CHAPTER ONE: Introduction to Study, Background to Study CHAPTER TWO: Paris: A History, The Medieval History, Renaissance and Baroque, Enlightenment, Napoleon to the Revolution and Restoration, Romantic City and Haussmann, Republican Age, Paris and Art Nouveau with World War II Modernity, Modern Paris, Purism, Cubism, Industrialisation and High Tec CHAPTER THREE: Love and Romance CHAPTER FOUR: Specific Investigation of Individual Structures, Notre Dame, The Louvre, The Eiffel Tower CHAPTER FIVE: Conclusion Sources: Romantic Paris Thirza Vallois 2003, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris David Pinkney 1938, Paris Robert Cole 2002, The Emerging City Leon Bernard 1970, Architect’s Guide to Paris Salvadori Renzo 1990, Visits: Paris: The Louvre, Notre Dame, The Eiffel Tower, Trip down the River Seine
Category: Stage 3
Using Hegel’s Phenomenology, I examine the movements of self-consciousness apparent in a selection of socio-political incidents in contemporary Europe. Hegel’s work is not a rulebook for action or for history. But we can derive meaning in life only from the conceptual understanding of our experiences. Do all social acts have historical meaning? What part does morality have to play between consciousness and the other? Does true freedom mean the freedom to be righteous in all things?
We all want a fairy tale ending, everlasting happiness, in fact there is no more one important question within philosophy than that of the concept of happiness. It is the defining question of ethics. The crucial question that Socrates asked that of, how should I live? This question has been at the forefront of philosophical inquiry for the subsequent 2400 years, however despite this, constant deliberation has thus far produced no definitive answers. How should one live one’s life to maximise happiness? Throughout this project I wish to delve into some of the major theories of happiness to see if I can adopt any of them to make my life the happiest it can be. The mayor theorists I shall be tackling are: Aristotle – Believed happiness was achieved through fulfilment of the 3 parts of the soul. Socrates – Believed happiness is entwined with virtue. Plato – Believed happiness is achieved through acquiring the virtues and contemplation of the world of forms and the form of the good Epicurus – Believed happiness is achieved through moderate satisfaction, avoidance of pain and pleasure being the highest good Kant – one should always obey the moral law however living a virtuous life does not necessarily lead to happiness. Nietzsche – Happiness is achieved through going for what one truly desires. Pain is a necessary part of life – one cannot experience true happiness if one has not suffered. As well as looking at these philosophers I also wish to try to answer the following questions: What is Happiness? Why is it so important? How has happiness changed in the modern age? Is there one universal happiness that we all strive for? Finally I will look at an investigation into the youth of today and see what ultimately their philosophy behind happiness is.
OBJECTIVES: • to consider the different fundraising methods • find out how these are linked to meta-design and mediated experience • decide whether meta-design and mediated experience are beneficial to fundraising and life in general META DESIGN Meta-Design characterizes activities, processes, and objectives to create new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and be creative An important aspect of meta-design is to design not just an artifact, but a life-cycle that anticipates changes that may occur over a long period of time. MEDIATED EXPERIENCE Mediated Experience refers to the idea that there are systems and networks between a person and their natural experience. Something is put into a system, changed, and we then see the output that has been altered in the system.
Introduction: For over 2000 years, it would seem that man has developed and evolved without ever fully coming to grips with one of the most basic commands in Greek philosophy. Western culture today places a great emphasis on replacing religious belief with scientific knowledge, today we are surrounded by knowledge and technology, yet we know very little about ourselves. My dissertation will be focussed on the ‘self’. In my work, I will be drawing reference upon the work of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, two of the most prominent social theorists of the modern world, both of whom have dedicated much of their time to the concept of the self. I will be examining separately their theories on the narrative biography, modern reflexivity, the fragmented self and the effects of modern society on the individual. I will also be exploring how the concept of the self has developed over time, along with the status of the individual in society. I aim to discuss the ways in which Western society has changed dramatically over time, for example the way in which during the industrial ages science began to replace tradition and religion. I will be looking at the impact of industrialisation on the concepts of time, space and place in modernity and the influence of society itself on the individual. I will also be devoting some time to studying the effect of modern conditions such as globalisation on society and our current status as a ‘risk society’. I aim to determine the media’s influence in the creation of this risk society, and the resulting impact of the risk society on the development of the modern individual. I will also be exploring the role of the media in the formation of modern identity, and whether the media and other knowledge systems subconsciously feeds the human mind a set of values and ideals that they in turn begin to live by, whilst still believing that they maintain an independent, individual status. Finally, I aim to have some insight into the future of the ‘self’ in our society in the postmodern world.
