-to-mid 20th century avant-garde movements and analyse how gaming’s dynamic attributes could help them become more fully realised. To begin, I analysed the immersive sim genre to explore how consumers could become producers, and how this shift fits with Paris and Munich Dada’s goal of reducing egotism in art (as conceived by Jean Arp and Hans Richter). Then, I looked at how technological advancements and limitations could aid in the creation of both unpredictable realities and imaginative surrealities, respectively, as conceived by Yves Bonnefoy, John Cage, and Andre Breton. Finally, I touched on how experimentation within the medium subverted audience expectations and genre conventions to create a transgressive experience that breaks down the player’s self-contained character, as proposed by Georges Bataille and Paul Hegarty. I concluded by reaffirming the incredible potential within gaming to transform the nature of art through its unique toolset in a manner hitherto unimagined, owing to their symbiotic relationship with environmental factors such as technology and player input.
This project analyses the value of Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, using Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” as a contextual foundation. I argue that Kundera’s work highlights the problems that arise from not accepting one’s fate, failing to comprehend the immutable nature of the past, and refusing to recognise that suffering is an inevitable part of life. By using Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as a psychological tool, individuals can learn to appreciate both the positive and negative aspects of existence. I contend that although criticisms, such as Karl Löwith’s, demonstrate some weaknesses, ultimately Nietzsche’s eternal return is a valuable doctrine that may act as a possible solution to the burden of existential weight.
This project seeks to problematize European notions of Enlightenment and to discuss notions of a non-Western form of Enlightenment. I will begin by discussing the problem of Enlightenment that still haunts us to this day. Central to this will be Kant and Foucault’s work ‘What is Enlightenment’. This will lead me to utilize work from Adorno and Horkheimer and Said to demonstrate how colonial expansion was justified through Enlightenment and Orientalist ideology. This will explain how foreign interference across the globe has been justified. I shall highlight the issues of enforcing European, Enlightenment value frameworks on non-Western cultures in reference to the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
The rise of the music streaming service throughout the 21st century stands as a revolutionary change within the world of music. Although only a small number of companies dominate control of the market, the streaming service has succeeded in becoming the world’s most favoured method of music listening. The largest and most popular service is Spotify; a multi-billion-pound corporation that will act as the representative case study for the project. Spotify offers a unique platform of audible content, which gives users access to a vast library spanning the history of music. The main appeal of Spotify sits in their provision of a more affordable, accessible, and technologically advanced mode of listening, which is available to be streamed online through digital devices. This project looks to investigate the platform through the unique application of 20th century cultural critics Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Benjamin’s work will be used to introduce how our experience of art changes as technology evolves. His theory on art’s ‘aura’, a concept relating to the presence of an original piece, which withered in the age of mechanical reproduction, will show how the move away from physical collections of music, such as vinyl, has led to a decline in authentic musical experience. Despite this, Benjamin’s work helps provide a balanced overall assessment of Spotify. This balance occurs through his insights upon how new technologies can bring about social change, particularly through the enhancement of accessibility – a useful argument in the context of Spotify’s global network. The primary conceptual focus, Adorno, will build upon the foundation set by Benjamin, through his observations on ‘the culture industry’. This term refers to the commodification of cultural goods, such as television, film and noticeably, music, that occurred at the hands of late capitalism. Adorno claims the movement comes at the jeopardy of all modern culture, as the industry looks to homogenise cultural creation to accommodate for mass production. . Overall, the project will use Adorno’s philosophy to show how Spotify exists as a modern extension of the culture industry; thus, adding to the decline of true artistic expression in contemporary music.
Through this project I will be discussing how the genre of Intelligent Dance music can be perceived as a postmodern genre. I will show this through separating IDM into three categorise; history, sound and culture and through these analysing each through the lens of postmodernity. To define postmodernity I will be using Vattimo and his writing on the end of history with the use of Fisher to gain closer insight to the effects of postmodernity on 21st Culture. IDM offers an interesting opportunity for the visualisation of postmodernity through music, with its very backbone portraying clear characteristics of the postmodern.
My aim when researching and writing this project was to discover if there was a surrealist element to the subgenre of hip-hop called mumble rap, and if there was, what this would mean for both the subgenre in question and the avant-garde surrealist movement. I have done so by analysing various mumble rap songs and surrealist poems as well as discovering if surrealist techniques could be viewed in those songs. Also, I have also analysed the respective shifts within the art forms that each movement operated in. Furthermore, I have used Plato’s ideas in the Republic to understand whether the way Breton turned away from Platonic ideas and attitudes is similar to the way mumble rap artists turned away from conscious rap, which similarly contains mimetic and logical ideas. As well as this, I was interested in discovering what this means for both sub-genres. This is because Andre Breton, the de-facto leader of the early surrealist movement, famously hated the mainstream and mumble rap is a popular style of music. On the other hand, I was interested in how this would affect mumble rap and if they were linked, what the implications of being linked to a well-respected movement would do for a sub-genre often dismissed by critics. In doing this project I have gained a deeper respect and understanding for all the elements involved.
