| 1. |
- Andén, Lovisa
(author)
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Litteratur och erfarenhet i Merleau-Pontys läsning av Proust, Valéry och Stendhal
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)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 While the former remains unpublished, the latter was finally published in 2013.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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| 2. |
- Bergman, Karl, 1985-
(author)
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Communities of Judgment : Towards a Teleosemantic Theory of Moral Thought and Discourse
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis offers a teleosemantic account of moral discourse and judgment. It develops a number of views about the function and content of moral judgments and the nature of moral discourse based on Ruth Millikan’s theory of intentional content and the functions of intentional attitudes.Non-cognitivists in meta-ethics have argued that moral judgments are more akin to desires and other motivational attitudes than to descriptive beliefs. I argue that teleosemantics allows us to assign descriptive content to motivational attitudes and hence that even if the non-cognitivist is correct, moral judgments can be said to describe the world. Moreover, given further teleosemantic assumptions, this conclusion has consequences that are both surprising and interesting. First of all, while moral judgments have descriptive content, moral statements do not. The purpose of moral discourse is not to convey beliefs that are true simpliciter, but to convey attitudes that are descriptively correct when tokened by the addressee. Consequently, moral discourse requires speakers to adapt to hearers in order to secure their assent and bring them into "community of judgment" with themselves.Secondly, the descriptive content of a motivational attitude is partly a matter of the subject’s own preferences and circumstances. In particular, the descriptive correctness of a moral judgment is partly a function of the degree to which it is shared with others. Since a moral judgment also motivates the subject to spread it, it has the ability to, in a certain sense, make itself true. If regular descriptive beliefs are supposed to adapt the subject to the world, a moral judgment also has the capacity to adapt the world to the subject.
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| 3. |
- Boberg, Johan, 1984-
(author)
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Scientifically Minded : Science, the Subject and Kant’s Critical Philosophy
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Modern philosophy is often seen as characterized by a shift of focus from the things themselves to our knowledge of them, i.e., by a turn to the subject and subjectivity. The philosophy of Immanuel Kant is seen as the site of the emergence of the idea of a subject that constitutes the object of knowledge, and thus plays a central role in this narrative. This study examines Kant’s theory of knowledge at the intersection between the history of science and the history of the modern subject, on the one hand, and in the tension between modern experimental and mathematical science and more traditional Aristotelian conceptions of epistemic perfection, on the other.The dissertation consists of four chapters. In the first chapter, I examine Kant’s concept of experience, and its relation both to Early Modern experimentalism and to the Wolffian tradition. In the second chapter, I argue that Kant adheres to a broadly Aristotelian conception of epistemic perfection – the ideal of understanding – but transforms this ideal into the self-understanding of reason, where reason can only have insight into the products of its own activity. In the third chapter, I use Kant’s conception of space and time to exemplify such products of reason, and argue that, for Kant, space and time are constructively generated representations that function as principles for ordering empirical knowledge. In the fourth and final chapter, I examine Kant’s conception of the subject, and situate it in relation to both the long history of the modern subject and German Enlightenment philosophy. Whereas the modern philosophical conception of the subject is usually taken to combine an ‘I’ functioning as the subject to which mental acts are attributed and an ‘I’ that has the ability to immediately perceive itself as the subject of these acts, I argue that Kant reconceives this relation between the ‘I’ and its acts as a purely intellectual self-relation. The unity of the ‘I’ is not a perceived unity, but a unity brought about by the intellect.
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| 4. |
- Forsberg, Niklas, 1972-
(author)
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Philosophy, Literature and the Inheritance of Language
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation investigates the extent to which philosophical assumptions are inherited when we learn language. The topic is approached through an investigation into the importance of literature in Jacques Derrida’s philosophy. In chapter 1 it is argued that Derrida’s interest in literature is best seen as an attempt to make room for a thinking that is not controlled by limitations inherent in the language inherited. Chapter 2 describes how the question of literature is related to Derrida’s overall deconstructive philosophical project. In Derrida’s view, our philosophical problems and metaphysical thinking as such are dependent upon a particular understanding of the linguistic sign. Chapter 3 describes why a literature that is based on and formed by a traditional conception of meaning is not going to be useful for Derrida in his deconstructive philosophy, since that notion contains, in Derrida’s view, a reinforcement of traditional metaphysical assumptions.Chapter 4 describes Derrida’s alternative understanding of “literature” and situates this notion in his “quasi-transcendental” philosophy. It is argued that, in Derrida’s philosophy, the question of “literature” must be understood as intertwined with these three things: the transcendental/empirical distinction, Derrida’s attempt to re-think phenomenology and his conception of language. In chapter 5 Derrida’s view of language is examined. It is argued that Derrida’s notion of the sign is more restricted in scope than Derrida claims and that he has overestimated the importance of certain linguistic conceptions of language. It is argued that Derrida’s interest in “literature”, as a response to philosophical assumptions inherent in language, is dependent upon a much too detached view of language that fails to do justice to ordinary facts about language use and about language acquisition. Chapter 6 contains a summary and an elaboration of my own position.
