Category: Abstracts

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Personhood. Persons, bodies and: exploring the relationships between historical concepts of personhood and prescriptions in medical ethics.

My objective in this essay is two part. Firstly I aim to produce a well-rounded account of the differing approaches to defining personhood, assess their shortcomings and highlight the relationship between personhood and rights. The second part of the essay will be an application of this notion of personhood and the subsequent theory of rights to the sphere of medical ethics, using abortion to demonstrate the important role the notion of personhood plays in medical ethical issues as well as highlighting its limitations.

FIRST I will establish the context of personhood by assessing first the Religious approaches to personhood. Next the Philosophical approach, using the philosophies of Aquinas, Descartes and Locke on personhood. And last the approach of science. All will be viewed in the context of history and how definitions change across history and across culture.

Secondly I will emphasise the undeniable link between concepts of Personhood and the effects it has on human rights. And use Peter Singer to demonstrate issues with a hierarchy of rights.

Lastly I will apply notions of personhood, and the subsequent theory of rights, to the abortion debate in order to demonstrate the impact of personhood in medical ethics. I will then use the works of Judith Thompson and discussions on social influences to highlight the extent of the role that personhood actually plays in medical ethical issues.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

Why Should I? Commitment in An Age of Individualism

An investigation into the relationship between the growing individualistic tendencies of the West and commitment-phobia: The identity crisis of the chooser with infinite choice

Case Study: Marriage – Why are marriage rates declining?
Kierkegaard, The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage
Blond, Marriage: Union for the future or contract for the present

“The faith of the Faithless”

Q) Would a restoration of religiosity in our culture make the idea of commitment more reasonable?

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

How Can We Learn from the Holocaust? A critical evaluation of the pedagogic value of responses to the Holocaust and art in law.

Artistic responses:

Adorno: didactic art and mass culture. Holocaust art has the ability to misrepresent victims’ experiences, undermining the pedagogic value of art. Mass culture threatens society’s understanding of the Holocaust by dictating standardized moral messages to its audience.

Schindler’s List is an example of Holocaust art that is not appropriate for education because it dictates a moral message through in scenes of gratuitous violence.

Maus consistently reminds the reader of the dangers of misrepresentation in Holocaust art and does not dictate a message, allowing readers to critically engage with the subject matter and form their own opinions. It is educational without being didactic.

Legal responses:

Holocaust denial: Irving v. Lipstadt set the precedent for how liberal societies can maintain their commitment to free speech whilst protecting the collective memory of the Holocaust from deniers.

Who’s accountable? Society must accept that strategic reasoning pioneered by modernity contributed to the implementation of the Final Solution, rather than assigning Germany sole accountability.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann highlights that individuals have a duty to humanity above the need to follow the orders of their government.Artistic responses:

Adorno: didactic art and mass culture. Holocaust art has the ability to misrepresent victims’ experiences, undermining the pedagogic value of art. Mass culture threatens society’s understanding of the Holocaust by dictating standardized moral messages to its audience.

Schindler’s List is an example of Holocaust art that is not appropriate for education because it dictates a moral message through in scenes of gratuitous violence.

Maus consistently reminds the reader of the dangers of misrepresentation in Holocaust art and does not dictate a message, allowing readers to critically engage with the subject matter and form their own opinions. It is educational without being didactic.

Legal responses:

Holocaust denial: Irving v. Lipstadt set the precedent for how liberal societies can maintain their commitment to free speech whilst protecting the collective memory of the Holocaust from deniers.

Who’s accountable? Society must accept that strategic reasoning pioneered by modernity contributed to the implementation of the Final Solution, rather than assigning Germany sole accountability.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann highlights that individuals have a duty to humanity above the need to follow the orders of their government.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Is Dadaism Anti-Art?

The internationally revolutionary art movement Dadaism changed what we constitute as art to this day. Fundamentally a form of protest art, it has deep philosophical roots. In my project I will investigate Dadaism and what the artists stood for.

Albert Camus famously wrote about the concept of the absurd; Dada was a chaotic mix of nonsense, humour and nihilism – just how important is art in our ill-fated world?

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement pens what should constitute fine art – does this notion apply to the unrestrained world of the Dadaists?

Finally, I will use Nietzsche’s early and middle period writings to analyse the importance of art and culture in our society – is culture an illusion, and what is the importance of art in our lives?

