Transitional justice, like other peacebuilding endeavours, strives to create change in the world and to produce knowledge that is useful. But the politics of how this knowledge is produced, shared and rendered legitimate depends upon the relationships between different epistemic communities, the way in which transitional justice has developed as a field, and the myriad contexts in which it is embedded at local, national and international levels. In particular, forms of ‘expert’ knowledge tend to be legal, foreign and based on (...) models to be replicated elsewhere. Work on epistemic communities of peacebuilding can be usefully brought to bear on transitional justice, speaking to current debates in the literature on positionality, justice from below, marginalisation and knowledge imperialism. This paper offers two contributions to the field of transitional justice: an analysis of the way the field has developed as an epistemic community and the relevance of this for a politics of knowledge, and an argument for the politics of knowledge to be more widely discussed and understood as a factor in shaping transitional justice policy and practice, and as a call to a more ethical relationship with the supposed beneficiaries of transitional justice interventions. (shrink)

The title story of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s ‘Der Hof im Spiegel’ has received the most critical attention of any piece from the collection, leading to the neglect of the composition of the collection as a whole. Reading it as a short story cycle and examining the connections between the texts reveals that they track developments in migration and integration from before German unification into the 1990s. Through her narrator Özdamar comments on developments in social initiatives to promote integration and mutual (...) understanding, as well as advocating direct individual contact as the basis for intercultural understanding. She also explores possibilities of identification for those with a diasporic background which look beyond social models such as multiculturalism and transcend national borders and citizenship. In particular, Özdamar explores the potential of an adaptive cultural cosmopolitanism for establishing new lattices of identification as the basis for a re-orientated subjectivity in migration. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim (1998a, 2005) claims that his exclusion problem follows a priori for the non-reductive physicalist given her commitment to five apparently inconsistent theses: mental causation, non-identity, supervenience, causal closure and non-overdetermination. For Kim, the combination of these theses entails that mental properties are a priori excluded as causes, forcing the non-reductive physicalist to accept either epiphenomenalism, or some form of reduction. In this thesis, I argue that Kim’s exclusion problem depends on a particular conception of causation, namely sufficient production, (...) and that when causation is understood in interventionist terms, the non-reductive physicalist can avoid the exclusion problem. I argue that Woodward’s (2003, 2008a, 2011a) version of interventionism not only provides an account of mental causation that avoids the exclusion problem, but argue that it also upholds all of the minimal commitments of non-reductive physicalism, thereby providing a successful non-reductive physicalist solution to the exclusion problem. In Chapter 2, I argue that all five theses are minimal commitments of non-reductive physicalism that cannot be rejected in order to avoid the exclusion problem. Chapter 3 identifies the assumptions that I take to underlie the exclusion problem. Chapter 4 introduces and outlines the central features of Woodward’s (2003) interventionism and Chapter 5 argues that Woodward’s interventionist account of mental causation provides a solution to the exclusion problem. I examine two alternative interventionist accounts of mental causation[1] that fail to provide satisfactory solutions to the exclusion problem and conclude that Woodward’s account therefore provides the only satisfactory account of mental causation and solution to the exclusion problem. Chapter 6 addresses some challenges proposed by Michael Baumgartner (2009, 2010) and argues that the interventionist is able to defend her position against these objections and uphold the interventionist solution to the exclusion problem outlined in this thesis. [1. Proposed by List and Menzies (2009) and Campbell (2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010).]. (shrink)

The principal aim of this thesis is to mobilize the conceptual apparatus of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger in order to recuperate an understanding of life as it is concretely known and experienced in the immediacy of its actual being-lived-out, or simply, to develop a distinctly Heideggerian conception of primordial phenomenal life. [...].

The authors examined cue competition effects in young children using the blicket detector paradigm, in which objects are placed either singly or in pairs on a novel machine and children must judge which objects have the causal power to make the machine work. Cue competition effects were found in a 5- to 6-year-old group but not in a 4-year-old group. Equivalent levels of forward and backward blocking were found in the former group. Children's counterfactual judgments were subsequently examined by asking (...) whether or not the machine would have gone off in the absence of I of 2 objects that had been placed on it as a pair. Cue competition effects were demonstrated only in 5- to 6-year-olds using this mode of assessing causal reasoning. (shrink)

This thesis offers a reassessment of the philosophical problem of scepticism about knowledge of the external world. It distinguishes between different forms of this sceptical problem and considers two kinds of response: a strategy developed by Tim Williamson, and a disjunctivist approach. Chapters one and two offer an introduction to the problem of scepticism: the sceptical arguments of Descartes and Hume are compared, and Williamson’s approach to scepticism is introduced. Chapter three considers three different ways of responding to Humean scepticism. (...) This chapter offers an interpretation of Stroud’s objection to externalism and considers whether disjunctivist accounts are vulnerable to a similar objection. Chapter four compares Williamson’s approach with one form of disjunctivist account. Central to this discussion is a distinction between responses to scepticism which question whether there is guaranteed epistemic access to one’s own mental states, and a disjunctivist account which proposes that the subject’s perspective on their conscious states is not grounded on a mode of knowing something independent of it. Chapter five considers a further debate about disjunctivism and scepticism. Wright’s objections to disjunctivist accounts are considered, and McDowell’s version of disjunctivism is compared with a Moorean response to scepticism. (shrink)

