Investigating whether painting depicts reality in a more meaningful way compared to photography when faced with political and non-political issues and scenarios.
Category: 2021
Object: Salvador Dali’s “The Great Masturbator” (1929) Painting. Dali’s history as an artist confused and disturbed by sexual behaviour and promiscuous acts is represented by the strange surreal distorted imagery surrounding the sexual act. Examining Dali’s strange and disturbed history with promiscuous behaviour encourages us to ask the following questions:
-What is the nature of sexual promiscuity?
-Is sexual promiscuity ethical?
Karl Marx’s A Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ (1970), and Plato’s Plato Repiblic I (1937) are employed as the primary tools into the search for the meaning of Eastern and Western spiritual doctrine, also providing frameworks through which the concept of spirituality can be understood.
This investigation concludes that Eastern spiritual doctrine has more real spiritual value than that of the West through providing a value-system orientated towards freedom and a ‘pure’ conceptual framework orientated towards truth. The concept of divinity in Eastern spiritual doctrine exudes oneness and reciprocity, whilst transcendence focuses on being and presence.
Western spiritual doctrine on the other hand is thought to be reducible to a Capitalist mechanism due to the orientation of control pertinent to its value system and implicitly motivated conceptual framework. Divinity in Western spiritual doctrine embodies oppressive instruction, and its transcendence is linked to Capitalist exploitation. This, then, puts into the nature of Western Reason for its embedding with such oppressive structures and frameworks.
Object and Territory:
The object I will be examining is banal evil in Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil.
I will explore banal evil in relation to its relevance to the modern day and the extent of its importance in revolutionising thought on evil
Aim:
How – I am analysing Arendt’s thought on evil to gain an understanding of the characteristics involved in the phenomenon of the banality of evil
Why – I am exploring Arendt’s thought on evil in order to be able to apply it to our contemporary society
Main Thinkers and their works:
Hannah Arendt – Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil and The Origins of Totalitarianism
Susan Neiman – “Banality Reconsidered”
María Lara – Narrating Evil
Richard Bernstein – “Are Arendt’s Reflections on Evil Still Relevant?”
This project is a philosophical analysis of the existence of billionaires in today’s economic climate. In today’s society, there is an ever-increasing number of billionaires. Meanwhile, there is also a large number of people living in poverty. Many of the wealthiest people today, such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are considered to be philanthropists due to their many charitable actions. Although it is undeniable that these actions are more significant than those of many other billionaires today, it still seems that this is simply not enough in today’s economic climate. This project will aim to understand if there is an alternative to the way society is structured. Firstly, we must consider whether the human desire to have an excessive amount of wealth is something that is fundamental to human nature, or whether we are conditioned by society to think this way. In order to do this, I will consider Thomas Hobbes’ account of man in the state of nature to understand how man is naturally greedy. I will also consider the Marxist critique of capitalism to understand how society conditions us to believe that we are in a state of scarcity and need to work for new symbols of exchange. After fulfilling this research, I will conclude that it is within our human nature to be greedy animals, wanting an abundance of goods, and the society we live in simply facilitates this need. It will then be important to consider how the goods within society could be distributed in order to account for this inherent greed. I will discuss the ideas of John Rawls and Robert Nozick on distributive justice. I will present the ideas of Rawls which seem to be commendable, however Nozick’s critique of Rawls will show that it would be impossible to remain in a state of equal distribution without sacrificing individual liberty – a higher order good. Overall, the project will highlight that wealth is a central element of society today, and the only way to account for the inequalities we see is to diminish liberty; a conflict which is unresolvable.
Virtual Identities Vs. Authentic Selves: A Philosophical Investigation into Whether the Level of Value Society Offers to Hyperreal Identities Relates to Baudrillard’s Notion of ‘The Death of the Real’
This project aims to explore society’s immersion in technology or simulations of reality such as social media, with the idea this hyperreality is used to claim a second identity. This territory will be looked at more closely, by interpreting the value society places on virtual identity offered by the implosion of the new stimulating realm of technological experience such as social media and whether this contributes to losing a sense of authenticity and external reality which will point toward Baudrillard’s notion regarding the death of the real.
-Look at Taylor’s concept of webs of interlocution in ‘sources of the Self’ to show how society is able to learn identity, from being affected by others, in social spaces such as social media.
-Research the extent social media can affect society’s identities supported by a description of ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’.