The past few decades have witnessed the rise of the application of international human rights law as well as the extension of a wider public discourse on human rights to the extent that they could be regarded as being one of the most globalized political values of our time. Following the death of grand political narratives, it could be said that in the postmodern era, human rights represent the last remaining utopian ideal; the last remain shard of enlightenment emancipatory values. However, if the twentieth century is said to be the epoch of universal human rights then its triumph is paradoxical since this period has witnessed so many violations. Furthermore, civilians have been killed by those purporting to defend human rights as illustrated by the Kosovo ‘humanitarian’ bombings. Thus whilst the discourse of human rights purports the intrinsic rights of all people based on nothing more than an appeal to humanity, there appears to be a great deal of dissonance between self-satisfied rhetoric and social reality. As we step into the globalized era, rights are transported all over the world and transmitted straight into the homes of people, the problematic nature of universalising rights becomes apparent. Is there such a thing as rights? Can they and should they be universalised? Can rights be squared with the deconstruction of subjectivity? If not, can a non-essentialist theory of rights be developed? These are the questions I intend to answer.
Aim: To discover why certain types of heroes are popular in films, animation and graphic novels, and why we are attracted to such qualities. Method: Analysing some of the more interesting and obscure characters to ascertain why people are attracted to more nihilistic, free-thinking traits. To do this I will look at ideas such as nihilism, escapism and boredom, and correlate them with research into transcendence, innocence, naivety, and rebelliousness. Characters explored will include Roman Dirge’s Lenore, Jhonen Vasquez’s Johnny The Homicidal Maniac (pictured above), the residents of Sobriety Straight in Dame Darcy’s Meat Cake, and the Norse God Loki who features in The Mask. Sources: The Modern Stranger – Lesley D. Harman, Comic Book Nation – Wright, Dame Darcy’s Meat Cake Compilation – Dame Darcy, JTHM – Jhonen Vasquez, Lenore: Noogies – Roman Dirge.
The transformation in our conception of art, time and identity has, according to Lyotard, represented a postmodern break from unity and identity; an opposition to totality. We now reject totalising theories, and seek localised theories that explain the difference of life. Grand theories uniting all disciplines are then impossible. Whereas modernism was concerned with what we could determine, Bergson and Deleuze are concerned with the indeterminacy, the contingency, of Life. To what extent do we trust our preconceived notions of the world? How might this obscure the true nature of time and space, and therefore life? If life does not run along a single line of time, but consists of durations that differ for every being, then how should we try to live life? How can the cinematic affect open our eyes to the true ‘multiplicity’ of the world? Gilles Deleuze questions the grand narratives and conventions of life more radically than many, calling perhaps for a ‘rethinking of philosophy’ in light of the most important artistic development of the century; the cinema. In Chapter 1, I wish to look at the main artistic movements in Cinema, from German expressionism and Soviet montage of the 20’s through to the New Wave in cinema following 1968. I will then explore the capabilities of the cinema to produce new and diverse styles of thought through the movement image that allow us to see time directly, not as we experience it through the ‘human eye’ that is interested and organises. In chapter 2, I wish to look at the writings of Bergson and his philosophy of dynamism and change based on the continuous experience of nature that is falsified with the imposed divisions we divide life with as a means of understanding some underlying reality. The image is instead a simulacra with no foundation in reality. Deleuze believes that, rather than reality being actuality, or based on an ideal model, it is a constant interaction between these two; the actual and the virtual, and this is how difference is created. The impossibility of founding knowledge on structures allows us ‘the opportunity to invent, create and experiment’ with life and its possibilities.
