In one of his last texts, Foucault defined his philosophical enterprise as an?analysis of the conditions in which certain relations between subject and object are formed or modified, insofar as they are constitutive of a possible knowledge,? or again as?the manner in which the emergence of games of truth constituted, for a particular time and place and certain individuals, the historical a priori of a possible experience.? Despite its eclipse during the genealogical period, the notion of the historical a priori (...) is thus reaffirmed as central by later Foucault. There is, however, an essential modification with respect to its archaeological problematisation: In The Order of Things, the various historical a priori were characterized by specific relations between being and language, relations in which the subject of knowledge did not always or necessarily have a place. The Renaissance episteme was defined by the homogeneity of words and things, and its Classical counterpart by the transparent distance between being and representation, which excluded any positioning for the subject (the missing?place of the king?). Within the archaeological configuration, only the contemporary historical a priori was characterized by the invention of a new position for the subject of knowledge, that of Man, which according to Foucault generated the Analytic of Finitude and ultimately resulted in the?anthropological sleep? criticised at the end of The Order of Things. So although later Foucault refocuses his work around the notion of the historical a priori, he gives the notion a considerable twist whereby the conditions of truth saying are no longer referred back to an implicit connection between being and language, but to the various relations historically established between?modes of subjectivation? and?modes of objectification.? (shrink)

A term of art, originally Italian, becoming common usage in other European vernaculars in the late sixteenth century. It meant practical reflection, albeit in writing and general in form, about all aspects of statecraft (reason = reasoning, discussing, considering, but also a ground or justification for acting; state = government, the prince’s position, the institutional order of a “commonwealth” or “principality”). It claimed practical usefulness in virtue of its grounding in experience and history, contrasting itself with “mirrors of princes,” which (...) were supposedly ignorant of the realities of politics. More narrowly, reason of state meant a “Machiavellian” disregard for legal, moral, and religious considerations when the “interests of the state” or “necessity” required it. Particularly contentious were the justifiability of dishonesty, duplicity, breach of faith and even treaty obligations, violence against opponents and competitors, illegal taxation, disregard of the claims of traditional institutions and officeholders, and the practice of religious toleration. Opponents of “reason of state” attempted to demonstrate that, on the contrary, adherence to religion, morality, and legality was the best policy, in that it earned providential rewards, but also that in strictly pragmatic terms it was most likely to bring political success. However, these proponents of “true reason of state” acknowledged that strict adherence to these norms was sometimes impossible, and when it was, statesmen must attempt to avoid the greater evil. Having become the subject of a vast literature and even a standard university topic, reason of state faded as an issue in the later seventeenth century. Realpolitik from the nineteenth century onwards resembles it, with the state representing a morality superior to the norms of legality and private morality, a view in turn contested by advocates of human rights and international morality. (shrink)

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German Reformer, theologian, translator of the Bible into German, priest, theology professor (from 1512) at the university of Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony, preacher and pastor, prolific author in both German and Latin, former Augustinian monk, and excommunicated by the papacy in 1521. His best known political doctrines are the Zwei Reiche/Regimente Lehre (Two Kingdoms and/or Two Governments); political obedience and hostility to rebellion and millennialism; endorsement of princely “absolutism”; the territorial “prince’s church” (landesherrliches Kirchenregiment). Slightly (...) less well known are his opposition to usury, his anti-Jewish attitudes, his very “secular” interpretation of marriage and divorce, his doctrine of the three estates (the military, economic, and ecclesiastical), his “congregational” tendencies in church government, and his belief that his was the “end-time” when Satan and Anti-Christ ruled the world. His principal political doctrines were not unfamiliar; they resemble Augustine’s conception of the two civitates, the medieval “two swords” controversy, and conventional doctrines of obedience and good order of his time. Luther, moreover, set out his political ideas in pamphlets prompted by specific emergencies, and never consolidated them in a definitive text. Some interpreters see them as an expression of “social conservatism” rather than as inferences from his theology. (shrink)

Death is a human concern and yet, the topic of death is one which is rarely discussed in an open and frank way between adults and children. A genealogical approach is used with the concept of habitus as a set of dispositions and a way of being. The changes in socialisation practices are mapped and psychosocial reasons are offered for the denial of death in UK schools. Using a psychodynamic theoretical framework, the thesis explains how stressful experiences are demonstrated through (...) practices in the field of education, and how schools as containers, use collective defence mechanisms to guard against their primitive survival anxieties. Equal importance is given to the practical logic of everyday action as well as the objective structures within which the action takes place. Semi structured texts are used to access current practises in school alongside autoethnography and an anti-narcissistic form of reflexivity which considers the teaching practice of the researcher as a potential source of information. For the inclusion of the topic of death in a curriculum there has to be a transformation to current practices in some schools. This involves addressing the anxieties which defend against discussions of the topic of death and adopting school practices to enable a commensal relation in a containing environment. Key Words. Socialisation, Habitus, Education, Social Defence Systems, Containment. (shrink)

Despite the ubiquity of forgetting in human life, scholarly research has said relatively little about it. The following project aims to begin to remedy this neglect by offering a phenomenological analysis of the pivotal role that forgetting plays in making us who we are. By foregrounding the experiential impact of forgetting, this phenomenological approach will move beyond the reductive view of forgetting as a mere failure to ‘encode an input,’ or an absence of a ‘neural trace’, and it will allow (...) me to illuminate the crucial role forgetting plays in our existence. Along the way I will discuss various threads in the epistemology and metaphysics of memory to provide a new way of looking at forgetting via a phenomenologically informed view of our mindedness: that we are best placed to understand the role of forgetting if we foreground the idea that mindedness is based in care. (shrink)

This dissertation explores Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung’s (1875-1961) curious relationship with the ideas of the 17th Century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). Despite mentioning Spinoza by name only seven times throughout his Collected Works, there is a strong affinity between the core ideas of both thinkers, most notably in regards to the transcendental immanence of Spinoza’s God and the monism implicit in Jung’s writings. Despite this accordance, wherever in Jung’s writings he seems to ‘meet’ Spinoza he also confusedly denounces him. (...) To understand why Jung reads Spinoza the way he does, a rigorous comparison between the convergent ideas of both thinkers is undertaken. Various reasons for Jung’s perplexing attitude toward Spinoza are explored before reaching the most plausible conclusion: that Spinoza forces Jung into a confrontation with the unknown that strips Jung of the sanctuary of the inner world that he holds dear and that his psychology prioritizes. Ultimately however this introverted bias reveals a problem in Jung’s theories regarding his ability to treat the outer world equal to the inner realm. To solve this dilemma, Jung concedes to a Spinozist viewpoint. For Jung this results in a ‘tripartite monism’ of matter, psyche and spirit that differs from the dual-aspect monism outlined by the theoretical physicist and Jungian scholar Harald Atmanspacher. According to Jung and Spinoza, knowledge of the absolute does not come from tracing the aspects of mind and matter back to an original one but rather through understanding the relationships between the infinity of all finite things. This allows a comparison of Jung’s ideas of individuation and the unus mundus with Spinoza’s notions of virtue and blessedness. For both thinkers, knowledge of the self leads to knowledge of the Divine, and it is this championing of a transcendental immanence that makes Jung an unlikely yet consummate Spinozist. (shrink)

Facial feedback, which involves the brain receiving information about the activation of facial muscles, has the potential to influence our emotional states and judgments. The extent to which this applies is still a matter of debate, particularly considering a failed replication of a seminal study. One factor contributing to the lack of replication in facial feedback effects may be the imprecise manipulation of facial muscle activity in terms of both degree and timing. To overcome these limitations, this thesis proposes a (...) non-invasive method for inducing precise facial muscle contractions, called facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES). I begin by presenting a systematic literature review that lays the groundwork for standardising the use of fNMES in psychological research, by evaluating its application in existing studies. This review highlights two issues, the lack of use of fNMES in psychology research and the lack of parameter reporting. I provide practical recommendations for researchers interested in implementing fNMES. Subsequently, I conducted an online experiment to investigate participants' willingness to participate in fNMES research. This experiment revealed that concerns over potential burns and involuntary muscle movements are significant deterrents to participation. Understanding these anxieties is critical for participant management and expectation setting. Subsequently, two laboratory studies are presented that investigated the facial FFH using fNMES. The first study showed that feelings of happiness and sadness, and changes in peripheral physiology, can be induced by stimulating corresponding facial muscles with 5–seconds of fNMES. The second experiment showed that fNMES-induced smiling alters the perception of ambiguous facial emotions, creating a bias towards happiness, and alters neural correlates of face processing, as measured with event-related potentials (ERPs). In summary, the thesis presents promising results for testing the facial feedback hypothesis with fNMES and provides practical guidelines and recommendations for researchers interested in using fNMES for psychological research. (shrink)

In some unpublished lecture notes on communication, Kierkegaard introduces a distinction between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ communication. According to these notes, the key distinguishing feature of indirect communication, with respect to its formal structure, is that it lacks an ‘object’. By this, Kierkegaard appears to envisage a form of communication in which what gets imparted is strictly nothing. However, this presents an immediate puzzle, especially given that our natural way of understanding communication just is as the transmission of some content from (...) one person to another. How can we even possibly conceive of a communication that has no ‘object’, i.e., no communicative content? Regarding Kierkegaard on indirect communication, a standard general interpretative strategy rows back on the notion of a form of communication in which what is imparted is strictly nothing. Instead, critics appeal (more or less expressly) to the idea of communicative content that is imparted indirectly, i.e., implicitly or ambiguously. My overall aim in this thesis is threefold. Firstly, I aim to clarify the notion of communication that lacks an object. I show that, while it does not rely on the possibility of forms of communication that contain no intelligible content, this notion does rely on there being ways of communicating that are strictly non-didactic, i.e., not aimed at imparting any knowledge or information. Secondly, I show how variants of the standard interpretation misconstrue Kierkegaard’s strict direct/indirect distinction, as a distinction between explicit and implicit ways of imparting content. Thirdly, I offer an alternative. Specifically, I defend the following: that indirect communication’s purpose is to problematise the recipient’s relation to that which he takes himself to already know. I develop this alternative by re-examining Kierkegaard’s conception of ‘doubly-reflected’ mode of communication, the artistry he thinks this involves, and its role in his overall communicative strategy. (shrink)

To many of its most authoritative commentators, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment cannot but entail a reductively negative, pessimistic philosophy of history that ties the historical progress of enlightenment rationality with regression and domination so tightly as to undermine its own critical intentions. My thesis contends that a text as self-reflective of its own form of presentation as the Dialectic obviously is could not be read so literally. To remedy this, I offer an interpretive reappraisal of the Dialectic of (...) Enlightenment, which places a methodological appreciation of the latter’s distinct style and form of presentation at the centre of understanding its philosophical status and more specifically, its philosophical viability as a form of social critique. I argue that the Dialectic pursues, in the first place, the negative, critical aim of undermining the unreflective perceptions of history and progress through which present society constructs its own self-understanding, and does so not only on the level of philosophical content, but also on the level of linguistic form. The text performatively repeats the conventional tropes, narratives and genres in which the historical self-understanding of enlightenment is embodied, and enacts, on the level of linguistic expression itself, the failure of this self-understanding to deliver on its own promise. I argue that this form of critical textual composition simultaneously implicates its own audience and is aimed at their experience of the text. As such, it is concerned not simply with challenging their rational beliefs, but also and especially at undermining their affective investments to socially prevalent notions of history. (shrink)

Though political conflict is inevitable in democratic societies, it has garnered little attention in political philosophy as a phenomenon sui generis. In this PhD thesis, I survey the landscape of approaches to conflict and develop a critical-phenomenological basis for a more thorough philosophical understanding of the phenomenon. A key assumption is that the structures of conflict experience manifest in context-relative modalities shaped by power. To bring out these differences, I conducted qualitative interviews with political actors—politicians, civil servants, activists—which I analysed (...) with the tools of phenomenology and critical theory. My dissertation reveals that agents can perceive the same conflict differently, at times drastically so, and explores how this variability impacts the suitability of practical proposals to resolve conflict. The dissertation is organised into five parts: (1) discusses a dominant paradigm in political philosophy, i.e., Rawlsian political liberalism. By uncovering its conflict typology, I show how intractable conflicts remain a problem in Rawls’s well-ordered society. (2) addresses Modus Vivendi Theory, i.e., a realist alternative approach. While I argue that the theory can potentially tackle a wider array of conflicts, it still remains too indeterminate to provide normative guidance. (3) marks a shift from immanent critique to a critical phenomenology of conflict. Focusing on the role of space and location in conflict, and combining phenomenology with feminism, the chapter shows how (a) variations relating to spaces matter for the viability of practical solutions to conflict; and (b) how power asymmetrically structures scopes of possible action in these spaces. (4) combines phenomenology and critical philosophy of race to illustrate the role of the body in conflict—both as the vehicle of action and as the object of social perception. (5) elaborates the normativity of the political world, developing a phenomenologically-informed understanding of political conflict missing in the literature. (shrink)