My thesis explored the conceptual and evaluative reasons behind Nietzsche's critique of truth. I narrated the changing relation between our will to truth and the problem of nihilism. I argued that Nietzsche understands truth in terms of a practice which affects its practitioners. To explicate the practice of truth which Nietzsche advocates I explored its continuities, and crucial points of opposition, with a Platonic practice of truth. I claimed that cultivating new habits in how we pursue truth allows the nihilistic (...) form of the will to truth that Nietzsche criticises to be overcome. I offered a reading of the will to power as an interpretation that is both employed in and justified by Nietzsche's practice of truth. In the context of Nietzsche's interpretation that the world is will to power a new practice of truth is potentially transformative. Given Nietzsche's interpretation that the human is made up of various wills to power, which include drives, practices, and habits, a cultivation of new practices and habits can bring about the overcoming of modern man demanded by Nietzsche's critical philosophy. I argued that this process of overcoming through the practice of truth is instantiated in the potential free spirit's gradual emancipation from the Ascetic Ideal. Those with sufficient strength to follow their intellectual conscience will experience a deepening of nihilism that is potentially liberating. These emancipated spirits have the space to experiment in order to find their own values and overcome the nihilism of the Ascetic Ideal. The possibility of such transformation can be seen to connect the distant goal of the Übermensch with human possibility and allow it to serve as the "sense of the earth". (shrink)

In the thesis I explain why an immanent approach in philosophy means taking contingency to be "irreducible". I show why Deleuze and Guattari believe this to be the case and why they think Hegel fails to do this. I then go on to show in what way Hegel incorporates contingency into his system and how he also creates his own sense of "necessity" that emerges from the systematic treatment of contingent concepts. In this way I show how Hegel can respond (...) to the demand for immanence made by Deleuze and Guattari. I suggest that freedom, for Hegel, consists in the systematic treatment of contingency in our lives and in our thinking. (shrink)

This thesis examines some of the contested meanings of what it is to be a self, person and individual. The law of obligations sets the context for this examination. One of the important aspects of contemporary feminist philosophy has been its move beyond highlighting inconsistencies in political and legal theory, in which theoretical frameworks can be shown to rely upon an ambiguous treatment of women. The feminist theorists whose work is considered use these theoretical weaknesses as a point of departure (...) to propose different conceptual frameworks. I start by analysing contemporary work on the self from within both philosophy of science and feminist metaphysics to draw out common approaches from these diverse positions. These themes are then discussed in the context of the law. I then critically examine the concept of legal personhood in the work of Drucilla Cornell and her proposals for the amendment of tort law. This is juxtaposed with an analysis of the practical operation of tort law by adapting François Ewald's work on risk and insurance to English law. I concentrate on women's ambiguous position with regard to both risk and to the image of the individual that is the subject of Ewald's critique. This is followed by an examination of the changing position of women with regard to 'possessive individualism', 'self-ownership' or 'property in the person' in relation to contract law and social contract theory. There are a number of different social contracts discussed in the thesis: Cornell's reworking of John Rawls and the stories of Thomas Hobbes and of Carole Pateman. The final 'social contract' to be discussed is that of 'new contractualism', the employment of contract as a technique of government. I argue that Pateman's critique of possessive individualism continues to be relevant at a time when the breadwinner/housewife model has broken down. (shrink)