The Transhuman. For Deleuze we should understand reality as an acentered system of forces. Becoming has no fidelity to distinctions of species or genus, but should be understood as the complex movement of non-linear flows. To think in this way is to pass beyond the human to the transhuman. The Return of Human Nature. DNA boosted Darwinian theory by enabling it to explain the process of heredity.The study of populations using statistics enabled us to posit species-typical behaviour. Biotechnology and the Transhuman. The new human sciences which underpin our understanding of human nature also allow us to change that nature. But are we not already Transhuman? How might we understand our emerging ‘pharmacological society’? Therapy or ‘enhancement’? The genotype determines the phenotype? How far does the phenotype extend? What about our social, cultural and technological relations? ‘The coils of the serpent are even more complex than the burrows of a mole hill’ How did we become neurochemical selves? How did we come to understand our sadness as a chemical imbalance in the brain, able to be corrected by psychopharmacalogical products? What is ‘natural’ for us must also be manufactured We posit what is natural once we are able to manufacture it.
At the end of the nineteenth century Nietzsche was already pointing to dynamic becomings and complexity in the ontology of the human being. For him we are not entities with a transcendent being but an immanent field of forces that are always bound up in different processes. In the past century, advances in computing, mathematics and science have made it possible to study complex and dynamic systems that were dismissed as anomalies under linear models. Bodies are no longer studied in isolation but in dynamic systems that can alter their states, sometimes creating new and surprising features. We move away from singular objects to the study of quasi-objects and folds that can only be considered within their given system. The CApitalist system resembles this state of constant flux and change. There is a constant flow of abstract value and the persistence deterritorialization and reterritorialization of labour power. Within capitalism nothing exists outside of the system and decodings are brought back within a capitalist axiom. Philosophers such as Deleuze and Guattari, Serres, Simondon and DeLanda have taken theories of catastrophe, chaos and folds and reterritorialized them on to the social to explore human activity and phenomena. What emerges is biotechnics; the human is bound up in what DeLanda calls”nonorganic life”. I wish to examine Nietzsche’s process of becoming alongside recent theories of flux, chaos and complexity in the context of our state of “self” within capitalist structures to explore the processes that contribute to our stabilising of the “self” and to determine whether, on an ontological and immanent level, we are continually becoming a different self.
It was Marcel Duchamp who invented the notion ‘art can be anything.’ By looking at the influences through a time shift starting from the Renaissance through to contemporary times examine exactly how true this revolutionary statement is or whether it is a matter of shock value that the Artist of today wants to put across, whereby the skill in drawing and painting has undoubtedly been lost. My aim is to explore the notion ‘art can be anything’ through three different time periods Renaissance, Baroque and Contemporary. The first will be the Renaissance (the early fifteenth century) which focuses on the issues of function and purpose of art. A major criticism with the youth of contemporary art today is the lack of knowledge towards the primitive foundations of art. This knowledge has been replaced with abstract ideas and theories about what art should and should not be. I used various influential names in my introduction to sketch an overall outline to the subject of art. Plato emphasises the ‘capacity of art to perfect nature, to correct in the mind of man the deficiencies of nature.’1 Wollheim and Panofsky said that only humans make art whereas Sir Philip Sidney said ‘The artist often creates things such as never were in nature.’ As a result, given the differing attitudes towards this particular subject the point is made that art is a matter of personal opinion. Using the theory of Utilitarianism I tried to use a system where the individual could categorise high and low art. It was Mill who said that a higher pleasure was one that stimulated the mind. Was it then possible to use this Utilitarian system within art? The higher pleasures of the mind are without doubt more desirable and valuable than those of lower pleasure of the body. Taking this approach the appearance or aesthetic value of a modern piece of art becomes worthless and what becomes important are the effects on the viewer. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory where the consequences are important. In some cases within modern art i.e. conceptualism, the effect can be sublime. Looking at the intention of the artist using Kant’s system of ‘means ends reasoning’ I wanted to look at what makes the moral motive a ‘pure’ motive. This is a disinterested one and it is solely based on the fact that we are motivated to act on the moral law by the moral law itself and not by some self-interested end. The idea of universality is used by Kant to support a theory of moral reasoning. Thus, we are to ask whether our maxim is one we can expect all rational agents to adopt in relatively similar circumstances. Using this Kantian system, the intentions of modern day artists like David Blaine and Damien Hurst were closely examined. I stated that it was the intention of Damien Hurst to shock his audience rather than to please. Consequently, Hurst’s works like the ‘shark’ was viewed as aesthetically poor but led to fame