This dissertation deals with the political uses of anger, focusing on those cases in which anger is mobilized against socially structural forms of injustice (henceforth, “radical anger”). The author provides a philosophical defence of the legitimacy and usefulness of this kind of anger, together with a set of conceptual tools for distinguishing among different instances of anger in the political realm. The text consists of seven chapters, an introduction and a short conclusion. The first chapter offers a genealogy of the (...) pathologization of radical anger, investigating the linguistic and conceptual entanglement of rage and rabies. The following chapter reviews a few cases in which oppressed groups successfully reclaimed radical anger in spite of widespread pathologizing and criminalizing tendencies, drawing mainly from the radical feminist and antiracist traditions. Special attention is also paid to the relationship between anger and violence, as well as to the opportunity for structurally discriminated groups to politically embrace anger. The metaphor of a ballistics of anger is introduced to heuristically distinguish among specific occurrences of political anger. The third chapter outlines the essential features of a political philosophy of radical anger, starting from a re-reading of Michel Foucault’s interpretation of ancient Cynicism which emphasises the angry character of the latter. After asking whether radical anger can be considered philosophically true and reactionary anger defined as untrue, three possible arguments in favour of an affirmative answer are considered. Since the first two arguments, based respectively on the works of Rahel Jaeggi and Giorgio Agamben, prove unsuccessful, a third alternative, relying mainly on the works of Foucault and Hannah Arendt, is proposed by the author. Chapters from 4 to 6 look for contemporary reprises of Cynical anger, proposing a philosophical reading of the lives and works of three figures who angrily confronted several kinds of structural injustice: Valerie Solanas, Malcolm X and Audre Lorde. The dissertation shows that each of them can offer useful additions to the political philosophy of radical anger already sketched. In particular, Solanas can help us thinking the connections between anger, negation, utopia and abolition; X testifies to the importance of the link between radical anger and the notion of care of the self (ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ); Lorde allows us to understand the deep implications of the use of radical anger and paves the way for an erotic conception of this feeling. Finally, Chapter 7 presents the international trans-feminist movement Ni Una Menos-Non Una di Meno as an example of the practical and theoretical strengths of radical anger. (shrink)

Lacanian psychoanalysis has received increasing attention in the last few decades for its relevance to thinking about politics, mainly as a result of its key role in the work of the post-Althusserian philosophers of the Ljubljana School. This, however, has resulted in a portrayal of Lacan’s position with respect to Marx that can seem obvious and uncomplicated, and that elides the complexities of the historical narrative of psychoanalysis’s interaction with Marxist thought. This thesis offers a more complex historical picture of (...) how Lacan relates to Marx. It argues that the political possibilities opened up by psychoanalysis, in particular with respect to its response to Marx, cannot be understood extraneously to this historical dimension. The thesis carries out readings of key texts in twentieth-century philosophy, science, and political theory associated with Marxist thought to construct this intellectual history. It finds that, at each moment of its development, Lacan’s work responded to conceptual impasses precipitated by the legacy of this tradition. What also emerges, though, is a view of Lacan that cannot be reduced to a Marxist framework, precisely because of the pressure-points within it that he exploits. There is a history conditioning Lacan’s position with respect to Marx that has been forgotten, and that haunts attempts currently being made, in the half-century after his work was completed, to come to terms with it. This thesis begins a study of the contours of this history, in order to register the political possibilities that Lacan opened up. (shrink)

This practice-based research examines the development of the visual culture of British emergency politics between 1997-2017. It cites the first naming and emergence of the British government emergency response committee COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Room) in 2000 as the beginning of a new condition in the visual culture of emergency politics. This study pinpoints the combination of camera phone images and social media in 2005, with the implementation of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 as a pivotal moment in who can (...) now claim, and counter-claim, the legitimacy of civil emergency events. This study will show how emergency images have now become a set of standardised visual conventions and modes of habitual participation, normalising the condition of a continual state of emergency. This inquiry identifies a new category of images, namely the emergency image and the emergency response image. I argue that the emergency image and emergency response image have not only altered the public perception of emergency events and the State’s response to them, but have opened up a new space for political contestation where the claiming of emergency events is now distributed between the State and the public. This investigation uses a practice-based research methodology to publicly reassemble the COBR Committee by actively collating, curating and documenting its previously siloed visual elements and fragments, and its emergency events between 1997-2017. Four original practice-based research outputs include: Emergency State: The COBR Committee between 1997-2017 held in July 2021, the web archive (www.COBR-Commitee.uk), a formal entry of a dataset of all publicly held COBR meetings between 1997-2017 to the UK Data Archive (dataset ref number: 855344) and an intervention in which images of a restaged COBR meeting are placed within the economy of images. (shrink)

Much research supports the existence of top-down effects on visual perception. Within this thesis, two accounts which seek to explain top-down effects on perception are investigated: The Action-Specific Account, which asserts that perception is affected by an individual’s ability to act, and the Attentional Account, which asserts that perception is affected by attention towards an object. These accounts were investigated because they potentially challenge cognitive impenetrability – the assertion that perception is free from cognitive influences. These accounts therefore have ramifications (...) for the concept of modularity and the current understanding of how the mind is organised. However, no research demonstrating top-down effects on perception has successfully avoided the methodological pitfalls which provide alternative explanations for their results. As such, the central aim of this thesis was to develop a method of measuring one example of these top-down effects - changes in object size perception - whilst avoiding said methodological pitfalls. Perception of food size was selected because previous research suggested that changes in perceived food size may affect subsequent eating behaviours. The central finding of this thesis is that attention, independent of action-specific influences, affects perception. Importantly, although top-down attention affects perceptual experience, it is suspected this occurs indirectly through small changes in visual input - and therefore may not challenge cognitive impenetrability. To investigate the extent of top-down effects on perception, this thesis also addressed inconsistencies within the broader food perception literature. It was observed that health outcomes related to over-eating were better predicted by food-specific, than domain-general, self-reports. Interestingly, the impulsivity assessed by these food-specific measures did not predict perceived food size. In summary, this thesis addresses methodological issues within the object perception literature and further research is proposed to assess its limitations. (shrink)

This thesis argues that contrary to the dominant anglophone approach to interpreting Hegel, his social philosophy ought to be understood as breaking with Kant’s conception of freedom. I develop this argument first by showing that Hegel denies the distinction, central to Kant’s moral philosophy, between is and ought. In the second chapter I turn to the work of Robert Pippin, who offers the most wide ranging and systematic defence of the view that Hegel maintains an essentially Kantian theory of freedom. (...) Through my discussion of Pippin, I conclude that his attempt to ground the objectivity of social structures in the reflective endorsement of individual subjects is ultimately unsuccessful. I then turn to the work of Terry Pinkard and Christoph Menke who I see as correctly recognising that there is a tension between Kant’s subjectivist conception of freedom and Hegel’s socially integrated theory. Both theorists do not, however, see this tension as indicating that the Kantian model of freedom is inadequate to providing an account of agency that could be reconciled with a modern social conception of freedom. Instead, they see the tension as a productive one. For Pinkard it indicates the maturity of the consciousness of modern subjects who cannot be fully integrated into social structures. For Menke the tension reveals an alternative form of freedom as liberation from the constraints of rigid and habitual social practices. In the final chapter of this thesis, I argue that in the anthropology Hegel develops an alternative model of freedom as a pre-social self-formation. This alternative model of freedom provides an account of how the subject comes to be the kind of being capable of integrating into social structures by making themselves into a coherent self. The manifestation of this alternative model of freedom is habit. Habit is a form of freedom which, in our overly intellectualised conceptions of agency, we often dismiss. (shrink)

The concept of “dissociation” describes a variety of phenomena that involve a divided or disunified experience, ranging from everyday experiences such as daydreaming to the fascinating and controversial phenomenon of dissociative identity disorder —formerly called multiple personality disorder. Because of the wide assortment of phenomena, theoretical unity has been difficult to achieve, and there is no received consensus of what dissociation is, with many arguing the concept is imprecise, confusing and/or ambiguous. The aim of the thesis is to use resources (...) from Heidegger’s existential-hermeneutic phenomenology to articulate core structures of dissociative experiences. In pursuing this aim, I identify three problems that any satisfactory theory of dissociation must confront: the motleyness problem, the ontological problem, and the normative problem. Before developing the Heideggerian account, I first track the development of these three problems over a two-part philosophical history of dissociation. After identifying consciousness as one of the ontological commitments that run through the history of consciousness, I then situate dissociation within the philosophy of mind by critically evaluating Tim Bayne’s unity of consciousness thesis with reference to whether it can satisfactorily accommodate dissociative phenomena. After showing that the three problems remain a significant challenge to theorizing dissociative phenomena, I move to articulate dissociative experiences using the Heideggerian ontological structures of Jemeinigkeit and Unheimlichkeit. I conclude by evaluating this Heideggerian account of dissociation against the three problems. (shrink)

As political crises and social unrest proliferate worldwide, the appeal of populism grows steadily in various fora, including academic fora. In this respect, an abundance of scholarly publications has sought, through the study of populism, to unravel important aspects of contemporary political and social dynamics. Discourse theory scholars, in particular, have played an important role in pushing the boundaries of populism studies forward. They have challenged objectivist perspectives in the sciences by foregrounding the role of meaning-making and by treating populism (...) as a discursive logic that better characterises the political articulation of social reality. In situating its analytical focus at the frontier of populism studies, this paper-based dissertation contributes to this literature from both an empirical and a theoretical point of view. Through the four papers which make up this thesis, I contribute to discourse theory by presenting three main lines of analysis in the study of populism in Brazil, a case that is frequently referenced but which remains under-explored. Firstly, by exploring Brazil’s fourth republican period, this thesis shows how populism is best understood as both a concept and a signifier, revealing the way the dynamic interplay of populism discourses shape our sense of social reality. Secondly, by studying a leading magazine with an upmarket readership in Brazil, I explore the affective force running through anti-populist discursive articulations, affirming the value of the category of fantasy from an empirical and analytical point of view. Thirdly, by focusing on the collective candidacy of the Bancada Ativista in the Sao Paulo State elections, I explore the potential of the concept of populism, conceived as a logic, to shed light on aspects of political life beyond populist phenomena. Finally, in recognising a gap in the literature in relation to the constitutive role of desire in social meaning-making processes, the fourth paper constructs, through the psychoanalytic category of hysteria, an approach to knowledge production informed by desire, which constitutes the main theoretical contribution to the discourse theory tradition. By paying close attention to Brazilian politics, this thesis explores some of the distinctive virtues of a discourse theoretical approach to populism by drawing out the normative, ideological, and politico-strategic implications of complex political dynamics and social meaning-making processes within and beyond the study of populist phenomena. (shrink)

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and debate (...) the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice. (shrink)

This book outlines A.N. Whitehead’s philosophy of process and uses it to re-orient a range of topics within social theory, namely: The relation of language and the body; sexual difference and conceptions of nature; the question of realism; the concept of the social; and capitalism as process.

