Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social Philosophy'
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1
Holmes, Peter John. "Karl Barth's social philosophy 1918-1933." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2001. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1294/.
Abstract:
This thesis is a contribution to the contemporary reassessment of Karl Barth's social philosophy. A close reading of the English translation of the text of a series of posthumously published lectures on ethics which Barth gave in the universities of Münster and Bonn between 1929 and 1933 is the basis of the work. Previous literature includes no discussion of the lectures. The thesis argues that the lectures show the foundation of Barth's thinking both of theology as a science and of ethics as a part of dogmatics, and that his subsequent work developed these ideas. Barth's intellectual debt to Hegel is recognised by showing that he returns to the fundamental theological questions of the relationship between faith and reason, and truth and method in the form in which Hegel discussed them at the end of the nineteenth century. The thesis acknowledges the influence of Barth's helper, Charlotte von Kirschbaum, and contrary to other opinions claims that the impact of Wilhelm Herrmann's thinking on Barth remained until 1933. Although principally about material from the period 1918 to 1933, later work by Barth is included in the study to give evidence for the proposals that his ethical thinking helped shape his dogmatics, and that his later ethics show development, not stages and breaks. A discussion of criticisms of his ethics highlights the problem of choosing a method of enquiry that is appropriate to the object studied. A dialogue with two other ethical projects helps focus attention on his insistence on a proper foundation for Christian social ethics. The thesis argues that Barth's work is a theological ethic, because his social philosophy gives a method for asking appropriate questions and creates a way of considering these questions from a Christian perspective.
2
Griffiths, B. J. "The social philosophy of Pietro Verri." Thesis, Swansea University, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.637177.
Abstract:
This thesis is the first extensive study of the thought of Pietro Verri in English, and the first major study in any language to focus on his social philosophy. It brings together a large number of writings by Pietro Verri and considers them in relation with one another. It is based on readings of these primary texts, including unpublished manuscript material, and of studies of Verri published in Italy in the last twenty-five years, most of them in article form. Pietro Verri was one of the leading figures in the 'School of Milan' in the second half of the eighteenth century. The eldest son of Count Gabriele Verri, a lawyer and senator, Pietro Verri chose instead to study political economy, and became a functionary of the Habsburg government in Milan. Verri was still politically active in the 1790s and had several newspaper articles published during the Napoleonic period, before dying in the council chamber in 1797. This thesis takes issue with the standard biography of Verri (Nino Valeri, Pietro Verri, first published in 1934). While Valeri believed Verri to have been a disillusioned and increasingly conservative figure during the 1770s and 1780s, my research shows that his views were remarkably consistent throughout his life. While accepting that Verri was part of the cosmopolitan intellectual movement of the Enlightenment, this thesis also draws attention to the existence of a specifically Italian philosophical tradition to which he contributed.
3
Anzola, David. "The philosophy of computational social science." Thesis, University of Surrey, 2015. http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/808102/.
Abstract:
The thesis is a collection of six stand-alone chapters aimed at setting the foundations for the philosophy of computational social science. Agent-based modelling has been used for social research since the nineties. While at the beginning it was simply conceived as a methodological alternative, recently, the notion of ‘computational social science’ has started to be used to denote a separate disciplinary field. There are important differences with mainstream social science and traditional social research. Yet, the literature in the field has not accounted for these differences. Computational social science is a strongly practice-oriented field, where theoretical and philosophical concerns have been pushed into the background. This thesis presents an initial analysis of the methodology, epistemology and ontology of computational social science, by examining the following topics: 1) verification and validation and 2) modelling and theorising, 3) mechanisms 4) explanation 5) agency, action and interaction and 6) entities and process philosophy. Five general conclusions are drawn from the thesis. It is first argued that the wider ontological base in agent-based modelling allows for a new approach to traditional social dualisms, moving away from the methodological individualism that dominates computational social science. Second, the need to place a distinction between explanation and understanding and to make explanatory goals explicit is highlighted. Third, it is claimed that computational social science needs to pay attention to the social epistemology of the field, for this could provide important insights regarding values, ideologies and interests that underlie the practice of agent-based modelling. Fourth, it is suggested that a more robust theorisation regarding the experimental and model-based character of agent-based modelling should be developed. Finally, it is argued that the method can greatly contribute to the development of a processual account of social life.
