Sadism and masochism coupled together as sadomasochism is a compound term which denotes a pair of opposites, adopted by psychoanalysis. The development of sadism and masochism began from the literary contributions of Sade and Masoch, which later contributed to the psychoanalytical analysis of the relationship in perversion between opposites. This project focuses on psychoanalysis being useful in the developed understanding of sadomasochistic relations, specifically in terms of how, why they are formed and are able to function despite being structurally separate. As a result, psychoanalysis claims a necessary reliance on each other present in sadomasochist relations, despite being the opposite of each other. The common psychoanalytic reading of sadism and masochism will be used, as a challenge to sadism and masochism being defined without being sourced from a process of reversal. In addition, there is focus on role of fantasy and if whether sadism and masochism can exist as a pure example without elements of the other, with perversions always existing as a pair of opposites in a relation of an exchange of power. The objects of sadism and masochism are applied to the territory of psychoanalysis with psychoanalysis providing depth into these concepts as they are of a paradoxical nature. A historical methodology will be used to follow the progression of the understanding of sadism and masochism, as developed over time with psychoanalytical understanding as such provided by Freud, Deleuze and Lacan.
Category: Stage 3
A fair trial of Rawls.
The right to a fair trial is a human right held by those living in the UK. Rawlsian theory lays claim to the fairness of the criminal trial and insists upon the ability of such a procedure to produce fair outcomes. This is frank account of the reality of criminal trials in the UK, the procedures in place and the extent to which Rawls is able to justify his claims. Individual liberty, amongst other things, appears to be in jeopardy. Will Rawls produce a suitable enough defence to clear his name of all shortcomings?
Animal rights are commonly understood as the rights of non-human animals to live freely from human interference and exploitation. These rights are, however, frequently violated by industries which use non-human animals to create products such as food, clothing, and cosmetics – regardless of the suffering caused to the individuals involved.
It is the purpose of my project to explore the human being’s inability to sympathise with this suffering, arguing that this inability has originated in Christian doctrine and philosophy, and can only be overcome after the death of God.
This project draws upon work from a variety of thinkers – including David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, Lawrence J. Hatab, Peter Singer and Gary Steiner – to investigate the role of sympathy in the creation of moral values and the Christian narrative of human dominion.
Such discussion entails a revaluation of both our moral values and the value we place on our species, concluding that the advent of nihilism in the West creates an opportunity to recognise our shared kinship with all sentient creatures, and therefore our need to sympathise with them.
My project will posit the notion that society is entrapped in a one dimensional mode of thinking due to the technological rationality of our time. I will dissect the notion of neutrality and how it is simply a facade to cover the logic of domination. This will be evidenced by the impositions on religious beliefs and the oppression of the Islamic community and voice, highlighting that the commodification of high culture into mass culture has reduced us to a society where there is no critical angle left. A society in which one cannot argue against the supposed ‘rational’ a society that follows the history of domination yet we are all deluded into believing it is more progressive than ever. Furthermore I will reflect on case studies to illustrate the repressive nature of this society and focus on Frankfurt school critical thinkers: Marcuse and Adorno. The use of critical theory is necessary as it will enable dialect thought that will hopefully allow for the the individuals real liberty.
Karl Marx’s A Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ (1970), and Plato’s Plato Repiblic I (1937) are employed as the primary tools into the search for the meaning of Eastern and Western spiritual doctrine, also providing frameworks through which the concept of spirituality can be understood.
This investigation concludes that Eastern spiritual doctrine has more real spiritual value than that of the West through providing a value-system orientated towards freedom and a ‘pure’ conceptual framework orientated towards truth. The concept of divinity in Eastern spiritual doctrine exudes oneness and reciprocity, whilst transcendence focuses on being and presence.
Western spiritual doctrine on the other hand is thought to be reducible to a Capitalist mechanism due to the orientation of control pertinent to its value system and implicitly motivated conceptual framework. Divinity in Western spiritual doctrine embodies oppressive instruction, and its transcendence is linked to Capitalist exploitation. This, then, puts into the nature of Western Reason for its embedding with such oppressive structures and frameworks.
