Philosophy Theses and Dissertations

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/2041

This collection contains some of the theses and dissertations produced by students in the University of Oregon Philosophy Graduate Program. Paper copies of these and other dissertations and theses are available through the UO Libraries.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 99

Open Access
The Drama of the Dialectic: Hegel, Marx, and the Theory of Appropriation
(University of Oregon, 2024-12-19) Knowlton Jr, Kenneth; Muraca, Barbara
This dissertation develops a theory of appropriation through an account of dialectical materialism as a relational ontology. Appropriation is argued as creative-aesthetic activity definitive of the human species-essence through which sociality metabolically transforms. In turn, the universality of appropriation becomes an analytic for designating historical change through the mode of appropriation, where the transhistorical and ontological dimension of appropriation take on a historically specific character. I begin with a critical reconstruction of German Idealism through an account of FWJ Schelling’s critique of GWF Hegel’s Science of Logic. Schelling’s criticism initiates a tendency to misrepresent Hegel’s dialectical logic that extends into 20th century philosophy, a misrepresentation which also transposed itself onto the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. I trace this lineage in Part I, critically responding to it. Part II provides a materialist interpretation of Hegel’s Science of Logic, focusing on essence, necessity, universality, telos, and reason. I demonstrate the relational and anti-representational character of Hegelian dialectics through a systematic account of these categories. Consequently, I draw on Hegel to provide the logico-theoretical structure of the concept of appropriation as constitutive of a dialectical relational ontology. Part III develops appropriation and the mode of appropriation through an engagement with the works of Marx and Engels. I argue that their work is predicated on a dialectical relational ontology fundamental to their political, economic, and historical analysis. I show that the mode of appropriation is constituted by a triadic structure of changing labor-forms, property-forms, and belonging-forms that together elucidate socio-historical transformation.
Open Access
Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociated Identity Disorder: The Client as Actor Model
(University of Oregon, 1999-12) Prane, Jada Z.
This dissertation is a philosophical analysis of Multiple 1Jersonality Disorder/Dissociated Identity Disorder. It investigates what the existence or presence of alter-identities in a client means, and critically analyzes the metaphysical basis of that existence or presence. This dissertation also has a major focus of concern with the therapeutic value of treating multiple personalities/dissociated identities as a disorder. An analysis of the metaphysics of the prevailing conception of multiplicity ( the alter model) is shown to have fatal logical problems. Moreover, the conception of multiplicity as a disorder is shown to have destructive consequences for the typical client who manifests multiplicity and whose therapy is based on the disorder conception. These problems and consequences provide the motivation for replacement of the alter model with one that is free of logical problems and that does not treat multiplicity as a disorder. A model of multiplicity as a form of acting provides the replacement conception. A previous consideration of the acting approach (by some clinicians) in favor of the alter model was based both on a conception of acting as mimicry or faked feeling, and the idea of extreme dissociation experienced only as a psychopathology. This alter-actor comparison is referred to as the alter-actor distinction. However, this dissertation reconsiders the alter-actor distinction and shows how the alter model is contradicted by the testimony of some important actors, directors, and theoreticians and psychologists of acting. Moreover, consideration of how actors are counseled to protect themselves from the effects of extreme dissociation reveals that this advice is at odds with the advice and encouragement given to some M.PD/DID clients about the emergence of multiple personalities/dissociated identities. This dissertation urges that the alter model of multiplicity/dissociated identity be replaced by the actor model. The actor model overcomes the logical deficiencies of the alter model, and has improved compatibility with, and a more accurate understanding of, the continuum of dissociative experience. The actor model will thereby serve clients more effectively and less dangerously.