This thesis aims to rework Foucault’s care of the self so that it can be understood as a political activity that opens the possibility for a new type of subjectivity. I develop and exemplify this claim through an analysis of the digital. Firstly, I focus on Foucault’s ethical work, which I articulate and defend by reading the care of the self through the notions of body, critique and limits, thus envisioning a political activity from which a new subjectivity can emerge. (...) Ultimately, I understand the care of the self to be an embodied critical practice that aims at transgressing the limits of imposed truths and forms of life. The exercise of the care of the self, thus, permits for a conversion of power, which signifies the passing from a moment of subjection to one of subjectivation. Secondly, I employ such arguments in a more practical manner and analyse the digital and the subjection process it enacts. I argue that the digital, which I take as the exacerbated use of the internet through gadgets, is a complex tool-like space characterized by quantification, seclusion and symbiosis, and that such notions arise as a result of the mechanisms that uphold the digital: discipline, mediation of discourse and biopower. However, my interest here is not in these characteristics and mechanisms per se but about the subject they create. I claim that the digital serves to exemplify the making of the useful and docile bodies of the twenty-first century: depoliticized in their utility and docility insofar as they are made to take for granted the imposition of a contingent truth. Thirdly, I then explore how my political reading of the care of the self serves to ‘fight’ the depoliticized digital subject, where I claim that our attention should be directed towards the mundane, the everyday, and the regaining of it through thought exercises, which allow for the subject to rethink that which was once taken for granted and regarded as incontestable. In doing so, I argue for the value of the uncertain and the political possibility that rests within. (shrink)

The present thesis seeks to explore knowledge generation methods in the field of psychotherapy, with a focus on qualitative clinical and systematic case study narratives. Currently, evidence–based practice in psychotherapy prioritises quantitative methods. However, recent studies exploring psychotherapists’ decision–making processes in clinical practice suggest that there are significant difficulties in applying randomised and decontextualized statistical findings onto individual patients and their specific mental health experiences. Some of the concerns about large–scale quantitative findings include overlooking complex individual differences in treatment processes (...) and outcomes. This contributed to an ongoing issue of research–practice gap: a lack of integration between the findings disseminated by researchers and the practical decisions made in the consulting room by therapists. To aid with these issues, this thesis considers the role of the case study method in psychotherapy research. From its inception, psychoanalysis used case studies to produce complex, longitudinally sensitive and detailed narratives to discuss clinical decision–making processes and theoretical advancements. However, criticisms about researcher’s subjective bias, unclear research focus, and lack of generalisability continue for both classic psychoanalytic and contemporary psychotherapy case studies. Whilst there have been several historical misconceptions about case studies, there are also persisting methodological issues, such as lack of epistemic guidance for hypothesis generation and generalisability of case study findings. Crucially, there are currently no research appraisal tools for psychotherapy case studies. The thesis therefore seeks to i) address the long–standing criticisms directed at the case study method, ii) develop epistemic knowledge generation strategies for case study researchers, iii) address the philosophical underpinnings of thinking in cases as a scientific style, and iv) introduce a novel Case Study Evaluation–tool, which will improve the evidential status of systematic psychotherapy case studies. (shrink)

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and debate (...) the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice. (shrink)

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and debate (...) the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice. (shrink)

In a 1984 interview, Michel Foucault introduced a distinction between two forms of freedom: freedom as the ontological condition of ethics, and ethics as the “practice of freedom” informed by reflection. This text suggests that a good understanding of Foucault’s thoughts on freedom would require accounts of both ontological freedom and practices of freedom, but the secondary literature currently suffers from a shortage of work on these topics. This thesis attempts to fill this gap in the literature by offering a (...) new account of practices of freedom which also shows the connection with ontological freedom. Drawing inspiration from the constitutivist approach to meta-ethics, I suggest that Foucault’s notion of the practice of freedom is best understood by identifying the “constitutive aims” of the practice, in other words, the aims that make an agent’s activity a practice of freedom. Such a framework allows us to understand how Foucault can make specific ethical suggestions without committing himself to substantive moral claims and also allows us to apply the notion of practices of freedom to a broad range of real-life examples. I first offer a new account of ontological freedom and then, using a constitutivist approach, engage in a close reading of Foucault’s work in order to identify the constitutive aim of practices of freedom. With the aims in view, I demonstrate what it means to successfully practice freedom and then apply the account in two close readings of historical individuals. The first, on Socrates as presented in the Platonic dialogues, shows that we can apply our account of the practice of freedom to existing individuals. The second, on Oscar Wilde, argues that Wilde’s experience of agency in the practice of freedom was middle-voiced, rather than active, and thereby allows us to loosen the assumed connection between practices of freedom and active agency. (shrink)

This thesis aims to reconstruct the work of Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, who productively integrate some political and aesthetic elements of the critical social theories of Adorno and Habermas to theorize the conditions for a radical social change. I depart from Adorno’s contention that a true historical change requires the construction of what he calls a ‘global’ subject—i.e. a collective of critical and autonomous individuals. Adorno, assuming that capitalism has virtually eliminated autonomous subjects, turns to art as a potential (...) site from which this subject could (eventually) emanate. Given his limited understanding of art’s emancipatory potential—dependent on interpretation—however, he can, at best, account for individual resistance, but not for the construction of a ‘global subject’. I then reconstruct Negt and Kluge’s work as an attempt to move beyond Adorno’s limitations. Capitalism, they contend, cannot be as pervasive as Adorno theorises, but rather always produces the possibility to resist—a subjective counter-reaction which through aesthetic means (including popular art) can be transformed into resistance and critical thinking. According to Negt and Kluge, the reappropriation of aesthetic forms, further, can enable the collective articulation of common interests and needs, and the resignification of imposed identities. This motivates the formation of counter- public spheres, i.e., oppositional social movements. Counter-public spheres, nevertheless, are not sufficient to build a ‘global’ subject. This also requires the autonomous reconstitution of the public sphere as a whole, i.e. in the construction of what Negt and Kluge call a ‘proletarian’ public sphere. This alternative, I argue, must be understood as both as a consciousness-building process that mediates between particular interests and the totality of the social structures, and as the result of that process—a historically new social horizon of experience where individuals can consciously and collectively produce their contexts of living. (shrink)

Since Varela first introduced the term ‘neurophenomenology’, the assimilation of neuroscientific and phenomenological forms of evidence has become increasingly prominent in the cognitive sciences. Over the past quarter-century, neurophenomenological approaches have facilitated several notable successes and have been increasingly utilised to tackle a myriad of theoretical and methodological problems. However, an oft-voiced and persisting concern pertains to the prospective incongruity of combining objective, third-person forms of evidence with first-person, so-called ‘subjective’ forms of evidence. According to some critics, the inclusion of (...) phenomenological and therefore subjective, biased, and anecdotal first-person accounts of experience and cognition are of little utility or compatibility with a ‘hard science’ such as neuroscience. Furthermore, the kind of research initiatives that are labelled as ‘neurophenomenological’ are surprisingly heterogenous and, on examination, the logic governing each methodological approach is not necessarily interchangeable. Thus far, little scholarly attention has been paid to disaggregating and defining the diverse standards of evidence and validation operative in neurophenomenological research programmes, and how they might differently overcome the problem of integrating ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ forms of evidence. To address this lacuna in the current scholarship, I propose the existence of three identifiable sub-categories of neurophenomenological research: 1. Interpretative Neurophenomenology; 2. Experimental Neurophenomenology; 3. Constitutive Neurophenomenology. After articulating the defining characteristics of each neurophenomenological approach, I examine how each confronts the problem of establishing and validating its claims. I achieve this by evaluating three exemplary instances of past neurophenomenological research. Thereafter, I analyse the kinds of theoretical implications that can be extracted from each case example and how this information might help to provide a roadmap for future research in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Is it possible to limit heteronomy under oppression through critical self-assessment and self-transformation? I answer by testing available models of autonomy in light of their capacity to deal with the forms of heteronomy which typically characterise oppression. Drawing from Foucault’s analysis of power relations, I claim that there are significantly different ways of being oppressed in contemporary Western societies and that we need to account for this difference when answering if self-emancipation under oppression is possible. First, I look into paradigmatic (...) examples of the two main strategies available in the literature on autonomy: Christman’s procedural account, and Stoljar’s and Oshana’s substantive accounts. I analyse the strengths of these accounts but conclude that, as they stand, they are ill-suited to problematize forms of (what I call) ‘subjection’, namely forms of oppression which affect agents’ “normal” developments qua subjects of different kinds. Crucially, Christman’s model lacks resources to problematize settled characters and values, while Stoljar’s and Oshana’s models cannot sufficiently account for resistance and transgression in oppressive environments. To find a way out of the impasse of the substantive-procedural debate, I turn to Foucault’s analysis of power. Foucault’s resources are useful both to problematize agency and self-relations as effects of social power relations and to distinguish between the different interferences that contemporary theorists would call ‘oppressive’. I argue that some forms of oppression qualify as Foucauldian ‘domination’, where power imbalances are frozen and irreversible through the (limited) margin of freedom available to the individuals living in those conditions. Other forms of oppression, however, can be likened to what Foucault calls ‘government of individualisation’, where practices of self-clarification and self-transformation can make agents less heteronomous vis-à-vis specific power configurations. I propose a two-tracked approach to autonomy: a revised procedural account for cases of ‘subjection’, and a substantive one for cases of ‘domination’. (shrink)

Becoming autonomous is a process of coming to realise oneself in shared, socio-historical practices. There can be no self before these practices, but their existence is no guarantee for selfhood either: one can be heteronomous through one's successful participation in various practices if that participation is not a genuine expression of one's own personhood. This means that the sheer capability to participate in the practices in which one finds oneself is not sufficient for personal autonomy. Something else is required before (...) the self is realised in shared, socio-historical practices. How can this be, if as we said, there can be no self before these practices? By what principle do we decide whether a particular expression of selfhood in a socio-historical practice is genuine? If there can only be a self within socio-historical practices, it stands to reason that we can find it only there. If, however, one's participation cannot be considered in advance as a genuine expression of oneself, what we may expect to find is perhaps only a fragment, a hint of autonomy always already entangled in heteronomous elements, or things that would be different if one could have so chosen. To come to an understanding of oneself, then, will require more than just a handle on one's existence in various practices. It will require the capacity to see one's participation in this socio-historically determined practice as a fragment of a whole, a particular instance of something more general which points beyond our present participation in these particular, socio-historically determined practices towards a horizon of possibility that recedes beyond our grasp whenever we try to make definitive sense out of a possibility for agency. (shrink)

In this chapter we suggest that an appeal to retroductive reasoning as a form of explanation distinct from induction and deduction can help frame the strategic and methodological issues of any research that takes seriously an anti-essentialist ontology rooted in poststructuralist discourse theory. Anti-essentialism captures the view that societies and social agents – indeed, history itself – do not contain essences – invariable and fixed properties of an object - that can be rationally extracted and used to characterize social phenomena. (...) At the same time, although prominent in debates over how best to understand the production of theories and hypotheses in the natural sciences, we also argue that the concept of retroduction is relevant to a set of debates in the philosophy of social science. More precisely, it offers theoretical resources to develop a post-positivist picture of the study of social and political phenomena, thus furnishing important elements of a feasible and critical research strategy. We draw on arguments associated with a poststructuralist discourse-theoretical approach to social and political research to justify adopting the idea of a retroductive ‘cycle’. A retroductive understanding of the relationship between key elements of the social science research process offers us a useful way to think about research strategy and methodology from the point of view of post-positivism, including approaches informed by poststructuralist discourse theory. (shrink)

The empirical investigation of free will beliefs is a fascinating and extensive field, offering potential insights into the extent and ramifications of free will beliefs, but this research is not without its limitations. Many competing definitions of free will exist. These competing definitions have informed the variety of free will manipulations and measures currently used, often without researchers properly addressing the important differences in the understandings of free will being operationalised, manipulated and measured. These manipulations and measures are also typically (...) broad ranging, also including statements targeting determinism, reductionism and other related constructs. They therefore lack the focus necessary to identify just what aspect of these supposed free will manipulations are actually impacting cognitions, beliefs, and behaviours. Across 7 studies we address some of these limitations. Study 1 confirms past findings demonstrating that perceptions of having choice and being free from constraints are central to lay understandings of free will. Study 1 also tests new single item measures of free will and determinism. In studies 2 and 3 we use our new measure of lay free will, to demonstrate that the previously established utility of free will beliefs for predicting subjective wellbeing, is due to the perceptions of having control that form the core of lay free will beliefs. We then reason that, as pro deterministic/anti free will messages can undermine free will beliefs these manipulations may also impact perceived control and subsequently indicators of subjective wellbeing. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrate that an abridged version of the Crick essay, can undermine perceived control. This suggests that past successful manipulations of behaviour via the Crick essay, may have been due, at least in part, to reductions in perceived control rather than just free will beliefs. The Crick essay is a broad ranging, poorly focused manipulation, simultaneously championing determinism while undermining the idea of free will. We therefore then endeavour to create two new, better focused, manipulations of free will/determinism, with reduced demand characteristics. In study 6 our TMS manipulation lead to a significant reduction between participants’ pre and post manipulation scores but this was also true for participants in the neutral condition. These complex findings are explored, suggesting that placing participants in an intimidating environment may undermine their perceptions of having free will. In study 7 our deterministic video manipulation successfully undermines free will belief but does not undermine perceived control or self-efficacy. These findings are explored further with participants’ agreement with the deterministic or non-deterministic video lecture, moderating the impact of condition on participants’ ratings of free will, self-efficacy and perceived control. When compared to non-determinism, high agreement with determinism was associated with lower perceived control and free will belief. By contrast low agreement with determinism was associated with higher perceived control self-efficacy and free will. In study 1 we created a new measure of cheating/dishonesty that can be used online. In study 7 we used this new measure of cheating and contrary to our predictions, exposure to a deterministic argument led to less cheating than exposure to a non-deterministic argument. In the general discussion the various strands of research are brought together and their contribution to the literature discussed. The limitations of our research are explored with new ideas proposed to address those limitations and further our work. Taken together, the research outlined in this thesis provides valuable new insight into the nature and implications of beliefs relating to free will and determinism, provides a valuable critique of research in this field and offers suggestions to improve and extend the current literature. (shrink)