4
Heath, Paul J. "Social philosophy and modern public health." Thesis, Keele University, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.392306.
5
Good, Robert 1959. "The philosophy and social thought of Alfred Fouillée." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=41262.
Abstract:
Classical scholar and historian of philosophy at France's Ecole Normale Superieure, Alfred Fouillee (1838-1912) heralded the science of psychology as philosophers' sole path to social and political relevance in the modern age, and sought for French society the philosophically based morale that her polarized political tradition seemed unable to provide. His theory of idees-forces identified rationality with an irreducible yet conscious will, lent precision philosophical idealism's often vague exaltation of individual freedom, and promoted psychologically informed discussions about the proper ideals for the French Third Republic. Examined here is the evolution of Fouillee's thought from his earliest writings until his death: the genesis and elaboration of his idealist psychology, its later extension to social and ethical thought, Fouillee's defense of the classical lycee curriculum, and his repudiation of both unphilosophical sociology and the "anti-intellectualism" of the early twentieth century. Alert to both science's potential and its limitations, Fouillee held that modernizing societies like France would adequately define social justice and individual dignity only by joining ancient philosophy's metaphysical impulse and public spiritedness with modernity's liberal precepts.
6
Aloi, Michael Joseph. "The Social Benefits of Wilderness." The University of Montana, 2009. http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-05122009-110525/.
Abstract:
Modern culture has not yet learned to live in harmony with the rest of the natural world. This is largely because we are afflicted with inadequate institutions and personal habits. These habits and institutions are also responsible for many social ills sexism, homophobia, etc. In particular, the imperium is a way of thinking and acting which encourages us to practice a heavy-handed form of standardization; it encourages us to ignore particularity. These habits and institutions the imperium are a result of, and reinforced by, our interpersonal interactions. The standardization of these interactions drains the wildness out of them. But to relate to an other in an ethical manner, I must assume that the other is wild, with its own integrity, will, and path. Because our experiences in wilderness are radically different than our experiences outside wilderness, the wilderness can instill in us different, better habits and understanding of relationships. In particular, the wildness of wilderness shows us the falseness of the standardized ideas and beliefs. This wildness also causes us to forge new habits of relating to others, and new beliefs about relationships and others. These new habits are social benefits, especially once we allow them to reform our identity.
7
Shimray, David Luiyainao. "Educational philosophy in India compared and contrasted with Christian philosophy of education." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2005. http://www.tren.com.
8
Clayton, Kelvin. "Social Chaosmos : Michel Serres and the emergence of social order." Thesis, Staffordshire University, 2011. http://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/1922/.
Abstract:
This thesis presents a social ontology. It takes its problem, the emergence of social structure and order, and the relationship of the macro and the micro within this structure, from social theory, but attempts a resolution from the perspectives of contemporary French philosophy and complexity theory. Due to its acceptance of certain presuppositions concerning the multiplicity and connectedness of all life and nature it adopts a comparative methodology that attempts a translation of complexity science to the social world. It draws both this methodology and its inspiration from the work of Michel Serres. After explaining this methodology, it presents a critique of the work of those prominent philosophers of multiplicity who have written on the social: Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Manual DeLanda. Having argued for the need of a ‘non-unit’ of social organisation, it then unsuccessfully surveys the work of Michel Foucault and Gabriel Tarde in search of such a ‘non-unit’. It produces one by extracting elements from different theorists and then proceeds to offer a novel explanation of how these expectations first emerge from the ‘social noise’ and then go through a complex process of self-organisation to produce social structure. Apart from complexity theory, this explanation draws on the temporal ontologies of both Serres and Deleuze. In doing so, it argues that the social replication necessary for this self-organisation cannot be achieved through direct imitation. Instead, it draws on an idea from Stuart Kauffman and argues that this is achieved through autocatalysis. Finally, it argues that social structures and what is perceived to be social order are the effect of the codification, to varying degrees, of these emergent expectations. It concludes that this structure is at its most creative when on ‘the edge of chaos’, when at a point of social chaosmos.
9
Thompson, Neil. "Existentialism and social work." Thesis, Keele University, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.293995.
10
Calvert-Minor, Christopher Lee. "Practicist epistemology and the social dimension." Related electronic resource: Current Research at SU : database of SU dissertations, recent titles available full text, 2008. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/syr/main.