and fortune due to him gaining recognition by the public eye. However, is unlike Caravaggio (from the Baroque era) who had similar intentions in depicting truth within reality and whose skill and technique is certainly not limited. The key difference between the two artists (Caravaggio and Hirst) is not the obvious answer of ‘time’. Instead, it is how Hirst seems to have a good sense of the media and understands how that mindset works, which results in his intention being primarily concerned with a self-interested end. I argued that due to the influence of time and the drastic changes in fashion and philosophical thinking that have taken place since the early 15th century, it is time that dictates what art is considered acceptable and where art is going. The shock value of some artists today has lead to skill being undermined because they are reacting to a demand from society. Consequently, I believe that art can be anything, but that it has become a response to commodification and the need to make money as opposed to conveying personal expression. I feel that Kant’s philosophy of morality is key to my argument because it deals with the reasoning of the validity of art and the intentions of artists in order to determine whether their motivation is pure.
A study of the book:- its history, form, market, authors and its changing place in and of society. For centuries people have recorded important events and thoughts for their own personal reasons or for posterity. The format and availability of books have helped to shape the way knowledge has been received and perceived. However, in recent times the place of the written word as the primary source of information has been challenged as a consequence of technological advances. The role of the author has changed through time, from a position of anonymity, to one where the presence of the author had a significant impact on the work and so on to now where the reader is a significant impetus for what is produced Books afford a certain status, particularly hardbacks, despite the fact that technology has meant that books can be produced as quickly as carefully prepared magazine articles. Technology has also resulted in a rise in Internet sources and an increasing numbers of television channels needing information to transmit. We are bombarded with information and this makes it gradually more difficult to discern which facts are important or even true. Territory The changing modern society: – increasingly consumer driven, mediated by technology or the media, confusions of reality, the loss of meaning and the increasing sense of transience. Looking at current book sales and bestseller statistics in the UK, including the BBC big read winner’s list. Objectives To offer some insights into the future of books and their place and influence in society Sources Internet sources e.g. www.bookmarketing.co.uk, www.publishers.org.uk. The works of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard.
This philosophy project will evaluate the notion of science, technology and capitalism as an abstract organising mechanism. It will attempt to show the turn in philosophy in ways to redeem the primacy of bodily life and creativity and its influence on the order of things. Abstract: Topic and Key Concepts Capitalism is conceived by production and efficiency. Bataille and Deleuze and Guattari show that one is compelled to participate as a producer in society via the economic infrastructure, and as a consumer via cultural mediation. In essence the human condition is confined by an ‘abstract order’, being that of capitalism. The project will evaluate the shift in consciousness, perception and communication. It will assess the ability to understand and absorb the impact of technological and other changes, how basic human ‘drives’ are related, for example, to a well-functioning economic system, to a balance of conversation and change, and to the production of functionally useful patterns of society. . An evaluation on the various means and manifestations denying such abstract representative systems in society: – Through Transgressions – Drugs. Stimulants and Dampeners – Idleness – Counter-Institutions – Revolution – Terrorism It will evaluate political, economic and media examples of representative systems evaluating the ways in which technology has been imagined and theorised during recent history exploring its impact on the producing and consuming individual. It will assess the propagation of ‘events’ and will assess the manifestations of the rejection of functionally useful patterns of society, i.e. the intensification of the working day. Sources: Heidegger: ‘On the Question Concerning Technology’, Deleuze and Guattari’s: ‘Anti Oedipus’, Bataille: The Accursed Share, Baudrillard Jean: The Mirror of Production and Simulations, Beck U: Reflexive Modernisation
Using the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari I will discuss the revolutionary potential of music. I will so do with reference to the Black movement in America. My main aim is to show how, through the music of blues and jazz, Blacks constructed a culture of resistance; giving rise to their freedom and subsequent status as citizen in America. I will look at … the deterritorialising power of music: how traditional blues and jazz improvisation deviate from formal musical structures to produce new forms of expression, and how the oppressive routine, and identity of the slave may have been ruptured by the singular effects of such music. … how blues and jazz incorporates both African and Western references to form an intensification of multiple heterogeneous and non-heterogeneous relations that are productive of different modes of thought and experience. … how Blacks found a distinct voice through their music, and how this led to their becoming other than slave, and to their emancipation.