For Kierkegaard, “purity of heart” means to will only one thing- the good. He calls the pull towards the good “conscience”. At some point, any person may be forced to come to terms with their conscience when it disrupts their life through restlessness, anxiety or through one of its other manifestations and reveals the need to take the demands of the good seriously. But how are we to do justice to the demands of conscience? Is it possible to reach purity (...) of heart without giving up on happiness altogether? Would it even be possible to give up on happiness? This thesis will consider the possibility of trying to make the good the sole end of one’s will and thus the finding and development of conscience. We will consider from where we are to get a conscience, what it means for conscience to grow and what the obstacles might be in living this way of life. We will see that a person who tries to obtain purity of heart is met with a great challenge. The conscience can demand extreme things, can require that one give up one’s possessions, one’s time, one’s loved ones, it might require that one give up on happiness and it might even require the impossible. The question arises as to how it is possible to live this kind of life without reaching breaking point- a point at which one flees from conscience into a demonic form of life. It will be argued that it is faith that allows us to avoid the danger of the demonic but at the cost of great humility. We must be prepared to set aside the understanding to accommodate a hope that may seem absurd. (shrink)

This thesis starts from the intuition that it is possible to oppress oneself. On an initial description, self-oppression is a form of agency in which the agent, though exercising self-control, compromises her own choices in doing so. But, as such, self-oppression seems paradoxical and thus impossible: how can an agent be both the oppressor and the oppressed? And how can she compromise her own choices? The headline aim of the thesis is to offer a conceptualisation of self-oppression, thus establishing it (...) as a possible as well as a distinct form of agency. The strategy of the thesis is rather unusual. In the first chapter, drawing on Aristotle’s philosophy of action, I devise the category of hyperkrasia, designed to capture the phenomenon of self-oppression. I propose that, in hyperkrasia, an agent’s practical reason becomes authoritarian. This category is then further developed throughout the thesis, drawing on Augustine, Foucault, and Merleau-Ponty. Augustine’s notion of a corrupted will provides an account of how choice can be compromised without agency being bypassed: the agent with a corrupted will chooses to φ, but cannot but choose φ. Foucault’s notion of domination provides an explanation of how an agent’s will can be corrupted by factors influencing her perception of opportunities. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of action shows how our perception of opportunities can draw us toward action. Bringing these elements together, I propose that practical reason can influence an agent’s perception of certain opportunities, drawing her so strongly toward them that she cannot but act on them. As such, she makes a choice; but it is compromised, and this by her own practical reason. This resolves the paradox of self-oppression: it is practical reason which becomes the oppressor, and it compromises the agent’s choices by influencing the way she perceives certain opportunities. (shrink)

In this thesis I attempt to uncover the general philosophical significance of the distinction made by F.W.J. Schelling between negative and positive philosophy in his later work. Instead of approaching this issue in the customary way, via a comparison with Hegel, I argue that the distinction marks the point of culmination of a distinct strand in the development of idealism which has a significant precursor in the neglected and misunderstood later work of J.G. Fichte. I argue that the tendency of (...) both thinkers’ later work is to provide a criticism of the systematic project most commonly identified with German Idealism, namely holistic monism. I further attempt to elucidate the steps both thinkers take towards providing an alternative account of systematicity. In the first part of the thesis I examine the roots of the distinction between negative and positive philosophy in the disagreement about the status of the system that finds expression in Fichte’s and Schelling’s correspondence. I argue that this debate reveals both the ambiguities of the early Wissenschaftslehre as well as the inconsistency of Schelling’s attempt to supplement it with an ontological grounding. In the second part of the thesis, I argue that Fichte’s later philosophy, as it is expounded in the Berlin Wissenschaftslehre, is to be understood as crystallising in the wake of his disagreement with Schelling. Fichte develops, on my reading, a negative philosophy in order to separate the structure of self-consciousness from the absolute partly in order to reveal the inadequacy of Schelling’s approach to ontological grounding. I identify the further significance of the Berlin Wissenschaftslehre as consisting in Fichte’s novel reformulation of the ontological argument, which likewise anticipates a central element of Schelling’s later thought. In the final part, I examine Schelling’s self-conscious formulation of negative and positive philosophy and try to uncover its wider methodological significance. (shrink)

This investigation examines how the uneasy relationship between death and representation plays out across three overlapping modalities – text, body, and image. Drawing from Freud’s formulations, I trace out the paroxysmal movements of the death drive in concurrence with narcissism, masochism, and the uncanny, arguing that the theoretical indeterminacy of these concepts might be ascribed to the manner in which they interrogate, exceed, and destabilize the prevailing perception of the self as an integrated whole. As a situation of subjective/symbolic rupture, (...) perhaps it is not “possible” to think beyond the limit that death poses for psychoanalytic theory. However, I propose that reconsidering Freudian metapsychology in light of Georges Bataille’s work on transgression and excess allows us to think across said limit. In deploying this highly dynamic approach, I elaborate on the role of death in the drive economy and, subsequently, its potential association with the ‘oceanic’ feeling that Freud acknowledges as a motivation for religious belief. Considering death and its corresponding drive through the ontological oscillations they provoke, I argue, expands the field that constitutes their manifestations and opens up new avenues of inquiry via potential applications in religion and aesthetics. (shrink)

Existing Anglo-American scholarship on the films of Paul Verhoeven is overwhelmingly concerned with the director’s Hollywood productions and tends to apply frameworks of analysis based on Cartesian dualist thought. Much of this scholarship consequently finds contradictions between the politically progressive qualities of Verhoeven’s work and the reactionary politics assumed to be inherent to the popular form. This study aims to re-contextualise Verhoeven’s films as a cinema of immanence, which does not think in those dualist terms. Building on existing work that (...) centres the body and sensation in film scholarship, and drawing on the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, this thesis asks about Verhoeven’s body of work: what is a cinema of immanence, what does it do and how is it different? In this context, immanence means thinking of everything as inherent to the material world. Through close readings of Verhoeven’s films, the thesis makes the argument in three stages over three chapters. The first chapter defines what is meant by a cinema of immanence through a consideration of how bodies are presented on-screen in Verhoeven’s pre-Hollywood films. This chapter identifies a body of work that consistently decentres subjectivity in favour of a presentation of the human body as a multiplicity, also collapsing planes of the symbolic and fantasy into the world of bodies. Consequently, the film-worlds are shown to think in terms of immanent ethics, rather than a transcendent morality. Building on the definition of a cinema of immanence in Chapter One, the second chapter looks at what a cinema of immanence does by reframing the encounter between the spectator and Verhoeven’s Hollywood films in terms of immanence, affect and habit. The chapter determines that Verhoeven’s films can express the formation of rigid Hollywood frameworks of realism, genre and sexual difference, arguing that they operate as popular Hollywood genre films through camouflage or as simulacra. This opens up potential becoming-others to the spectator as habits and expectation are disrupted. The third chapter shows how Verhoeven’s films are different from films that think in terms of dualism by comparing Verhoeven’s RoboCop and Total Recall with their contemporary remakes. Through this comparison, Verhoeven’s films can be seen to show a supple segmentarity and micropolitics of the individual, whereas the remakes present unified models of individuality that resonate with the interests of the nation-state and capitalism. The study concludes that the capacity to think in terms of immanence allows Verhoeven’s films to express what Deleuze and Guattari call the molecular dimension of the film world. This disrupts the function of dualist thought, which works to unify, centre, hierarchise and impose finality. Further research is recommended to shift emphasis away from scholarship that imposes dualist frameworks of analysis on the popular form, toward how a film thinks. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Kurdish question has been a major challenge for Turkey. In the earlier period within modern Turkish history, the Kurds revolted many times, demanding their rights; but each time the state managed to suppress them violently. However, the armed wing of the Kurdish movement, the PKK, has fought against the state since 1984 and this conflict has been of great humanitarian and economic cost, both to Kurds and Turks. In order to end the (...) for our-decade-long conflict, the AKP government began a peace process with the PKK in 2009. That process ended in the middle of 2015, for reasons both internal and external. This thesis examines the representation of the Kurdish question during the period of the peace talks (2009 to 2015) in three Turkish newspapers of differing ideologies. I analyse some specific events, including the peace process itself, which occurred during this six-year period, in order to explore how Kemalist, leftist and Erdoganist newspapers presented the Kurdish question and – as I shall argue –reproduced the dominant discursive practises about the Kurds. My main method is Critical Discourse Analysis. With it, I try to show: the media discourse about the Kurds tended to fluctuate according to the state’s somewhat variable political stance; for the most part, that discourse remained true to what did not change in the state’s discourse, and, thus, that mostly the media discourse was one of terrorism and security. Hence, and despite some intermittent support for the peace process, most of the press failed to practice the persistent advocacy of peace that would be required for that journalism to count as ‘peace journalism’. The thesis faults the press for that and traces the failure to compromising ownership of the media. (shrink)

This thesis offers a critical exploration of the roles played by ideas of space and containment in psychotherapy. A wide range of existing approaches to the notion of therapeutic space in depth psychology are presented. The dominant models of containment in psychotherapy are then interrogated. The thesis discusses these models from different perspectives, drawing on various disciplines, such as art, social studies, cultural studies and philosophy. Specifically, the thesis aims to employ approaches derived from psychogeography, with a focus on the (...) praxis of ‘aimless walking’, in order to shed new light on classical concepts of therapeutic space and containment in depth psychology and psychotherapy. It is asked whether and how we can progress to consider alternative models of therapeutic space, leading to the proposal of what the author terms ‘psychogeotherapy’. This fresh approach is not offered as an instant solution to the problems noted with existing approaches, nor are such approaches inappropriately dismissed. A feature of the thesis is its analysis of various psychogeographical personal testimonies. The thesis is to be considered not only a critical piece of writing, but also a fresh and creative account of the work of psychotherapy. (shrink)

This thesis draws on conceptual tools developed in Michel Foucault’s late work on ‘technologies of the self’ to historically reposition The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), not as the inaugural text of the ‘psychoanalytic movement’, but instead as belonging to a long-standing tradition of practices and writings, which view the self as an object of cultivation, representation, and knowledge. In order to historicize psychoanalysis in this way I critically examine practices and techniques employed within hypnotism and experimental psychology, in addition to (...) literary discourses on self-representation in 19th century autobiography. As a scientific treatise, a technical manual and a quasi- autobiographical text, Interpretation borrows from each of these approaches. In doing so, however, Freud would install a tension at the heart of the modern self that radically undermined the liberal conception of the individual as transparent, coherent, and responsible. My conviction is that positioning psychoanalysis within the history of practices of the self, and charting its ‘pre-history’ in these terms will deepen our understanding of Freud’s oeuvre as a significant event and agent in the history of subjectivity. For as this thesis contends, Freud contributed to the emergence of the notion that the self was an object that could be critically renegotiated via the relation of the self to itself, rather than submission to religious values, universal notions of duty, or bourgeois aesthetics. In doing so, Freud provided certain techniques of self-reflection to individuals who would not have had the authority or expertise to give an account of, or alter themselves in this way before. Finally, this reading also subverts Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis (represented in his middle works) by arguing that Freud’s ‘technology of the self’ cannot be subsumed under the rubric of ‘governmentality,’ and instead constitutes a ‘caustic’ technology that enables individuals to identify and renegotiate prior subjections. (shrink)