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| 5. |
- Hållén, Elinor
(author)
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A Different Kind of Ignorance : Self-Deception as Flight from Self-Knowledge
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this dissertation I direct critique at a conception of self-deception prevalent in analytical philosophy, where self-deception is seen as a rational form of irrationality in which the self-deceiver strategically deceives himself on the basis of having judged that this is the best thing to do or, in order to achieve something advantageous. In Chapter One, I criticize the conception of self-deception as analogous to deceiving someone else, the so-called “standard approach to self-deception”. The account under investigation is Donald Davidson’s. I criticize Davidson’s outline of self-deception as involving contradictory beliefs, and his portrayal of self-deception as a rational and strategic action. I trace the assumptions involved in Davidson’s account back to his account of radical interpretation and argue that the problems and paradoxes that Davidson discusses are not inherent in self-deception as such but are problems arising in and out of his account. In Chapter Two, I present Sebastian Gardner’s account of self-deception. Gardner is concerned with distinguishing self-deception as a form of “ordinary” irrationality that shares the structure of normal, rational thinking and action in being manipulation of beliefs from forms of irrationality treated by psychoanalysis. I object to the way in which Gardner makes this distinction and further argue that Gardner is mistaken in finding support in Freud for his claim that self-deception involves preference. In Chapter Three, I present a different understanding of self-deception. I discuss self-deception in the context of Sigmund Freud’s writings on illusion, delusion, different kinds of knowledge, etc., and propose a view of self-deception where it is not seen as a lie to oneself but rather as motivated lack of self-knowledge and as a flight from anxiety. In Chapter Four, I discuss some problems inherent in the three accounts under investigation, for example, problems arising because first-person awareness is conflated with knowledge of objects.
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| 6. |
- Jansson Boström, Erik, 1985-
(author)
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Max Weber och idealtypernas nödvändighet
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis has two aims: first, to investigate Max Weber’s account of “objective validity” in the cultural sciences; second, to elaborate a more concrete version of this position using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later remarks on language.Chapter 1 introduces Weber’s idea of objective validity and proposes that in order to understand Weber’s idea of ideal types, we need to re-evaluate Weber’s understanding of the term Bedeutung in “The ‘Objectivity’ of knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy”.Chapter 2 presents Weber’s notion of ideal types and raises a number of problems to be dealt with in the following chapters. The central questions are i) why Weber thinks that ideal types are sometimes necessary in order to reach objective validity, and ii) under which circumstances this might be the case. The chapter argues that the answer to the last question is that Weber thinks that ideal types are necessary for objectivity within a specific kind of study of meaning (Bedeutung) within the cultural sciences. Chapter 3, in turn, focuses on why ideal types are necessary within this kind of cultural science by taking a closer look at how to understand Weber’s concept of given reality and the connection between meaning, concepts, reality and values in the methodological writings that constitute “Roscher and Knies and the Logical Problems of Historical Economics”.In chapter 4, the central issue of objective validity can finally be addressed. The investigation shows that what Weber says about objective validity does not cohere with what follows from his arguments concerning the relation between meaning, given reality, values and concepts. I conclude that Weber fails to provide a clear and consistent account of what objectivity could mean in the cultural sciences. This also means that Weber fails to clarify the necessity of formulating ideal types.These deficiencies notwithstanding, I argue, Weber succeeds in formulating cogent arguments concerning the relationship between given reality, values and concepts. In chapter 5, I use Wittgenstein’s later remarks on language to develop a clear and consistent conceptualization of ideal types, and propose an account of what objectivity can mean in the cultural sciences and how it can be realized.