11
Temelini, Michael Joseph. "Seeing things differently, wittgenstein and social and political philosophy." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0023/NQ50268.pdf.
12
Temelini, Michael. "Seeing things differently : Wittgenstein and social and political philosophy." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35950.
Abstract:
This thesis calls into question a currently orthodox view of Ludwig Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian philosophy. This view is that the social and political implications of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are conservative and relativist. That is, Wittgenstein's concepts such as 'forms of life', 'language-games' and 'rule-following' defend and promote: a rule-determined and context-determined rationality; or an incomparable community-determined human understanding; or a neutralist, nonrevisionary, private or uncritical social and political philosophy.In order to challenge and correct this conventional understanding the thesis sets up as 'objects of comparison' a variety of very different examples of the use of Wittgenstein in social and political philosophy. These uses are neither relativist nor conservative and they situate understanding and critical reflection in the practices of comparison and dialogue. The examples of this 'comparative-dialogical' Wittgensteinian approach are found in the works of three contemporary philosophers: Thomas L. Kuhn, Quentin Skinner and Charles Taylor.
This study employs the technique of a survey rather than undertaking a uniquely textual analysis because it is less convincing to suggest that Wittgenstein's concepts might be used in these unfamiliar ways than to show that they have been put to these unfamiliar uses. Therefore I turn not to a Wittgensteinian ideal but to examples of the 'comparative-dialogical' uses of Wittgenstein. In so doing I am following Wittgenstein's insight in section 208 of the Philosophical Investigations: "I shall teach him to use the words by means of examples and by practice. And when I do this, I do not communicate less to him than I know myself." Thus it will be in a survey of various uses and applications of Wittgenstein's concepts and techniques that I will show that I and others understand them.
13
Wilson, Kenneth. "Action, rationality and mediation : a social and environmental philosophy." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.322632.
14
Skinner, Catherine. "The 'end of philosophy' debate : a social theoretical perspective." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.390516.
15
Delport, Aletta Catherine. "Emotions, social transformation and education." Thesis, University of Port Elizabeth, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/318.
Abstract:
This thesis addresses the topic of the education of the emotions in the context of a rapidly transforming South African society. It attempts to reconfigure the conceptual landscape in terms of which we think about rationality, social transformation and education, and contests the intellectual and instrumental prejudice in the currently dominant ways of thinking about education. It reclaims a sense of what it would be to think of education in terms of cultivating humanity, as a key to the profound transformation of the South African society. It argues that the emotions should be relocated in our conception of transformation and education, because without it, education will fail to assist South African society to transform into a society where most people are able to live improved quality lives. The thesis comprises three distinct parts. The first part consists of an account of a particular cognitive theory of the emotions, as developed by Martha Nussbaum in her book, Upheavals of thought. The Intelligence of Emotions (2001). This theory is then applied in Part 2 to examine the complexities of social transformation in South Africa at the more profound, personal level. This investigation is presented as a narrative and comprises the perspectives of the author, who is a white Afrikaner female, who grew up in South Africa in the heyday of Apartheid. In the final part, the concept of ‘education for transformation’ is discussed. It is argued that, in order for education to enhance the social transformation of South Africa, social transformation should be conceived according to a fundamental aspect of Rousseau’s political philosophy, namely that the ideal society comprises two reciprocally related spheres, the political and the personal sphere. Part 3 argues that ‘education for transformation’ should be conceived according to a conception of transformation, which acknowledges this double-layered texture. It further argues that ‘education for transformation’ should primarily be concerned with transformation at the personal level, since, according to Rousseau’s philosophy, this dimension is fundamental to ensuring the stability and legitimacy of the political order. However, built on the main insights of Part 2, this thesis also argues that personal transformation is only possible within a framework of rationality, which acknowledges the emotions as constitutive elements of rationality itself. Essentially, this thesis is about the conception of human being, which should be esteemed as the most fundamental and crucial element of successful social transformation.
16
Hoffman, Benjamin K. "Reflexivity and Social Phenomenology." UNF Digital Commons, 2011. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/130.
