This project will explore the object of the runner’s high within the territory of Phenomenology, in particular, the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in The Phenomenology of perception and the work of Martin Heidegger in Being and Time. The runner’s high is generally understood as acute and positive mood changes that occur with running and jogging over long distances, that can be explained by the scientific endorphin hypothesis. However, this project aims to show that this is limited as it does not provide an account of our actual human experience of the runner’s high. It draws on literature and blogs that describe the author’s personal experience of the runners high in order to analyse this phenomenon as it actually appears to us. The application of phenomenology is significant in proving an account of this as it includes the way things are experienced by humans and treats this phenomenon as real and significant. To an extent, this project argues that Phenomenology can provide a valid account of the runner’s high as the application of Heidegger’s work partially provides an explanation of key factors in our experiences of the runner’s high. However, the application of Merleau-Ponty’s work provides a more sufficient account.
Category: Stage 2
This project examines where one should draw the line between obeying and disobeying the law, specifically focusing on the Colston statue controversy in Bristol, UK. It investigates the role of civil disobedience in the removal of the statue. The legitimacy of the actions taken by the Colston Four are considered, who were charged with criminal damage and brought to trial for their role in the statue’s removal. The perspectives of political philosophers John Locke and John Rawls on civil disobedience are utilised, with a view towards how their theories might relate to the Colston statue case.
It also considers the legal framework governing civil disobedience in the UK, examining the Colston Four’s legal defence and the judge’s ruling that they could not rely on a human rights defence. It questions whether the current legal system adequately protects individuals’ rights to civil disobedience and whether greater protections should exist. Ultimately, I argue that the Colston Four’s actions were justified as a form of civil disobedience aimed at rectifying a historical wrong and that the law should allow for greater latitude in cases of civil disobedience where the individual’s actions are aimed at challenging injustice and promoting equality.
The emotional release that is often felt by spectators when observing cinema is an interesting focus in the context for Freud’s catharsis, as early cinema was still developing as an art form when he wrote his various works. He extensively discussed the psychic mechanisms at play during dreams, fantasy and even when telling jokes yet applying his theories of repression and the unconscious to cinema specifically has produced insight into the unique experience of being a spectator to cinema.
This dissertation explores the role of catharsis in cinema, focusing on the 2016 television series ‘Fleabag’ and analysing the psychic mechanisms at play during such catharsis. My object therefore is Cinema and Fleabag and the territory is catharsis.
Cinema is referenced through a variety of secondary sources and Fleabag is referenced through Phoebe Waller- Bridge’s original scripts- The Scriptures (2020).
Aristotelian Catharsis is reference through his Poetics (1995) which influenced Freudian catharsis as demonstrated in Breuer and Freud’s Studies in Hysteria (2004) which describe a therapeutic technique which harnesses the process of catharsis to treat neurotic patients. Finally, I discuss the feminine experience of catharsis with reference to the popular culture term dissociative feminism, relating it to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (2011).
By the above primary thinkers, my project demonstrates that the process of cinematic catharsis is purgative because it facilitates a processing of unconscious conflict, even if we are unaware of it.
Hannah Arendt’s philosophy on ‘the banality of evil applied to racism.
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.
A current and stimulating insight into the question of whether criminals should be allowed to have children. With staggering statistics such as ‘online grooming crimes have risen by more than 80% in four years’ (NSPCC, 2022 raising important philosophical questions about whether it would better for society if criminals were prohibited from having children. Understanding the many moral dimensions to such a complex question is key in the debate of whether criminals should be allowed to have children.
This project intends to investigate moral responsibility in war especially particularly war crimes and actions of violence. It takes inspiration from the work of Hannah Arendt and her report on the banality of evil. It also looks at the Military Philosophy of Carl Von Clausewitz to understand the influence of military doctrine and the establishment on moral thinking. Finally it will discuss the Phenomenon of Dirty hands and the implications it has for how actions of state impact societies ethics and the burden of personal guilt to provide an interesting take on western military culture and liability.
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.
SURROGACY – THE PROBLEM OF WOMEN’S SELF-OBJECTIFICATION
An insight into the key questions and thinking that surround the philosophy of music; An outline of the relationship between sound, noise, and music; and the changes that have occurred for music and the philosophy of music over recorded history.
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’.