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| 7. |
- Kristensen, Kasper, 1985-
(author)
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Spinoza on Ethical Cultivation : An Analysis of Vulnerability, Empowerment, and Early Modern Cultura Animi
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation concerns Benedict Spinoza’s (1632–1677) account of ethical life, emphasising the role of techniques and exercises for achieving greater power to control one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions. The study aims to show that Spinoza offers a much more coherent and ambitious ethical theory than what is commonly acknowledged, involving both theoretical and practical considerations.The primary focus of the dissertation is to trace the influence of the early modern cultura animi (cultivation of the soul) tradition on Spinoza’s moral philosophy and to explore the novel use to which he puts it. Chapter One relates the central aims of Spinoza’s philosophy to a conception of philosophy as the art of living, connecting the Renaissance humanist revival of cultura animi tradition to Spinoza’s own attempt to construct a scientific ethics. Chapter Two analyses how Spinoza’s theories of imagination, judgment, and emotions explain the deep-rooted habits and prejudices that present key obstacles to ethical progress. Taking this diagnosis of human nature as a point of departure, Chapter Three explores the difficulties involved in trying to attain adequate knowledge and argues that Spinoza constructs his philosophical method to remedy the natural weakness of human understanding. Chapter Four explains Spinoza’s account of the central moral concepts of good and evil, articulating and defending an objectivist reading of his value theory. Chapter Five considers the extent to which a rational understanding of good and evil can alter habits and guide action given that passions are often more powerful than reason. Building on the weakness of reason to control the passions, Chapter Six shows that spiritual exercises are necessary components in Spinoza’s proposed remedy insofar as they fortify rational understanding by producing firm habits of character. The concluding discussion underlines that Spinoza’s ethical cultivation should not be seen as a linear process that secures stable happiness. Rather, people are and remain subject to the power of illusory beliefs and passions, and the ethical struggle is ongoing. By cultivating understanding, modifying one’s desires, reforming vicious habits and performing virtuous actions, however, the individual can learn to live with his or her vulnerability more happily and virtuously.
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| 8. |
- Novak, Judit, 1985-
(author)
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Juridification of Educational Spheres : The Case of Swedish School Inspection
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation argues that the great transformation of education policy and governance that we have witnessed in the last few decades can only be properly understood by taking into account a process of juridification. In and of itself, this is not a novel assertion; what is argued here is that what this entails concretely has been only partially understood. The mounting importance of positive rights in the welfare state as a means of preserving and legitimating the State’s role is underlined, and particular focus is directed to the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (SSI) as an intermediary body between the State and educational institutions. The main argument that this dissertation advances is that the Swedish 2010 Education Act, along with the changes that its enforcement brought to state school inspection, is an instructive expression of the institutionalization of a juridified school system. Central to this argument is the idea that the legitimacy of the postmodern State in the eyes of its citizens can no longer be taken for granted. Juridification can be seen as a strategy of compensatory legitimation. Drawing on earlier research on governance and juridification, respectively, the dissertation sketches out the general thrust for the examination of the relation between the two and, in particular, just what the theoretical perspective of juridification adds to our understanding of the transformation of education policy and practice. We still know rather little about the latter, i.e., about what the functions and implications of a “juridified” mode of education governance may be more precisely. Against the backdrop of three empirical studies, it advances the argument that a good part of the evolutionary process that is here called “the juridification of educational spheres” comprises operations, institutions and actors deeply involved in locally or regionally situated issues and struggles. It further argues that state school inspection processes as such provide some means of intermediation – the means of making ideologies become real and policies come true. The final discussion is conducted in light of the specific case of the SSI, particularly how the actions and decisions involved in the Inspectorate’s enactment of policy actually constitute policy by giving it certain forms and specific content. These considerations take us beyond the sphere of governance and to the heart of what we may think schooling is or ought to be about.
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| 9. |
- Rider, Sharon P., 1963-
(author)
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Avoiding the subject : A critical inquiry into contemporary theories of subjectivity
- 1998
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation explores certain recurrent problems in modern theories about the nature of thesubject. Taking examples from phenomenology, poststructuralism, neopragmatism and feminism, itargues that philosophical theorizing about subjectivity often assumes that the transition from thedescription of the models of meaning with which they work, to the description of the everyday practices of which they are models, can be achieved within the model. There are two aspects ofthis assumptionthat are worked out in detail with respect to the specific theory under discussion ineach chapter: (i) the supposition that there must be a general description to account for diversephenomena, and (ii) the presumed primacy of that theoretical re-description.In examining the selected illustrations from phenomenology, poststructuralism, neo-pragmatism and feminism, the study sets out to show how the terminology and methods ofphilosophy, even in dissimilar or even opposing traditions, produce an object of study at a farremove from the reality they are supposed to explain. Specifically, the dissertation takes up fiverelated themes: (i) the conflation of facts about language or thinking with descriptions of workingmodels; (ii) the assumed dichotomy between "the thinking subject" as producer of language or asproduct of it; (iii) the tendency to misapply the language and thought-forms appropriate to third-person observations about states of affairs to first-person expressions; (iv) the demand thateveryday linguistic practice fulfill the conceptual requirements of the theory; and (v) the idea thatthe truth or facticity of otherwise indubitable facts about the world is somehow compromized if itis not philosophically grounded.The conceptual difficulties described here are outlined in the introduction. In the followingchapters, the problems raised are illustrated and developed by way of examples from modernphilosophy, represented by Husserl, Foucault, Derrida, Rorty and Fish, and Gilligan and Benhabib.
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| 10. |
- Sjöstrand, Björn
(author)
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Att tänka det tekniska : En studie i Derridas teknikfilosofi
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)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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