The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 has affected thousands of lives in England and South Korea. The management of the virus has been difficult, in terms of creating regulations that the common people would be willing to follow.
The responses in both countries, however, were significantly different. It can be considered that due to the contrasting cultures and identities, the responses from the people and the management from the governments were influenced by such background frameworks that are the foundations of the priorities.
This suggests that in an individualistic or idiocentric country, the government will prioritise people’s liberty and the economy, thus placing more importance on individual lives rather than the collective, alluding to less consideration of those extremely vulnerable. In comparison to a collectivist or allocentric country, the government will prioritise everyone’s safety, and the people will respond with discipline, thoughtfulness and accepting of regulations, that could be deemed invasive, for the sake of defeating the virus and lowering mortality rates. By considering the cultural shaping of identities, the value of liberty is displayed, in which individualistic countries lean towards individual freedom than the collective safety.
This project explored the philosophies of Charles Taylor, Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman.
Other thoughts include the discussion of the East Asian Tradition, Confucius Ethics, with the sociological research of Geert Hofstede. The political and philosophical view of Robert Nozick will be utilised to understand the value of liberty.
• This project will place the film ‘Sorry We Missed You’ (2019) within the territory of biopolitics, in order to understand the relationship between the worker and their employer.
• ‘Sorry We Missed You’ is a film set in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, following the Turner family where parents, Abby and Ricky, work within the gig economy.
o Abby works as an outsourced, in-home care worker.
o Ricky is a delivery driver, mockingly referred to by his son as a “white van man”.
As a contemporary film, this project shall be contextualised against the backdrop of ‘Capitalist Realism’: the pervading atmosphere that capitalism is the only possible economic system.
• Workers that are self-employed or are on zero-hour contracts are referred to as ‘precarious workers’.
o Precarity is anxiety that lacks a definite object.
• Paolo Virno empirically observes these workers to contain the qualities of opportunism, fear and cynicism.
o These qualities alienate workers from their social ties as their morals are uprooted and knowledge is fixed to capital, creating ambivalence.
• Ivor Southwood’s first-hand account of this sector echoes Virno arguing that workers suffer from inertia as they can no longer separate work from their private life.
• The relationship is biopolitical as the relation between worker and employer is constituted by the originary bond of sovereignty to bare life.
• Over the course of the film, the bare life of the worker is demonstrated by the violence and exploitation exerted towards Abby and Ricky, for the goal of maximising their bodies potentiality to gain capital for their sovereign employer.
This dissertation examines John Rawls’s procedural liberalist position with a specific regard to the possible imposition of group-differentiated rights. In light of Will Kymlicka’s communitarian defence of liberalism, I invoke the argument that there are sufficient grounds to implement self-governing rights particularly to the native population in Canada. Considering Canada was the first country in the world to legally recognise multiculturalism as a governmental policy, I use the ongoing debates between the democratic state and the indigenous population in Canada to comprehend the argument for protective group rights. I also incorporate the work of Charles Taylor to determine the importance of the modern identity with specific regard to the dependency one holds to their community.
This project aims to explore the territory of horror fiction,
investigating the question of ‘what is horror?’ through a
psychoanalytic perspective. This investigation is focused on H.P.
Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness, published in 1936;
this constitutes the object of the project. The psychoanalytic thought
that will be drawn upon is, primarily, that of Sigmund Freud and
Jacques Lacan, with Slavoj Žižek used as secondary theorist
throughout. The philosophical concepts employed in this project are
Freud’s notion of the unheimlich and Lacan’s order of the Real,
though the latter is streamlined through the Žižekian reading of the
Real as horrifying.
An application of these psychoanalytic frameworks to the material
provided by Lovecraft’s novella will offer two contrasting accounts
concerning what constitutes the notion of horror. The Freudian
approach rationalises the image of horror by tracing it back to certain
repressed content, whilst the Žižekian-Lacanian approach
understands the phenomena of horror as an interruption of the Real
into our social reality. This project argues for the salience of the latter,
on account of the reductive tendency of the Freudian framework that,
ultimately, fails to capture the philosophical richness of the material
with which it is dealing.
