Category: Stage 3

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Does Art Succeed where Language Fails? Art as the Vehicle for the Expression of Emotion

I aim to see why we as humans ever need to say such phrases and is it at this point that art comes to the fore.

I will use the following Philosophers:
Heidegger M. On the Way to Language. 1982. Harper Collins Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger. Ed. David Farrell Krell. 2010. Routledge.

Mugerauer R. Heidegger’s Language and Thinking. 1991. Humanities Press International.

Van der Heiden G-J. The Truth (and Untruth) of Language. 2010. Duquesne University Press.

Silverman D. and Torode B. The Material Word. 1980. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Derrida J. Writing and Difference. 2010. Routledge.

Derrida J. Of Grammatology. 1997. John Hopkins University Press.

Basic Writings: Jean-Paul Sartre. Ed. Stephen Priest. 2006. Routledge.

A Nietzsche Reader. Ed. Hollingdale R.J. 1977. Penguin Classics.

Gadamer H-G. Truth and Method. 2006. Continuum

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

[Facebook] Promoting Authenticity or Inauthenticity. What do you Think?

Heidegger: Facebook promotes authenticity by offering people the chance to assume responsibility over their identity and realise that they are in a ‘self-making-situation’.

Sartre: Facebook promotes authenticity by revealing that there is in fact a lack of identity when presenting a self due to the fact that one always has the freedom to choose to move beyond their current situation

Lyotard: Facebook promotes inauthenticity because individuals are no longer concerned with developing a sense of personal identity that is a true representation of them but only with developing an identity that will perform well within their social network in order to increase their social capital

Foucault: Facebook promotes inauthenticity because people are not concerned with developing an identity that is a true representation of them but only with conforming to a certain ideal of how a person ought to be in order to be accepted and not excluded by their social network

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

How Have the Concepts of Truth and Knowledge Developed Throughout History in Relation to Capitalism and Post Modernity?

Key thinkers:
Lyotard 
Foucault 
Gadamer 
Kuhn

Main texts used:
The Post Modern Condition 
Truth And Method 
The Scientific Revolution 
The Archaeology Of Knowledge

Other texts used:
The Philosophy Of Science 
Theology And Scientific Knowledge 
The Passion Of The Western Mind

I have used these texts and studied these thinkers in order to explore the concepts of truth and knowledge. Lyotard has given me an insight into the way science and technology function in the post modern condition and Kuhn has shown the alternative possibilities for the development of science. I have studied Foucault to understand the nature of power and how it relates to knowledge.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

The Problem of Authenticity in Postmodern Society

The aim of my project is to look at the influence of postmodern society and postmodern culture on our experience as authentic, autonomous selves. I hope to unearth something about the true nature of authenticity, if it indeed exists at all, and through the course of this investigation I also hope to obtain a better understanding of my own self. The main question I wish to resolve is: In this postmodern society can anyone really become an authentic individual and consider their experiences to be authentic? The foreseeable problems are centred on the condition of the postmodern world, which promotes inauthenticity. I shall be considering the views of Adorno: The Culture Industry; Heidegger: Being and Time; Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, whilst also investigating The Truman show.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Commodification: for Better or for Worse?

Are professional athletes alienated towards the original values that uphold sport?

Historically, sport had been used among other things as a means of building character, promoting the spirit of fair play, and even nation building. Now in our contemporary society, sport is budding into one of the most forceful business and entertainment franchises within our capitalist culture.

My aim: to investigate how the commodifications of sport (through cultural advancement) have altered and enhanced the social value of modern day athletes

Territory: There is perhaps no better illustration of the commodifications of professional sport than the advancements of European football. As a result, my project is particularly focused on investigating the commodifications and cultural advancements of sport within European Football

Methodology: I intend to discuss my topic of the commodifications of sport through a hermeneutical critique, engaging on the evolvement of professional sport that has led the 21st century athlete into becoming a ‘celebrity’ rather than purely a competitor. My discussion is centred upon two key philosophical theories involving the works of Karl Marx (theory of alienation) and Martin Heidegger (a question concerning technology)

The objective of my discussion is a critical dialogue in which I seek to outline the cultural changes that have caused this apparent transformation within our society, and hence altered the social value of professional athletes today. This project aims to prove that through capitalist commerce and exploitation, the business of sport and its athletes become alienated, and additionally have lost a relationship towards the original bounds that compile sports and competition.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

The Origin of Plagiarism (or Why Copying is Good)

In my project I intend to look at the historical genealogy of plagiarism and how it has come to be seen negatively in contemporary society. I will attempt at giving a counter argument to the negative nature of plagiarism.

