Author: Glen

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 3

Consumer Culture. What’s in It for Me?

Territory.
The consumer culture/Modernity /Postmodernity/Commodity and the role of the individual experience. Essentially the current capitalist world in which we live.

Object.
The various theories brought forward by philosophers and sociologists such as Horkheimer and Adorno, Giddens, Lyotard, Marx, Featherstone, Slater, Baudrillard, Debord and Bernstein. The theories of Modernity and Postmodernity, their consequences when related to the concepts of Consumer Culture and a world of Commodity.

Change.
I am to chart the change from traditional world view through to modernity. The extent to which capitalism is affected by the culture industry and its movement towards postmodernity. Mass culture and the effect of industrialisation. The Influence of the Media industry, and the various problems we associate with advertising and marketing culture in contemporary society.

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2010 Abstracts Stage 2

Absurdity and the Apocalypse. Meaningful Existence in a Dying World

Mankind has long held a kind of morbid fascination in the prospect of its own demise, and with that of the world as a whole. The apocalypse – the cataclysmic end of all life on Earth – has frequently been a subject of film, art and literature. In my project, I intend to investigate one such literary instantiation of a world subject to just such a cataclysm – the bleak and ruined existence described in Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ – with regard to the philosophy of the absurd, as found specifically in the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Albert Camus.

When faced with the absurdity and meaninglessness of our existence – by the tension between our intuitive feeling that our lives have meaning, and our inevitable failure to find it in the world – we are plunged into nihilism.

The absurd man has recourse to three possibilities upon his experience of nihilistic feeling; faith, defiance, and suicide.

Through an investigation into the absurdist thought of Kierkegaard and Camus, and with reference to the world imagined in The Road, I intend to show existence in the post-apocalyptic world to be the ultimate embodiment of the absurdity of human life; that in this Godless world, where death is an experience one cannot stop living, and where nihilism is substantiated, inescapably, by existence itself, we find the true essence of our being, and the true nature of our attempt to give a point to our lives.

I intend to argue two things; one, that our world and the post-apocalyptic one are, in terms of human meaning, identical. And secondly, that despite the absurd nature at the core of human existence, our lives can still be worth living.

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 2

Commodification: Has It Tarnished the Beautiful Game?

• Historically, sports existed ‘to promote aretê or human excellence which could be applied to almost any endeavour in life’.
• Contemporarily, the market forces of Capitalism have taken over and money has become the primary objective – football is the greatest example of this transition from a character building activity to a mass-market business.
• What, though, does this process of Commodification involve? George Bataille and Guy Debord will be used to cast enlightenment on this within the context of the Surrealist and Situationist Parties.
• Furthermore, has the footballer become tarnished by this process of Commodification? In assessing the effects this has on the professional footballer’s character, I shall be drawing on Schiller’s Aesthetic Education and its arguments regarding modern society’s obsession with specialists.
• Alistaire MacIntyre’s views on how man’s virtues should be able to be summoned and used in all situations will also be made relevant

Schiller: ‘‘[contemporary society encourages the footballer to be] nothing more than the living impression of the craft to which he devotes himself’’

MacIntyre: ‘‘someone who genuinely possesses a virtue can be expected to manifest it in very different types of situation’’.

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 3

Manic Depression: an Illness Rooted in its Dark Past

An examination of the modern treatment and diagnosis of bipolar disorder in the light of Michel Foucault

Territory: Bipolar Disorder – This project looks at how the term bipolar has been constituted and how it came about, as well as identifying the stigma still attached to diagnosis.

Michel Foucault: – Foucault talks of madness and looks back over history to see how the mad were treated and viewed by society and doctors. The constitution of the term “madness‟ is historically negative so that today it is often viewed in conjunction with manic depression.

“What is called “mental illness‟ is simply alienated madness…”

Aims: To research the diagnosis and treatment of the disorder, historically linking it to Foucault’s thought.
Case study: America’s Medicated Kids – Louis Theroux, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Stephen Fry BBC Documentary.