TITLE- Outline and consider how the philosophical concepts of power within institutions, according to Foucault, may be useful in assisting us to understand the change in power struggles between modern football clubs (as institutions) and their players (as individuals) compared with clubs first formed. Evaluate how this balance of power has shifted from the intuitions to the individual in the last hundred years and argue to what extent this relationship is also evident between the Football Association and Premier League. AIMS/OBJECTIVES- To show how Michel Foucault’s characterization of power in his works Power/Knowledge, The History of Sexuality and The Birth of the Clinic can be used a basis to explain the power struggles that exist between football clubs and their players. Show the factors/changes in rules of game that led to the balance of power shifting from club to players as a result of specific legal milestones such as the Eastham case or Bosman case which arguably laid the foundations for players to contest the supreme power of clubs. How this change has come about and to what extent The Football Association, as an oppressive institution, is to blame. In Foucault’s essay The Subject and Power, he outlines what he calls anti-authority struggles that will always develop between individuals and institutions and can be explained in terms of power struggles when the individuals reject the way in which certain institutions. Consequently, can power struggles in football, therefore, be explained in terms of this anti-authority struggle postulated by Foucault. Outline the changes in philosophical concept of power and how the definition has been adapted for to explain relations of power within institutions. Power promotes a delusion of one’s self-importance in the world, and this egotism leads to the illusion of the social effectiveness of power as an instrument that is used to control others. I will use the notion of change to show how change is fundamental when philosophically explaining the concept of power struggles within football institutions, because power is defined as the control of change and accordingly power is greater when there is control over change. CHANGE-In the 1880s football clubs had overall power (oppressive power as Foucault puts it) over players but today players (as individuals resisting to this power) now have power over clubs. Not only this, but the Football Association previously exercised similar power over the Premier League but now the Premier League has also become more powerful. FIELD OF EXPLORATION- How Foucault’s notion of power within institutions, as portrayed in his works power/knowledge, The History of Sexuality and The Birth of the Clinic, is relevant to the power relationship between the Football Association and the Premier League and between football clubs and players.
When a human being contracts AIDS, their DNA is replaced, and their very existence becomes deficient. In a cold light, it is a murderous disease but the reality is that the negation of viral infection only delays evolution. Nietzsche argued with and against Darwin on the nature of natural selection, and made the will to power applicable to more than just the human being. Highlighting the development of AIDS since the 1980s, I will show how diseases are able to shape society and evolve beings in a network of complexity theory created by the “self-organised behaviours of complex genetic regulatory systems”.
Territory & Field of Exploration This project will discuss the field of contemporary architecture. I want to discuss some of the major challenges that face the contemporary architect in relation to his particular ‘way of thinking’ about the problems of designing in our technological age. In Our Modern Technological Age, Can Contemporary Architecture truly appeal to The Heideggerian Notion of Dwelling? Aims & Objectives. • I will discuss Heidegger’s essay ‘Building. Dwelling, Thinking’ in order to reveal the nature of Heidegger’s notion of dwelling. • This project will discuss in detail the relationship between Building & Dwelling in order to adopt a ‘way of thinking’ about the challenge of building that may be applicable in the contemporary world. • I will discuss Heidegger’s use of ‘the poetic’, and ask weather or not there is the possibility in our contemporary world for ‘poetic building’ • This project will discuss the affect of modernity on Heidegger’s notion of dwelling, my focus will rest specifically on mans ‘homelessness’.