"The current volume represents an exciting collection of essays critically examining the relation between modern science and Lacanian psychoanalysis in approaching the question of mental suffering. Lacan & Science also tackles more widely the role and logic of scientific practice in general, taking as its focus psychic processes. Central themes that are explored from a variety of perspectives include the use of mathematics in Lacanian psychoalanysis, the importance of linguistics and Freud's text in Lacan's approach, and the central significance attached (...) to ethics and the role of the subject. Constituting an invaluable addition to existing literature, this comprehensive volume offers a fresh insight into Lacan's conception of the subject and its implications to scientific practice and evidence."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This study in applied ethics addresses whether the ontology of corporations as rights-bearing artificial legal persons allows them to be held morally responsible as unitary entities and members of the moral community, or if their status requires ascription of moral responsibility to reduce to their individual participants. I argue that moral responsibility is ascribable to corporations not on the basis of their agency as metaphysical natural persons but as irreducible non-agential intentional systems. The moral issue is illustrated through a case (...) study of the global financial crisis of 2007-08. Legal personhood is essential for understanding corporations because they are legally constructed, not natural. Personhood is fundamental for corporate accumulation of constitutional rights in US law. However, the dominant aggregation legal theory treats corporations as non-entity fictions reducible to only their participants. While the law suffers theoretical indeterminacy about responsibility, corporations act collectively and intentionally. There are two views of corporate collective intention: 'state-of-mind' and 'course-of-action'. SoM requires that the nature of collective agents sufficiently conform to a natural agent for ascription of responsibility. CoA concerns itself with what the entity plans and executes and its consequences, even if it is an intentional system. I argue CoA of intentional systems resolves problems of corporate moral responsibility because they are conversable members of the moral community. I conclude we may assign moral responsibility to corporations as unitary non-agential intentional systems, and not only to individual participants. The metaphysical question of the ontology of corporations need not be resolved because as collective, juristic intentional systems we can assign moral responsibility to them despite their not having intentional states of mind or agency. To preserve financial stability and democratic processes financial sector corporations must be susceptible to legal, social and moral responsibility. (shrink)

For post-Kantian philosophy, "life" is a transitory concept that relates the realm of nature to the realm of freedom. From this vantage point, the living seems to have the double character of being both already and not yet free: Compared with the external necessity of dead nature, the living already seems to exhibit a basic type of spontaneity and normativity that on the other hand still has to be superseded on the path to the freedom and normativity of spirit. The (...) contributions in the third volume of the series Freedom and Law take their departure from Hegel in order to investigate the extent to which we need figures and concepts of the living to understand the genesis and structure of theoretical and practical self-determination. In these analyses, Hegel's philosophy reveals itself as a thinking not restricted to a mere opposition between the determinations of life and the freedom of spirit, but rather conceives of a freedom that realizes itself in and through life: a freedom of life. (shrink)

This thesis consists of two parts: my main creative project, Tamám; four translations of the Chinese T’ang poet Yu Xuanji; and an accompanying critical commentary. Tamám is a present-day reimagining of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám consisting of one-hundred-and-one quatrains. It frames translation as a creative process informed by philosopher Jacques Derrida’s la trace : that source texts and other sources defer their meaning to one another, simultaneously absent and present in the genesis of new writing. These sources tangentially influence (...) and “mark” the content and meaning of a new text. The main translational elements of Tamám are the Persian source text of The Rubáiyát; Edward FitzGerald’s 19th century translation of The Rubáiyát; the case of the Somerton Man; the sociopolitical climate of 21st century south-east England; translation theory and deconstruction theory. The critical element of this thesis is split into three chapters, led by images from Tamám that focus on different aspects of trace in relation to creative writing and translation. Case studies include poets not traditionally considered translators, and contemporary poet-translators to suggest that trace is a peripheral element of writing processes. The commentary for Tamám follows these analyses and foregrounds the issues I encountered in the writing process, solutions to them, and justification of my creative response to aspects of trace and translation discussed in the theory. This is held against translations of Chinese poetry to demonstrate how the strict form, regulated verse, provides new creativity with absent-present trace of the form in its native language. In doing so, I argue that for the poet’s practice translation is an act of creative interpretation that informs and supplements the composition of new poetry by way of trace. (shrink)

In this chapter we suggest that an appeal to retroductive reasoning as a form of explanation distinct from induction and deduction can help frame the strategic and methodological issues of any research that takes seriously an anti-essentialist ontology rooted in poststructuralist discourse theory. Anti-essentialism captures the view that societies and social agents – indeed, history itself – do not contain essences – invariable and fixed properties of an object - that can be rationally extracted and used to characterize social phenomena. (...) At the same time, although prominent in debates over how best to understand the production of theories and hypotheses in the natural sciences, we also argue that the concept of retroduction is relevant to a set of debates in the philosophy of social science. More precisely, it offers theoretical resources to develop a post-positivist picture of the study of social and political phenomena, thus furnishing important elements of a feasible and critical research strategy. We draw on arguments associated with a poststructuralist discourse-theoretical approach to social and political research to justify adopting the idea of a retroductive ‘cycle’. A retroductive understanding of the relationship between key elements of the social science research process offers us a useful way to think about research strategy and methodology from the point of view of post-positivism, including approaches informed by poststructuralist discourse theory. (shrink)

Carl Gustav Jung’s (1875-1961) concept of synchronicity – designating the experience of meaningful coincidence and the implied principle of acausal connection through meaning – has been extensively discussed and deployed within the field of analytical psychology. However, there has been little success in integrating the concept into frameworks of thought beyond that of analytical psychology or operationalising it within non-Jungian programmes of research. In this article I explore the relationship of synchronicity to holistic thought as one of the more promising (...) directions in which synchronicity could gain greater purchase within wider academic and intellectual culture. The article takes its starting point from the view that Jung’s psychological model is itself a richly articulated form of holistic thought, which would repay study in relation to its core holistic ideas, its affinities with contemporaneous currents of holism, and its influence on subsequent holism. For such a project, clarification of the relationship between synchronicity and holism, which is the principal focus of this article, could be particularly valuable. For synchronicity is, I argue, itself a deeply holistic concept, and one that, far from being a late adjunct to Jung’s psychology, may have been implicit in his thinking about the holistic dynamics of the psyche from the beginning, and in an important sense arguably underpins them. (shrink)

The question of how to identify a sound normative basis for critique has troubled the Frankfurt School tradition of Critical Theory since its inception. Many thinkers in the Critical Theory tradition wish to avoid treating the normative ground as an abstract and ahistorical in-itself, and to connect it to concrete historical reality. It is, however, very difficult to do this without reducing the normative ground to a merely contingent historical fact, erasing its normative force and relativizing critique. It seems that (...) one must end up in either metaphysical Platonism or historicist relativism. In this work I argue that resources for tackling this question can be found in the phenomenological tradition, especially in the work of Jacques Derrida. Critical Theory has for the most part rejected phenomenology for its general philosophical approach, but I argue that an engagement with Derrida’s reading of Edmund Husserl is essential if Critical Theory wishes to make progress with the problem of normativity. To begin with, I examine Theodor Adorno’s notion of a non-dogmatic dialectical materialism. This doctrine contains the seed of a solution to the problem, but Adorno does not consistently apply it in his critical work. I then show that a reading of Derrida’s engagement with Husserl’s treatment of the relation between ideal being and subjective experience offers a more consistent way of putting Adorno’s non-dogmatic insights to work. After examining Derrida and Husserl’s work on the relation between ideal objectivity and subjective experience, I then turn to the work of Axel Honneth. Using the insights found in the exposition of Derrida and Husserl, I criticize two different attempts from Honneth to comprehend the relation between historical experience and its normative ground. Through these critical examples, I show what it is that Critical Theory can learn from Derrida and Husserl, and why it stands to benefit from an engagement with the phenomenological tradition. (shrink)

This Chapter presents an analysis of the idea of social pathology and its role in Frankfurt School Critical Theory. I suggest that this idea can set Critical Theory apart from mainstream liberal approaches, but also note the challenges involved in doing so, urging a return to its original, interdisciplinary program.

This thesis argues that Rancière’s conception of ‘aesthetic emancipation’ is a productive and neglected way of thinking about three political practices: a politics of memory, struggles for recognition and emancipatory education. I argue it can offer either a supplement or an alternative to recent Frankfurt School theorisations of these practices, particularly in relation to struggles concerned broadly with decolonisation. Specifically, in the first chapter, I argue that deliberative theorists miss an important form of political discourse, namely the speech of what (...) Rancière calls the ‘part without a part.’ I examine the implications of this omission for a politics of memory and suggest that drawing attention to these marginalised, disruptive acts can have implications both for witnessing and taking up aesthetic acts of politics in the present. In the second chapter, I argue that Rancière’s concept of disagreement allows us to theorise struggles for ‘recognition’ in a way which avoids the problematic reconciliatory tendencies which haunt the work of Axel Honneth. However, in order to capture the struggle of an indigenous ‘politics of refusal,’ I argue against the claim that political subjects act in the ‘name of anyone’. In the third chapter, I give a partial defence of Rancière’s critique of stultification in relation to emancipatory educational practices and, by developing a more nuanced account of explanation, show how certain explanations might inhibit the will of political actors to act upon their equality. In all three cases, then, I suggest Rancière could add to our understanding of these practices but only by making modifications to his account, specifically to the concepts of dis-identification and explanation. Ultimately, by thinking between Rancière and the Frankfurt School, I argue we can think both affirmative, disruptive critical theory as well as a modest ‘negative’ critical theory of unequal social structures. (shrink)

This thesis examines the ways in which contemporary cinema from a range of different countries, incorporating a variety of styles and genres, explores the relationship to the past of people living in the present who are affected by traumatic national histories. These films, which I’ve grouped under the term ‘temporal gateway’, focus on the ways in which characters’ experiences of temporality are fragmented, and cause and effect relationships are loosened as a result of their situations. Rather than a recreation of (...) historical events, these films are concerned with questions of how to remember the past without being defined and trapped by it: often exploring past events at a remove through techniques of flashback and mise-en-abyme. This thesis argues that a fuller understanding of how relationships to the past are represented in what have traditionally been seen as different ‘national’ cinemas is enabled by the hybridity and indeterminacy of the temporal gateway films, which don’t fit neatly into existing categories discussed and defined in memory studies. This thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach in order to draw out the features of the temporal gateway film, demonstrating how the central protagonist, the character whose life is in limbo, personifies the experience of living through the past in the present. This experience relates to the specifics of a post-trauma society but also to a wider encounter with disrupted temporality as a feature of contemporary life. I demonstrate how these films construct a new way of transmitting the experience of living with the past, through detailed analysis of approximately fourteen films from Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, including a detailed study of Lucrecia Martel’s work. This formal analysis is developed through the perspective of the historical, political and institutional to show how the films transcend a variety of existing definitions in films studies, to blur boundaries of categorisation. (shrink)

This paper undertakes an analysis of the distinctive forms of self-consciousness, self-representation and existential-therapeutic work characteristic of the ex-voto paintings in Mexican folk art, and examines the appropriation thereof in Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair.