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 3

The Relation of Advertising and Branding to the Rise of Capitalism in Britain

My third year project presentation is on the rise of capitalism in Britain by means of advertising and branding with reference to Theodor Adorno’s The Culture Industry and Dialectic of Enlightenment and Naomi Klein’s No Logo. I will evaluate the rise of capitalism in Britain, and what led to the individual’s willingness to conform to this particular type of industry. I will analyse the techniques of the colossal chain companies that engage individuals to consume, these being advertising and its origins and the increase of companies starting to produce „brands‟ instead of concentrating on the production of the product.

This leads my dissertation on to the work of Theodor Adorno, Adorno subscribed to many of Karl Marx’s about the economy and the exploitative relations of capitalism and advertising. Adorno argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a „culture industry‟ the opposite of „true art‟, to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic. The strength of his theoretical contribution owes a great deal to the originality with which he traced pathways between the central themes of German idealist philosophy, Marxist sociology and Freudian psychopathology.

I will discuss his ideas about alienation, the regression of listening, fetish consciousness and the domination of nature, in relation to our capitalist society today. The repercussions on society of Adorno’s notions are colossal; such as the ideas of brain-dead docile populations hence, I will explain these.

My case study focuses on the rise of Tesco’s as a business; I will show how it exploits individuals through capitalism at its purest. Many of Adorno’s theories on domination and the way Tesco’s sucks us into a cycle of fetishizing commodities that we will never need or use.

Naomi Klein’s No Logo is seen as the Das Kapital of the anti-corporate movement. The basic perspective is that multinational corporations have become so big that they have superseded governments and have become the ruling political bodies of our era. Unlike governments, multinational corporations are accountable only to their shareholders and there are no mechanisms in place to make them “put people before profits”. Klein takes a modern perspective that Adorno is not here to see. I shall then contrast ideas from both Klein and Adorno to gain a modern perspective of the problems of capitalism and how it affects our society and the individual.

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2010 Abstracts Stage 2

The Rise of the Posthuman: the Redefinition of the Human

The aim of my project is to demonstrate that a redefinition of the Human has taken place in contemporary culture.

Here is basic outline of my investigation

• I will explain, firstly, what Ontology is, due to the fact that it is this branch of philosophy that has been traditionally occupied with defining things, including ourselves, in order to categorise the universe

• Secondly, I will reveal that this system of ontology is obsolete in a postmodern landscape, as we see the crumbling of these categories.

• The questions we are left are, why has this crumbling of categories occurred and how does it affect our understanding of ourselves and of that which surrounds us differently?

• The answer lies simultaneously with an increasingly technocratic and cybernetic culture and the realisation that Man is not a categorical some priori but a historical one. In other words, the Human is an epistemological concept which is grounded within a particular epoch that is inevitably going to change when that knowledge finds a new form.

• Michel Foucault attributes our particular epoch’s understanding of the human to Immanuel Kant, since he was the first to recognise the epistemological consciousness of man as such.

• Therefore, I will investigate Kant’s understanding of the human and determine whether it has already found new form.

• By studying the notions of the philosophers, and in the developments in science and technology, that followed Kant, I will reveal that the Human has found a new form of knowledge.

• I will also demonstrate that certain art forms, such as literature and cinema, particularly that of the Science Fiction genre, reveal this by applying the aforementioned philosophical, scientific and technology developments to certain texts. Since art is generally seen as representation of truth, this method is perfectly valid.

• Finally, I will expose the result of this redefinition, The Posthuman.

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 2

Protecting the Wealth of the Nation. A Study of the Ideological Structures of Radical Capitalism

As anyone may notice there is an obvious assumption in my title which I should first work to explain, namely my assertion that current, late capitalist power structures are radical. I use this term in its meaning of ‘extreme’. As I will seek to show, while the values of the majority of people, across most societies of the world, are those, broadly speaking, of freedom, democracy, choice and fairness, and of respect for the dignity of human life, these are not values that are followed through in the operating of modern states or the capitalist system.

