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.
Category: Stage 3
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?
Between Emancipation and Control: A Critical Discussion of Social Media in Postmodern Society
Is social media the key to emancipation, or the handcuffs prohibiting liberation? This project started from the object of social media and the claim that, as society has become highly mechanised, it is a further perpetuation of control and the very medium, which keeps individual behaviour in accordance with what is deemed socially acceptable. This project aimed to investigate this claim, using the case of Cambridge Analytica, to reach a conclusion to the overriding question: CAN SOCIAL MEDIA EMANCIPATE?
An investigation into the ways that technology is used as a method of creating insecurities with the self, leading to cosmetic surgery and the sustainability of capitalism.
My aim of this investigation is to explore the effects of technological apps such as Snapchat and Instagram on self-esteem and confidence. Also to investigate how far there is a link between beautifying apps and the cosmetic surgery industry, in a 21st century society where the conception of beauty is given great importance.
In this investigation, I conduct a survey to understand the effects of technology. I ask questions regarding frequency of usage, confidence levels after usage and pressure in society surrounding beauty.
Philosophical Concept 1: Adorno and the Culture Industry
Philosophical Concept 2: Freud and ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’
What is data-mining?
In the case of Cambridge Analytica, data-mining is extracting data from people’s social media accounts to gather information on them.
What is micro-targeting
Micro-targeting is using data and information gathered on people to identify their interests and beliefs and then use this to try influence them, in this case their political decisions.
Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica is a data analytics company founded in 2014. They manipulated Facebook in order to access millions of people’s personal details and information and used it to influence elections.
Democracy in the age of technology: a philosophical enquiry exploring the effect data-mining and micro-targeting has on a democratic government.
Philosophy used to explain this: Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and Rousseau’s Social Contract.
The Queen is not truly recognised by us for the work she does, but by the title she holds. Do we treat her as we should treat another human being, or do we treat her as if she is just her title?
The philosophy of Sartre and Levinas will be used as they both put forward a theory of the Other. We have an effect on the others freedom for both philosophers.
For Levinas, it is getting away from Heidegger’s view that we encounter everything with its use value. We have a relationship and a responsibility over the Other.
For Sartre, is the Queen acting in Bad Faith? Rather than recognising herself beyond her duty.
So, does the Queen restrict herself from becoming an Other, or do we restrict the Queen from being treated as an Other truly should be?
Generation Snowflake and The Contemporary Situation
Defined in the Collins English Dictionary – ” the generation of people who became adults in the 2010’s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generation”
How has ‘Generation Snowflake’ come to be?
Foucault’s analysis of the kind of power at work today in Generation Snowflake is the interference and dominance of medicine, a discreet mode of power facilitating the set-up of this transactional reality.
Does Free Speech Exist Today in ‘Generation Snowflake’?
Mill’s Harm Principle – to safeguard liberty and free speech, ” the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.
The first part of my project was to prove that accepting a scientific and medical approach to mental illness was wrong. I used Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of bad faith, in which the human being freely gives up their freedom. I then applied this behaviour to the person who accepts the scientific explanation for the dark thoughts and emotions we experience when suffering from illnesses such as depression and anxiety.
In the second part, I introduced Heidegger’s lecture on the origin of the work of art, and how poetry uncovers truths about the world through its use of
language. Music is also a form of poetry so in contemporary times I believe that accepting the truths presented to us about mental illness by musicians is acting in good faith. I supported this argument with the examples of Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and Kendrick Lamar. Additionally I analysed a select few examples of medical accounts of mental illness in order to prove that they were an insufficient approach to mental health.
Does Technology Merely Distort or Substantially Change Law and Justice?
The Media:
Common-held belief was that – because of Simpson’s celebrity- he would not be prosecuted.
Despite the incriminating evidence against him, the public supported Simpson. As noted by Bugliosi, there were “people carrying sings outside the courtroom during the trial declaring “Free OJ” and “Save the Juice”
The Pharmaceutical Industry
Euthanasia:
Technological advancements have made it considerably more comfortable for us to watch someone “slip away”
The Death Penalty:
At this present- day, advancements in the pharmaceutical industry ensure that ‘the shelf life of benzodiazepine’ also plays a role in this process.
Plagiarism is wrong. Says who? Why should we obey this? Does Plagiarism stifle creativity? Is plagiarism a force of coercion and obedience?
“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world”
–
Anthony Burgess
We live in a society today in which privacy concerns seem to be cropping up more and more frequently. This essay basis its’ notion of a right to privacy on Warren and Brandeis’s article for the Harvard Law Review titled The Right to Privacy, and investigates the ways in which the culture today strikes down this right.