This thesis offers a phenomenological study of self-awareness. I argue that, in its most basic form, self-experience consists of two aspects: affectivity and temporality. I then demonstrate that self-awareness can be primarily either affective or temporal. However, in both of its forms, self-experience remains continuous and unitary. I then suggest that continuous and unitary self-awareness is incompatible with experiences of novelty. I argue that in order to accommodate the new, self-experience must become discontinuous and dislodged. I show that the form (...) of self-awareness can be modified by concrete experiences. I then demonstrate that the experience of responsibility for the other produces a new form of self-awareness – one which is neither continuous nor unitary. Consequently, responsibility, by precipitating the emergence of a new form of self-experience, opens subjectivity to new experiences. In fact, the experience of radical novelty consists of a rediscovery of the other in a responsible attitude. I conclude by arguing that, in contrast to the discontinuous and dislodged subjectivity, the continuous and unitary form of self-awareness is incompatible with responsibility and thus with ethics. The distinction between the forms of self-experience incongruent and congruent with ethics, in turn, allows me to suggest an ethical hierarchy of self-awareness: discontinuous and dislodged self-experience is ethically better than its continuous and unitary counterparts. Subjective life, therefore, oscillates between better and worse forms of self-awareness. (shrink)

The United Nations human rights system has in recent years been divided on the question as to whether coercive care interventions, including coercive psychiatric care, can ever be justified under UN human rights standards. Some within the UN human rights community hold that coercive care can comply with human rights standards, provided that the coercive intervention is a necessary and proportionate means to achieve certain approved aims, and that appropriate legal safeguards are in place. Others have held that coercive care (...) is never justified. Disagreement over this issue has produced an impasse in the UN human rights system. We survey the impasse with particular attention to the legal arguments that inform the divergent positions. In doing so we introduce a distinction among a variety of different ‘abolitionist’ positions regarding coercive care, and draw a distinction between ‘non-consensual’ and ‘coercive’ treatment. We conclude with three proposals for moving beyond the current impasse. (shrink)

Drawing on Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, this thesis seeks to develop a normative-reconstructive approach to the theory of justice for the economic sphere, reflecting domestic and transnational perspectives. In the first part, I first reconstruct and critically evaluate how Honneth’s views on justice in the economic sphere have evolved from Struggle for Recognition to the Idea of Socialism. Against this backdrop I then go beyond Honneth and outline and defend a mixed-view for the domestic level that combines elements from (...) the Freedom’s Right and Recognition and Redistribution. I come up with a weak interpretation of social freedom in the economic sphere and argue that the best way to understand weak social freedom is as a threshold view based on collective recognition: the normative promise of the market consists in the fact that everyone participating in it ought to have enough recognition both in the productive and consumptive dimension of the economy. Above the threshold, socio-economic differences are to be justified in terms of individual recognition, as envisioned by Honneth in Recognition and Redistribution. However, again it is important to consider the aspects of need, esteem and respect in both the productive and consumptive dimension of the market. I then look at two case studies of low wage and luxury consumption to put my model to work and compare it with alternatives. The second part of my thesis is dedicated to developing a recognition theoretical model of transnational economic justice. I argue that the conditions of Sittlichkeit that underpin the applicability of weak social freedom are absent in the transnational market. Therefore, we rely exclusively on standards of individual freedom according to the recognition norms of need, esteem and respect, which, I argue, are constitutive for market relations. I then apply this normative-reconstructive approach again to a case study: sweatshops. My conclusion is, with regards to the productive dimension of sweatshops, that low wages, meaningless work and bad working conditions which both find justification according to classical economic standards all violate the requirements of justice conceived of legitimate expectations for individual recognition that are underpinned by norms that are constitutive of the market. Likewise, in my analysis of the consumption dimension of sweatshops, I demonstrate that lack of necessities on the side of sweatshop workers, their deception or manipulation resulting from fake or substandard goods and lack of voice in what gets produced and the condition under which it is produced all violate the demands of respect, esteem and need. (shrink)

This chapter introduces Axel Honneth's theory of recognition and discusses some criticisms of it, especially in relation to the third dimension of recognition and its relationship to the market economy.

In this study I investigate the relationship between the concept of Primordial Mental Activity coined by Michael Robbins, and the constellation of archetypes, as described by Analytical Psychology. PMA, expressed as a mental function qualitatively different from thought for its a-rationality, is generated by the self-organization of brain and driven by raw affects and unidentified emotions, forming the core that scaffolds the process of individuals’ emotional regulation. Accumulating information by implicit and procedural learning, PMA is expressed in enactments and actualisations. (...) For its reliance in interrelationships for the learning of attribution of meaning to experiences, PMA depends on a non-logical approach to subject-object relations, demonstrating the fluidity of the frontiers of inner/outer realities. Considering the nature of archetypal energy as bipolar, composed by an affective pole and its ‘spiritual’ counterpart, PMA is associated with the biological pole. I portray PMA as the neural circuitry that roots the possibility for conceptual meaning to be ‘born’ out of the embodied perceptual-sensorimotor experiences it neuroanatomically manages. To expose PMA and archetypes as underlying factors responsible for experiences in mental health and spiritual experiences, I cross-culturally analyse 1) mystical experiences of the Santo Daime Church and of European neo-shamanistic encounters, and 2) selected artworks from the 'Museu do Inconsciente' [Museum of Images from the Unconscious] and the 'Adamson Collection’. Thus, I discuss how awareness directed to behaviours and attitudes derived from impressions stored in the unconscious, can elucidate individuals’ interpersonal and transpersonal difficulties, promoting psychic transformation. (shrink)

I offer an approach to Dreyer's film Ordet as a contribution to the phenomenology of a certain kind of religious experience. The experience in question is one of a moment that disrupts the chronological flow of time and that, in the lived experience of it, is charged with eternal significance. I propose that the notoriously divisive ending of Ordet reflects an aim to provide the film's viewers with an experience of this very sort. l draw throughout on some central ideas (...) in Kierkegaard’s work, especially his category of ‘the moment’. (shrink)

This paper draws out from Kierkegaard’s work a distinctive critical perspective on an influential contemporary approach in moral philosophy: namely, Christine Korsgaard’s transcendental argument for the value of humanity. From Kierkegaard’s perspective, we argue, Korsgaard argument goes too far, in attributing absolute value to humanity – but also that she is required to make this claim if her transcendental argument is to work. From a Kierkegaardian perspective, to place this sort of value in humanity is problematic since it threatens to (...) make the relation between individuals too claustrophobic. Finally, we explore the possibility of a rival approach, in which we should view others as ethically significant because they too are related to the kind of ‘third’ which Kierkegaard argues is needed to bring stability to the structure of the self. In this way, we claim, a different and more successful transcendental argument to the value of humanity can be found in the work of Kierkegaard. (shrink)

In a co-authored piece with Adam Slavny, I argued that any promising account of the wrongness of discrimination must focus not only on the harmful outcomes of discriminatory acts but also on the deliberation of the discriminator and in particular on the reasons that motivate or fail to motivate her action. In this brief paper, I defend this conclusion against an objection that has recently been pressed against our view by Richard Arneson. This task is important not only because Arneson’s (...) objection is an intriguing one, but also -- and more importantly -- because my response sheds further light on the content and structure of an attractive theory of wrongful discrimination, as well as on more fundamental ideas in moral philosophy. (shrink)

This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. It argues that a re-reading of Freud’s major thesis in Totem and Taboo via an engagement with the Dionysos myth and cult scholarship allows for a new understanding of dominant forms of hegemonic psychic and social formations that attempt to keep in place a false opposition of polis and phusis, self and Other, resulting in the (...) perpetuation of oppressive structures and processes. The primary methodological claim of the thesis is that prior psychoanalytic engagements with cultus scholarship have suffered from being either insufficiently thorough or diffused in attempts to be comparative. A more holistic and detailed approach allows us to ground a psychoanalytic interpretation in the realities of said culture, allowing us to critique Freud’s misreading of Dionysos regarding the Primal Father and the psychic transmission of the Primal Crime. This thesis posits that Dionysos needs to acknowledged as a projection of the Primal Father fantasy linked to a basic ambivalence about the necessity of boundaries in psychosocial life. Using research from the classics and psychoanalysis alongside Queer and post-colonial theory, as well as extensive fieldwork and primary source analysis, this thesis provides a grounded materialist critique of psychoanalysis’ complicity in reproducing a false dichotomy between polis and phusis, a dichotomy that furthers the projection onto marginalised groups whose othering is linked to a fear and desire of a return to phusis and denial of its constant presence in the psyche and polis. This re-reading of Dionysos challenges the defensive structures, which are organised around ideas of subjectification that posit that phusis must be severed from polis/ego and projected onto Dionysos and all groups that threaten the precariousness of these boundaries. (shrink)

Autism is typically framed as stemming from empathy deficits as well as more general cognitive and sensory issues. In turn it is further associated with other purported harms: ranging from psychological suffering to diminished moral agency. Given such associations, in the philosophical literature, autism is widely taken to hinder the possibility of both thriving and attaining personhood. Indeed, this purported stifling of thriving personhood can be taken as the core harm associated with autism as such. In direct contrast to this (...) dominant view, the key aim of this thesis is to raise reasonable doubt as to the validity of this exclusion, by establishing that there is no decisive reason to accept the notion that autism is inherently harmful. This builds on arguments made by autistic self-advocates who argue in favour of de-medicalising and instead politicising autistic disablement and distress. However, the originality of this thesis lies in three key factors. First: it focuses more specifically on the purported impossibility of thriving autistic personhood, since I take this more fundamental matter to underlie all the other issues relating to these wider debates. Second: I use a negativist methodology. That is, instead of, say, arguing that autistic individuals can be useful to society or have positive attributes, my aim is to raise reasonable doubt regarding the core assumption underlying the dominant framing of autism as a pathology: namely, that autism and thriving personhood are inherently at odds. Third, I draw on methodologies developed by feminist philosophers and critical theorists in order to further our understanding of autism and the ethical issues surrounding it with more nuance than I have found in the existing literature. In sum: after a critical analysis of the concept of autism, and then further analysis of the relationship between autism and the harms it is associated with, I conclude that we have no decisive reason to think that being autistic, in and of itself, is at odds with either thriving or personhood. This chimes with the notion that autism is best framed as a difference, disabled by society rather than medical pathology, raises important problems for both ethical and psychiatric theory, and has significant implications for autism policy and practice. (shrink)

No theory of social change can circumvent the task of specifying the process that transforms the existent order into a different order, and determining that which accounts for the difference between those two orders. This thesis examines whether the theories of social change found in the works of Alain Badiou and Ernesto Laclau succeed in fulfilling this task. Badiou contends that a political process transforms the situation in which it unfolds in so far as what it produces is a ‘truth’. (...) Certain implications of the set-theoretical ontological discourse through which Badiou conceptualizes truths, however, prevents an unambiguous appraisal of their socially transformative character. Although Badiou stipulates that the transformative potential of a truth lies in its ‘generic’ universality, this universality becomes indistinguishable from particularity when its transformative effects are limited to a situation—but it is precisely the interplay between situations, in the plural, that is not adequately reflected in set-theoretical ontology. Whilst Laclau’s theory of hegemony can be interpreted as providing an account of this interplay between pluralities of situations, it has its own shortcoming: the transition between different social orders cannot be thought under hegemony theory as anything other than a transition wherein the to-come is conditioned by the present to an extent that is theoretically underdetermined, resulting in the blurring of the distinction between social transformation and social reproduction. The final part of this thesis explores the possibility of bringing together the Laclauian notion of the ‘simplification’ of the social space through hegemonic articulation and Badiou’s theorization of truth procedure, in an attempt to conceive the particular kind of situation in which a political process would potentially have far-reaching socially transformative consequences. (shrink)

This doctoral project explores the narrative representations of transforming subjectivity in modernist and post-modernist texts that deploy the trope of metamorphosis. Subjectivity is explored within a psychoanalytic framework and from a comparative lens, through the juxtaposition of selected short stories and novels of metamorphosis from different literatures, produced in different languages and under different geocultural and historico-political conditions from 1915 to 1996. Chapter One explores subjectivity as sacrificial and in conflict with a symbolic father-authority, through a close reading of insect (...) metamorphosis in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” (1915) and Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Aurelian” (1931). Chapter Two addresses the postcolonial dimension of subjectivity and its collective construction in terms of the loss of home in Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World (1949) and Vassilis Vassilikos’s …and dreams are dreams (1988). Chapter Three pairs two feminist writers and their stories of metamorphoses, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography (1928) and Darrieussecq’s Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation (1996), to explore subjectivity as hybrid: androgynous and human-animal like. Metamorphosis, as this project suggests, allows us to explore an array of subjectivities, both individual and collective: it points to the issues of death, rebirth, sacrifice, the subject’s position within a nation and the processes of nation-formation, and creative writing as negotiating loss, while it also challenges the established boundaries of gender and animal representation. This thesis argues that the twentieth-century stories of metamorphosis which are being examined here articulate a certain metamorphosis in our very conception of subjectivity, namely, the reconceptualization of subjectivity as hybrid, metamorphic, and bound to individual and collective transformations. (shrink)