In the first chapter I will begin by arguing that in pre-modern society copying and indeed imitation were promoted as being tools to preserve tradition, and as a way to intellectual enlightenment.

In the second chapter I will look at the way the invention of the printing press influenced society and made people more concerned with originality and plagiarism from perspectives of private property and authenticity.

In the third chapter I will argue that plagiarism as a concept has been invented and that everything anyone ever says or writes derives from something that has already occurred.

Some texts I have included in my work are: T.S.Eliot: The Sacred Wood, Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy, Sartre: Being and Nothingness, Kierkegaard: Repetition, Borges: Labyrinths, Aristotle: Poetics and Hegel: Elements of the philosophy of Right

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Can True Ethical Business Practice Exist in a Capitalist Society?

Aims:
To come to a conclusion whether a capitalist society is a breeding ground for unethical business practice.

What is capitalism?
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and profit is the incentive for motivation

Philosophers: Rawls and Marx
I shall investigate how Rawls and his ‘Theory of Justice’ can be applied to a system of capitalism. Also how Marx and his stance against a free market may or may not be correct.

Enron:
The case study of Enron will be my example of how the free market may give too much freedom to independent companies. It also shows how Marx to some extent is right, but furthermore how Rawls can be seen with the workings of this major meltdown.

Why Business?
I chose business and its ethics because I hope to further my knowledge in the field of accounting as this is the profession I one day hope to enter. Both Rawls and Marx have great influences on the decisions faced in this profession.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

How Are Franz Kafka’s Novels Ethical?

Aim: I aim to demonstrate how Blanchot’s ethics can be found within literature. Specifically, in Kafka’s work.

Philosophy: death of a subject is, ultimately, Blanchot’s ethics. It is instigated by the interruption of the ‘Il y a’. Here, all former values (everydayness) is replaced by those of the other (otherness). This motion is mimicked in literature, particularly in Kafka’s work. My project will assess why.

Anti-thesis: Is Kafka’s work symbolic (stubbornly independent) or allegorical (autobiographical)? That is, is Kafka himself present throughout his work?

I will argue that Kafka’s work is allegorical; he is everywhere in his work.

Blanchot’s Texts: Reading Kafka, Kafka and Literature, The Language of Fiction Literature and the Right to Death, Death Sentence.
Heidegger’s Texts: Why Poets?, On the Essence of Truth, The Origin of the Work of Art, Way to Language.
Kafka’s texts: The Trial, The Castle, Metamorphosis.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Are Holidays Part of Our Real Lives or an Escape into Unreality?

LOOKING AT NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITQUE AGAINST THE `’REAL” AND “APPARENT” WORLD

IS THERE ONLY ONE WORLD? IF SO WHICH ONE ARE WE LIVING IN?

IS A HOLIDAY A FORM OF AN ILLUSION?

ARE WE BORN INTO A CULTURE OF ESCAPISM?

IN OUR ESCAPISM CAN WE STILL FIND TRUTH?

The Schopenhauerian man voluntarily takes upon himself the suffering involved in being truthful.’

The quote is bound up with Nietzsche’s view that most people don’t like seeing reality as it is, i.e. the one and only reality there is. People prefer all the illusions, which the apparent world gives us by way of hope that we will enter the real true world where everything will be alright; for example heaven or even on holidays.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

New World Order: Atheism in Religion, Anarchy in Politics and No Property in the Economic Sphere, Possible or Improbable?

Understanding NWO is a giant geo-cycle political picture. Things are happening with the use of subliminal indirect and reversed psychological propaganda Some say it is made to be confusing. It is theorised that the Illuminati, the ones who call themselves the enlightened ones, had gained positions of power; through means such as controlling the banking system.

The coined phase ‘New World Order’ is the term used to describe a unity of the world’s superpowers to rule, secure, and maintain the principle of “global peace.” The concept is to bring the world under submission to one supreme government, enforce one controlled common religion and one worldwide economic system. (The EU has already instituted this with the ‘Euro’ currency.) The common conspiracy theory about the New World Order is that there is secret power elite with a globalist agenda that is conspiring to eventually rule the world with an authoritarian government. Absolute Obedience. In actuality, it is a move towards a socialistic, controlled, and godless world.