In this essay, I explore if a failure to give an account of oneself should be used as an explanation for violent behaviour, with reference to the Netflix television series ‘You’. I reference Butler’s account of oneself, where we will often face opacity as we come across barriers in our own self-narration. This occurs because we are not in control of our narrative origins, nor the social norms that were shaped by a pre-existing society. I also reference Laplanche’s enigmatic demand of the Other, where we possess a radical dependence on our caregivers from the moment we are born and discover that we are vulnerable to them. I also reference Levinas’ face-to-face relation with the Other, where we are met with the unavoidable face of the Other, and we must recognise our inherent responsibility to appeal to their presence, with an obligation to live a life of peaceful pacifism. However, the fictional serial killer Joe Goldberg subverts the notion of non-violence as he suffers with numerous neurological disorders and is unable to give an account of himself due to his traumatic and neglectful childhood, whereby his psyche protected his egoistic sense of self through repression.
Currently psychedelics are undergoing a revitalisation in medical and metaphysical research. The question pressing now is how and if these substances, which produce experiences of alterity and perceptual disruptions, can be integrated into normal society. To explain this, this work has explored ideas of perception outlined by Kant, the mystical ideas of Watts and Leary before finally critiquing and evaluating how psychedelics on a cultural and counter-cultural level relate to society. From this research, the conclusion is drawn that psychedelics are not as easily compatible with normal society as a simple attempt to make them medically acceptable. This is due to their deeply rooted political, historical and still current rejection of normalizing society in favour of individual empowerment away from institutional control.
This project explores the persistent hold of history on the present, with
Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle being used as an example of this phenomenon. The hold of the Second World War in the novel is shown to have a significant effect on the present for the characters, as it has for Japan as a nation. Philosophical ideas are taken from Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida and Fisher. Through Hegel, a philosophy of history is discussed, with the progression of history as a result of spirit realising its freedom. Both Nietzsche’s Apollolian and Dionysian states are explored, as well as his concept of the eternal return. Derrida’s notion of hauntology is used to show how the past can haunt the present, with Fisher being used to further explore this, with our inability to retain memories of the present leading us to hold onto historical memories. The symbol of the wind-up bird itself is used to show how the hold of history is depicted by Murakami, with the wind-up bird signalling the machinery of history, yet also being a role for those who must wind the springs of time. This project explores how individuals, like those in the novel, could respond to this hold of history, with the individual choice of embracing history, and its prophecy-like role, or succumbing to fatalist doom.
My project focused on sustainability, environmental consciousness, and responsibility; all thing’s most western societies don’t seem to have a grip on. I wanted to explore why some communities, specifically indigenous groups, seemed to be able to act much more respectfully towards the environment than most other populations. This was an important topic for me as the climate crisis is something my generation has grown up with. It has been something most of us hear about almost every day, and yet the society I live in values so many things above the environment, despite the amount we rely on it. The environment is a current and important topic at the moment, so not only is it something that I am passionate about, but there is also an abundance of resources and information, giving me a lot of perspectives, and elements to the debate to look at.
In my essay I looked at sustainability and environmental consciousness in the context of two different societies. The first being Aboriginal Australians, as the representation of a tribal mindset; the second being non-indigenous Australia, as the representation of a mindset, of a more industrial and economically developed society. Before I looked into these two ways of life in detail, I discussed some of the current theories and debates regarding the climate crisis and society’s reaction to it. The main thinkers and activists I considered were Peter Singer, John Broome, René Descartes, Núria Almiron, Marta Tafalla, and Greta Thunberg. This gave me a good impression of what has been said already, on topics similar to my own, a lot of which I heavily agreed with, such as Thunberg’s chapter, ‘We are not all in the same boat’. Agreeing also with Broome’s responses to those denying contributing to the climate crisis. I wanted to combine a lot of what these thinkers had been saying, I aspired to directly compare the differences in ecological thought and action of these two different realities and see what mindsets, if any, would be to blame for our lack of action and denialist behaviour.