In this thesis, I use the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to offer a detailed account of existential sin. I show that existential sin as a form of self-understanding is deeply embedded in the Christian theological tradition, and that Nietzsche’s account of existential sin should be understood as part of this same tradition. In my reading of On the Genealogy of Morality I show that we need to place sin in close relation to bad conscience, guilt and the genealogical method itself. (...) However, despite being grounded in Christian thought and dependent upon the figure of the Christian God in its origin and emergence, I follow Nietzsche in positing that existential sin continues to exist after the death of God. It is by considering sin as not only a form of self-understanding, but also as a cultural memory, that we can make sense of this claim. For Nietzsche existential sin is at its root a mistaken understanding of human nature that has taken hold of us through Christianity. However, I argue that we need to consider existential sin as a socio-historical answer to the ontological problem of meaningless suffering. Existential sin responds to a fundamental experience of the human condition. With this in mind, in the final chapter of the thesis I examine possible avenues of redemption from post-Christian sin. What options are open to the person suffering from post-Christian sin-consciousness if she cannot turn to religious narratives? I argue that Nietzsche’s redemptive method of genealogy is not sufficient, and that life-affirmation is too demanding. However, a weaker version of life-affirmation in which meaningless suffering is affirmed as necessary, but not desired, does provide a promising alternative answer to the problem of meaningless suffering. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel Hegelian view of the relationship between aesthetics and democratic politics. My account avoids the drawbacks associated with approaches that reconceive all of the political in aesthetic terms or reduce the aesthetic to art. Instead, I maintain that the aesthetic is best understood as a distinct relationship of individual freedom. My argument proceeds by highlighting shortcomings of Honneth’s account of democratic Sittlichkeit and then addressing these impasses by integrating aesthetic freedom into the picture. The first two (...) steps of my argument concern the fact that the form of life outlined by Honneth aspires to be a form of free life, yet his account of democratic Sittlichkeit gives rise to two dimensions of unfreedom. The first problem of unfreedom pertains to the scope of freedom. The relationships of freedom incorporated into Honneth’s account fail to turn given social roles into the subject matter of a sufficiently unrestricted practice of freedom. The second problem of freedom concerns conformism. In a final step, I complete my argument that Honneth’s account is unsatisfactory and incomplete by showing that aesthetic freedom is socially valid and thus ought to form part of our accounts of democratic ethical life. (shrink)

This article makes a contribution to debates in recognition theory by expanding the taxonomy of (mis-)recognition in the economic sphere. It argues that doing justice to the variety of ways in which recognition is engaged in economic relationships requires: (1) taking into consideration not just the recognition principle of esteem, but also (various aspects of) need and respect; (2) distinguishing a productive from a consumptive dimension with regards to each principle of recognition (need, esteem and respect); and (3) identifying the (...) specific economic relationship at stake (e.g. between consumers and producers, or between employers and employees). In this way, we can account for the diversity of demands for recognition made in the economic sphere, explain what underpins them, and bring structure into these diverse phenomena. What is more, this expanded taxonomy is a useful tool for social pathology theorists, who should appreciate the full range of variants of misrecognition when diagnosing pathologies of misrecognition in the economic sphere. (shrink)

This paper draws from resources in the work of Deleuze to critically examine the notion of organicism and holistic relations that appear in historical forerunners that Jung identifies in his work on synchronicity. I interpret evidence in Jung's comments on synchronicity that resonate with Deleuze's interpretation of repetition and time and which challenge any straightforward foundationalist critique of Jung's thought. A contention of the paper is that Jung and Deleuze envisage enchanted openings onto relations which are not constrained by the (...) presupposition of a bounded whole, whether at the level of the macrocosm or the microcosm. Openings to these relations entail the potential for experimental transformation beyond sedentary habits of thought which are blocked by a disenchanting ‘image of thought’ that stands in need of critique. Other examples of enchanted openings in Jung's work are signposted in an effort to counter their marginalisation in some post-Jungian critiques and to signal their potential value from a Deleuzian perspective. (shrink)

Theories of deliberative democracy have faced the charge of leading to the unjust exclusion of voices from public deliberation. The recent rhetorical turn in deliberative theory aims to respond to this charge. I distinguish between two variants of this response: the supplementing approach and the systemic approach. On the supplementing approach, rhetorical modes of political speech may legitimately supplement the deliberative process, for the sake of those excluded from the latter. On the systemic approach, rhetorical modes of political speech are (...) legitimate within public deliberation, just so long as they result in net benefits to the deliberative system. I argue that neither of these two approaches adequately meets the unjust exclusion charge. Whereas the supplementing approach does not go far enough to incorporate rhetorical speech into public deliberation, the systemic approach goes too far by legitimizing forms of rhetoric that risk only exacerbating the problem of unjust exclusion. More constructively, I draw on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, as an art that is a counterpart to dialectic, to argue for a constitutive approach to rhetoric. I show how this approach provides a more expansive notion of deliberation that remains normatively orientated. (shrink)

By putting existential phenomenology into conversation with virtue ethics, this book offers a new interpretation of human flourishing. It rejects characterizations of flourishing as either a private subjective state or an objective worldly status, arguing that flourishing is rather a successfully negotiated self-world fit – a condition involving both the essential dependence of the self upon the world and others, and the lived normative responsiveness of the agent striving to be in the world well. A central argument of the book (...) is that there is an irreducible normative plurality arising from the different practical perspectives we can adopt – the first, second, and third-person stances – all of which make different kinds of normative claim that we understand ourselves as having reason to meet. Flourishing is human excellence within each of these normative domains achieved in such a way that success in one domain does not compromise success in another. Existential Flourishing provides a correspondingly transformed interpretation of the virtues as solutions to various existential problems we face in responding to these normative domains. The book also addresses traditional problems in virtue ethics and analyzes the structure of four virtues in detail: justice, patience, modesty, and courage. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to contribute to research in the philosophy of social science. The study focuses upon select epistemological and ontological aspects of Hannah Arendt’s work from which methodological implications are drawn pertaining to sociology. Arendt, although critical of the sociology of her time, has become increasingly cited and influential for emerging sociological research and this study seeks to contribute to this by focusing upon the problem of novelty. The aim is to explore the philosophical and methodological implications of novelty (...) for social science by working through three case studies that are theoretically pivotal for social science—action, the ‘social’, and the self—in terms of novelty as expressed in Arendt’s writing. Arendt is critical of methodology and epistemology, aiming to draw her readers to ontological concerns outlined from her preoccupation with the 'world' and social reality. In this aim, Arendt seeks to distance herself from social sciences that she claims ignore human novelty in favour of reading social regularities, tendencies and similarities. Despite her disdain for method, Arendt suggests a anti-methodological 'method' (outlined in an overlooked footnote) for keeping trained upon and for dealing with novel, anomalous events. In the seed of this method lies a unique opportunity for social science to reassess and extend its methods, addressing this oversight and in so doing bring to light the novel social object as a legitimate subject of social research. (shrink)

Hughes argues that in the Analytic of the Beautiful Kant introduces an account of feeling that operates as a non-cognitive and yet reflective form of awareness. The range of modes of awareness – which hitherto comprised sensible intuitions, concepts of understanding and conceptually determining judgments, but also ideas and principles of reason – is extended to include a new distinctively aesthetic type of judgments that have feeling as their ground. Crucially, Kant views this development as the condition of the integrity (...) of his critical system. (shrink)

There are two extreme poles in the literature on akrasia. Internalists hold that it's impossible to act intentionally against your better judgment, because there's a necessary internal relation between judgment and intentional action. To the contrary, externalists maintain that we can act intentionally against our better judgment, because the will operates independently of judgment. Critics of internalism argue that it fails a realism test—most people seem to think that we can and do act intentionally against our better judgment. And critics (...) of externalism argue that it flirts with incoherence by severing the intimate link between judgment and action. Drawing on resources from phenomenology, the cognitive sciences, analytic action theory, and recent “hybrid models” of skilled action, I argue that one route beyond this theoretical impasse is to understand akrasia as a form of skillful pre-reflective intentional action. This strategy, I argue, preserves the internalist insight that there is indeed an intimate relation between judgment and intentional action; and it also confirms the externalist claim that this relation is defeasible, but it does so without falling into incoherence. (shrink)

The continued presence and importance of Christian moral values in our daily lives, coupled with the fact that faith in Christianity is in continual decline, raises the question as to why having lost faith in Christianity, we have also not lost faith in our Christian moral values. This question is also indicative of a more pressing phenomenon: not only have we maintained our faith in Christian values, we fail to see that the widespread collapse of Christianity should affect this faith. (...) To tackle this latter phenomenon, I claim, we have to pose the Nietzschean question of the value of our moral values, so as to see that this value can be a possible object of questioning. In chapter one, I consider different approaches found in the history of moral philosophy that look like potential candidates for this task. I argue that, ultimately, the task requires simultaneously taking our familiarity with Christian moral values as both sui generis and a questionable phenomenon. In chapter two, I articulate in detail the sui generis nature of this familiarity with moral values,in terms of the phenomena of habituation and sedimentation. In chapter three, I consider the possibility of estrangement that is built into our familiarity with moral values, by focusing on the role of cognition. I demonstrate how cognition, in the form of self-consciousness, can disrupt the sedimented, habituated nature of our moral values through a form of ironic disruption. In chapter four, I develop this account by considering the possibility of an appeal to an alternative moral outlook. To do so, I draw upon the structural isomorphism that is present between the process of estrangement and a rite of passage. (shrink)

This dissertation’s contribution consists in providing a novel interpretation of the role time plays in Kant’s transcendental idealism. A significant part of Kant scholarship on the Critiques tends to assume that time, as understood in transcendental philosophy, is solely a formal property of intuition. This assumption has led several commentators to overlook a fundamental feature of transcendental idealism, namely, that in being the most basic form of intuition time is, also, a provider of content in and for experience. In looking (...) attentively at such feature this dissertation shows that time is the activity of the self that grounds the possibility of objectivity and explores the philosophical implications of such an interpretation. In the first Chapter I conduct a comprehensive survey of relevant literature and show that it is impossible to separate general metaphysics from transcendental logic in the context of Kant’s transcendental philosophy without making serious philosophical sacrifices. I then argue, in the second Chapter, that time is not merely a formal property of intuition but is, rather, the fundamental form of intuition and that, even if space is in no way reducible to, or derivable from it, time has nonetheless primacy over space on both logical and ontological grounds. From this I argue that by time, or self-affection, Kant understands the activity of subjectivity that brings about the possibility of relating to objects through the power of imagination. In the third Chapter, I show that such relation is not left wholly undetermined and that, instead, it occurs in accordance with the layout presented by Kant in the Table of Judgments, the Table of Pure Concepts of the Understanding, the Schemata and, importantly, in the System of Principles of the Understanding. I show that only an interpretation that acknowledges the systematicity found in the Analytic section of the Critique of Pure Reason can justify the distinction drawn by Kant between the mathematical and the dynamical and conclude, from that, that time does indeed provide a specific content in and for experience to be found in the Schematism doctrine. Finally, in the fourth Chapter I broaden the philosophical scope and inquire as to whether Kant has the theoretical means to articulate something like an uncategorized schema or time-determination. I conclude that, although in the Critical period Kant can do so only problematically, in the post-Critical period there are means to do so categorically: system, as such, is a time-determination for which the understanding lacks a pure concept. (shrink)

According to Cécile Laborde, persons with religious commitments that are incidentally burdened by generally applicable laws should, under certain circumstances, be provided with an exemption from those laws. Labore’s justification for this view is that religious commitments are a type of commitment with which a person must comply if she is to maintain her integrity. I argue that Laborde´s account is insufficiently demanding in terms of the other-regarding attitudes it expects people to have before they can make claims to exemptions (...) based on their integrity. The reason for this is that Laborde’s account rests on what I call a ‘non-moralised’ view of integrity. I raise some criticisms of this view and defend an alternative, ‘moralised’ view of integrity, according to which a religious person’s integrity depends on whether the practice she wishes to perform complies with certain moral constraints. (shrink)