The study of death has been looked into in both scientific and theological terms. Something I wish to delve into is the philosophical discussion regarding death as the reason for human significance.
By using the works of thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Karl Löwith, and Karl Marx, I aim to discuss and compare the variety of ways in which death derives or disproves humanity’s ’innate’ purpose.
Death is presented to do this in Heidegger’s ahistorical argument through the death of nature– i.e. the death of our external world and the individual– in comparison to Löwith’s historical argument regarding secularised eschatology.
Marxist ideology and literature is considered throughout as this best relates to modernity.
• The objective of my project is to discuss how policing by consent operates in a democratic society and the consequences to individuals and societies when the boundaries of policing by consent are transcended, particularly when it is believed that excessive and disproportionate force is used.
• The aim of my project is to describe the mechanisms by which policing by consent can be achieved, with the absence of transgression and force, and to also demonstrate the consequences for individuals and societies when this ethos is not embedded in policing practice.
• In order to do this, I am the applying the philosophical concepts of Bourdieu’s study of ‘symbolic power’, Hobbes ‘social contract theory’ and Bauman’s notion of ‘liquid modernity’. This is an important subject because the use of force by legitimate authority in a fair and proportionate manner to uphold laws continues to be relevant and a contentious issue in modern day society.
• Hobbes ‘social contract theory’ describes how we need laws to govern human behaviour and we need state force to ensure compliance with these laws. Hobbes believes man has a desire for security and order to ensure self-preservation with the end goal of avoiding misery and pain, therefore man enters into a social contract where individual rights and liberties are surrendered in exchange for security and peace. This can be applied to the concept of ‘policing by consent’ as it describes how individuals willingly engage in lawful behaviour in order to maintain security and order.
• Bourdieu’s notion of ‘symbolic power’ demonstrates that symbolism in the police is important in generating consent with symbols, such as uniforms, as they reinforce their position of authority in society. The symbolic power of the police evokes feelings of trust and the belief that they have just cause and legitimate authority for upholding the law. The symbolic power the police have can be utilised to generate consent from the public.
• At times the police have to reasonably use a legitimate amount of force to maintain order, however a consequence of this is the risk of the abuse of this force. Therefore, using Bauman’s notion of ‘liquid modernity’ it can be demonstrated that the police’s reputation is volatile, and the police are constantly on trial by the public. The transgression of boundaries of policing by consent can be extremely detrimental to public attitudes on the police.
The issue of whether we can, and should, separate art from the artist is perennial. This project considers the question of separating art from the artist and assess the effects of commodification of art in respect to it. Looking at competing ideas of artistic interpretation and focussing on the approach of historical materialism, this project presents a Marxist view of art and places commodification at the centre of the issue. This project considers Adorno and Horkheimer’s contributions to the subject in the form of their theory of the Culture Industry.
This project found that the effect of the commodification of art was the separation and alienation of the artist from their art. It suggests that this separation and alienation is a necessary feature of production in capitalist societies. The concept of autonomous art is presented as a potential solution to this problem, being defined by its functionlessness and the idea that it cannot or is not commodified.
In this project, I will start out by analysing the origin and structure of conspiracy theories in general. I will then conduct an analysis of the data regarding public opinion on various issues within the pandemic, using the previous sections to create assertions which aim to explain the statistical trends seen in figures 1-4. In search of providing a competent method to demarcate between warranted and unwarranted conspiracy theories — I will appeal to Karl Popper’s falsification principle, with attention also paid to his conception of conspiracy theories. Unintentionally, throughout my research, I have come to speculate that the real concern is not so much these obviously unfalsifiable conspiracies that the media would have you believe are incredibly prevalent — but the deflection away from the competence and authority of the government. I will reference Giorgio Agamben’s thoughts on this emerging structure of totalitarianism present within the government and argue that we ought not propose these unified conspiracy theories which require stretches of the imagination — but simply that we should approach the media and government with an unbiased eye, doing justice to the data in front of us.
Life in La Esfera Doméstica: A Philosophical Exploration into the Role of Women in Spain During and After The Francoist Dictatorship.