Preliminarily, this dissertation is focused on the concept of emancipation and capitalism and how the New World Order is apparently attempting to overcome such issues. Involvement of the banking system and especially the role of power in relation to money has been considered as the state of the economic society can tell us a lot about the New World Order regime. It has referred predominately to the work of Karl Marx ‘father of communism’ and his work on Capitalism. Throughout this work on capitalism, the concept of religion and attack on society will come into play as the New World Order presents us with a new atheistic view on religion. The main material to be used and referred to throughout this dissertation is that by A. Ralph Epperson “The New World Order” and Marx’s “Capital and other writings”. Hegel also shows us the importance of his Dialectic theories in relation to the new World Order by presenting us with a thesis, antithesis and synthesis that can be applied to conflict throughout history.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

True (?) Romance. How has the Ideal of Love Been Lost in Contemporary United Kingdom and What Are the Ramifications?

Current relationships are under strain due to the gap between fictional love (the ideal) and genuine love. Marriage and monogamy are the metanarrative structures and institutions of the ideal of love that are causing tension in love, requiring paramours to be more consistent than their identity allows for. As identity lacks an origin without the ideal, it becomes relative to the Other in a cyclical relationship that causes identity to be in constant flux. Without a stable base on which to love, the ideal can longer function.

Therefore if agents still want to love, then they must accept that each moment is unique and the only ground for love is the individual’s experience of the other in the Other. The essay is heavily influenced by the works of Jacques Derrida (Violence and Metaphysics), Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness) and Emmanuel Levinas (Totality and Infinity).

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

A Questionable Interpretation: a study into John Nash’s Game Theory, its reliance on a dubious interpretation of Adam Smith’s economic theory, and how it has been detrimental to competition in modern day economics

The aim, as such, of this writing is to examine the idea that there is a questionable interpretation underpinning modern economics and if it is attacked we are left with the notion that the economics we have is not the economics it should be. This is because the theory of capitalism that we have today is not exactly the one argued for, by its founder, Adam Smith. I also wish to show that we cannot go back to the more true form of capitalism however nor can we move to any other system because of the damage already done. This shall be hinted at by using some segments of Capital by Karl Marx.

The object which has driven me to examine such an idea that something has gone wrong in economics is the film A Beautiful Mind. I believe the portrayal of John Nash in this film is biased and unjustifiable as I believe his wrong interpretation of Smith may have led to an unending cycle of greed that will slowly pervert and consume any form of morality.

My territories of discussion are economics and the application of game theory and within this writing the concepts that I wish to discuss are: Nash equilibria, game theory and competition.

The thinkers and relevant sources that I shall use within this writing are:

Karl Marx – Capital
Adam Smith – Wealth of nations
John Nash – non-cooperative games and two person cooperative games (contained within issues of Econometrica, the economics journal)

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Social Luck versus Social Mobility. Is it OK to be Told the World isn’t Fair?

– Objective/Territory: The ‘American dream’: What is the ‘American dream’ and is it just a product or propaganda process of the capitalist society in which we live? 

– Sources: Karl Marx, Deleuze and Guattari, Charles Taylor and Adorno. 

– Project Outline: Leaving education and entering the ‘real world’ in a time where one’s ideals and ambitions are centred on seeking wealth; why is it that we think this way? I hold the belief that to succeed, it is about whom you know not necessarily what you know. So, I want to prove that wealth is down to social luck. My territory is society and culture and I am trying to show that our basic intuition (one gets what one deserves) is a herd mentality in order for a specific class to benefit. If we think everyone has what they deserve, then we don’t think that it could be redistributed.

Through a method of hermeneutics, I endeavour to seek why it is we think the way we do and why it is we desire wealth. E480

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Féiniúlacht, Teanga agus Cultúr: Identity, Language and Culture in Ireland

The trinity of identity, language and culture have always been one of my fascinations. This interest stems from the fact I myself am descended from bilingual Gaelic speaking Irish immigrants, and growing up in North-East England, I am fully familiar with an English dialect barely comprehensible by most native English speakers taken in its purest form.

