| 1. |
- Cederberg, Carl, 1973-
(författare)
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Resaying the Human : Levinas Beyond Humanism and Antihumanism
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this reading a notion of the human is developed through an engagement with the work of French philosopher Emanuel Levinas. The argument is that, with the help of Levinas, it is possible for the idea of the human to be understood anew, for the notion to be ‘resaid’. This resaying of the human is performed in a critical appropriation of the philosophical tradition: Levinas’s work is shown not to be a new variation of the complacent ideology of humanism; the idea of the human is instead interpreted to be the bearer of the very movement of critique. This movement is articulated in terms of a transcendence of a discursive ‘economy of violence’. Critique does not establish a permanent position outside of violence, but is a movement that must constantly be renewed.Here Levinas is offered as a modern thinker of particular relevance for contemporary discussions surrounding the nature both of the political and of Human Rights. In addition one finds a systematic analysis of the major works of Levinas, unraveling how a notion of the human develops from within his philosophy.Levinas’s thought is placed alongside philosophical figures of his time, such as Heidegger, Sartre, Bataille, Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault and Derrida, as well as more recent political thinkers, for example, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Rancière.
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| 2. |
- Foultier, Anna Petronella, 1966-
(författare)
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Recasting Objective Thought : The Venture of Expression in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about meaning, expression and language in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and their role in the phenomenological project as a whole. For Merleau-Ponty, expression is the taking up of a meaning given either in perception or in already acquired forms of expression, thereby repeating, transforming or congealing meaning into gestures, utterances, artworks, ideas or theories. Contrary to the predominant view in the literature, the relation of expression to meaning, and in particular the problem of expressing new meanings, was of fundamental importance to Merleau-Ponty from the very beginning, in that it was intrinsically related to the overcoming of what he termed “objective thought”. Admittedly, there is an evolution of his philosophy in this respect: from the early stance where the recasting of certain basic categories is taken as pivotal for the development of a new form of thinking, with arguments drawn also from various empirical and social sciences, to what appears to be an effort at an all-pervading reformulation of philosophical language during his last years. But the remoulding of categories was never for Merleau-Ponty a matter simply of finding a few, better adapted concepts, but from the outset an endeavour to think philosophical arguments through to a point where they reveal their inherent inconsistencies. Recasting philosophical expression is thus a risky enterprise, and this is a point I explore further in Essay 1, that focuses especially upon creative expression in painting and to some extent in literature. In Essay 2 I discuss the notion of Gestalt and how it serves this general project, whereas Essay 3 deals with verbal language, on the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Saussure’s linguistics. Essay 4 examines bodily expression from the point of view of feminist phenomenology and in particular Judith Butler’s early reading of Merleau-Ponty, and finally Essay 5 discusses expression in the art of dance.
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| 3. |
- Sjöstrand, Björn
(författare)
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Att tänka det tekniska : En studie i Derridas teknikfilosofi
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How should we understand the relations between human beings and technology? Where does technology end and where does the human being begin? How should we understand the relation between thinking and technology? These and related questions have been increasingly salient during the last decades. The aim of this study is to provide an outline of a philosophy of technology in the work of a major contemporary philosopher: Jacques Derrida. The study is divided into seven chapters, each dealing thematically with a part of Derrida’s philosophy of technology. The opening chapter begins with an exposé of the way the question of technology has evolved historically. It argues that Derrida’s deconstructive thinking avoids many of the problems associated with earlier as well as contemporary approaches. The next chapter sketches the basic features of a coherent philosophy of technology, a deconstructive phenomenology of technology that enlarges the concept of technology to include the entire phenomenological field: technology is here not opposed to the psychical, it is rather a close relation between the psychical and the non-psychical, between life and death. Life is always already contaminated with technology. Chapter three explores in some detail Derrida’s thesis that contemporary life is contaminated by what he calls a “gigantic tele-technological machine” including the media, the Internet, mobile systems, digital archives, etc. As is discussed in the following chapter, this contamination also has consequences for our experience of time. More than ever before, time is today produced artificially by the tele-technological machine that transforms our temporal experience. Chapter five suggests that also the ethical dimension in Derrida’s thinking is closely linked to technology. The main part of the chapter is devoted to three technological events of historic proportions: the electronic revolution, the hypothesis of a total nuclear war, and global terrorism, all of which require an urgent ethical response beyond current politics.This ethico-political response is further elaborated in the subsequent chapter, dealing especially with Derrida’s radical thesis that the tele-technological machine will transform the concept of the political as we know it. According to this thesis, the ability of the new technologies to facilitate extremely rapid circulation of ideas, voices and images around the world will eventually erase the borders between nation states, a fact that will force us to think the political beyond politics. The final chapter on religion argues that Derrida’s provocative thoughts about the close link between religion and science, religion and technology, and religion and the media provide keys to a more comprehensive understanding of his thinking about the technical, if not of his thinking as a whole.