In my project I intend to explore how this radical state manages, through its prevailing Ideology, to continually reproduce the conditions of production, and so continually assert itself over the rights of the majority of the people.

In order to do this, I shall use Guy Debord’s concept of the visible manifestation of ideology – the spectacle – in order to show the spectacle/reality distinction in several examples, centred in the last ten years of Neo-Liberal Capitalism.

EXAMPLES INCLUDING: The Illusion of Democracy Capitalist Realism and The Myth of the West’s Civilizing Force

I shall expand on these examples with comparison to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four as a paradigm for a radically oppressive ideological system, as well as theory and analysis from Slavoj Žižek, a prolific writer on the functioning of ideology, Noam Chomsky, an outspoken critic of modern state manipulation and the manufacturing of consent, Louis Althusser’s theory of Ideological State Apparatuses and Mark Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism. In this way I intend to show how Ideology dictates what is thinkable in life, how our free market Neo-Liberal system, is really just a system for funnelling rights and capital into the hands of the incredibly wealthy, and how our free and fair democracy is in fact a cynical sham, in which policy is dictated by corporate leaders.

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2010 Abstracts Stage 2

Glastonbury Festival and the Festivals of the Cherokee Tribe of Indian America

Aim: I intend to explore, in depth, both the Glastonbury festival and the festivals of the Cherokee Indian American tribe. I will compare and contrast their methods of celebration and their traditional customs.

Territory: I will be looking through the history of Glastonbury festival; how it has changed and developed through its forty-year span, including its transformation through commerce, charity and attendees. Conversely, I will focus on the Cherokee festivals through their very broad historical traditions; establishing the reasons behind their elaborate celebrations and the methods used to do so.

Philosophers and Concepts: I will mainly focus on Bataille’s philosophy, with particular reference to The Accursed Share and amongst his other writings; looking at his notions of unproductive expenditure, potlatch and the sacred. In addition, I will use a variety of resources, such as film, literature and internet sites to illustrate these notions and apply them to my aim.

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2010 Abstracts Stage 3

Should the Advertising of Alcoholic Products Be Restricted?

In my project I am going to be focusing on advertising of Alcohol in our current society and its positive and negative effects.

By looking at how the negative health effect of smoking changed the advertising of cigarettes I will relate this to what we already know about alcohol and its damaging attributes both physically and mentally, and assess if the advertising of alcohol needs to change.

It is arguable that because alcohol is a legal product then it should be legal to advertise.

However, the same can be said for cigarettes but because of the clear connection between cancer and cigarettes.

Clearly a total ban on alcohol advertising would be detrimental to individual brands of alcohol, but possibly not on the general sale of alcohol.

The main arguments against alcohol advertising suggest they increase sales in existing drinkers and provoke new young drinkers.

Cheap accessible alcohol promotes anti-social behaviour and heavy drinking which can lead to alcoholism and depression in later life, as well as various health issues.

Essentially, advertising of alcohol legitimates excessive use of a potentially damaging product.

To establish if it is right to ban alcohol or an infringement of our liberty I will be looking at Bentham and Mill’s concept of welfare. A vitally important question for Mill is what are: “the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by the society over the individual’ (L.1.1)

I aim to establish whether the health effects of alcohol are reason enough to ban the advertising of it.

Categories
2009 Abstracts Stage 3

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Class Differences of Social Deviance and its Links to Philosophy

Aim of project – form an enquiry into the idea of social deviance, focussing particularly on how it differs depending upon the social group and why it seems to be more prevalent in the working classes. I will look to give possible explanations of social deviance based upon the philosophical thought I am going to look at. • General idea of deviance – any act which goes against the social norms or laws of a particular society. • Common explanation found for the greater prevalence of deviance in lower working class groups – harder for the individuals in the lower classes to fulfil their potential in society. This leads to feelings of frustration, which can lead to social deviance • This links into the ideas of Marx, and his ideas on class struggle, and how the lower class, or proletariat are the powerless people in society, which leads to feelings of resentment and frustration and may lead to certain antisocial behaviours – this class struggle will ultimately lead to what would be considered deviance as he suggests that a social revolution will occur • Work done with Engels on the family – microcosm of larger society showing negative side of society • PHILOSOPHY – Sartre – ‘Red mist’ showing the connection between mans subconscious and violence and idea that man is completely free to be whatever he wants to be SO man is free to act in a totally socially deviant manner, however it is one’s own responsibility to act in this way • “Being and Nothingness” – conflict is central to all human relationships

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2009 Abstracts Stage 2

The Problematic Case of Alchemy: Science or Superstition?