Ireland, with its rich shifting linguistic and cultural history is an ideal backdrop for these concepts to be given a concrete context. Therefore using the linguistic situation in Ireland I aim to:

1. Examine the extent of the relationship between language and identity of both the individual and the collective culture which the individual ascribes to;
2. Examine the evolution of the meaning of language from a pre-modern to a modern globalising world;
3. In doing so identify the causes and implications of language shift.

The thinkers I will employ are firstly; Pierre Bourdieu, with his ideas of habitus, and social and cultural capital to help explain how language and culture shifts due to market forces. Secondly I will look at Karl Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism and see the implications of extending commodity fetishism to the cultural and social market. Finally I will take Deleuze & Guattari’s concept of minor language and minor literature and apply it to the Irish Literary Revival, in the process showing how novel discourses and identities can be formed from the deterritorialization of post-colonial Ireland.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Violence Vindicated: Can Violence as a Means of Protest Be Justified?

The recent surge in protest activity both nationally and internationally and the inclusion of violent means within these protests opens up a debate as to whether a violent protest can ever be justified. The aim of my project is to explore the possibility of a justification of violence; my context is therefore that of ethics, politics and law. Through the method of axiological critique, I intend to consider the value of violence and whether it is applicable in a protest situation. As protest is generally a part of the political realm it is a political justification of violence that I aim to find. The main philosophical theories that are engaged with in the project are theories which closely explore the notions of protest and violence and are therefore extremely relevant. They are:

– The Just War Theory 
– John Rawls’ Theory of Civil Disobedience 
– Sartre’s discussion of violence 
– Foucault’s discussion of resistance

With regards to the Just War theory, I aim to establish whether the principles which already justify violence in war can justify violence in a protest. An exploration of John Rawls’ Civil Disobedience argues the case for non-violent means of protest. In contrast, Sartre’s discussion of violence considers the necessity of violence as a form of protest. Exploring violent protest in relation to Foucault means considering his views on resistance and power.

Ultimately, I hope to reach a credible conclusion as to whether violence can be proven to be a justified means of protest using the support of political philosophical theories.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Philosophy Behind Recession: a Study of Contemporary Economics Through Philosophy

An investigation on how the US reached a destination of an estimated 200 trillion in debt. How is it that America can possibly be named the Land of the Free? In a country with a constitution claiming ‘all men are created equal’; why is it that 15% of the population live below the poverty line? Can the ‘poster boy’ of Capitalism be considered moral? The USA is an economic powerhouse with an annual GDP of 14.6 trillion dollars. However, 42% of $14.6 Trillion is controlled by just under 1% of the population.

I intend to investigate the evolution of the global capitalist economy and its current state of disarray. Marxist rhetoric will serve, amongst several thinkers such as Engels, Machiavelli, Ayn Rand, Sun Tzu and Emmanuel Levinas in investigating the evolution of the US Capitalist system.
Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, a damning indictment of corporate America, will be used as the cornerstone for my arguments against big business and the ever widening gulf between the rich and the poor.

Categories
2011 Abstracts Stage 3

Linking Heidegger’s Essay The Question Concerning Technology to the Changes of Technology within Football from the 1960s to the Present Day

The aim of my project is to link Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology to the changes of technology within football from the 1960s to the present day.

From watching the 1966 World Cup Final, England vs. West Germany and the 2010 Tyne-Wear Derby, Newcastle United vs. Sunderland, and also with the use of some useful websites, I would be able to highlight the changes of technology within football. These are the six changes of technology within football which I have highlighted:

1. Picture Quality/Display
2. Replays
3. Capturing of the Game play/Emotions
4. Football boots
5. The Football
6. Co-commentary/Audio

I will explain Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology from his book The Questioning Concerning Technology, and relate the changes of technology within football to the relevant parts of his theory.

A few examples of linking Heidegger’s theory to the changes of technology within football

– Heidegger talks about how modern technology reveals but also challenges, and I linked this to the development in the replays from the 1960s to today in the use of different camera angles which reveals more of what just happened, e.g. of a goal scored or challenging a decision made by the referee.
– Heidegger talks about how nature’s energy has become a standing reserve and how nature is now a resource of technological exploitation. As well, we ourselves are situated in the standing reserve as human resources. I linked this to the development in camera angles in capturing more emotions in football today than in the 1960s, therefore making football more of a standing reserve. Why? More is revealed (captured) in the match for the television audience.