Abstract:
This thesis develops an account of human understanding on the basis of an analysis of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, and in relation to the thought of the Kyoto School philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro. The aim is to describe shared human intelligibility as founded upon a historical tradition and maintained by concrete practices, and yet as expressed only by interpretive projections, and therefore always open to revision. An analysis of the significance of anxiety and authenticity in Being and Time, as aspects of the existential interpretive process of our lives, is accompanied by a philosophical description of everyday acts, which finds that the world is interpreted in relation to the others with whom the world is co-inhabited. This social relatedness between, on one hand, authentic, ‘individualized’ interpretation, and on the other hand, the everyday basis of intelligibility, is shown to support a potentially radical philosophy of social transformation. The first half of the text discusses the central significance of interpretation for Heidegger’s phenomenology, and argues for a reading of authenticity as a contextual, practical and individualized project. The second half develops an account of social existence in reference to Watsuji’s phenomenological ethics, and concludes with an examination of social opposition movements and the revision of the ground of intelligibility provided by a tradition and expressed in social practices.
17
Blankschaen, Kurt Martin. "Social identities and special obligations." Thesis, Boston University, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/41667.
Abstract:
Oppression makes certain social identities morally significant. I argue in my dissertation that this relevance manifests in disparate ways and that we should develop a theory about three ontologically distinct aspects of a social identity in order to explain these differences. The way institutions define people in terms of race, gender, or religion matters because that classification plays a role in how individuals can or cannot participate in society. But oppression is not only a series of structural barriers: it also fosters demeaning stereotypes that distort the way we self-identify or how we form beliefs about others. Oppression can warp interpersonal relationships as well because it enables others to impose an oppressive social identity on to us. This interpersonal aspect of oppression depends on specific interactions because we can present distinct “public identities” across different social circles: someone can come out as LGBT at home, but not at work; to friends, but not family. I use each of these aspects of a social identity to illuminate cases where oppression creates similar experiences of subordination among group members that non-members do not experience. These shared experiences can constitute a special, if undesirable, relationship among the oppressed that generates a special obligation for the oppressed to resist their own oppression.
18
Béthencourt, Julien. "Philosophie et société : esquisse d'une contribution à la définition de la fonction sociale du philosophe." Phd thesis, Université Toulouse le Mirail - Toulouse II, 2011. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00674934.
Abstract:
Ce travail de thèse est l'esquisse d'une contribution à la question suivante : comment faire de la philosophie aujourd'hui pour, non plus seulement interpréter le monde de différentes manières, mais aussi participer à le transformer ?Pour produire cette contribution, ce travail se propose de définir la fonction sociale de la pratique matérielle du philosophe dans les systèmes de production philosophiques, culturels et sociaux.C'est ainsi que ce travail définit avec les outils conceptuels de la théorie matérialiste historique de Marx, Engels et Althusser, et psychanalytique de Freud :- les pratiques déterminées de production discursives que le philosophe accomplit dans son système de production spécifique ;- la fonction culturelle particulière que ces pratiques ont pour les forces productives, les rapports et les systèmes de production des discours idéologiques dominants et (ou) émergeants, des discours savants des Sciences Humaines et Sociales et des Arts, Lettres et Langues, et des discours profanes ;- enfin, la fonction sociale générale de ces pratiques.
19
Gertz, Robert. "Moral Code: The Design and Social Values of the Internet." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2011. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/121006.
Abstract:
PhilosophyPh.D.
In the field of philosophy, the study of the Internet has mainly focused on the social responses to the technology or offered contending visions of the future forms of the Internet with little or no regard for the import of the technical features that contribute to these possibilities. Philosophy lacks a sustained investigation of the implications of the basic design of the Internet technology. This dissertation lays out a philosophical framework for investigating the social and historical relations that result in the embodiment of specific interests in the technology of the Internet. Its philosophical basis, influenced by the thought of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Andrew Feenberg, supports a social constructivist approach that includes theorization of the oppressive embodiment of hegemonic and exclusive interests in technology while rejecting the technological determinisms influenced by Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology. After establishing that three pervasive social-political interests - accessibility, openness, and decentralization - directed the design choices that produced the fundamental structure of the Internet, I consider how these embodied interests have interacted with interests arising through the commercial commodification and the globalization of the Internet since the 1990s. Critically evaluating and expanding upon theoretical work in philosophy and other disciplines, I argue that the interests of accessibility, openness, and decentralization, while potentially oppressive when appropriated to satisfy the needs of commercial advertising and dominant social relations, avert the technological hegemony and exclusivity that has concerned philosophers. The result of these embodied interests is an emancipatory ability to incorporate alternative interests and uses through dispersed collaboration and participation, which enables Internet technology to remain minimally coercive.