This thesis evaluates a variety of important modern approaches to the study of the mind/brain in the light of recent developments in the debate about how evidence should be used to support a theory and its constituent hypotheses. Although all these approaches are ostensibly based upon the principles of scientific realism, this evaluation will demonstrate that all of them fall well short of these requirements. Consequently, the more modern, co-evolutionary theories of the mind/brain do not constitute the significant advance upon (...) more traditional theories that their authors take them to be. There are two fundamental elements within my discussion of the relationship between evidence and the constituent hypotheses of a theory. Firstly, I shall demonstrate that the traditional veil-of-perception issue has a wider relevance than that which has historically been attributed to it, since it is the paradigm case of an attempt to construct a two level theory on the basis of evidence tha~ does not adequately support either hypothesis. This interpretation of the issue can be represented by constructing a semantically inconsistent tetrad. It is shown that similar tetrads can be constructed for each of the theories of the mind/brain discussed in this thesis. Secondly, I shall argue that the theories discussed all employ a variety of the bootstrap strategy. This strategy is a relatively recent development in the philosophy of science, which suggests a way in which the same evidence can be used to generate both a general and a specific hypothesis within a theory without violating the constraints of scientific realism. However, I contend that recent use of this strategy in the investigation of mind is largely unsatisfactory as a result of a neglect of structural as well as more informal influences upon the kinds of evidence employed to support the hypotheses contained in the theories. The thesis is divided into three major sections. The first (Section A) discusses the influence of the motivations of the individual theorists upon their arguments and provides a critical discussion of the issues of the veil-of-perception and bootstrapping. The second section (Section B) comprises a detailed examination of a range of modern theories of the mind/brain and critically analyses their success. The final section (Section C) draws together general conclusions and methodological consequences of the detailed analysis of the nature of realism and evidence in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The following is a study of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ontology of conscious awareness. Ontology, for Sartre, consists in the delineation of the constituent elements, structures and dimensions of Being as well as the way in which such constituent features interact within the ekstatic dynamics of the lived experience of the being for whom such ontological features are capable of becoming phenomena of possible awareness. Sartre’s methodology, then, is manifold. The ontological project which Sartre undertakes to develop is at once transcendental, phenomenological (...) and dialectical. It is transcendental inasmuch as it is a theory of the way in which phenomena become experientially possible for a being whose primary existential mode of conscious awareness is as an act of immanent self-relation, as pure auto-affection, and is capable of divesting itself of its modality of active self-affective immanence in constituting for itself a particular phenomenon transcendent to itself. This is to say that what Sartre refers to as pure or transcendental consciousness is capable of dissolving its primordial mode of autoaffective immanent self-awareness in the intentional (or, attentional) act whereby a choice is made to privilege a given phenomenon from amongst the otherwise undifferentiated multiplicity of the conscious existent’s (auto-)affective conscious awareness in order to become conscious of something which is not itself and from which the act of consciousness differentiates itself as not being, whether this privileged phenomenon is ekstatic or extensive, whether it is chosen from the otherwise undifferentiated virtual multiplicity of this conscious existent’s own psychic pastness (or possible future) or from the indifferent multiplicity of worldly actuality. In either case, whether the privileged phenomenon of intentional awareness is egological or material, of the psyche or of the world, the noematic correlate of conscious attention (the explicit or thetic phenomenon of intentional awareness) is transcendent to transcendental consciousness. It is in the investigation of such phenomena that Sartre’s ontology manifests itself as phenomenological. However, for Sartre, such awareness is by no means static, and it is through the ekstatic dynamization of the constituent features of conscious awareness that the transcendental and phenomenological methodologies of Sartre’s ontology of lived experience ultimately prove to be dialectical. Every moment of conscious awareness must, for Sartre, be both surpassed and preserved. Every moment of awareness, with its transcendent dimensions of virtuality and actuality and the auto-affective immanence upon which they depend, reveal themselves as intimately related, then, to memorial dynamics, dynamics which Sartre did little to explicitly develop but upon which an adequate understanding of his ontology depends and which will ultimately ground any investigation of what we might call an existential epistemology. (shrink)

William Molyneux raised the following question: if a congenital blind person is made to see, and is visually presented with a cube and a globe, would he be able to call the shapes before him a cube and a globe before touching them? Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, and Reid presented their phenomenological view of shape perception, i.e. their view as to what it is like to perceive shape by sight and touch, in responding to Molyneux’s Question. The four philosophers shared the (...) view that visual perception delivers no solid shape. This view would provide a premise for an argument for immaterial objects. The purpose of my thesis is to reject that argument. Kant’s view and John Campbell’s externalist account offer a way to reject the premise of the argument in question. However, my strategy is not to adopt their view. I pursue Reichenbach’s view that the there is no congruence or incongruence involved in the visual phenomenology. I develop his view, and propose the view that visual perception delivers no flat or solid shape. Although my view endorses the premise in question, I can offer a way to reject the argument. This is because my view is compatible with a form of externalism about perception (which differs from Campbell’s). My view can also do full justice to the phenomenological views presented by the four philosophers. (shrink)

The project of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the question of Being posed by Heidegger, to identify problems with Heidegger's formulation of the question, and ultimately suggest a way in which these problems can be overcome. The analysis begins by laying out Heidegger's initial attempt to formulate the question presented in Being and Time and the work immediately following it. The real concern here is to get clear about the constraints Heidegger places upon the formulation of (...) the question, and how these structure the inquiry projected in his early work. This focuses on the importance of the question of the structure of questioning in relation of Being, and the status of the question as a question of meaning. This involves examining the origins of the question in Aristotle, and providing a detailed account of Heidegger's theory of meaning and interpretation. The thesis then examines the way in which this initial formulation of the question evolves during the 1930's, moving from the meaning to the truth of Being. This involves providing a detailed account of Heidegger's theory of truth and the way this develops after Being and Time. After this, the thesis moves on to assess Heidegger's attempts to formulate the question in relation to the constraints just outlined. This reveals several insurmountable problems in both Heidegger's later approach, and a number of serious problems with his earlier approach, the worst of which undermines the very aim of the project. The thesis concludes by showing that there are resources for overcoming this within the way that Heidegger's approach develops after Being and Time, once this development is understood in terms of Heidegger's account of metaphysics. This leads to the outline of an alternative formulation of the question. (shrink)

A point that Strawson often emphasises in his writings is that the concepts of knowledge and perception are closely linked. For example, the idea of such a link does important in his exposition and defense of a causal analysis of perception. According to this analysis a material object M is perceived by a subject S only if M causes an experience in S. Why should this be? One reason, according to Strawson, is that such a causal requirement on perception is (...) implied by perception’s knowledge-giving role. This is one sense in which, in the words of Strawson’s last book, ‘we could not explain all the features of the concept of sense perception without reference to the concept of knowledge’. (shrink)