The project is driven by the intuition that in the modern age there is a conflict between science and religion. This conflict/ value distinction is proved problematic; in which domain does alchemy lie? Context: Alchemy as a historically changing concept. Thinkers: Kant, Hegel, Kuhn. Change/ Contrast: Historical contrast between our views/ intuitions of alchemy, science and religion respectively; from the Ancient world view, to the Enlightenment and the Modern age. – Why is there a value distinction between the two? Alchemy defies this hierarchy. – Can science and religion reconcile their positions?

Categories
2009 Abstracts Stage 3

Exploring the Philosophy of Heidegger through the Work of Samuel Beckett

In my project, I will use Beckett’s work, including novels, short prose, drama and critical essays, to explore and challenge the work of Heidegger. I will explore Heidegger’s philosophy, in terms of his views on the way people exist in the world, their perspectives and the nature of truth and knowledge, with a particular focus on his ideas about art. I will use the style, mediums and characters of Beckett to explore how valid these ideas are for the modern world, particularly after the atrocities of the Second World War. I will focus particularly on Heidegger’s condemnation of art in the modern world, exploring its validity. I hope to show that Heidegger’s ideas, though often persuasive and enlightening, are inapplicable to a modern world in which subjects and communities are simply not the coherent and well-integrated wholes he hoped for. Following Beckett, I will explore the precarious, impotent, tragic and confused nature of existence, resolvable, perhaps, in death.

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2009 Abstracts Stage 3

Nursing Ethics: the Changing Role of the Nurse

Territory: Nursing. Object: The role of the nurse. Concepts: Informed Consent, Paternalism, Autonomy Change: The role of the nurse over time. Thinkers: Kant, Mill, O’Neill, Foucault, Gadamer. Questions I am going to Consider: Does the paternalistic role doctors and other medical professionals used to take have any ethical basis? Is the more recent move towards advocacy and partnership more ethical? Should informed consent be compulsory in every situation? Which is more important: autonomy or welfare? Sources: Mill, J.S., On Liberty, 1903, London: Longmans, Green and Co.; Gadamer, H-G., Truth and Method, 1975, London: Continuum; Gillon, R., Philosophical Medical Ethics, 1985, Chichester: Wiley; Fairbairn, G. and S. (ed.), Ethical Issues in Caring, 1988, Aldershot: Gower Publishing Company Ltd.

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2009 Abstracts Stage 3

Is Popular Music a Means to an End, or a Good in Itself?

Object – Popular music. • I shall study Schopenhauer in order to establish how ideas concerning music have changed over time. • For Schopenhauer music is a good, an end in itself. • Music is set aside from all the other art forms, it does not simply manifest the ideas of the will but is a direct expression of the will. • Music is the key to suspending will for a moment through an aesthetic break from everyday pain. Adorno. • Popular music is an instrument for another good instead of an end in itself. • The function of the culture industry is ultimately to organise leisure time in the same way as industrialisation has organised work time. • Customers of musical entertainment are themselves objects of the same mechanisms which determine the production of popular music. Their spare time serves only to reproduce their working capacity. • Work leads to mass culture and mass culture leads back to work. Popular music is standardized, and in order to conceal this standardization, the music industry engages in pseudo individualisation. Thus listeners are kept inline by making them forget that what they listen to is already pre digested. Problems with Adorno. Popular music has changed a lot since Adorno who was writing in 1941. Is it still as monolithic as he would have us believe? Does pseudo individualisation really explain things like the advent of rock and roll in 1956, the emergence of The Beatles in 1962 or punk rock in 1976? Popular music from Adorno onwards. Rock and roll as religion – a good in itself. Robert Pielke suggests that rock and roll is most properly understood as a religion that has created a transformation in culture. He compares the 6 characteristics of a religious experience presented by Rudolf Otto with feelings generated from listening to rock and roll or attending a concert. Charles Pressler and Derrida’s outline of ‘The Colossal’ The awe-inspiring concept that rock and roll presents is ‘the colossal’. The presentation of ‘the colossal’ is like an enabling energy that allows a new set of values to be taken onboard by the rock and roll audience.