Temple University--Theses
20
Harter, John-Henry. "Social justice for whom?, class, new social movements and the environment : a case study of Greenpeace Canada, 1971-2000." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/MQ61564.pdf.
21
Brauer, Tony. "The equitable construction of social institutions." Thesis, Open University, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.262760.
22
Foster, Roger Stephen. "Domination and disintegration: Adorno and critical social theory." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/8569.
Abstract:
The central claim of my thesis is that Theodor Adorno's social theory harbours important insights which can bring to light significant deficiencies and weaknesses in the works of contemporary critical theorists. In order to substantiate this claim, I argue that Adorno's philosophical and sociological writings embody a coherent and systematic version of critical social theory. I then attempt to place Adorno's version of critical social theory in critical and constructive dialogue with the successors to the tradition of Frankfurt School critical theory (Jurgen Habermas and Axel Honneth). This is achieved by reconstructing and reinterpreting Adorno's key theses through insights developed in contemporary social theory. Part One demonstrates, firstly, how Adorno's critical social theory developed from out of the problems of the earlier social-theoretic 'paradigms'. In chapter two, I argue that Adorno, in Negative Dialectics, develops a conception of critical theory as a 'critical dialectic of concepts', derived from a synthesis of the Durkheimian sociology of knowledge, and Hegelian dialectic. Chapter three attempts to substantiate and develop this thesis, and also shows how Adorno develops a theory of linguistic reification. In chapter four, I attempt to expound the social theory underlying the philosophical arguments of Negative Dialectics. In Part Two, I deploy the insights derived from the analysis of Adorno's work in order to furnish a critique of Habermas's critical theory, concerned with its failure to develop an adequate critique of class- and group-specific domination (chapter five) and problems stemming from its formal/abstract conception of moral-practical reason (chapter six). I then turn, in Part Three, to the critical theory of recognition. It is argued that, by returning the concept of social struggle to the centre of the analysis, the theory of recognition is able to theorize structures of domination and oppositional praxis far more adequately than the Habermasian account. However, I argue that this theory needs to integrate insights deriving from Adorno's thesis of integration through domination. I argue that the concept of symbolic power provides for a plausible reconstruction of Adorno's integration thesis, by interpreting integration through domination as occurring at the symbolic rather than the psychic level. In the final chapter, I draw upon contemporary social theory in order to furnish an interpretation of Adorno's social theory as articulating a twofold distortion of instrumental reason, which I characterize as a dialectic of increasing integration through domination, and intensifying lifeworld disintegration.
23
Woodrow, Jonathan. "The social psychology of digital photography : a process philosophy approach." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2004. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/7724.
Abstract:
This thesis addresses the nature of the image and its relationship to human perception and memory. Traditionally psychology approaches the relationship between the image and the human in a representationalist register, in which the world represents itself through images to the subjective observer. The thesis questions these assumptions about the representational relationship between the world, the mind and the image through a study of people using digital photographic technologies. It argues that digital images exist as a complex network of technology and activity that manage their incessant movement, production, consumption, convertibility, connectedness and fragility. The digital image exposes the complex nature of the image as more than a simple representation. If this is the case, then human involvement with images as networks occurs in terms of our inclusion in the network rather than as a subjective observer positioned outside of the world. Henri Bergson proposes that we see the image in terms of a distinction between time and space rather than as an intermediary between a subject and the object. The implications of this for the way in which we think about the interaction between people and technology and the nature of perception and memory are explored through some data examples from three settings. These are; amateur photographers using digital technology; families looking through their stocks of digital images and remembering past events together and finally, displays of family member's histories and identities on the internet.
24
Guibal, Francis. "Social Sciences and Political Philosophy. Eric Weil's Post-Weberian Kantianism." Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú - Departamento de Humanidades, 2013. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/113269.