This thesis seeks to establish a connection between abstract thought and material practice. It does so by focusing on the relation between the transcendental philosophy of time and the socio-technics of time-keeping practices. The thesis begins with a discussion of Kant's philosophy of time as outlined in the Critique of Pure Reason. It argues that Kant's discovery of the transcendental coincides with the development of an entirely new conception of time. This new conception overturns classical thought by making a distinction (...) between the abstract form of time and the empirical phenomena of movement and change. The second chapter maps the transcendental philosophy of time on to the history of capitalist time-keeping. This history includes: the invention and development of the mechanical clock, temporal standardization and the increasing importance of the equation 'time = money. The aim in bringing these two spheres together is to show, both that Kant's philosophy of time owes much to his empirical surroundings, and also that capitalist time can only be understood through the temporal abstraction of transcendental thought. This link between Kant and capitalism is blocked, however, by a dividing line which separates the philosophical nature of time from the empirical changes of history. In order to surpass this problem the thesis turns to the work of Deleuze and Guattari whose 'transcendental materialism' connects the abstract production of time with empirical innovations. This is accomplished by replacing the classical conception of a transcendent eternity with the immanent materiality of an exterior plane. This plane - which they call Aeonis composed of thresholds, or singular events which make no distinction between time and that which occurs in time. The final chapter explores the dawn of the third millennium - or Y2K - as constituting one such Aeonic event. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to show that a familiar hermeneutical movement from suspicion to affirmation of rational meaning, as a reader reflects on a narrative, is, in part, grounded in the narrative's rhythmic structure which mediates a sonorous condition of being appropriated by the reader. This hermeneutical process involves the reader in appropriating the temporal perspective which creates a 'space' for reflection in which a provisional conceptual unity is made possible, but subject to continuing movement from suspicion to (...) affirmation. It is shown that this relationship between Self and Other is dialectical, and mediated by the textual modes of metaphor and narrative. Particular examples of poetry and prose are examined, and the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in the 'Authorised Version' of the Bible is analyzed in detail in an attempt to show how the reader, imaginatively inhabiting the world of the text, is involved in a process in which there is an 'instant' of letting go Self reflection; and there is affirmation of reasonable hope that the narrative may be rationally understood. In an attempt to address the critical issue of validation of rational meaning to show that affirmation may be given reasonable hope, the analogy of juridical legality is examined, particularly with respect to Aristotle's notion of phronesis. The analysis draws upon the hermeneutical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur with particular regard to his theories of metaphor and narrative, and the role of the creative imagination. It also makes use of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the lived body in terms of a dialectical relationship between its material objectivity and its phenomenological aspects, especially, with respect to sonorous being and corporeal intentionality. From the discipline of literary criticism, Northrop Frye's notion of prose rhythm in his Anatomy of Criticism is employed to identity this key mediatory characteristic. (shrink)

In this dissertation I address the question, how does power operate in day-today consuming in a consumer society? My theoretical framework has two bases. One base is Foucault's theories of power, including but not limited to his work on normalization, surveillance, examination, confession, and identity. The other base is narrative theory, including the relevance of narratives to personal and social identities, the role of narratives in creating social order, the impact of narratives on such things as the organization of space (...) and time, and the effect of narratives in creating coherence and directionality across operants of power. I suggest that many of the mechanisms of power identified by Foucault have unmistakable narrative features, and that by combining narrative and Foucauldian perspectives a more comprehensive understanding of the operation of power in day-to-day life is attainable. I apply my theoretical framework to data collected using autoethnographic methods. Specifically, I spent one year keeping a detailed journal of my and my family's experiences relating in the broadest sense to consuming. During this period we lived in a middle-sized Canadian city. To heighten my awareness of the taken-for-granted aspects of power and consuming we alternated lifestyles each month, living months 1,3,5,7,9, and 11 as conventional Canadian consumers, and months 2,4,6,8,10, and 12 as committed environmentally-mindful consumers. In addition, I conducted - interviews of small samples of conventional and environmentally-committed consumers; I undertook a content analysis of print advertising delivered to our house; and I conducted background research on various issues relating to consumerism. My research indicates that Foucauldian operants of power are used extensively to support consuming, and that; in addition, many narrative structures are also employed as operants of power, including charms and stories. These operants of power are aligned with one another to form coherent patterns through the effects of metanarratives. I argue that, despite claims by Lyotard (1984) and others, modern consumer societies are highly narrative, and have defining metanarratives. In addition, environmentally-based opposition to the dominant metanarrative of consuming has a metanarrative of its own, but is distinctly lacking in operants of power. (shrink)

Can we detect changes in the way that the world turns up as they turn up? This paper makes such an attempt. The first part of the paper argues that a wide-ranging change is occurring in the ontological preconditions of Euro-American cultures, based in reworking what and how an event is produced. Driven by the security – entertainment complex, the aim is to mass produce phenomenological encounter: Lifeworld Inc as I call it. Swimming in a sea of data, such an (...) aim requires the construction of just enough authenticity over and over again. In the second part of the paper, I go on to argue that this new world requires a different kind of social science, one that is experimental in its orientation—just as Lifeworld Inc is—but with a mission to provoke awareness in untoward ways in order to produce new means of association. Only thus, or so I argue, can social science add to the world we are now beginning to live in. (shrink)