I started by directly comparing the two ways of living in four very simple aspects of life: Diet, Clothing, Beliefs and Practices. This allowed me to see, quite linearly, the differences between the two, both in environmental impact and also in views regarding nature. I unsurprisingly found that due to the Australian Aboriginals habits such as only eating locally sourced food, making their own clothes without excess, their environmental impact is almost none. They work within the “circle of life” acting as an element in the food chain rather than as a disruption to it. This way of life brings to light how out of touch and excessive most of us living in “developed” civilizations are. With eating packaged, intensively farmed meat every day, to shopping online and buying more clothes made in sweatshops across the globe. It became clear, that what allowed us to act like this is the values appreciated by the societies we live in, consumerism and individualism. This is completely different to that of the Australian Aboriginals; their whole lifestyle is rooted in their religious philosophical belief system, the “dreaming”, which has connected them to all other species and the land that surrounds them. This doesn’t force them to treat the land with respect, it motivates them to treat it with respect because they genuinely care and appreciate the nature that has helped them grow and survive. This is what I believe our more economically, industrialised societies are missing, a respect for nature imbedded in genuine ecological awareness and experience. My essay aimed solely to create and enforce a dialogue between the indigenous, and non-indigenous communities and bring light to an underappreciated, unutilized perspective.
This project seeks to explore the film genre of horror, and within that, its representation of women. With a territory surroudning the representation of women in horror, the objects of this project consist of a selection of horror films, most notably slashers from the 1970’s and 80’s. These include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre I & II, Halloween, Aliens, and the non-slasher Videodrome. The overall aim of the projects was to discover how a genre so fixated on producing an atmosphere of fear from the physical mutilation and sexual assault of women could be anything but negative representation. However, through the researching and writing of the project, it was discovered that, through the exploitation of cultural taboos, the horror provides space for concepts of female agency, inverted male-female dynamic, and critiques of existing gendered issues of domestic violence and the sexual exploitation industry, to be explored in ways which other film genres do not allow. Moreover, horror has always existed as a medium for representation, specifically for women, compared to more commercially and critically successful films have not.
Through utilizing Freudian psychoanalysis, and screen theory, this project dives into the aforementioned films, as to derive how female characters within the films are represented, through their costuming, framing, and overall qualities. In addition, Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex allows an application of feminist philosophy to the project, providing depth to the politically/culturally systemic nature to the representation of women in the broader sense. Furthermore, her reference to the Hegelian Slave-Master dialectic assisted in the analysis of the discussed films.
Other texts used within the project include Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Coral J. Clover’s Men, Women and Chainsaws, and Erin Harrington’s ‘Gyneohorror: Women, Monstrosity & Horror Film’.
Modern liberal democracies are often assumed to operate in accordance with an unobjectionable neutrality with respect to the various worldviews of their citizens. By examining the work of Locke and Rawls, I demonstrate that even the most sophisticated conceptions of society and secularity rely on value-judgements that are asserted by the state on behalf of its citizens. The aspirational target of value-neutrality held by the liberal democracy is thus shown to be unattainable.
The concept of the hero is one that has been debated and discussed sociologically, historically, and even psychologically but not so much philosophically. There is not one singular definition of a hero yet the concept can impart extraordinary knowledge of the wider world and how it has changed, as well as highlight the notable development of the concept of the self throughout the years. The interdependent relationship between the hero and the society can tell us a lot about human nature. Through looking at two antithetical heroes – an Ancient Tragic Hero and a Contemporary Superhero – and the differences between them I have investigated the idea of selfhood and how that has completely changed, alongside how society reflects this relationship. I have used Aristotle’s Poetics and MacIntyre’s After Virtue to analyse in what ways the concept of the hero can teach us these things. It seems as if the self has become something distinct, and that in contemporary society we become who we are through our actions and how we behave, in contrast to the ancients who act and behave in the way they do because of who they are. There are these crucial elements of fate and choice which highlight the complete change in the hero. Through this contemporary understanding, it seems as though it does not make sense to think of morality solely in terms of action and theory but rather in virtue and practice too. Humanity has developed to a point where we should be looking at morality in terms of character, actions, and society in a unified manner rather than just in the actions themselves.
Philosophical discourse surrounding time travel traditionally engages with concepts such as the Grandfather Paradox, the possibility of time travel, issues surrounding causation, and the effects such concepts have on the nature of the metaphysics of time and change. However in this project, time travel will be assessed by its ethical consequences through contemporary pieces of popular culture, namely Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Philosophically, this project will engage with Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and his essay Existentialism is a Humanism in addition to Baron d’Holbach’s The System of Nature, as the two will be presented in direct opposition to one another as representatives of philosophies of free will and hard determinism. The objective of this project is to assess whether ethical judgements are justified or necessary in the depictions of time travel I will be referencing by evaluating whether characters are free to act responsibly or predetermined to act in ways in which they have no influence over. The object of this project will therefore be time travel, assessed through the philosophical concepts of Sartre and d’Holbach, in the context of ethics. The position this essay wishes to argue in favour for is that Sartre’s philosophy of freedom allows one to manifest one’s own moral character, and this moral character is the ultimate determinant in ethical dilemmas. There does however exist vast amounts of overlap in the two opposing philosophers’ theses however the difference lies in Sartre’s notion of bad faith which highlights d’Holbach’s refusal of his ability to choose as problematic. Therefore, the overarching argument of this project is that it is one’s own moral character that dictates their future decision making, and the formulation of such character is done through choice and freedom. Due to the philosophies of Sartre and d’Holbach hugely predating the idea of time travel, I will first give a brief description of the scientific underpinnings of the procedure of time travel, then discuss d’Holbach’s and Sartre’s philosophies, before finally applying the latter to the former.