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

“Downloading an album illegally is the same as taking an album out of the shop without paying” (Recording Industry Association of America). Is this a fair analogy of illegal file-sharing?

Aims:
Can we connect first basis principles to a legitimate claim to ownership?
To discuss what it means to ‘own’ a media file by an investigation into the artist’s labour and personality
If ‘file-sharing’ isn’t stealing off the original artist, who is it stealing off?
Do record labels successfully represent the artist’s intentions?

Project Outline
Distinguishing Features of Stealing and Copying
Which claim to property is most effective: Locke’s labour-mixing or Hegel’s embodiment of personality
The only claim to private property that is effective is Nozick’s entitlement to capital

Philosophers & Key Texts Used:
John Locke: Second Treatise of Government (1689)
Natural Right to Property
‘Labour-mixing argument’

Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State & Utopia (1974)
Entitlement Theory

David Hume: A Treatise Concerning Human Nature (1738)
Artificiality of Property

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy of Right (1820)
Embodiment of Personality

Karl Marx: The German Ideology (1845)
Critique of Capitalist values

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

A Philosophical Discussion of Comedy and Laughter and an Analysis of the Potential Benefits They Offer Society

Thesis: Absolute freedom of comic expression is a prerequisite for a fair and functional society and can provide a form of abstract social mobility. Some forms of comic performances can be considered artistic.

Objective: To explain the philosophical theories concerning why we laugh, to demonstrate these theories through contemporary and historical comedy, and to determine the extent at which comedy is relevant today.

The Superiority Theory: Do we enjoy laughter because we enjoy the suffering of others? Is it just a method for self-elevation? Plato, Hobbes, and Descartes think so.

The Relief Theory: ‘laughter does in the nervous system what a pressure-relief valve does in a steam boiler.’ Nervous energy from insecurities can be released through laughter, according to Freud and Spencer.

The Incongruity Theory: When something seems out of the ordinary, or incongruous, we laugh. Aristotle, Kant and Kierkegaard agreed.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Can Claims to Property Ground Territorial Expansion?

Aim: To investigate whether claims to property can legitimise territorial expansion.

Case study: Throughout the essay I will focus upon he colonisation of America, with the aim of concluding whether the desire for land, held by the colonial power, could be used to legitimise the events that took place.

Philosophers: Locke, Nozick, Hobbes, Hegel, Radin, Grotius

Objectives:
– To investigate the concept of property amongst native Americans.
– To assess whether the European powers had any legitimate claim to the land.
– Can the colonial power’s desire for property ever legitimise the events that took place?

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

The Wolf of Wall Street

Project Aims:
•To distinguish the moral issues within the life story of Jordan Belfort and explore whether the initial presumption that he is solely to blame for such actions is completely accurate.
•Can philosophers such as Nietzsche explain such actions through their own reasoning and logic about how people operate?
•Can a true objective answer be found for such moral dilemmas or is it too subjective to conclude with one judgement?
•Assessing the overlooked factors that aren’t so apparent when first understanding Belfort’s past.

Philosophy:
•Apollonian vs. Dionysian: Nietzsche’s division between the two realms of approaching the world. A good combination of both will help you lead a sustained lifestyle, whereas if you fall too deep into either you risk becoming ‘too boring’ or ‘out of control’. Throughout the study of Belfort’s life this concept is very applicable because he certainly experiences the description of both realms and consequentially allows the Dionysian to be the downfall of his reign.

•Cultural Relativism and how it can help people to understand the differences between certain environments and how such external influences play a vital role when making such moral judgements.

•Immanuel Kant’s absolute laws on ethics. On principles such as: “Do not use people as a means to an end” he would not condone Belfort’s actions.

•Friedrich Nietzsche’s study into Epistemology and how the process of receiving and using knowledge infringes our own free will.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Gnosticism and Feminism: Did the Development of Orthodox Christianity in the Roman Empire Harm the Progress of Feminism in the Modern World?

In this essay I intend to ask if the early development of Christianity was harmful to modern feminism. Are the ideas that were found in the Nag Hammadi library and the Gnostic Gospels more empowering to women than those in the Canon? Looking at the work of Elaine Pagels and Jane Schaberg I will be looking into the early history of the Church and its development in the Roman Empire, comparing Orthodox ideas to those of the Gnostics before looking into modern religious and secular issues for feminism discussing if the Gnostics had more progressive beliefs for women.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

Can Postmodernist Picturebooks be Considered to be An Example of Deleuze and Guattari’s Concept of Minor Literature?