This thesis is an interrogation of the viability of transitive production, which I associate with the Aristotelian term hylomorphic. The central axiom of hylomorphic production that will be targeted for critique is that the agent of production must be distinguished absolutely from the product. The thesis follows the thought of production primarily-but not exclusively-in its characteristically modem instantiation in the Kantian transcendental. The argument seeks to demonstrate that the productive aspect of the operator of transitive production is incompatible with the (...) transcendental element, and that Kant was himself increasingly aware of this problem. The Third Critique, under the rubric of an aesthetics, it will be argued, manifests this awareness in its problematic of a manifold of empirical laws. That this constitutes a difficulty for transcendent idealism means that the transcendental operators of the First Critique have failed to constitute experience in a relevant and important way. Furthermore, it is possible to see in some of the famous slogans of the Third Critique, an indication of another mode of production which is immune to the difficulties of the axiom of transitive production. In conclusion I suggest that the consequences of this new mode of intransitive production, associated with materiality, is destructive of the thought of the axiomatic otherworldliness of production operators. Production is not operated at all. Some suggestions are then made as to the explanation of the error embodied in the axiom of transitivity. (shrink)

A striking feature of twentieth-century Western cultural history was a preoccupation with silence. This thesis is a survey of the phenomenon across a broad range of literary and theoretical discourses actively engaged in the period in exploring and exploiting silence's expressive and philosophical potential. Its focus, and unifying principle, is the dynamic resourcefulness of the motif-the diversity of its uses and significations. The meaning of silence shifts according to its context and the discourse deploying it. By analysing an array of (...) novels and theoretical formulations-by writers as diverse as James, Chopin, Conrad, H. D., Forster, Lawrence, Faulkner, and Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Blanchot, Hassan, Macherey, Irigaray, Spivak, Derrida-the mobility of silence as a construct is exposed. Silence is identified in the fiction of the period 1900-1950, and its implications are assessed in the light of the various ways in which its uses were understood and interpreted by twentieth-century theorists. Theory provides a heuristic device for the comprehension of the fiction selected for scrutiny whilst further highlighting the extent of the past century's dedication to the motif. Fiction and theory are regarded as two different manifestations of a fascination with silence: fiction dramatizes a commitment to the motif which comes to be formally registered in theoretical discourse as the century progresses. After an introductory chapter outlining the expanse of the phenomenon to be studied, the thesis is divided into two parts illustrating the discrete implications attaching to the motif: 'Social Silences' and 'Ontological Silences'. The project questions whether the multiplicity of silence's usage may work to depotentiate its signifying power; in particular, whether its role in abstract 'ontological' formulations diminishes its force for emancipatory 'social' discourses. In conclusion, by means of the synchronic organization of the thesis, silence's import is shown to lie in its resourcefulness rather than in any intrinsic characteristic it might be thought to possess. (shrink)

To date, there is no universal and coherent theory concerning the nature or the function of time. Furthermore, important and unresolved controversies raging within both philosophy and the natural sciences apparently indicate that there is little hope of constructing a single, unified theory. Even so-called "folk" theories of time, embedded within different cultural traditions, show no common elements, and therefore can not provide a pre-theoretical description of time, towards which an explanatory framework could be constructed. This lack of consensus indicates (...) that the concept as it is currently being used is ill defined, and, at the very least, needs to be considerably revised. The conceptual disarray surrounding time has aided and abetted the arguments of certain thinkers, especially Ricoeur, working within the phenomenological tradition who make de principe claims that there can not be a single theory of time. My intention is not to try and to produce a concept of time that was capable of unifying all these different elements. Rather, Ricoeur's arguments and those of others working in the phenomenological tradition dissatisfied me. I believed that their arguments were informed by a myopic, muddled and positively 19th Century understanding of the scientific project. Hence, my aim is to show that Ricoeur's claim will not stand up to scrutiny, and that there are no principled arguments against the possibility of a unified theory of time. We examine the major arguments against unification in general, and also with particular reference to theories of time, such as Husserlian phenomenology, conventionalism, instrumentalism, anti-reductive positions in general, as well as the specific problem of reducing subjective experience to objective description. We demonstrate that none of these objections constitutes a watertight a priori argument against a unified theory of time. Furthermore, we demonstrate that recent developments in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind have made such a unified theory a plausible goal. We argue that post-positivist philosophy of science, with its emphasis on research programmes, the co-evolution of theories and super-empirical rational support, opens the way for new types of evidence to be brought to bear on questions about time. Also, recent developments in the brain sciences mean that a neurologically plausible and fully naturalised analysis of our experience of time is being developed. Although much work in this direction has begun, we argue that it is fragmented, partly through the limitations of our current knowledge, but more particularly through an inadequate background of coherent philosophical thought. This has lead both philosophers and scientists to attempt grand metaphysical answers to muddled philosophical questions which threaten the progress which natural science and the philosophy of science have offered in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Western feminist theoretical models of identity can be productively complicated by the insights of postcolonial feminisms. In particular, it explores ways that Western feminist theory might more adequately sustain a focus on 'women' while keeping open a space for differences such as race and nation. Part One identifies a number of themes that emerge from recent Indian feminist scholarship on the intersections of sex, gender, race, nation and community identities. Part Two uses these insights to look (...) critically at the work of four Western theorists, Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway and Luce Irigaray. I argue that strategies which privilege sexual difference as primary cannot deal adequately with differences such as race and nation. But I also argue that strategies which privilege destabilizing identity can be equally constrained by the logic of dualisms which has made it so difficult for feminists to sustain a focus on women and their differences. Part Three discusses how the insights to be drawn from Indian ferninisms might be taken on board by Western ferninisms in order to develop more complex models of power, identity and the self. Throughout the thesis I draw on a Foucauldian understanding of power as productive, and on Foucault's insight that subjects and identities emerge, not through the imperatives of a single symbolic system, but through the intersection of multiple networks of discourses, material practices and institutions. I argue that, by attending to women's complex location within intersecting landscapes of gender, nation, race and other community identities, feminist models of identity can dispense with a logic of dualisms in order to redefine, and not only destabilize 'women' as the subject of/for feminism. This requires working against purity on three levels. First, it requires a model of power that gives up on the search for pure, power-free zones and works instead with the instabilities power produces as it both enables and constrains women. Second, it requires seeing 'women' as a complex, impure category that bleeds across the apparently coherent borders of identity categories such as gender, race and nation, and contesting discursive constructs of 'Woman' as the pure space of origin upon which these apparently discrete categories stand. Third, it requires the development of alternative models of the self that take these complex, impure spaces as a valid and valorised position from which to act and to speak. (shrink)