A Philosophical Investigation into Women’s Rights to Equal Status:
To what extent can it be argued that a historic power imbalance still exists between the sexes, despite the efforts made to extinguish this gap?
Object:
-Robert Browning’s poem, My Last Duchess-
An insight into the use of language relative to women’s power and the extent to which women remain powerless due to lexical choice, in the modern media.
Looking at the death of Sarah Everard as a modern example.
Territory:
An in-depth analysis of the change in power attributed to women in the past 200 years.
Focusing on changes in legislation and societal attitudes towards women.
Could it be argued that women now have equal power to men or has the male desire for dominance simply diverged into other areas of society?
Concept 1:
-Plato’s Republic-
A discussion of the existence of power in Plato’s Polis, and how power exists in society. Moving on to consider Plato’s understand of the role of women in society and subsequently what this means for women in terms of power and equality.
Concept 2:
-Foucault’s Power / Knowledge-
Considering Foucault’s understand of power could it be that women should be equal to men in society? Using Foucault’s Repressive Hypothesis, and Sovereign Power, to formulate an understanding of Foucault’s understanding of power equality.
Concept: Hegemony, dialogue, critical thinking
Object: The work of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire
The aim of this investigation is to argue that there exists a hegemony within education, specifically English literature. This hegemony prevents the reading of texts such as An Inspector Calls in a critical, working class dialogue.
To argue this, this investigation will examine; what is hegemony? How does it function? Where is it in education? And how can we stop it?
This investigation will argue that for a critical education system, we must adopt the work of Paulo Freire and begin the process of genuine dialogue with students when undertaking a reading.
My project aims:
Outlining neoliberal hegemony, why it has become so universally pervasive.
To uncover the manner in which neoliberalism increases levels of distress for young people through statistical evidence.
To look at the systemic shortcomings in treating mental illness and how this leads young people into self-medication and escapism.
To look at potential solutions to countering neoliberalism, highlighting precisely why the left has failed in doing so.
Concluding by revealing neoliberalism as pseudo-universal.
My object is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and my territory is the relationship between art and science. In my project I argue that the arts (and humanities) come into conflict with science (and technology). Richard Dawkins laments that in his view science does not get the same respect as poetry. Meanwhile Midgley claims that science attempts to colonise humanities with inappropriate methods. Habermas claims that science has ‘infected’ politics, ethics and philosophy. Warbuton argues that the concepts used to evaluate scientific research are applied to the arts as well, but are not fit for this purpose.
Lyotard looks at one of the causes of this conflict. Narrative has been the main way of transmitting knowledge, and is still used in the arts. However, science condemns narrative as no knowledge at all, since narratives are only legitimated by their general acceptance. Science, on the other hand, requires legitimation by empirical evidence, and must be able to justify and defend its claims against challenges. However, science can only justify and defend its claims by using narrative, so could itself be accused of begging the question by using a form it has condemned as not susceptible to legitimation.
Heidegger argues that technology, by treating human beings as a reserve, poses a danger to our very essence. Pirsig proposes care as part of the solution. Heidegger sees care as constitutive of humans, inextricably linked with human life and temporality. Pirsig’s version of care is what provides the creativity and imagination which he demonstrates is needed by science to come up with new theories and hypotheses just as much as it is needed by the arts. If this is accepted then care, creativity and imagination could provide the basis for a bridge between the sciences and the arts.
The values of disco are often seen to tie neatly into consumerist culture and represent a false, materialistic and escapist attitude to life. In this project, I seek to provide a defence for a genre that had significant power and value for marginalised communities.
I will be referencing texts that discuss popular music and popular culture, focusing on Theodor Adorno, Richard Middleton and Simon Reynolds predominantly, in order to assess how a musical movement can be valued, what disco music can tell us about ourselves, and whether disco music should be taken seriously as a musical genre.
Michael Foucault
– The repressive hypothesis
– Changes in sexual practices over time
– Mode of power within society
Theodore Adorno
– Enlightenment
– Culture Industry
-Standardisation of sexual categories
Do sexual categories define individuals?
Has sexuality always existed?
How does sexuality function within society?