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| 4. |
- Andén, Lovisa
(författare)
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Litteratur och erfarenhet i Merleau-Pontys läsning av Proust, Valéry och Stendhal
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to explore the relation between literary expression and experience in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. The principal focus is Merleau-Ponty’s investigations into literature, in two of his first courses at Collège de France, 1953- 1954: Sur le problème de la parole (On the Problem of Speech) and Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage (Research on the Literary Use of Language). While the former remains unpublished, the latter was finally published in 2013. At the time of his premature death, Merleau-Ponty left thousands of pages of working notes. They were supposed to contribute to a major philosophical work, the planned title of which was Être et monde (Being and world). Merleau-Ponty had planned to undertake an extensive examination of language in the last part of the work. However, in the absence of this text, the courses on literary language afford us the possibility of sketching the direction that this research might have taken.The examination of literary language use is, for Merleau-Ponty, made possible by an understanding of language found in Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics. Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Saussurean linguistics anticipates the structuralist reading that was later to dominate the intellectual scene. Instead of reading the linguistics of Saussure in opposition to phenomenology, he finds in the former an ally that allows him to think Husserlian phenomenology further.In the course notes, Merleau-Ponty explores the relation between sensible experience and linguistic expressions through close readings of Proust, Valéry and Stendhal. In the writing of Marcel Proust, he finds a writer that perpetually examines his experience, searching for expressions that are capable of bringing it forth. In Stendhal’s writing, Merleau-Ponty finds a literary method that makes the world appear through the “small true facts” that describe it. Finally, in Paul Valéry’s poetic writing he finds a writer superimposing words over other words, in order to create new significations. In their literary writing he finds a capacity to seize the world anew, beyond our habitual preconceptions of it, thus bringing us closer to the experience we already perceive.
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| 5. |
- Smith, Nicholas, 1964-
(författare)
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Towards a Phenomenology of Repression - a Husserlian Reply to the Freudian Challenge
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This is the first book-length philosophical study of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The book investigates the possibility for Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to clarify Freud’s concept of the unconscious with a focus on the theory of repression as its centre. Repression is the unconscious activity of pushing something away from consciousness, while making sure that it remains active as something foreign within us. How this is possible is the main problem addressed in the work. Unlike previous literature (including Ricœur, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida) this book makes full use of the resources of genetic phenomenology and passivity in the attempt to clarify the Freudian unconscious. The central argument developed is that the structure of the lebendige Gegenwart as the core of Husserl’s theory of passivity consists of preliminary forms of bodily kinaesthesia, feelings and drives in a constantly ongoing process where repression occurs as a necessary part of all constitution. The clarification of Freudian repression thus takes place by showing how it presupposes a broad conception of consciousness such as that presented by Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. By arguing that “repression” is central to any philosophical account of subjectivity, this book takes on the most distinct challenge to philosophy posed by Freud.
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| 6. |
- Hjertström Lappalainen, Jonna
(författare)
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Den enskilde : En studie av trons profana möjlighet i Sören Kierkegaards tidiga författarskap
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In his attempt to explore philosophically human existence, Kierkegaard frequently refers to the term "the single individual" (den Enkelte), and he explicitly states that this notion plays a prominent part in his authorship. Even if he ascribes such a significant role to the single individual he never gives a comprehensive account of how to understand this notion. The thesis is an attempt to describe the difficulties inherent in this very notion and at the same time to provide an interpretation of how one could understand it as fundamental to Kierkegaard's philosophical and theological work.The study starts by determining and interpreting Kierkegaard's own remarks about the single individual and how he himself presents it as essential to his philosophy. These remarks constitute the point of departure for the interpretation of some of his books from the years 1843-1846. The mainly biblical characters that constitute the subject matter of these books are interpreted as philosophical examples of single individuals. This procedure shows that Kierkegaard's struggle with the notion of the single individual was an underlying and homogenous theme throughout his early authorship, and further that Kierkegaard understands this notion as a complex existential category: both as a way to exist and a way to perceive. It also shows that he regarded the single individual as a prerequisite for reaching genuine faith, and yet not as an essentially religious category. It is a general human existential category, the individual's capacity to experience the unknown as absolutely unknown and the new as absolutely new.
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