This thesis has two principal aims: to demonstrate the centrality of memory to the philosophy and aesthetics of T. W. Adorno, and to assess its philosophical significance. Although in recent years Adorno's work has been the object of increased scrutiny within Anglo-American philosophical circles, as yet little sustained attention has been devoted to the concept of memory within Adorno's oeuvre. However, in Dialectic of Enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer proclaimed that it is "by virtue of this memory of nature in the (...) subject" that "enlightenment is universally opposed to domination. "Given that all of Adorno's work is concerned to redeem enlightenment from domination, the importance of a philosophical interpretation of the concept of memory is pivotal for an engagement with the legacy of Adorno's thought today. It will be argued that, for Adorno, memory always operates in relation to reification. The construal of this relation enjoins the consideration of a number of significant categories within Adorno's work: notably tradition, experience, mimesis and utopia; and further, it serves to situate and distance Adorno from those thinkers - Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Benjamin - with whom he incessantly engages. Finally, by focusing on the relation between memory and reification, one can gauge the stakes of the Habermasian critique of Adorno, for it is Adorno's understanding of reconciliation as the "remembrance of nature in the subject" that is the crux of the agon between Habermas and Adorno. I will argue that it is Habermas's failure to fully engage with the ramifications of Adorno's concept of memory that vitiates his critique, and indeed, that this failure provides the means for an Adornian critique of Haberman. It will be argued that memory is not an object of Adornian thought, but rather, that it provides the utopian texture of that thought. (shrink)

This thesis explores Heidegger’s philosophy of Being and Nothing in the context of the problem of nihilism. Nietzsche diagnosed the present age as an age of nihilism in the sense of a ‘devaluation of the highest values’. Heidegger argues that Nietzsches’s diagnosis suffers from a fundamental failure to question the meaning of ‘nihil’ in ‘nihilism’. This failure is, according to Heidegger, shared by the history of metaphysics which Nietzsche brings to completion, and it is closely connected with the failure of (...) metaphysics to address the question of Being as such. We shall examine the emergence of Heidegger’s early phenomenological approach to the question of Being in his engagement and confrontation with Husserl’s phenomenology, and trace its subsequent development in major writings of his. It will be argued that Heidegger’s philosophy of Being permits for the first time a more adequate understanding of the problem of Nothing. Throughout the thesis, the horizon of the discussion is the question of the meaning and the ground of nihilism, which will also be addressed explicitly through an examination of Heidegger’s confrontation with Nietzsche. (shrink)

What follows is the transcript of an inquiry which takes itself as its object: an inquiry into its own inquiry. It opens out of a mere marking of its questioning, `?', and proceeds by questioning that mark, and the progress of its inquiry as transcription of something `open' into marks and questions - such transcription itself marked as only one thing open to the `writer'. Each successive attempt to transcribe into words the opening transition into `words', `text', `book', from some (...) textually marked `context' in which the transition is open, simply leads into a questioning of each such attempted transcription, the bringing of its terms `into question'. The first section of the inquiry closes having marked out an internal `logical' space and time of these opening questions, coordinated around the initial question of marking a question: so many `dimensions' of lines of questioning `question' - in particular the external `physical' dimension of a `space' and `time' in which marking or transcription is open, and a `poetic' or figural dimension in which that `external' physical open-ness or space provides, like the `internal' logical space of logical, physical and poetic questions, and `image' for those three coordinate dimensions in whose textual and contextual interplay their transcription into a logical space and time of questions is open. (shrink)

This thesis concerns the relation between the fundamental properties and the powers they confer. The views considered are introduced in terms of their acceptance or rejection of the quiddistic thesis. Essentially the quiddistic thesis claims that properties confer the powers they do neither necessarily nor sufficiently. Quidditism is the view that accepts the quiddistic thesis. The other two views to be considered, the pure powers view and the grounded view reject the quiddistic thesis. The pure powers view supports its denial (...) of the quiddistic thesis with the claim that properties consist in conferring the powers they do; the possession of a property just is the possession of a power. The grounded view, the positive view of this thesis, rejects the idea that properties are constituted by conferring the causal powers they do. Rather on the grounded view, it is the natures of the fundamental properties that metaphysically explain why they confer the powers they do. (shrink)