Categories
2009 Abstracts Stage 3

Fighting for Peace: a Contradiction in Terms or the Harsh Reality?

Object: I chose to examine the concept of war and terror and if it is really possible to fight in order to restore peace. The main focus of my project lay in the idea that war will only spawn more hatred, and so creating a war with the objective of bringing peace to a society is an impossibility. In conjunction with this I attempted to look at the reasons why people agree to war, and the freedom of British citizens when they agree to join the Army. Territory: When I originally decided upon a territory I chose the ‘War on Terror’, namely the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Upon further investigation it became clear to me that these were two separate wars with different focuses and motivations, and so I shifted the focus of my project solely to the war in Iraq, and the reasons for and against this war. I also looked at the concept of the British Army and the reasons behind why soldiers are deployed to fight in what was not a British fight to begin with. The Philosophy behind my project: Gadamer and Death: One of the concepts that became most clear to me was that of the idea of the repression of death. Gadamer notes that society’s perception of death had changed, and I examined if this affected the decision of those joining the Army. Kant, Freedom and Duty: I also looked at the idea of whether the innate sense of duty that we possess, according to Kant, affects the decisions we make in everyday life, such as joining the Army. I also discussed how much freedom we actually have, when, if you join the Army, you have to sign up for a minimum period of time, and you can be forcibly deployed to fight in wars you might not believe in.

Categories
2009 Abstracts Stage 3

Nature vs Nurture

Overall aim- to prove that humans do have a distinct nature which sets us apart as individuals and that we are more than living organisms that respond to social needs. • To prove this I am using my experience of America – to study how I adapted to a new culture to see whether I totally adapted or whether there is part of me that remained the same. • We cannot deny our want and need to adapt to environments and cultures but humans still have an innate nature that defines us as individuals and remains the same all our life. • Our human nature is responsible for HOW we respond to cultures and our upbringing. We are not born a blank slate. PHILOSOPHY. • I liken my ideas to Descartes and his idea of dualism where the mind and body are distinct from each other. • Mencius believed that there are 4 positions of human nature that we are born with but develop throughout our life, o 1. Mind of commiseration o 2. Mind of shame o 3. Mind of respect o 4. Mind of right/wrong • Lao Tzu believed that we should strive to be an ‘uncarved block.’ So we should go back to the basis of our human nature and we should not be affected by anything external to ourselves. • I am using these two philosophers to suggest unlike them I do not believe we are wholly independent from society and I think that Lao Tzu’s ‘uncarved block’ is unrealistic. We could never deny the influences that our society/upbringing has on us. • But like them I believe we have an innate human nature which is responsible for how we respond to our surroundings and is individual to each person.

Categories
2009 Abstracts Stage 2

Addiction …. Mill and Bataille

My territory is addiction; I chose addiction as it is a contemporary issue of concern today! I have examined most areas of addiction, such as; Drug/ alcohol abuse, gambling, sex and eating disorders. Essentially it is not about what addiction one has; rather why one is addicted in the first place. Thus, I have explored contemporary answers. The two concepts of Philosophy I have  chosen are that of Mill and Bataille. 

Bataille is related to my topic of addiction because he blames Society!!! Due to the Rise of Capitalism All time is spent on useful means leaving no  time for useless expenditure…addiction is a way of escaping  this monotonous regimented lifestyle!!! 

The methodology: The method I have used throughout my project is the hermeneutic interpretive, as I attained all my information from books and the internet.