Open Access
Unreasonable Expectations: A Phenomenological Defense of Taking a Group-Rights Based Perspective Towards the Adjudication of Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment Claims
(University of Oregon, 1998-06) Pendleton, Kenneth
There is currently a debate among legal scholars about what kind of reasonableness standard courts should adopt while adjudicating hostile environment sexual harassment claims. The alternatives generally fall into two categories: traditional individual-rights based standards and group-rights based standards. Using the former types of standards entails a commitment to several traditional liberal principles- social consensus as mediator, tolerance of diversity, assumption of risk, and interchangeability- while using the latter types of standards entails either the modification or abandonment of them. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the explicit or implicit positing of different theories of the self ultimately underlies these disagreements. First, I will argue that a commitment to one crucial aspect of social atomism, i.e., the view that a rational individual can choose not to be seriously psychologically affected by the views that others take towards her or him, underlies claims that courts should appeal to these traditional liberal principles and adopt some variation of a reasonable person standard. I will then argue that all previous attempts to criticize this type of theory of the self for being "excessively individualistic" have failed; these theories of the self whether they are based on modern individualism, cornmunitarianism, or cultural feminism-still either explicitly claim or strongly imply that a rational woman can reject and consequently be psychologically unaffected by having to work in misogynous, traditionally all male work environment. Second, I will combine Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of "the look of the other" and with several aspects of George Herbert Mead's theory of social development in order to construct a theory of the self that will better explain why a rational individual cannot help but be psychologically affected by the disparaging attitudes that others express about her or him under certain sociological circumstances. In turn, this theory of the self will then be used to defend the claim that courts should adopt a group-rights based reasonableness standard while adjudicating hostile environment claims.
Open Access
Justifying State Toleration of Diversity and Dissent
(University of Oregon, 1992-06) Newman, Sandra
Attempts to justify toleration usually utilize moral arguments based on respecting the agency of, or preventing harm to, an individual. These arguments provide a sufficient but not a necessary reason for powerful states to tolerate a diverse and dissenting populous. Provided a state is interested in promoting non-violence, I claim that, because political controversy increases tolerance and decreases violence, toleration of all non-violent diversity and dissent is incumbent upon a state. This argument also justifies state intolerance of violent dissent, where violence is either threatened or manifest.
Open Access
The Truth About Fiction: Some Reflections on Philosophy and Literature
(University of Oregon, 1994-08) Miller, Jennifer Abbe
This investigation is concerned with certain philosophical problems which arise in current discussions about reading fictional literature, and with philosophical problems a nd themes that arise in literature itself. A number of theories have been offered by philosophers as well as literary critics not only to account for what fiction is , but also as to how appreciation of fiction occurs. The two are related in that how we answer the question "What is fiction?" may bear upon the problem of reading. One of my goals is to show how attitudes towards literature have evolved from philosophic views regarding the nature of , and connection between, language and knowledge. The theories of reading that I will consider are enmeshed in problematic presuppositions about this connection. I will also claim that fiction can be a source of insight, and that insight is a form of knowledge . This is a robust claim that will be illuminated by exploring certain works of literature. Novelists and other creative writers are often engaged with the same themes that philosophers are. In fact, some fictional works may even present a challenge to a given philosophical theory or view. However, most of the literature I will be examining does not set out to assess or even exemplify the views of particular philosophers, but rather pursues certain themes that authors share in common with philosophers, for instance, questions concerning truth, meaning, appearance and reality. I intend to show how certain works of literature offer different approaches to, and expressions of, philosophical themes. I claim not only that literature can expand our scope for thinking about philosophical questions, but more importantly, that it may help us in rethinking them.
Open Access
Nature Ethics Without Theory
(University of Oregon, 1989-06) Mellon, Joseph
This work presents a case against the need for moral theory in nature ethics. A theory is not needed to bridge a gap between f acts and values. One is not needed to handle crisis cases. Nor is one needed to extend the moral circle of car e beyond human beings. Ordinary moral reasoning will suffice . To show this , moral cases are made for a vegan diet , and against the use of animals in research. The moral theorist is then left with this dilemma: either the details of a moral issue are enough to settle it , thus rendering a moral theory unnecessary , or the details are not enough, but neither is any moral theory. In place of theory, a moral vision is sketched , one which is at once contemplative , feminist . anarchist , pacifist, anti-capital ist , and pro- nature.