This thesis has the following aims. First, to show that Deleuze can be situated clearly within the post-Kantian tradition. This is achieved through an analysis of the relations between Kant's transcendental idealism and Deleuze's transcendental empiricism. Second, to explore the criticisms of representational theories of difference which can be found in the work of Deleuze and Hegel. Representational theories are best understood as theories which rely on a logic which is governed by relations between entities which pre-exist those relations. Deleuze (...) argues that these logics presuppose the formal equivalent of a homogeneous space within which these relations can be construed. Hegel similarly understands representation as the utilisation of finite categories which rely on the fixity of the subject of predication. The third aim is to provide a rigorous explication of some of the key themes of Deleuzian ontology, particularly in relation to the problem of representation. This will involve looking at the logic of multiplicities, which attempts to provide a theory of difference that is non-oppositional. This logic will be clarified through a discussion of Deleuze's use of modern geometry, and his analysis of the foundations of the calculus. The fourth aim will be to contrast Deleuze's solution with that of Hegel, particularly with respect to their relationships to Kant and the calculus. This is achieved through the Deleuzian distinction between finite and infinite representation, the latter in Deleuze's view characterising the Hegelian attempt to bring the idea of transition into representation itself. Finally, having shown where Deleuze and Hegel differ in their respective projects, the thesis will explore whether either of these philosophies has the resources to provide a refutation of the other with reference to the dialectic of force and the understanding in the henomenology of Spirit, and the problem of the one and the many. (shrink)

The thesis critically analyses the dominant foundationalist tendency of modern philosophy, with special reference to the sophisticated antifoundationalist critiques of foundationalism formulated by G.W.F. Hegel and Gilles Deleuze. It begins by outlining a general methodological aspect of foundationalism, regarding the necessity of radical self-critique in philosophy, which directly connects contemporary thought with Cartesianism, via classical German philosophy. In the philosophies of Kant, Fichte and Schelling, this self-critical project is transformed: they undertake to show that reason can, by examining itself, give (...) an account of experience that is systematic, or consistent with itself. However, each of these thinkers fails to accomplish this, and indeed, the commitment to a priori foundations is itself undermined in Schelling's work; where a philosophical crisis of meaning (a 'trauma of reason', philosophical nihilism) emerges. Deleuze and Hegel's contrasting critiques of foundationalism, and their positive reconstructions of the standpoint of philosophy, are then interpreted as non-foundationalist attempts to overcome this internal crisis of foundationalist thought as inadvertently exposed by Schelling. Both criticise certain subjective presuppositions common to foundationalist philosophies, which they consider constitute a dogmatic 'image' of philosophy, a kind of transcendental illusion that is the guiding force behind foundationalism. Both also aim to replace this with a genuinely philosophical image. The thesis provides an original historical contextualisation of Deleuze's thought in relation to German Idealism, and Schelling in particular, with whom, it is argued, Deleuze has much in common. Deleuze's conception of pure difference is treated in this regard as a kind of 'absolute knowledge'. This contextualisation also allows the sometimes crudely understood antipathy between Hegel and Deleuze to be addressed in a more penetrating fashion, which shows that they have more in common in terms of their critical orientation than is usually supposed. The thesis concludes with a critical comparison of these thinkers, which argues that, although both succeed in their own terms, in relation to a criterion of self-consistency, Hegel's philosophy offers a more satisfactory treatment of the ontological and historical conditions of philosophical activity. (shrink)

This thesis will be asking questions about the underlying structure of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's thoughts on atheism and agnosticism. It will begin with the work of the mature Kant, explaining how his epistemology, as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason, treated the question of the sense experience of God and then how his theory of biblical hermeneutics treated the question of divine revelation through scripture, before examining Kant's moral proof of God, finding it not to be successful. I (...) next move to a consideration of the atheistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's chief argument against God will be seen to be an argument from exclusion, although significant difficulties will be seen to beset Schopenhauer's endeavour. He will also be seen to shape a moral philosophy which he then turns against God. This argument will be examined in some detail and it too, despite appearances, will be seen to be essentially metaphysical. Since Schopenhauer's moral philosophy is intrinsically metaphysical in this way, his moral objective to God has to be construed as relying upon the prior introduction of an element of his atheistic metaphysics and to that extent is to be considered an expression of, rather than an argument for, atheism. Nietzsche elaborates a metapsychological and physiological analysis of the type of person inclined towards believing in the claims of the monotheistic tradition, demonstrating how theism is connected with the yearning of escape and for the moralisation of the socially unaccountable. After investigating the Nietzschean approach to religion and atheism, I will however, conclude that Nietzsche only achieves some of his aims; and further, that those of his aims which are achieved themselves rely on certain specific empirical assumptions which are in any case problematic. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to substantiate the thesis that Nietzsche's physiological thinking constitutes a radicalisation of Kantian critique. To this end it attempts to mark out some of the salient points of the latter project and to examine the ways in which it falls short of its own potential radicality. In chapters one and two the categories of relation - in which Kant articulates his theory of the temporal connection of phenomena explicitly - are traced through the Analytic and Dialectic of (...) the Critique of Pure Reason and are read against the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding which implicitly contains another theory of time. Since the Critique of the Teleological Faculty of Judgement complements Kant's theory of the temporal cohesion of phenomena, the third chapter offers a reading of it under the aspect of its relation to the wider project of critique. Chapter four draws together the multiple strands around which Kantian critique can be shown to mutate into Nietzsche's philosophical physiology and the theory of temporality implicit in it. Finally, Nietzschean physiology is presented in terms of his thinking of the becoming of matter, in terms of the will to power as eternal recurrence. (shrink)