-Demonstrate how social media increases communities individuals are able to become a part of in granting a sense of identity.
-Look at Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity emphasising how the task of identity formation is incoherent and difficult in a world of flux.
Use Bauman’s concept cloakroom communities to describe how social media allows swapping of identity comes ease alluding to inauthenticity of virtual identity.
-Baudrillard’s concepts from his publication ‘Simulacra and Simulations’ used to describe simulations of reality and hyperreality of social media.
-Draw on how virtual identity is becoming further from the external reality and are the most real way we perceive people.
-Baudrillard’s Semiological theory will be used to explain why society values virtual identity of signs-value.
There are two main sides of the debate surrounding the issue of trans-gender athletes competing in sport – The first considers that everyone is entitled to participate in sport. The second deems it unfair and unsafe to allow trans-athletes to compete.
I offer to resolve this debate by proposing two methods that would change how competition is distributed. Moving away from the current system that sees competition based on sex, I will use Judith Butler to see if competition could be based on self-identification and John Rawls to see if competition could be based on what I will term as ‘micro-biology’.
This dissertation examines John Rawls’s procedural liberalist position with a specific regard to the possible imposition of group-differentiated rights. In light of Will Kymlicka’s communitarian defence of liberalism, I invoke the argument that there are sufficient grounds to implement self-governing rights particularly to the native population in Canada. Considering Canada was the first country in the world to legally recognise multiculturalism as a governmental policy, I use the ongoing debates between the democratic state and the indigenous population in Canada to comprehend the argument for protective group rights. I also incorporate the work of Charles Taylor to determine the importance of the modern identity with specific regard to the dependency one holds to their community.
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.
Object – The object I will be examining is to do with the question of medical treatment and prioritisation in UK hospitals, in relation to a pandemic scenario such as covid-19 pandemic.
Aim:
How – I am applying different ethical concepts to the question of prioritisation in order to find which one will be the most helpful in deciding which patients to treat.
Why – I am looking at this because it has been a very relevant problem during the Covid-19 pandemic. Hopefully I can find the best way to prioritise patients
Concepts & thinkers:
Fletcher – situations ethics
Mill – Rule Utilitarianism
Foucault – Biopolitics and governmentality
Main sources:
Fletcher – Situation Ethics: the new morality
Mill – Utilitarianism
NHS
Foucault –The Birth of Biopolitics
Is the way Technology is advancing really “rational-and-desirable”? (A Critique)
A project by Emily Saladin-Crosse. 3rd year, Philosophical studies. Newcastle university, 2021.
[Item Image]
[key words: introjection, consumption of mediated, de-sublimated product and information; deciphering true and false needs; nothing radically new, increasingly; mediated learning…]
“Dear Guests,
As of 2021, we ask for your help for a critical approach to modern-day technology. To bring you up to date… The new “phenomenological playground” is the internet. Via the phone/ screens we consume products: are “fed” information, images, videos, short and long pieces of information all the time, on the news, social media, etc. Every single thing is at arm’s length (literally), just a *click* away: information, product, print, photo, … everything beautiful and ugly, available and accessible. Art, replicated, multiplied, “free”. Same with porn, and fighting. Surveillance is invasive and “normalised”. For instance, online, we give in quite voluntarily to different forms of surveillance, because it looks rational and desirable and it looks like we have choice. In fact, we are recognised as workers and consumers by Tech. The image shown is the one I utilise to demonstrate/ illustrate parts of the multi-layered problem of deciphering true and false needs which poses perhaps more and more of a problem than before because of technological tendencies towards infinity.
‘Everything is functioning’- says Heidegger, but also: ‘All our relationships have become merely technical ones.’ (Der Spiegel Interview, published after his death, 1976). Today, the values of the Enlightenment bombarded with items according to technological interests instead of our own. This is no longer “rational” to Marcuse in his critique of the Enlightenment ‘One-Dimensional Man’ (1964).
It is valuable to look into ideas such Tech reproducing 1-Dimensional thought in individuals and society as a consequence of “introjection” from the outside (a psychoanalytic notion to be examined). Technology and mediated learning would cause a problem for 18th century Rousseau, but the modern-day Rousseau-inspired educational theorists: we hold on to the idea of an analytic over synthetic approach to education. Whether there are true or false needs at all, is also a question to address.
The writing is in the form of a dialogue, online. This is how the forum proceeds:
ACT 0: Positions.
ACT I: The Paradox of Technology.