Open Access
To Prove or Not To Prove: Pascal on Natural Theology
(University of Oregon, 1993-06) Groothuis, Douglas Richard
In this dissertation I argue that Pascal's reasons for rejecting the enterprise of natural theology are inadequate to negate the discipline's possible value for Christian theism. I begin by explaining the nature, function, and scope of natural theology or the attempt to argue for God's existence apart from revelation. Pascal argues that the Bible itself precludes the activity of natural theology. I dispute this claim by giving reasons why the omission of natural in the Bible does not mean that the enterprise itself is illegitimate. Although Pascal argues that the very nature of God as an infinite being renders a positive proof of his existence impossible because of the opacity of the infinite, I argue that Pascal misconstrues the nature of divine infinity and that when properly understood the notion of divine infinity does not rule out natural theology a priori. According to Pascal , the kind of reasoning used in theistic proofs is inappropriate for religious believers because it is "too remote from human reasoning" to move one to real religious devotion. I claim that even complex proofs for God's existence, if successful, could engender a kind of religious devotion. Pascal finds the God derived through natural theology--the "God of the philosophers"--to be too abstract and religiously unsatisfying to be equated with the biblical "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." On the contrary, I affirm that the divine predicates derived from natural theology (should they be derivable) have a significant overlap with the description of God in the Scriptures. Against Pascal's idea that a successful natural theology engenders a kind of pride in its practitioners that is incompatible with the Christian claim, I argue that philosophical proofs may but need not engender such pride. Finally, I take up the matter of the cogency of one version of the cosmological argument in relation to the defense of Christian theism.
Open Access
Hera, Not Hero: Centering the Moral Life on Moral Commitment, Rather than Heroic Courage
(University of Oregon, 1993-12) Gould, Robert Jarvis
Instances of moral commitment are central to the moral life, whereas instances of heroic courage are not necessarily central to the moral life. Given this contrast, it is odd when heroic courage is privileged over moral commitment. Heroic vitalism is the strongest expression of the privileging of heroic courage over moral commitment. My thesis counters heroic vitalism by building on a tradition of rejection that has deep roots , but finds its strongest support in the work of Josiah Royce and the feminist and nonviolent traditions. Though there are some senses of courage, such as heart, fortitude and endurance that are not particularly informed by the heroic, I suggest that our understanding of courage is dominated by the heroic . My suggestion of moral strength as an alternative to courage is based not only on courage's association with the heroic, but also on moral strength's close connection with moral commitment, which implies an engagement with the world and counters any preoccupation with character traits. My critique of heroic courage centers on its tendency toward being episodic, involving the overcoming of great fear, taking great risks and enduring potential violence. In contrast, moral strength is constant, not episodic and involves a moderated response to fear, risk and potential violence. This moderated response allows one to avoid the dissociation that often accompanies fearful, risky and violent situations. In turn, a freedom from dissociation facilitates a constant, lifelong engagement with the moral life. I conclude by addressing the question, what use might this rethinking of "courage" and the conceptual development of "moral commitment" and "moral strength" mean in the day to day practice of ordinary people interested in positive social change? I suggest that a strongest moral commitment can be constructed and used to resolve problems of violence in achieving revolutionary goals. These problems include the means and ends problem involved in seizing power, the problem of violent self -defense against genocidal predation, the problem of political and cultural domination and the problem of structural violence in the marketplace.
Open Access
The Understanding of Difference in Heidegger and Derrida
(University of Oregon, 1990-12) Donkel, Douglas Lee
In this study, I offer an account of the relationship between Heidegger's notion of difference and Derrida's notion of difference in light of the question of Being. I argue that, while Derrida's account of difference calls into question Heidegger's characterization of difference as that which allows for presence, this same account calls itself into question as well, that is, in the manner of the liar paradox--if it is true, it is false--which is just to say it is undecidable in the Derridian sense of the term. I come to these conclusions through a close reading of Heidegger's Identity and Difference and Derrida's Speech and Phenomena, where I uncover a motif of external and internal relations which I employ in contrasting difference and difference. In addition, this study is concerned with the doctrine of God, a doctrine which I suggest is closely related to Heidegger's question of Being insofar as both attempt to account for the genesis of things. I argue that, while Heidegger's account undercuts traditional theism, the problematization of the question of Being by virtue of difference suggests that the theological project, insofar as it involves giving an account of the absolute, i.e., God, has likewise been called into question. I suggest further that this situation indicates the need to redirect the concerns of theology toward interpersonal and social issues, and that this move does not set a precedent insofar as certain Western and Eastern approaches have always valued releasement from doctrinal attachments as a way to encourage the best in human relations.