My essay focuses on the primary ways in which the notion of privacy has been struck down in the post 9/11 society that we live in. In doing this, I was able to use the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and John Rawls, among many other philosophers, to formulate a response to this abolition of privacy in the society we live in. Their philosophies provide us with a thoughtful response to the factors affecting our right to privacy, and henceforth allows for a thorough investigation into the notion of privacy from a perspective not entirely common.
‘Perhaps the most striking thing about the right to privacy is that nobody seems to have any very clear idea what it is.’
– Judith Jarvis Thomson
If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist?” Schopenhauer
“Being brought into existence is not a benefit but always a harm” Benatar
“Our self-removal from this planet would still be a magnificent move… What do we have to lose?” Ligotti
This project will investigate the claim that human existence is a value.
There tends to be a given assumption that human existence is a good thing. I intend to question the validity of this and investigate whether it has valid justification.
The effects of human existence will be considered from three perspectives to determine whether human existence is worth its costs.
An ethical perspective will be used to evaluate the suffering and harm evoked by and for human beings.
An environmental perspective will contemplate the impact human beings have had on the planet and the detrimental effects caused.
A positive perspective will be adopted to investigate whether human beings deserve respect. It will be questioned if something would be lost without us.
PLAYBOY
The use of nude photography does not exclude a work from the sphere of art
Featured Articles
Rose: The Paradigm case of Pornography-Playboy does not possess the same explicit sexual characteristics of other ‘adult’ entertainment.
-In the production of Playboy, there is no violation of liberty or victim.
Noë: ‘strange tools’ -art is purely the subversion of function and purpose, that calls into question the surrounding presuppositions -Playboy does not have his same subversion intention.
Hegel- the closest instance to absolute truth within art is the human form “we must search out that in Nature which on its own merits
belongs to the essence and actuality of the mind…The human form is employed…exclusively as the existence and physical form correspond to themind” (Hegel, 2004)
“O Father Consel, you are sorry for us. You can help us. We have nothing – no aircraft, no ships, no jeeps, nothing at all. The Europeans steal it from us. You will be sorry for us and send us something” – cargo cult prayer.
Jarvie, I.C. (1964). The Revolution in Anthropology. New York, Routledge. (p64)
Given the rapid rise of drag performance in pop culture, it is now one of the most popular and varied forms of entertainment. But isn’t seeing drag performance and culture as nothing more than a source of amusement, to obfuscate swathes of its political, emotional and metaphysical potential? How might we do drag justice? How might we unlock this potential? The answer lies in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, an engagement with whom, will help us see the potential drag offers.Early Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy helps us understand drag’s potential in revealing a harsh reality, and in making it possible to bear by transfiguring suffering into beauty. Middle-period Nietzsche: Nietzsche sews the seeds for the ideas which develop in his mature work. Mature Nietzsche: Nietzsche’s critique of the Kantian subject helps us understand how drag pulls us towards a less anxious, less restricted and more emancipated subjectivity. Thus Nietzsche helps us appreciate drag as more than a piece of entertainment, as offering us a more tolerable and healthier way of being in the world.
An analysis of the modern education system through the eyes of Dewey, Plato and Rousseau.
Can the principles of these three men found in Democracy and Education, Emile, and Republic respectively be used to make a profound difference in modern education?
Aim/Territory:
A study of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of authenticity through the concept of care, in order to recover the idea of authenticity within education, and stamp out the institutionalised “they” understanding of education to produce non-conformist, original individuals.
John Dewey: providing an alternative philosophy of education, a pragmatic approach.
Ivan Illich, Noam Chomsky: contemporary philosophers of education, supporting the move away from institutionalised education.
Fundamental claims:
The authenticity of Football has been diluted due to the commodification of the game in our contemporary culture. • The commodification of the game is a result of all imposing factors that serve to weaken the integrity of the game. • I have argued these imposing factors are: the effects of Mass Media, Fetishism of the game, and the reproducibility of the game.
Philosophers used to support my claims:
1. Marx 2. Adorno 3. Debord, Benjamin
Through exposing the make-up of our contemporary culture it is made possible to see how the game Football was never going to exist in the same nature as it did when it first originated. Our society has served to alter the existence of the game and how it functions. By integrating
Adorno and his theory of ‘Mass Media’ we will be able to see both the detrimental and beneficial effects that media has had on the game. I will also look at Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’, which will allow us to refute whether or not the game is merely a representation of itself. I believe Marx’s theory of ‘Commodity Fetishism’ and Benjamin’s theory on the ‘Reproducibility of the Work of Art in the Mechanical Age’ will make apparent the form of attachment a fan has to their club.