The aim of the thesis is to consider the position of phenomenology in contemporary thought in order to argue that only on its terms can a political ontology of difference be thought. To inaugurate this project I being by questioning Heidegger's relation to phenomenology. I take issue with the way that Heidegger privileges time over space in "Being and Time". In this way, the task of the thesis is clarified as the need to elaborate a spatio-temporal phenomenology. After re-situating Heidegger's (...) failure in this respect within a Kantian background, I suggest that the phenomenological grounding of difference must work through the body. I contend that the body is the ontological site of both the subject and the object. I use Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty to explore the ramifications of this thesis. I suggest first of all that architecture should be grounded ontologically in the body, and as such avoids being a 'master discourse'. Secondly, by theorising the body and world as reciprocally transformative, my reading of Merleau-Ponty emphasises the ways in which his thinking opens up a phenomenology of embodied difference. It is on the basis of these themes that I develop this thinking in the direction of race, exploring the dialectics of visibility and invisibility in the work of Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin. I argue that embodied difference attests to variations in the agent's freedom to act in the world. If freedom is understood through Merleau-Ponty as being the embodied ground of historicity, we must ask after unfreedom. I suggest that the "flesh" ontology of a pre-thetic community should be rethought as a regulative ideal, the ideal of a justice that can never be given. In this light, phenomenology becomes as much as poetics. Beyond being though of as conservative, phenomenology henceforth unleashes the possibility of thinking a transformative embodied agency. (shrink)

Heidegger perceives a naivety at the heart of Greek metaphysics to which he believes philosophy has remained prey throughout its history. This consists in having taken the understanding of being appropriate to the activity and experience of production [ποίησις] as the basis for understanding being in general. What such a interpretation lacks above all is a conception of human being as that which, distinct from the work, engages in productive activity. Only if such a conception were secured in contradistinction to (...) the understanding of being derived from the work could, in Heidegger's view, ontology itself be placed on firm footing. By way of a response, Heidegger undertook a critical appropriation of Aristotle's practical philosophy and of the concept of πραξις in particular. This was to provide the basis of an account of Dasein. However, the outcome of the appropriation was problematic in two respects. First, Aristotle's own presentation of πραξις as the horizonal structure of teleological activity is dogged by incoherencies arising precisely from the influence exerted on the language of metaphysics by the experience of ποίησις. Indeed, the extent of this influence renders the language of metaphysics intrinsically ill-suited to the articulation of πραξις. Heidegger's appropriation of the figure of the end-in-itself must therefore be accompanied by an attempt to wrest it from the dominant conceptual structures of production. Second, insofar as the terms in which Heidegger couches the ontological determination of Dasein are taken from the language of practical philosophy, there arises a formal parallel between the transcendence of Dasein and possible structures of activity. Such a parallel invites the supposition that Dasein's transcendence may be enacted or accomplished in its comportment in and towards the world. Although I shall be concerned primarily with the first of these problems, the second remains a constant consideration and recurs explicitly at several junctures. Drawing on Heidegger's reading of Metaphysics Θ, I argue that he sought to secure an ontological interpretation of χίνησις, δύναμις and ένέργεια from which the influence of production had been displaced. Specifically, this hinges on the idea of finite appropriation as the essence of δύναμις. In addition, Heidegger emphasises the way in which each potentiality is related to the manner of its accomplishment. As an activity that is an end in itself, πραξις, is therefore understood as an activity of finite appropriation whose end is the very movement of appropriation itself. As such, it constitutes a repetition of the essence of δύναμις and of the transcendence of Dasein insofar as it is understood to be constituted by δύναμις. (shrink)

What is the relation between philosophical analysis and sociological method? Sociology has traditionally looked to Philosophy to provide either an indubitable epistemic foundation for its practices or alternatively to legislate invariant criteria of scientificity which might guide the social sciences in questions of methodology. But has Philosophy itself such an autonomy from the developing knowledge domains of the different sciences,natural and social? A structural analysis of philosophic discourse in the twentieth century reveals as a key element of recent philosophic'al thought (...) a central anthropologism. This study traces the rupture in philosophic thought which has occurred with the dissolution and collapse of classical epistemology and the emergence in turn of a radically new mode of philosophizing based on a recognition of the centrality of social reality to ontological judgement and epistemological critique. Just as the analytic epistemOlogy of the seventeenth century can be seen as an accommodation by Philosophy to the emergence and development of the empirical natural sc~ences, so the appearance of 'conversational' epistemology can be viewed as Philosophy's attempt to think'the implications for the nature of knowledge-in-general of the emergence and subsequent development of the social sciences at the end of the nineteenth century. The key theoretical instance which demarcates classical epistemology fram the anthropologistic philosophy since the 1920's is its inability to accommodate the category of intersubjectiv:itJY successfully within its egological structure. Contemporary philosophy, phenomenological, analytical, pragmatist and marxist, is forced to grapple with the new awareness of man's essential sociality. This has profound implications for epistemology. The question of the relationship of philosophical analysis to sociological method must be re-addressed in the light of the revealed epistemic proximity of the two disciplines. What sort of philosophical critique, we ask, is possible and appropriate in an age of sociological reason and historical method? (shrink)

It is consistent with the evidence in The Origin of Concepts to conjecture that infants' causal representations, like their numerical representations, are not continuous with adults', so that bootstrapping is needed in both cases.