Minor Literature is that which completes three tasks: the continual deterritorialisation of major literature, the enablance of collective enunciation and the instating of non-hierarchal relationships between signifiers and the signified. This project considers whether postmodern picturebooks complete these tasks.

The term, ‘postmodernist picturebooks’ refers to a series of books co-published in Britain and America between 1994 and 2004. All of these books make use of metafictive references and narrative gaps.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 2

Israeli Apartheid …

My project examines the justifiability of the State of Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Arab Palestinians and Israelis, which constitutes the ‘Crime of Apartheid’ under international law, in light of the conventional justification that such measures are necessary in order to maintain the freedom and security of Israel’s Jewish population. After outlining the mechanisms of Israeli apartheid, I will demonstrate that, whilst they are unjust from the perspective of both Kantian ethics and Millian liberalism, traditional utilitarianism considers them morally permissible, and thus, as some later liberals, such as John Rawls, recognized, does not provide a suitable foundation for a liberal political philosophy. I will argue that, whilst Israeli apartheid is undoubtedly unjust, and whilst many of the mechanisms of which it is constituted have no conceivable security function, putting an end to all aspects of Israeli apartheid ultimately requires a solution to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict. Finally, I will briefly explain why I consider a two-state solution to be the only viable means of resolving this conflict, and outline two conditions, from Kant’s Perpetual Peace, that could facilitate the actualization of such a solution.

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2014 Abstracts Stage 3

A Quest for Truth: Is Propaganda the New Empiricism?

Throughout each period of history information has been controlled by a select few elite. From Alexander the Great to Martin Luther to the modern complex of mass media that provides us with information today. This project seeks to explain the way in which information has been controlled from one society to another with the advent of new technologies only perpetuating the problem. If Philosophy is a search for truth, then propaganda is the opposite of philosophy, it is the concealing of truth. Do we just accept what we are told or can we use philosophy to overcome propaganda?

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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

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

Are We Naturally Egoistic or Altruistic?

THOMAS HOBBES – ‘Leviathan’

Man is selfish in the state of nature; we achieve peace through a sovereign which we obey for selfpreservation.

BERNARD MANDEVILLE – ‘The Fable of the Bees’

Altruistic behaviour is a myth and the motivation for everything we do is egoistic. Our ultimate goal is always to increase our own welfare and we help others only to the extent that helping them can benefit ourselves.

AYN RAND – ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’

Rand believes that since selfishness is serious, rational and concerned with one’s own wellbeing, then it is therefore a requirement to achieve ultimate moral value. Rand therefore states that this is the reason that selfishness is in fact a virtue.

DAVID HUME – ‘Treatise and second Enquiry’.

Hume puts forward that not only do we experience in ourselves a feeling for humanity but we also observe it in others. He argues that this sympathy and benevolence disproves the selfish hypothesis and is “contrary both to common feeling and to our most unprejudiced notions”.

JEREMY BENTHAM AND JOHN STUART MILL –

The theory of utilitarianism somewhat contrasts with both egoism and altruism.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU –

Rousseau argues that human nature on the whole is good. He argues that it is the influence of society that corrupts and changes the ‘natural man’ into an egoistic being.

Egoism
Calculated altruism, underlying self-interest?
Doing good for the sake of reward?
Selfishness in disguise?
Survival of the fittest?

Altruism
Natural interest in the good of others?
Doing good for the sake of good?
Developed and evolved throughout humanity?
Must we be taught altruism due to natural selfishness?

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2013 Abstracts Stage 2

The Church of Scientology

One of the fastest growing new religious movements in history, The Church of Scientology claim they possess the ultimate answer to existence, inviting the individual to sign a billion year contract to aid L Ron Hubbard and his missionaries on the road to total freedom. Scientology is a highly controversial movement, labelled by many as a dangerous and abusive religious cult. What is it about Scientology that attracts the masses? Psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung posited a clinical viewpoint on religious belief and practice.

Philosophers in their own right, their psychological theories of religious belief can be applied to religious cults such as Scientology. Freud judged religious faith to be a neurotic need, with belief bringing some comfort to our search for a father figure. In contrast Jung posited religious belief has underlying therapeutic value, giving the agent a chance to achieve emotional closure and human ‘wholeness.’ Nietzsche and Dawkins argue such benefits come at the cost of delusion. Cults appear to bring contentment – at a cost.