ACT II: Deciphering True and False Needs.
ACT III: More critique.
Essentialism is a widely debated facet of philosophy, often focused on the role of women in society. However, not often is research concerned with the role of masculinity within essentialism. To see the effect of and on social influence I will be reflecting the concepts of masculinity and essentialism onto film. This is not previously reflected upon categories, and overall the way that feminism can reflect onto masculinity is something that can be helpful to both genders. I will approach this question through an analysis of the films Billy Elliot (2000) and Dead Poets Society (1989) as a microcosmic story of society’s values. These films will enable me to see complete storylines. Also, I will refer to The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Goldfinger (1964), and Skyfall (2012), from the Bond franchise as influential storylines for the viewer. It will be approached under the guise of three methodologies, analytic, interpretive, and historical. Between these, I will proficiently examine the argument of essentialism, the idea of masculinity in relation to this, and finally, the way film can illuminate the way we view masculinity. This will be with specific reference to Diana Fuss’ book Essentially Speaking (1989) to frame the essentialism argument; also using Andrea Waling’s discourse around ‘toxic’ and ‘healthy’ masculinities. The addition of Locke’s idea of ‘nominal’ versus ‘real’ essence and Luce Irigaray’s input on feminism of difference all integrate to form a coherent basis from which to analyse and interpret the selection of films and draw conclusions. The concluding finding is that film is an integral lens through which we can view society and the demonization of femininity that evolves from the negative masculinity we continue to idealise. This is important to explore as previously the literature has fallen short of showing the practical ends film can lead to, and the importance of delineating the way we view essence even if it is a foundational part of knowledge.
I wanted to investigate online surveillance and how it asserts power and reduces autonomy
Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the infamous “Night Stalker”, once stated in an interview that ‘we have all got the power to kill in our hands, but most of us are afraid to use it. Those who aren’t, control life itself’. The first person to conceptualise evil was St Augustine, who believed in the metaphysical concept that evil was a necessary part of the world, for one cannot have good without evil. They both must coexist to create a balanced structure, thus describing evil within humans. The existence of evil is something that most humans view as destruction and nothingness, hence why they dislike the thought that it could reside within them. However, without evil in the world, there would be no conception of reality. If anything, good can only be praised as something which is not evil. Good is not a concept that guarantees happiness or fulfilment, and it is a concept that guarantees a lack of destruction.
This project will focus on the different contemporary theories of evil action regarding the concept of evil to deduce whether Richard Ramirez was justified in his claims about humanity and murder. BBC News claims that ‘over three decades in the late 20th century, there was a rise in serial homicides in North America’, explicitly suggesting that ‘a rise in serial killings [started] in the late 1960s, peaking in the 80s – when there were at least 200 such murderers operating in the United States alone’. This lead several theorists to attempt to offer necessary and sufficient conditions for evil. Some, such as Marcus G. Singer (2002), have focussed on evil as a root of personhood, whilst others, such as Luke Russell (2014), consider evil to be action-based.
The first part of this project will focus on the concept of evil and harmful wrongdoing. This chapter assumes that actions can be evil in themselves or that actions can be considered as ‘wrong’ in themselves. This chapter will then lead to evil and harm where it will be argued that evil must ‘cause or allow significant harm to at least one victim’. This part of the project will be crucial in deciphering whether evil is necessary within a person to cause another individual harm otherwise understood as quasi-deontological ethics. Then will continue into the concept of evil and motivation, which will delve into desire as a motive within a human mind, whether evil is a desire or something innate within us, otherwise known as consequentialist ethics. Evil could belong either to souls or to acts; if the former, there need be no consequences, if the latter, then evil is necessarily consequential. The next part of this chapter will focus on evil and its effect; this chapter focuses on the emotions humans must provide to commit murder and whether emotions must be involved to create evil. This chapter will conclude that evil resides within the soul rather than within the consequences of human action.
Then most importantly, the project will end with a chapter on evil and responsibility, which will focus on how evil resides in the soul using the classic argument of nature versus nurture. This will argue on behalf of ignorance, when people do not understand that what they are doing is wrong or when humans do something wrong by mistake and without intention. Then it will argue on behalf of psychopathy, where humans struggle to feel remorse for their actions which therefore makes it harder for them to act in a way which is socially acceptable. It will argue on behalf of upbringing, as evil could be distilled in childhood and traumatic experiences from a young age. This will be the crucial part of the essay in tying together the conclusion as to whether it has been ‘universally accepted that to perform an evil action an agent must be morally responsible for what she does’ unless that is of a natural event; however, there are other responsibilities for evil actions.