Open Access
Can We Diagnose the Health of Ecosystems?
(University of Oregon, 1995-06) Dewberry, Thomas Charles
This study is a philosophical examination of the question, "Can we diagnose the health of ecosystems?" Two senses of this question are investigated: 1) Are ecosystems the kind of entities to which "health" applies? 2) Assuming that ecosystem health is a coherent concept, how do we diagnose the health of ecosystems? This study begins with a distinction, first made by Michael Polanyi, between machines and holistic inanimate objects, such as thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are reducible to the laws of chemistry and physics, while machines are not Machines have two levels of control, the laws of physics and chemistry, and operational principles, which harness the parts to achieve the purpose of the machine. The importance of this distinction is that the concept of health only applies to objects which have two or more levels of control. This study concludes that the concept of health applies to ecosystems. Ecosystems are not reducible to their parts. The diagnosis of ecosystem health is similar to a medical doctor diagnosing the health of a patient, because ecosystems and humans are both members of the class of objects to which "health" applies. The diagnostician, with each specimen observed, simultaneously modifies the standard of normality for the class of object, at the same time the individual is appraised according to the standard. Diagnosing the health of a patient is a skill which cannot be reduced to an objective measurable standard. However, ecosystem are not individuals, so diagnosing the health of ecosystems is not exactly analogous to diagnosing the health of a human or horse. This study has important implications for resource management and policy. Procedures, such as the federal interagency watershed analysis, which are built on a hierarchical theory based on the rate of processes, make ecosystem health incoherent. The federal strategy appears to hold the implicit assumption that ecosystems are reducible to their parts. Watershed analysis is also an ambiguous procedure at best. It rejects the medical model, and it may destroy the skill of diagnosis, by attempting to replace it with a measurable standard.
Open Access
Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology: Clarification and Critique
(University of Oregon, 1992-06) Crabtree, John Alan
Alvin Plantinga has proposed a distinctive answer to the question whether belief in the existence of God apart from evidence is rational. Developing the suggestions of various theologians in the Reformed or Calvinistic tradition into a philosophically rigorous epistemological theory, Plantinga espouses what he calls Reformed epistemology. Reformed epistemology defends the rationality of belief in God's existence by arguing that belief in God is a properly basic belief. It argues, therefore, that belief in God is eminently rational apart from any evidence; for a basic belief is foundational and not based on evidence. I do two things in this study: (1) I attempt to clarity key aspects of Reformed epistemological theory, discussing at greater depth certain of its more problematic aspects and expanding the theory where necessary to show its basic coherence and/or plausibility; and (2) I attempt to answer the question whether Reformed epistemology is right - whether it accurately captures the epistemological status of the theist's belief in God. My answer is that most likely it does not. I argue that - due to an overly vague conception of "basic belief" - Plantinga has failed to recognize a fundamental incompatibility in his own views on the status of theistic belief. Furthermore, I argue that, when we have rightly understood what Reformed epistemology requires with respect to the nature of theistic belief, it is doubtful that Plantinga or any other theist actually holds his belief in God on the epistemological basis that Reformed epistemology says he does.