Samuel Beckett’s Nineteen-Sixty-One play Happy Days is best understood as a parody of the human condition. Beckett seeks to reflect the experience of what it means to be human in stage directions, set design, and language. His methods of confinement and parody also allow for a vivid portrayal of existence. A philosopher who also wrote on the human condition was Martin Heidegger. For Heidegger, this experience is regulated entirely by his concept of “Dasein”. My essay centres around seeking to attribute an overlap between Heidegger’s and Beckett’s human condition through its possible representation on the stage of Happy Days. Although Beckett is notoriously difficult to analyse and attribute a specific philosophical framework, I have uncovered evidence of possible Heideggerian influence and inherent similarities. The themes of Heidegger analysed include: world disclosure, anxiety, death, and authenticity. I have also highlighted Beckett’s use of optimism in the play as a potential counterpoint to the outwardly pessimistic philosophy of Heidegger. My aim is to show how the performance medium of theatre can be an effective tool in communicating philosophical ideas, as opposed to text on a page.
This project centres around critiquing the preservation and revival of human life through cryonic procedures. Through looking at the object of cryonics within the territory of death and technological revival, this project explores ethical, transhumanist, existentialist and religious issues within cryonics. As a contemporary topic that may become more prevalent in life as science progresses, this project does not aim to dissuade individuals away from a subjective choice of life, rather, offers divergent critiques of cryonics. Through looking at the work of Martin Heidegger, this project discusses how death is an essential predicate of life that ultimately characterises the way that humans live. His existentialism is used to accuse cryonic procedures of diminishing an authentic life. This project then turns to the theologically centred work of John Hick to highlight the importance of life beyond death. Through investigating the conception of a resurrection alongside soul-making, one uses Hick’s theology to deem cryonics as unethical procedure that ultimately dismisses faith. This project offers plausible critiques of cryonics to discuss the limitations of modern science. Although critiques can be interpreted in different ways depending on religious outlook or scientific optimism, this project discusses critiques that are detrimental to the desirability of cryonics.
Piercing a hole through the foundation of mathematics, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem resides outside the scope of consistency, provability, and solvability. A mathematical manifestation of self-referential paradoxes, the doctrine shattered the possibility of sustaining a complete system within mathematics, as Gödel utilised arithmetic itself to convey that there will always be axiomatic statements within mathematics that cannot be proved with certainty. However, in pursuit of clarity, can the philosophical attribution of morality and analytics be utilised to elevate an understanding of the paradoxical theorem? With both enterprises positing an abstract delineation of how truth and falsity are classified, the anomalous nature of the Incompleteness Theorem perhaps necessitates similar ascription. Whilst it is essential to note that the profundity of mathematical inquiry eradicates the possibility of the paradox being ‘solved’, the attribution of philosophy can perhaps offer avenues of illuminating novel aspects of the theorem. In doing so, the findings can be strung away from pessimism and towards mere curiosity. Mathematics may be defined by its incompleteness, but can philosophy offer an elevated insight that transcends an understanding beyond the mathematical enterprise?
This paper examines whether the exponential growth in the usage of social media is influencing the construction of our identity, with a specific focus on Facebook. The object of my project was to investigate whether there was a correlation between the exponential growth of social media and identity. The interest for this was stemmed through reading a variety of articles claiming the negative impacts social media obtains, because social media platforms exposes us to a variety of different cultures, opinions and perspectives, this ultimately must have some influence over identity composition. This project examines David Hume, ‘Treatise of Human Nature, specifically, book 1, part IV ‘Of Personal Identity’. Soren Kierkegaard’s ‘The Two ages: A literary review and lastly, Zygmunt Bauman’s book ‘Identity’. Engaging with these different texts concerning identity, provides a variety of different theories of how one forms identity. Analysing these philosophers works, highlighted that there are three main themes which contribute and can impact identity. The three main themes explored within this paper are: choice and experience, communities and collective identity and lastly, liquid modernity and capitalism. Investigating these main themes, enabled the conclusion to be reached that social media does influence the construction of identity.