In this investigation, I answer my object of the extent to which the British Media has invaded the lives of the public. Is there a need to limit the freedom of the press, what has been done and what is left to do to ensure the protection of ordinary people? Using texts by Jeremy Bentham and the work of Hannah Arendt as my philosophical insight, I ask, are we too reliant on the press to pass us our information and if so who is to blame for the politically fuelled hate campaigns that arise towards certain groups, individuals and sectors in our society spearheaded by the media?
From its roots, phenomenology has tended towards an anthropocentric view of the world. This much is true in as far as we think of the phenomenological subject as a solely human entitlement which cannot be transplanted onto other modes of being such as that of the animal or vegetal realms.
Plants in themselves have been reduced, in the past, to objects for the human subject both in our experience of them directly (Husserl, for example, talks of trees in Ideas I, only referring to them as objects in their own right), and in their material advantages to us as commodities and resources.
Goethe made a step towards understanding the world of plants in and of themselves in his philosophical application of botanical orientated scientific, observational study. In his Metamorphosis of Plants, he explains how the elemental life force, striving or ‘conatus’ of plants is the basis for vegetal ontology and is akin to a sort of rationality in plants.
Michael Marder recognizes how plants present a specific challenge to western philosophy, especially phenomenology, and, in his book, Plant Thinking, problematizes the reductionary relation between the human world and that of vegetal being.
Human and plant interactions in the world are ontologically estranged from one another which necessarily calls us into an ethical state of being with regards to Nature as a unifying concept. The ecopsychological application of the Buddhist world view of Ahimsa and dependent origination allows a different reading of ontological alterity within Nature to that of Marder.
In this study we shall look at the temporal character of vegetal ontology as a route for acceptance of plant life as a conceptual authority in and of itself. By informing a critique of Marder’s revolutionary ethical stance towards vegetal being with a meditative contemplation of the world around us, based in Zen Buddhism; I hope to show how human’s experience of the world can benefit from understanding plant’s interaction with the world. I shall also consider how this change in perspective to our relationship with plants and their being-in-the-world could have a positive outcome in terms of conservation and environmental ethics.
In this project, I will start out by analysing the origin and structure of conspiracy theories in general. I will then conduct an analysis of the data regarding public opinion on various issues within the pandemic, using the previous sections to create assertions which aim to explain the statistical trends seen in figures 1-4. In search of providing a competent method to demarcate between warranted and unwarranted conspiracy theories — I will appeal to Karl Popper’s falsification principle, with attention also paid to his conception of conspiracy theories. Unintentionally, throughout my research, I have come to speculate that the real concern is not so much these obviously unfalsifiable conspiracies that the media would have you believe are incredibly prevalent — but the deflection away from the competence and authority of the government. I will reference Giorgio Agamben’s thoughts on this emerging structure of totalitarianism present within the government and argue that we ought not propose these unified conspiracy theories which require stretches of the imagination — but simply that we should approach the media and government with an unbiased eye, doing justice to the data in front of us.
Was Harry Potter predetermined to be the chosen one? Or is it down to free will.. or more fate?
A philosophical investigation in the response carried out by the USA, the UK & New Zealand against Coronavirus
In 1967, French literary theorist and cultural critic Roland Barthes asserted The Death of the Author. Representing a call for a diminished heed in reviewing the backdrop of the author when interpreting a text, he states the reader as the only place where such meaning within a text can accumulate. It is through the Internet meme, “groups of items sharing common characteristics of content and form” (Williams, 2020, 4), we see this call met. Addressing Foucault’s “author-function” argument, we see the meme detach from the author’s stipulation — in its being propagated on the Internet, participation in the creation of work no longer holds regard to an author. Instead, we see memes created, propagated, spread, remixed, edited, actions integral to the digital experience, allowing the meme to standalone as a piece of work in its own utterance, it is not simply an original piece but woven in it lies countless threads of culture. In detailing Pepe, the Frog meme, we find memes represent a collective cultural experience: different groups rally over the Internet to depict meaning to a piece of work, presenting differing composition of cultures, none of which original. Thus, in the Internet age, the birth of the reader is in full stride, presenting the author as truly dead, in the context of the collective ownership of memes.