Open Access
Faith and Fideism
(University of Oregon, 1994-06) Bollenbaugh, Michael Wayne
Among philosophers of religion Soren Kierkegaard is often regarded as an archetypal fideist. In general terms, fideism is the view that religion is based on faith rather than reasoning or evidence. This study examines and critiques Kierkegaard's view of the nature of religious belief in light of his fideism. I argue that it is not useful to describe Kierkegaard simply as a fideist since this description applies to a whole host of philosophers of religion, some who are endeared by the term and others who are anxious to eschew it. Instead I critique Kierkegaard's efforts by identifying a species for the genus of his ftdeism, which I call "exclusivist". In identifying a species of Kierkegaard's fideism I am able to distinguish him from other fideists as well as more clearly define the concerns of his enterprise. The term "exclusivist" describes Kierkegaard's fideistic concerns in two ways. First, it means to make something singularly important as in an exclusive news story. Secondly, exclusive means to bar or prohibit as in an exclusive country club that only admits members of a certain race and gender. Kierkegaard's view of the nature of religious belief is an exclusivist fideism because it seeks to make his description of the path to faith singularly true and he bars an positive reasoning from the concerns of faith. I contend that the exclusivist nature of Kierkegaard's fideism has unfortunate consequences for the nature of faith itself. I support this claim by showing that the kind of religious experience Kierkegaard insists on does not parallel the religious experience of most ordinary believers. To support my case I examine several major themes in Kierkegaard's thought, which include his view of passion, his thorough rejection of positive reasoning for faith, the nature of the Christian Incarnation as an absolute paradox, and the subjectivity is truth thesis. I counter Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism with a genus and species of faith that I can inclusivist fideism. Inclusivist fideism accepts the authority of faith in the life of the believer but rejects the notion that there is a fixed set of experiences that lead to faith and that reason is beyond faith's concerns. I suggest that the genus of Kierkegaard's analysis of faith is correct but that the species is wrong. Because inclusivist fideism does not essentialize a believer's pilgrimage to faith it has important advantages over Kierkegaard's exclusivist fideism.
Open Access
On Metaphor
(University of Oregon, 1991-06) Berryman, Sylvia
Current debate on metaphor, involving philosophers from very different traditions, is a response to Black's challenge of Aristotle's view. Following this lead, the absurdity of metaphor--the clash within the sentence--is stressed, downplaying the role of perceived similarities. From different perspectives, Ricoeur, Davidson and Searle emphasize the innovative aspects of metaphor, treating it as deviant, distinct from literal language. This emphasis risks forfeiting explanatory power. Taking our ability to understand metaphors as a starting point, the assumptions behind talk of 'live' and 'dead' metaphors is challenged. The treatment of metaphor as a poetic device, and the focus on innovative metaphors are questioned. Recent work in linguistics suggests new resources in accounting for our understanding of metaphors, without denying their novelty. The dichotomy between the creative aspects of metaphor and our understanding of them may only be apparent.
Open Access
Prospects for Causal Explanation Outside of Mechanism
(University of Oregon, 1989-12) Athearn, Daniel Richard
This work is an attack on the standard neo-Humean conception of science in philosophy of science. The following pillars of this conception are targets of the critique: (1) the claim that the role of causality in scientific explanation has been, or can be , superseded by scientific laws ; (2) the belief that a causal process can only be a disconnected, perhaps contiguous, series of events. In addition to attacking these explicit views , the work challenges the background assumption that causal explanations for basic phenomena of physics have proved permanently impossible, leaving, henceforth and forever , laws and only laws as material for theoretical knowledge in a fundamental domain of science. Examination of other contemporary causal realist philosophers shows that their contributions to an understanding of unobservable causes in physics have severe limitations, due to their retention of key Empiricist conclusions.
Embargo
Making and Unmaking Worlds: Towards Liberation Beyond Subjectivity
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Friaz, Ricardo; Russell, Camisha
This dissertation develops the concept of liberation by questioning what it means to destroy, abolish, and create worlds. I develop a critical position towards agential or subject-based accounts of liberation in order to think through Abolitionist and Decolonial accounts of mourning and collective world-making. I trace the endurance of historical processes of slavery and colonialism and their violent effects today, and I discuss contemporary police torture and migrant camps to reflect on practices of observing world destruction that do not center a subject of liberation. I give a critical account of the contemporary organization of the world around the Cartesian subject, and develop an alternative account of the world by drawing on Spinoza’s account of substance and bodily knowing. I conclude by developing an account of world creation by engaging with Lugones’ account of world-traveling and playfulness along with Winnicott’s theories of the playground and transitional object.