Mill is associated with my territory because his philosophy is based on Hedonism: Addiction is based on pleasure and addicts do it to release pain. This is also following Mill’s principle of Utilitarianism. Also, I have explored Mill’s work on education; his basic doctrine related to addiction would be that a good education from a young age would prevent behaviours like addiction occurring. He distinguishes higher and lower pleasures, higher pleasures being things such as; theatre and literature. Thus an alternative for addiction, for Mill, could be through art.

Categories
2009 Abstracts Stage 2

To Whom are we Responsible?

Who can possibly be responsible for the two extreme eating disorders? The state, family, media and culture all have their parts to play. How do we know what is best for us?… If the state, family and individual all disagree? Parentalism – should an individual with an eating disorder be considered not fully rational and is this justification for some of that person’s right to freedom to be taken away, on the grounds that they would be ‘better off’. Hegel asserts that the individual’s highest freedom consists in membership in the state. BUT: Does society protect us?

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2009 Abstracts Stage 2

Fakebook: is Technology Mediating Human Interaction?

It is estimated that there are 150 million active Facebook users worldwide. • Once a website aimed solely at students at Harvard University as a means of keeping in contact with classmates, Facebook has grown exponentially since its inception in February 2004. • Recently it has excelled in the 35‐54 year age demographic with a reported 279% increase in users in this age bracket. The worry is that, in domino effect of sorts through the generations, it will soon be a reality that everyone who has regular access to a computer will be communicating through a website and human contact and interaction will be a seldom practiced pastime. With the arrival of the mobile telephone came a whirlwind of irreversible change. Advancements in Telecommunications opened the gateway to a so‐called ‘Thumb culture’ in which communication and media interaction are all dictated by some form of digital interface. It seems as though, with each technological step forward, we take an interpersonal step back. For example, first there were phone conversations to close friends and family, then came text messaging, a far less personal way of communicating but, nonetheless it was a progression, or perhaps digression, that was mutually embraced by contacts that once knew each other well enough to interact verbally. From this stemmed the birth of instant messaging as a cheaper but very similar alternative. The concept of social networking through sites such as Myspace and Facebook is a commendable one. They aim to maintain correspondence with people that would have otherwise slipped off one’s communication radar. But the reality is that our strong relationships become diluted by becoming ‘Facebook friends’ with people we would call mere acquaintances. With the addition of Facebook chat in April 2008, Facebook became a ‘one‐stop shop’ for all our communication needs. Engaging in duologues on Facebook meant that their monopolisation have become so conglomerate that face‐to‐face conversations end up actively referring to Facebook. With a limitless online friend capacity, people with thousands of friends either have to spread themselves very thinly across all these people, or spend hours and hours chained to a computer to maintain a valid friendship. In order to explore this territory, I will be looking at the work of J.G. Ballard and Guy Debord as well as looking into Communication Theory. My aim for this project is to investigate where we go from here. Will face to face, or even verbal communication exist in the future? Or will technology sever our personal relationships to such an extent that meeting with people will be simply a distant memory; something the future generations will dismiss as ’something their grandparents did’?

Categories
2009 Abstracts Stage 2

“Kill Me and Save Yourself!” How Friendship Affects Morality

Aims
In my project I will discuss how the relationship between friends affects our ability to make objective moral decisions. In doing so I hope to clarify some of the philosophical positions on friendship and assess my own views philosophically in order to attain whether moral theories should devote specific attention to this idea.

Object
The object for my project is the documentary film “Touching the Void”. This film tells the story of two friends who set out to climb the previously un-summited west face of “Siula Grande” in the Peruvian mountains. In doing so both friends were plunged into a life and death struggle and one was forced to make an arduous decision to end his friend’s life.

Territory
The philosophers I will use in my project are;
• Aristotle, who writes explicitly on the conditions of complete friendship in his book
“Nicomachean Ethics”
• Hegel, most importantly his concept of recognition and how that is affected by
friendship and how this in turn affects his moral theory
• Hobbes, the idea of rational egoism and how friendship is affected by this