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 3

Credit to Capitalism: a Philosophical Examination of the Most Enduring System of Our Time

The aims of this project are:

-To gain a greater depth of knowledge regarding the origins and definition of capitalism.
-To offer descriptions of the vast differences between Chinese and American capitalism.
-To give in depth analyses of the economies of both the United States and China.
-To open up capitalism as an economic concept to philosophical debate.
-To assess whether notions such as freedom and human potential are relevant in a discussion of capitalism.
-To make philosophical assertions about capitalism in advancing the worth of the human being and encouraging humanity’s ‘flourishing’.

Capitalism is the most enduring economic system of our time, there has to be a reason communism and Marxism have failed and why democratic led reform and capitalism have become the most successful political and economic systems. Capitalism is widely regarded as being able to give every single individual the opportunity to achieve wealth and the opportunity to involve themselves within the business of profit.

Max Weber’s account of the origins of capitalism in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism explains that religious protestant doctrine emphasises the moral goods of hard work, investment and discipline. During modernity, these ideals paved the way for the beginnings of unrestrained and individualist capitalism that is now the norm in the US. Weber identifies that an individual endeavours to involve himself in moral economic activity because of a ‘calling’ which can be seen as an obligation to God. Moreover, economic achievements were seen as the true measure of one’s moral standing.

I shall then focus on John Rawls’ most famous work, Political Liberalism; I believe that it is only in a liberal political system that true capitalism as we know it can be achieved. Liberal politics allows free trade and the opening up of an economy. The philosophical tradition of liberalism is widely regarded as enabling capitalism and engineering the free market that exists within some nations today.

My project will be a hermeneutical explanation of what capitalism essentially is, followed by an empirical investigation into the different strains of capitalism found in the USA and China and assess whether China can really be called a capitalist nation at all.

Sources used- Max Weber –The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and John Rawls – Political Liberalism.

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 3

“I Just Want to Climb Rocks. Is That too much to Ask?”

Can my life be defined by a sport?

“Climbing is a rich enough experience that it can be a valid focus for your life…. you can say I’m a rock climber and that, if anybody understands it, has as much value as anything else you can spend a day doing.”-Todd Skinner.

Project Object and Aims
The object I have chosen for my project is the way in which I centre my life around rock climbing.
In contemporary society, life tends to be primarily focused on one’s job. Activities such as climbing are defined as pastimes. My project aims to ascertain whether I can, in contemporary society, define myself by my sport. This is relevant to a wide audience, since, in my conclusions, climbing can be replaced with whatever one wishes to orient oneself towards.

Philosophy
The key thinkers I will investigate in my work are:

Manuel Castells who writes explicitly on the idea of “resistance” and “project” identities as a means of constructing real identity

Michel Foucault who formulates a theory of power which affects choosing an identity in contemporary society.

Gianni Vattimo advances the position of weak nihilism as a means of viewing a society which has a plurality of worldviews.

Categories
2010 Abstracts Stage 3

Anxiety: Disorder or Not?

Is anxiety a disorder to be eradicated, or a mood beneficial to human life? The aim of this essay is to establish whether or not there is a correlation between Heidegger’s concept of anxiety in relation to the Nothing, and Gadamer’s concept of anxiety as a legitimate, and often misunderstood, mode of knowledge.

Heidegger claimed that anxiety was the gateway to the Nothing and therefore could be used as a path to the answer to the question of being.

Gadamer claimed that mental illness, including anxiety, whilst seemingly treated to the best of a particular period’s abilities, is cast aside as being irrational. In fact, Gadamer claims that the way in which the mentally ill think is to be taken seriously and one must therefore enter into it.

The territory for this essay will be mental illness in our own modern society, as shown by the York Retreat below. I will attempt to show which mental illnesses to do with anxiety are prevalent in our society compared to societies in the past. I will also attempt to show if there are, in general, more cases of anxiety based mental illness in modern society than ever before, for example in the U.S.A. 13.3% of the adult population suffer from one or several forms of anxiety disorders (www.healthyplace.com).

For Heidegger, anxiety is a crucial “original” mood which cannot be entered willingly. He called such experiences “erfahrung”, meaning an experience which is undergone, not chosen. Such experiences are extremely powerful and although not directly life changing, do have an effect on one’s attitude to one’s life.