Open Access
A Critical Feminist Semiology: De-naturalizing and Re-Politicizing Patriarchal, White Supremacist, and Settler-Colonial Systems of Meaning
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Ring, Annalee; Stawarska, Beata
This dissertation de-naturalizes and re-politicizes patriarchal, white supremacist and settler-colonial systems of meaning through creating a methodology of critical feminist semiology. This methodology is built from the contributions of many thinkers’ works in semiology, phenomenology, philosophy of myth, feminist philosophy, and critical philosophy of race. I return to the emergence of semiology in Ferdinand de Saussure’s work to show that it has been more political than the dominant reading takes semiology to be. My reading of his work emphasizes the importance of studying politics, history, institutions, colonialism, and geography in the study of signs as a part of social life. I critique Roland Barthes for depoliticizing the method of semiology while acknowledging his many contributions, especially in the study of myths. Barthes’ emphasis on the operation of myths to naturalize and depoliticize politically motivated contingencies is a major contribution to the method of critical feminist semiology. This project turns to Simone de Beauvoir’s work The Second Sex and reads it as a semiological phenomenology. Beauvoir’s work closely considers signs as a part of social life through demonstrating the contingency of the myth of the eternal feminine as well as its political, economic, social, and ontological operations. She shows how this myth shapes lived experiences and how it might be resisted. This chapter demonstrates that the myth of the eternal feminine operates as a part of a patriarchal system of meaning. The dissertation then turns to the field of Black feminist thought, which considers how myths sustain and reinforce race and gender oppression in a more collective manner than the semiologists previously considered. This chapter identifies clusters of myths that support one another and that support what I call the meta-myth of white supremacy. White supremacy is both a singular myth and a meta-myth that is supported by clusters of myths. To dismantle the meta-myth of white supremacy, it is vital to understand how it is supported by and supports clusters of myths; that is, treating it as an individual myth is insufficient. This dissertation then engages with Indigenous and decolonial scholars to show how clusters of myth sustain settler colonialism. The cluster of myths considered in this chapter also supports the meta-myth of white supremacy. Decolonial scholars demonstrate the importance of purging mythologies that contribute to the material success of settler-colonialism. Throughout the dissertation, myths are considered material; rather than treated as abstractions alone, myths have significant impacts on material conditions and as such should be given moral scrutiny.
Open Access
Critical Phenomenology of Illness: Towards a Politics of Care
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) McLay , Sarah; Stawarska, Beata
Working at the intersection of phenomenology and critical disability studies, this dissertation develops a critical phenomenology of illness and health. Moving beyond classical phenomenologies of illness—which center on the first-person experience of a consciousness abstracted from social and historical structures—I argue that responsibly examining illness (and health) demands concretely attending to the ways that particular illness experiences are instituted from within a socio-historical field. Importantly, beyond describing the lived experience of illness, critical phenomenology must track the material-historical structures and norms that foreclose possibilities for coping and living with illness. This involves reckoning with how oppressive structures—in disproportionate ways—debilitate bodies and make them sick. When we do this work, it becomes clear that we must broaden the scope of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1964) call for “an ontological rehabilitation of the sensible” (167). That is, given that phenomenology can’t extract itself from the natural attitude, and given that natural attitudes are implicitly shaped by debilitating structures of oppression, if phenomenology demands rehabilitation, then rehabilitation can’t just take place at the theoretical level. Instead, a radically responsible phenomenology of health/illness demands that we work towards dismantling debilitating systems, and creating a world where all bodies might flourish.