This thesis explores the relationship between rights-based moral systems and climate change. It argues that supporters of rights-based moralities must give the realisation of rights priority over non-rights-based moral concerns. It further contends that future persons cannot possess rights that would place current persons under correlative duties towards them before their conception. The thesis then highlights that climate change will need to be combatted through programmes of adaptation and mitigation. Unfortunately, the majority of those protected by such programmes will be (...) future persons. It is therefore argued that rights-based moralities struggle to endorse – and might even actively oppose – the imposition by states of extensive programmes of adaptation and mitigation. Such programmes actively and directly restrict the realisation of the rights of many current persons. Even if this were not the case, supporters of rights are unable to justify the kind of spending that would be needed to finance those aspects of adaptation and mitigation which aim to benefit future persons while the fundamental rights of a great many current persons go unmet due to a lack of funds. As a result, rights-based moralities must justify climate burdens solely through reference to current persons. It is argued that, in the case of Interest- and Choice-based theories of rights, this would encourage an increase in emissions through the implication that pollution was permissible provided adaptation burdens were met. Alternatively, support for a rights-based morality akin to that put forward by Robert Nozick would enable us to implement mitigation, but the system’s disavowal of positive rights would simultaneously cause excessive harm to the wellbeing of many. The inability of rights-based moralities to deal with climate change in an effective and ethical manner leads us to question their legitimacy more generally. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Heidegger’s existential analytic of human existence challenges the traditional understanding of responsibility as lying in the power or mastery of the subject. In contrast to secondary literature that attempts to read Heidegger as showing that we take responsibility through some kind of self-determination or control, I argue that Heidegger’s account of our thrownness, and its first-personal manifestation in our attunement, contests such understandings and points to an account of responsibility that does not find its locus in (...) the power of the subject. In light of this, I argue that taking responsibility for our being-in-the-world should be understood as becoming attentive. By emphasizing the ‘movement’ of thrownness and the meaning of this as finding ourselves always already gripped by way of being attuned, my analysis demonstrates the pervasive power of that which is beyond the subject. I show that we must always already find ourselves submitted to particular possibilities and, more fundamentally, to the enigma of being Dasein. From this analysis, and via the work of Harry Frankfurt, I demonstrate how our thrownness speaks against seeing responsibility for our being-in-the-world in terms of choice, rational judgement, or wholeheartedness. A further analysis of anxiety, contrasting with accounts which read it as manifesting a privileged space for freedom and self-determination, emphasizes the revelation of the ‘I’ as essentially bound to what is beyond it. I then argue that a Heideggerian account of responsibility should be understood in terms of attention or attentiveness, a notion that is developed through phenomenological analysis, and in dialogue with the work of Iris Murdoch. Through the use of the examples of the film 'Locke' and the novel 'Disgrace', I propose that attentiveness, with its accent on that which is beyond the subject, is a more appropriate way of conceiving responsibility on a Heideggerian account. (shrink)

This thesis defends the diagnostic accuracy and political usefulness of the claim that women are complicit in their sexual objectification. Feminists have long struggled to demarcate the appropriate limits of feminist critiques of sexual objectification, particularly when it comes to objectifying practices which women both consent to and experience as empowering. These struggles, I argue, are the result of a fundamental misdiagnosis of what happens when women are sexually objectified, whereby the abstract notion of 'treating as an object' is called (...) upon to explicate the kind of phenomena which can only be properly understood in light of a more general set of social norms of masculinity and femininity. A more accurate diagnosis of sexual objectification, I argue, is provided by Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist theory, according to which sexually objectifying acts are manifestations of the social process through which women are made into objects of male sexual gratification. One important implication of this account is that women themselves play a role in perpetuating the norms through which sexually objectifying treatment of women is enabled: insofar as they participate in the re-constitution of the social context which facilitates their sexual objectification, they are complicit in it. Although this idea lacks intuitive appeal from a feminist perspective, I argue that understanding the nature of the contribution women make to perpetuating their objectification enables a better understanding of what practices of resistance are necessary for effectively combatting the sexual objectification of women. I defend the explanatory power of the complicity account of objectification in light of two pressing debates in contemporary feminist philosophy: the question of how women can disidentify from femininity given the strong attachments they develop to it, and the question of how feminism can continue to appeal to the motif of solidarity considering the anti-essentialist commitments of recent feminist theory. (shrink)

In this paper, we take up two objections Raymond Geuss levels against John Rawls' ideal theory in Philosophy and Real Politics. We show that, despite their fundamental disagreements, the two theorists share a common starting point: they both reject doing political philosophy by way of applying an independently derived moral theory; and grapple with the danger of unduly privileging the status quo. However, neither Rawls' characterization of politics nor his ideal theoretical approach as response to the aforementioned danger is adequate (...) - or so we argue. Moreover, contrary to received opinion, Geuss' political philosophy is the more reflective and the more philosophical of the two. In a final section, we highlight another agreement: both think that political philosophers should develop conceptual innovations as a way of clarifying and overcoming practical problems. We demonstrate that Geuss could offer a number of reasons for finding Rawls' conceptual innovations wanting. (shrink)

There is little doubt that Salomon Maimon was both highly respected by, and highly influential upon, his contemporaries; indeed, Kant himself referred to Maimon as the best of his critics. The appraisal and reformulation of the Kantian project detailed in Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy played a significant role in determining the criteria of success for post-Kantian philosophy, and was thus crucial to the early development of German Idealism. Key aspects of Maimon’s transcendental philosophy remain, however, relatively obscure. In particular, (...) it remains unclear to what degree Maimon’s skepticism is internal to the Kantian framework, and how this skepticism is related to Maimon’s so-called dogmatic rationalism. The central aim of this project is to present Maimon’s as a distinct form of post-Kantian skepticism: one which poses significant problems for Kant’s theoretical project and which motivates a reformulation of the critical framework. In Kant’s eyes, pre-Kantian forms of skepticism are insufficiently critical insofar as they involve a commitment to transcendental realism. By contrast, I argue that Maimon’s skepticism does not involve a commitment to transcendental realism and that it strikes at the heart of Kant’s critical project insofar as it constitutes what I term ‘critical’ as opposed to merely ‘empirical’ skepticism. I further argue that Maimon’s rationalism provides the materials for a response to this form of skepticism. This thesis contributes to contemporary debates in the history of philosophy concerning the nature of Maimon’s coalition system and its relation to German Idealism, but also provides an alternative perspective on contemporary problems in the philosophy of perception concerning, in particular, the possibility of non-conceptual intentional content. (shrink)

There is a deep divide amongst political philosophers of an egalitarian stripe. On the one hand, there are so-called distributive egalitarians, who hold that equality obtains within a political community when each of its members enjoys an equal share of the community’s resources. On the other hand, there are so-called social egalitarians, who instead hold that equality obtains within a political community when each of its members stands in certain relations to other members of the community, such non-domination and lack (...) of oppression, for example. In this paper, we have three aims. Our first aim is to cast doubt on the helpfulness of characterizing the debate in this way. Our second aim is to reconstruct this debate in alternative and more precise terms, so that disagreements between advocates of either side are easier to evaluate. Our third aim is to advance a hybrid account that integrates element from both views. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that moral agency is defined by an agent’s capacity for rational reflection and self-governance. It is only through the exercise of such capacities, these philosophers contend, that one’s actions can be judged to be of distinctively moral value. The moral phenomenology of the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup, currently enjoying a revival of interest amongst Anglo-American moral philosophers, is an exception to this view. Under the auspices of his signature theory of the ‘sovereign expressions of (...) life,’ Løgstrup provides a rich moral phenomenology aimed at establishing the ethical value of ‘spontaneous,’ non-deliberative actions, such as those exemplified in the showing of trust and acts of mercy. In this thesis, my aim is to investigate what mode of moral agency, if any, is compatible with Løgstrup’s phenomenology of the sovereign expressions of life. I argue that Løgstrup’s moral phenomenology is compatible with a distinctive medio-passive mode of agency. According to this conception of moral agency, the subject’s agency is constituted not through her capacity to stand back and make a judgment on how to act, but rather in the way the subject comports herself in relation to situations and encounters that are experienced first-personally as overwhelming and encompassing. I will proceed by providing detailed analyses of the core aspects of Løgstrup’s moral phenomenology and his theory of the sovereign expressions of life. In the process, I will elucidate the decisive influence that thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard had on Løgstrup’s way of thinking about ethics. Thus, in this thesis my aim is to contribute both to Løgstrup scholarship and to central on-going debates in moral philosophy and the philosophy of action. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to open discussion on the role of the individual, as opposed to the group, in contemporary progressive and radical politics. The phrase making a difference comes to mind. Academic ideas about the contexts and groups in which individuals operate are important yet require extensive revision. Jung’s ideas about the relationship of individuals and the social collective are useful as is Camus’ book The Rebel. This article presents new thinking about individuals as fractured and broken as (...) distinct from the autonomous unit promulgated by neoliberal thinking. Yet they remain individuals. (shrink)

Can one both be an Aristotelian in ethics and a negativist, whereby the latter involves subscribing to the view that the good cannot be known in our social context but that ethical guidance is nonetheless possible in virtue of a pluralist conception of the bad? Moreover, is it possible to combine Aristotelianism with a thoroughly historical outlook? I have argued that such combinations are, indeed, possible, and that we can find an example of them in Adorno's work. In this paper, (...) I reply to three critics who cast doubt on this proposal. I also reply to other concerns they raise, regarding immanent critique, negativism, the role of social theory in Adorno's work, and the danger of being co-opted. I stress the holism of Adorno's position, and, amid some more deflationary moves, insist on the distinctiveness of the Aristotelian position that results. (shrink)

In his pioneering work of moral phenomenology, K. E. Løgstrup offered a phenomenological articulation of a central moment of ethical life: the experience in which “one finds oneself with the life of another more-or-less in one’s hands”. In such circumstances we encounter what Løgstrup calls simply the ethical demand. Løgstrup’s preferred formulation of the content of that demand is taken from the Bible: Love thy neighbor. This neighborly love is expressed in the form of spontaneous, selfless care for the other. (...) We shall have occasion in what follows to return to the content that Løgstrup associates with the ethical demand, but my primary focus here is not its content but its distinctive modality. Løgstrup specifies that modality in a fourfold analysis: the ethical demand is radical, silent, one-sided, and unfulfillable. My concern in what follows will be with the fourth element in this analysis – or what I shall refer to simply as Løgstrup’s unfulfillability thesis. My discussion addresses three specific questions: Is it coherent to suppose that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? Why does Løgstrup hold that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? What kind of response is appropriate in the face of an unfulfillable ethical demand? (shrink)

Fichte’s early review of C. A. L. Creuzer’s neglected and idiosyncratic skeptical book on free will posed a serious challenge to what at the time was emerging as a consensus Kantian position on the role of free choice in the generation of imputable action. Fichte’s review was directed as much against Reinhold’s important letter on freedom of the will as it was against Creuzer himself. In the course of his brief review, Fichte suggests an important recasting of the strategy of (...) the Kantian postulates of rational faith; he poses a dilemma for the Reinholdian understanding of the relationship among an autonomous practical will, a free power of choice, and the actions of natural human organisms; and he hints at a radical reappropriation of the rationalist doctrine of pre-established harmony in re-orienting the search for a defensible reconstruction of a broadly Kantian position on the problem of free will. (shrink)

This thesis critically analyzes Axel Honneth’s theories of misrecognition and struggles for recognition and argues for two main conceptualizations to address shortcomings in his theories. The first conceptualization is that recognition and misrecognition behaviors are better understood along three dimensions of engagement—norms, individuals, and actions. We can use this multidimensional view to identify misrecognitions in which the problems are in vertical recognition, either disengagement from norms or engagement with problematic norms, and misrecognitions in which the problems are in horizontal recognition, (...) during which there is insufficient or improper engagement with other individuals. The multidimensional view of misrecognition overcomes Honneth’s overly positive picture of recognition and lack of a robust account of misrecognition and shows how negative recognition fits into the normative structure of social life while acknowledging the positive value of recognition. The second conceptualization is an expanded view of struggles for recognition that takes such struggles beyond group political conflicts into everyday social experiences. I identify two problems in Honneth’s formulation of struggles for recognition: his premise that emotional experiences of disrespect motivate struggles for recognition is contradictory without an account of individual agency, and his theoretical reliance on political resistance movements neglects other paths responses to injustice can take. To address these problems, I argue that there are two types of struggles for recognition, affirmational and rectificatory, and that individuals’ familiarity with affirmational struggles enables them to engage in rectificatory struggles against injustice. Individuals respond to injustice in varied ways other than organized political action, and this is significant for critical theory. The common thread in these two conceptualizations is the importance of individuals’ normative experiences in ethical life and social change. Power structures shape social relations, but individuals actively instigate many instances of injustice. (shrink)