Objectives: • To what extent has this notion of rights evolved over time, from the ancient Greeks to the present day? • To what extent do non-human animals possess legal and/or moral rights? • Depending on whether animals do or do not possess legal and/or moral rights I will determine why it is that they do, or do not possess these rights and what has changed. Structure: 1st Chapter: I will trace the notion of ‘Rights’ through the Western Philosophical Tradition from Aristotle to Darwin. I will determine whether or not they believed animals to possess intrinsic value and moral standing; did animals possess rights and if they did not, did they believe that they should. 2nd Chapter: I will look at the 1970’s onwards, what has been referred to as ‘the Greening of Philosophy.’ To what extent has the notion of moral consideration for animals changed? Do animals possess rights, if so, do they possess significantly more rights? 3rd Chapter: I will determine whether animals do, or do not possess legal rights and/or moral rights? Why is it that they do, or do not possess these rights and to what extent has this notion of ‘Rights’ changed? Change: I will look at the 1970’s as the key change as there was an emergence of interest in environmental philosophy and the belief in both moral consideration and moral standing for animals. I will examine to what extent there has been a change in both legal rights and moral rights for animals. Did they and/or do they possess such rights? If there has been a change, Why? Sources: Law Relating to Animals, Brooman and Legge. The Rights of Nature, Nash. Rights, Jones. Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Regan and Singer. Respect for Nature A Theory of Environmental Ethics, Taylor. Animal Rights – a Symposium, Ryder. Environmental Ethics, What Really Matters, What Really Works, Schmidtz and Willot.
This project will address the transition in human mediation between self, society and world affected by the transition from religious mediation to financial mediation. The problem will be posed from the perspective of circulation and the historical consequences suspected to arise from unrestricted human interaction. Broadly speaking the project will focus on; *The framing of transgression and taboo in Hittite, Scriptural, Roman, Ecclesiastical and British Civil law *The Council of Elvira and the formulation of the principle of una cara by Basil the Great *The birth of the Bank of England and consequent transfer of value and mediation *The contemporary economic situation which, with the demand for deregulation of markets and increasing tendency toward investment in areas of low governance leaves social mediation almost entirely up to finance and credit- the promise of value rather than value itself
Territory & Objectives: My project investigates the way in which we impose received value systems upon the world around us, and how those standards are also mapped upon the individual body as carrier of those principles of the dominant societal mode thus affecting our relationships with one another. It shows that living within the context of capitalism shapes the criteria of these docile evaluations, and demonstrates how this system of evaluation self-referentially recourses to fortify the capitalist social system through flux and change. Discussion will move on to consider in detail how locally received examples of information disseminated by globally operating media cartels act to coerce individuals’ lifestyle investment in the authority of the system. This will be orientated by the appraisal of lifestyle magazines, exploring how the discourses of desire within the grand schema of capitalism set standards of normative criteria which are employed in a self-policing system of adherence to what it means to be a good consumer. These various lifestyle aspects by various publications persuade the individual, critically disengaged, to regard themselves as the aspiring capitalist critically engaged in the labour of consumption and therefore active in the formation of their lives and their relationships with other people. Rather than promoting multi-cultural, inter-disciplinary engagement in the process of being, the imperative to consume, saturated throughout commercial repertoires, in fact causes and substantiates rival economies and inequalities between individuals, between factions and at the level of global market forces. Further, the effect of tying consumption, through advertising, to normative standards set, makes it almost impossible to recognise the specificity of an individual. Rather, we evaluate ourselves and others against normative standards which discourage empathy for our fellow man, a state of affairs which may have dire consequences. Finally then, this paper will suggest what possibilities remain for communication between us with a view to the reformation of a networked community in response to the alienation and apathy of the individual in high capitalism. Change: The way in which advertising has tied consumption to normative values which are themselves set with the imperative to consume in mind. The overall effect is to diminish greatly one’s scope for specificity, and to create conflicts of interest. Sources: Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality I: The Will to Knowledge, Penguin, 1998; Foucault, M., The Archaeology of Knowledge, Routledge 1994, Bristol; Foucault, M., Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Gordon, C., Pantheon Books 1989, New York; Blanchot, M., Literature and the Right to Death, The Station Hill Blanchot Reader, Station Hill Press 1999, Barrytown; Marx, K., Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Ed. McLellan, D., Oxford University Press 1977