Open Access
The Problem of Freedom and Universality: Marxian Philosophical Anthropology
(University of Oregon, 2024-03-25) Ralda, Oscar; Muraca, Barbara
This dissertation has two principal aims. First, it provides a critical reconsideration of Marx’s philosophical anthropology as it bears on the essential continuity of his emancipatory critique of political economy. Second, it makes an argument for well-suitedness of Marxian philosophical anthropology in critically assessing the systematic irrationality of capitalist society, that is, its incorrigible failure to meet substantive human needs and its ecologically destructive accumulative imperatives. It is argued, then, that the normative underpinnings of Marx’s critique of capitalist society derive from his philosophical anthropology and that the latter therefore proves indissociable from the positive necessity of the socialist alternative.Traditionally conceived, philosophical anthropology involves a form of inquiry concerned with articulating the qualities distinctive of, and essential to, human beings. A Marxian philosophical anthropology, however, does not propose a rigid taxonomy of human qualities, but instead develops a critical dialectic capable of grasping the immanent, developmental character of the necessary material and ontological determinations constitutive of human sociality, paradigmatically expressed in the cooperative form of the labor process as the very locus of the process of conscious human self-mediation. Hence, the actualization of universal human freedom pertains to the conscious socialization––or the substantive humanization––of those determinations which form both the limits of social existence generally and which, in their distorted and antagonistically constituted form, become sources of a dysfunctional, irrational, and deficient form of human self-mediation; that is, they assume the form of alienated actualizations of our social nature or essence. In the case of Marxian critique, the necessarily social character of the labor process constitutes not only the primary object of critique in its antagonistically constituted and alienated form, but also constitutes the point of immanence needed for specifying the necessary transcendence of capitalist social relations and hence the destructive social metabolism sustained by capital and its alienated compulsions. In reconstructing Marx’s early work and its constitutive philosophical anthropological concepts, in returning to his metacritique of G. W. F. Hegel, and in tracing the ambivalent reception of the ‘essentialist’ and ‘naturalist premises’ of Marx’s claims within Marxist theory and critical theory more broadly, the dissertation makes the case that the historical materialist critique of capitalist society requires a positive notion of human self-mediation, and that such a notion is supplied by Marx’s philosophical anthropology. Essential to this philosophical anthropology is not only an account of self-mediation as the open-ended development of human needs and powers, but also as the very need for social relations in which social individuals, conscious of their universal interdependence, become for each other the positive condition of their reciprocal self-actualizing freedom, transcending thereby the antagonisms whereby sociality appears as an alienated, altogether external constraint. It is in this way that universal, substantive socialist freedom becomes intelligible––a human necessity.
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Living Legality: Law and Dussel's Philosophy of Liberation
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Ospina Martinez, Juan Sebastián; Vallega, Alejandro
In this dissertation I examine the theoretical underpinnings necessary for a philosophy of liberationaccount of law and suggest an alternative conceptualization of the function of law and political institutions, following the normative contributions of Enrique Dussel’s political philosophy of liberation. I argue that, while Dussel has not yet developed a complete account of legality proper in his political philosophy, his work contains resources for developing a liberatory philosophy of law. Specifically, this dissertation explores the normative dimensions of this question by offering a systematization of Dussel´s philosophy of liberation of law through which is possible to conceive an alternative form of constituent power and institutions that result from this decolonial tradition. In pursuing this inquiry, I connect concepts from liberation philosophy to questions about the meaning of legal notions that are understood as the basic framework of our political life. I examine the notion of constituent power and its potential to redefine political and legal institutions.
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Making Sense of the Practical Lesbian Past: Towards a Rethinking of Untimely Uses of History through the Temporality of Cultural Techniques
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Simon, Valérie; Koopman, Colin
This dissertation focuses on the practice of untimely uses of lesbian history, and in particular the diverse practices of engagement with lesbian activist history, all of which aim to mobilize this activist history for the present and towards the construction of alternate futures. I approach such practices technologically by foregrounding the method and theory of ‘cultural techniques’ in a way that reframes the problem oriented by engagement with lesbian activist history. Specifically, I develop a reframing that shifts the focus from a question of representation (how to ensure the histories engaged with are more diverse?) to a question of how to engage with lesbian history in ways that guide and inspire action in the present and towards the future worlds that we deserve. I argue that to answer the latter question what is needed is attention to the practices (and in particular the technologies) we find in archives and to evaluate what these practices might do in the present through an understanding of these practices’ temporality, historicity and the ethico-political questions they raise.