Category: 2013

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Knowledge is Power. How the desire for self-education among the pitmen of the North East evokes both Kantian autonomy and Marxist emancipation

This Project is an exploration of the philosophical, ethical, and political motives to be found in the desire for and execution of self-education among the pitmen of the Great Northern Coalfield, particularly in the twentieth century.

The two main philosophical strands used were Kant’s notion of autonomy in the context of the universal moral law, and Kant’s depiction and encouragement of human emancipation.

The case study chosen was the Ashington Group of pitmen and labourers who rose to fame with their art from the 1930s onwards, but chose not to leave their occupations for the art world.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

The Hegemony of the Housed. A Foucauldian Reading of Homelessness in Modern Britain

Foucault’s focus on discourse notes language as establishing structures within society that exercise power.

Power/Knowledge reinforces social control and normalization of people – including the exclusion of those outside desired social norms – these are constructs of language and culture

Post-structuralist ideas reminiscent of the panopticon of Jeremy Bentham – in which all people/employees are observed at all times by those in control. This leads to the hegemony of the normalized people (in this context – the housed)

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

Beauty and Utility

The project aims to analyse the relationships between property and beauty and utility. This will include the shift in what we consider beauty to be, and how that has affected property development in the UK. Architectures and developers of the 20th Century have become impatient with beauty and replaced it with utility. I will discuss the implications for this on both the type of building as well as where these buildings are being constructed. In that vein the project will address the importance of environment and rural surroundings to human nature. Environmental ethics and aesthetics will form a large proportion of the project and the conclusion will determine whether this change in perception of beauty has had a negative effect on property in the UK and whether our spiritual and moral needs have been damaged. Key Philosophers include Roger Scruton who discusses the importance of beauty for humans in terms of understanding their nature and world around them. Immanuel Kant’s notion of disinterestedness in regard to beauty will also be analysed and compared to Scruton’s idea that one must appreciate the function of something to appreciate its beauty as well.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

An Exploration into Freemasonry (as Considered in S. Knight’s The Brotherhood) and its Influence on Power Dynamics within Social and Political Philosophies

Stephen Knights’ ‘The Brotherhood” (1985) claims that Freemasonry exists throughout most power dynamic systems and structures we recognize in modern day Britain.

Through an exploration of these claims and an analysis of them it seeks to discover how they would fit through various social and political philosophies such as those of Habermas, Plato, Hobbes, Locke and Nietzsche

It will look at how the alleged power and influence of Freemasonry fits with:
• Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action.
• Plato’s Republic
• Hobbes’ Leviathan
• Locke’s Two Treatise of Government
• Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Project looks at how Habermas’s theory of communicative action suggests that as their influence on society exists in their ability to control and coerce general population consensus. We must re-engage in a new civil autonomy so as to assert our own un-influenced general opinion. As such in a Democracy we may consider that in accordance with this, Freemasonry has no legitimacy in its power.

It then looked to Plato’s Republic, Hobbes’ Leviathan and Locke’s Two Treatise of Government to establish whether it could find a more accredited position outside democracy. However the secrecy and abstract assumptions regarding the movement brought about new issues with its validity.

Finally the project considered that, in light the lack of action taken against Freemasonry we could be led to assert a form of Existential angst present. If we are to consider that the movement finds no admissible or appropriate place in so many social and political philosophies then why does it still exist. The conclusion is the existential angst the majority face as proposed by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. If Freemasonry is as influential as Knight’s ‘The Brotherhood’ suggests then maybe Freemasonry has infiltrated our social structures too far throughout the course of history and its control become too engrained in all we know for anything to be done about it. Or have we just no interest in what has become an old novelty tradition.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

A Critique of the “Cult” of Willpower and Positive Thinking

Have the terms willpower and positive thinking become arbitrary labels which are used to explain success, failure or motivation when no other logical explanation presents itself?

Is Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace testament to this?

What do we mean when we describe acts of bravery, like those of soldiers at the Battle of the Somme, as extreme measures of willpower?

Smile or Die: has the self-help culture of the late 20th and early 21st century developed an attitude that positive thinking can overcome any problem, whether it be loosing weight, finding love, or beating cancer?

What light does Friedrich Nietzsche’s “will to power” shed on contemporary ideas of motivation and success?

Is humanity a struggle for dominance where the strongest willed individuals exploit the weak and the foreign through appropriation, injury, and overpowering?

If “life simply is the will to power” do we actually have any way of controlling, training or improving our will?

Does the answer to this question explain whether willpower and positive thinking have become arbitrary terms which have no tangible or practical meaning?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Embedded within Reality? A Philosophical Inquiry into Whether Photographic Practice Differs from Other Modes of Visual Representation in Terms of its Classification as Art

The discussion of this paper will be centred on the argument of whether photography can ever be considered as anything more than merely a mechanical replicate of the world. Photography is generally seen by many as an automatic unemotional means of ‘capturing a moment in time’. Art, on the other hand, is commonly seen as a hand-rendered expression of human imagination typically illustrated within a visual form.

The following questions will be asked;
 What effect has the mass production of photographic images had?
 How much does the intentionality of the artist matter?
 What is the impact of photo-manipulation on the notion of authorship?
 Can our perception of a believed photographic reality be merely an illusion?
 Is our modern consumerist world driven by the image?

We will begin with a brief outline of the ways in which photography of the past designed modes of replicating the painterly styles of the artworks of the time. We shall then discuss the notion of how photography became a product of mass production, whilst introducing the thoughts of Walter Benjamin and Heidegger who both see modern works of art, and photography, as unable to reach the previous standards of past great artworks for they have lost originality, ‘aura’. We shall consider the views of Scruton who fundamentally states a photograph is unable to be the product of aesthetic judgement for it is bound by a casual relation to the world and is an automatic technical invention which requires no thought processes on behalf of the creator to effectively formulate it. Our discussion will finally lead us to the views of Susan Sontag and Jean Baudrillard who believe that under the present age of our consumer media driven tradition, our reality is reinstated by the photographic image, for photographic seeing fundamentally alienates reality.

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

Cinema Violence. Quentin Tarantino in the World of Aesthetics and the Problem of Beauty in Evil

Territory: Cinema Violence

Object: Quentin Tarantino

Concepts: Audience emotion, aesthetic formalism, the problem of beauty in evil.

Philosophers: Noël Carroll, Mary Devereux, Joseph Kupfer, Quentin Tarantino

Objectives
– To better understand the arguments put forward by Quentin Tarantino for his use of violence.
– To further explore these ideas in the context of philosophy of audience and aesthetics.

– How has violent cinema developed?
– What is Tarantino’s role in the history of cinema violence?
– What is Tarantino’s relationship with his audience?
– What is Tarantino’s aesthetic philosophy?
– Where does Tarantino fit in with the problem of finding beauty in evil?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

Mental Illness as a Social Construct

Key Concepts
Stigma of mental illness in society – The effects this has on the modern day sufferers & the effect of the overall illness within society itself.
Mental Illness as a social construct – How it is seen to be created by social influences and what this means for the illness.
Public Conceptions of Mental Illness from historical and modern media influences.
Is there even such a thing as mental illness?
What is an illness of the mind?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 3

President Kagame What makes a legitimate Leader?

Hobbes
State of Nature/ Rwandan genocide

Rousseau
One’s right to obey a power does not legitimise power

State of Peace with Sovereign Kagame

Kagame’s possible move to Democracy to legitimise his power