This essay explores the genealogy of the penal system as a paradigm for understanding power dynamics within educational institutions, drawing from the philosophical works of Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche. Building on Foucault’s theoretical framework, this investigation delves into the structures of power and discipline, including hierarchical observation and normalising judgement, and their pervasive presence within contemporary educational environments. Nietzsche’s insights from ‘On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life’ and ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ offer an additional lens to critically appraise the formation and enforcement of norms in these settings. Cinematic representations of these concepts, primarily found in Lindsay Anderson’s ‘If….’ and Peter Weir’s ‘Dead Poets Society’, are analysed to provide tangible illustrations of Foucault’s and Nietzsche’s theories within institutionalised education. The essay demonstrates how, akin to the penal system, educational institutions exercise power, regulate behaviour, and manage deviation, resulting in a profound influence on individual formation and societal coherence. By juxtaposing the penal and educational systems, this analysis highlights the urgency of addressing the inherent power imbalances and restrictive norms within educational institutions to promote more equitable learning environments.
This project shall investigate the premises of social media to explore how perfection can be portrayed online, alongside the effect that it can have on individuals and society as a whole. Using the concepts the ego, the id and the superego, from the work of Freud, The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real from Lacanian psychoanalysis and the notion of shame from Sartre, this project seeks to understand how these concepts can be used to understand why an idealised online persona is desired.
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.
My project is set in the domain of existential fashion, particularly the rise of apocalyptic styling following the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects, both positive and negative. I have drawn philosophical concepts from the works of Jacques Derrida, including his ‘Of Grammatology’. Alongside this, I have referred to Ulrick Beck’s ‘Risk Society’, Risikogesellschaft (1986), in relation to people becoming increasingly preoccupied with a sense of impending doom that has been brought about by the pandemic: portrayed through recent fashion choices and explorations. To support my discussion further, I have incorporated the works of Marilynn H. Johnson in her Adorning Bodies (2022), in which she explores the philosophical implications of bodily adornment. Johnson notes that existential feelings and thoughts inspiring people’s fashion decisions, are not uncommon. As we have seen previously, different trends and popularity of statement pieces of clothing, rise following grand world events, such as in the 1960s in response to the Vietnam war and adjacent Civil Rights movement. The rise of apocalyptic fashion serves as proof of the determination and adaptability of human beings, along with our willingness to persevere through difficult situations, and it is this that I have delved into in this project.
This paper attempts to show how the object of prayer is linked to knowledge, as knowledge from a theological standpoint finds its root in God, and prayer from an Islamic perspective is seen as a direct communion with God. I will look at this from a cosmological aspect, with regard to the idea of man being created in the image of God and the Adamic potential of man. I will also look at the different levels of knowledge and what knowledge is for both Qadi Abu Bakr Ibn’ Arabi and Abu Hamid Al Ghazali. Ghazali emphasizes the concept of the heart being a vessel of knowledge and uses light as a metaphor for knowledge, I will try to outline how to attain a state where knowledge is possible by means of the heart, as well as showing from a cosmological perspective that the function of humans is to be in constant remembrance of God, thus constant prayer, through the idea of the divine names of God.
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.
State interaction is a variable that each governing authority has to examine and judge in relation to individual welfare. After examining a variety of political philosophers and their beliefs on state interaction, I propose this thesis. While there is an argument for minimal state interaction, the most optimal way to promote individual welfare is through the level of state interaction that John Rawls proposes in A Theory of Justice. More state interaction than this is detrimental to individual welfare as it infringes on individual rights, and less state interaction than this has the potential to create vast inequalities within communities.
• My project shows the fundamental racism in the American judicial system that mirrors the attitudes of colonial times.
• Primarily using philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon and his book, The Wretched of the Earth, I show the link between colonial and judicial racism and how prejudice from the past is still alive today, and how this could have happened.
• The wrongful conviction of the ‘Central Park Five’ is my key case study as it reflects the broken system that colonialism upheld.
• I also address other matters of judicial racism in different countries as it is a worldwide problem, with reference to some other philosophical views and relations to Fanon.
• In exposing the issue, I address the changes, Movements, and positive progression that continues to eliminate racism from the world.
• However, I also highlight the remaining systemic and societal racism and how much more needs to be done to cure the sickness that it is.
• I found Fanon’s philosophy truly engaging, the more informed about the horrors and persecution of colonialism I became, the more my interest in its history grew as I still wonder how humanity can be so inhumane.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French existentialist philosopher and a leading figure in the second-wave feminism movement. Beauvoir’s seminal book The Second Sex (1949) is widely considered as the first major study of women’s oppression in contemporary western feminist theory. The aim of my project is to examine Beauvoir’s central ideas in The Second Sex and subsequently demonstrate the topicality of Beauvoir’s manifesto on the feminist movement today.