Abstract:
The historical success of sciences and their tendency to extendt hemselves universally to all of realityis a fact. In order to understand their sense, they should be referred to acultural (rational) project, whose presuppositions ought to be judged in accordance with a reason conceived both as practical (ethical-political) and speculative (philosophical). E. Weil's rigorous thought is here compared in all of these points with high-ranging positions: only after going through Hegelian, Marxian and Weberian positions he intends an original reappropiation of Kantian insights.El éxito histórico de la(s) ciencia(s)y su extensión tendencialmente universal a toda realidad es un hecho. Comprender su sentido exige que se le refiera a un proyecto cultural (racional) cuyos supuestos han de ser juzgados conforme a una razón inseparablemente práctica (ético-política) y especulativa (filosofía). Sobre todos estos puntos, el pensamiento riguroso de E. Weil se compara y se contrasta aquí con posiciones de alto vuelo: solamente después de atravesar los planteamientos hegelianos, marxianos y weberianos, es como intenta retomar,de manera original, orientaciones kantianas.
25
Hesni, Samia. "Normative discourse and social negotiation." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122428.
Abstract:
Thesis: Ph. D. in Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This dissertation lies at the intersection of philosophy of language, social and political, and feminist philosophy. The first half of the dissertation is primarily about the ways language can be used to stereotype, denigrate, oppress, or otherwise harm. The second half is about how language can be used to resist and undermine those harms. In the four chapters of my dissertation, I examine the ways in which language can shape the social world. Language allows people to reinforce social norms and systems like sexism, racism, and oppression more broadly. But it also allows people to disrupt these systems. I argue that it is worth looking seriously at the linguistic mechanisms by which individuals can do both, and the social and political systems in place that enable such language use in the first place. Only by combining the two can we start to get the full story about language, oppression, and power.
Within this broad research program, I am specifically interested in implicit discourse: language that indirectly or implicitly communicates one thing while explicitly stating another. Implicit language is extremely important to understand various mechanisms of linguistic harm and oppression. Chapter 1 examines normative generics like 'boys don't cry,' whose utterances often carry with them an injunction that boys not cry, or a condemnation of crying boys. When someone utters a normative generic like 'women stay at home and raise families,' they are reinforcing a harmful social norm without explicitly using any evaluative terms like 'should, good, right.' In Chapter 2, I problematize philosophical views on silencing, and introduce a new concept of linguistic harm, illocutionary frustration, that occurs when a hearer treats a speaker as though she does not have standing to say what she is saying.
In Chapter 3, I give a meta-philosophical analysis of socially informed philosophy of language. In it, I argue that in the service of intellectual inquiry and social justice, we would do well to incorporate types of social situatedness into our methodological frameworks.. I end in Chapter 4 by reviewing the ways in which social scripts play pivotal roles in enabling interpersonal subjugation, and offer a way out.
by Samia Hesni.
Ph. D. in Linguistics
Ph.D.inLinguistics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
26
Bethencourt, Julien. "Philosophie et société : esquisse d'une contribution à la définition de la fonction sociale du philosophe." Thesis, Toulouse 2, 2011. http://www.theses.fr/2011TOU20144/document.
Abstract:
Ce travail de thèse est l'esquisse d'une contribution à la question suivante : comment faire de la philosophie aujourd'hui pour, non plus seulement interpréter le monde de différentes manières, mais aussi participer à le transformer ?Pour produire cette contribution, ce travail se propose de définir la fonction sociale de la pratique matérielle du philosophe dans les systèmes de production philosophiques, culturels et sociaux.C'est ainsi que ce travail définit avec les outils conceptuels de la théorie matérialiste historique de Marx, Engels et Althusser, et psychanalytique de Freud :- les pratiques déterminées de production discursives que le philosophe accomplit dans son système de production spécifique ;- la fonction culturelle particulière que ces pratiques ont pour les forces productives, les rapports et les systèmes de production des discours idéologiques dominants et (ou) émergeants, des discours savants des Sciences Humaines et Sociales et des Arts, Lettres et Langues, et des discours profanes ;- enfin, la fonction sociale générale de ces pratiquesThis doctorial dissertation is an attempt to contribute to the following question: how to practise philosophy today in order to not only interpret the world in various ways, but also to participate in changing it ?To do that this doctorial thesis aims to define the social function of the material practice of the philosopher in philosophical, cultural and social production systems. Relying on both the conceptual tools of Freudřs psychoanalytical theory and those of the theory of historical materialism as used by Marx, Engels and Althusser, this thesis specifies :- The practices of discursive production accomplished by the philosopher within the framework of his or her specific production system.- The cultural function these practices have for the productive forces, the relationships and the production systems of dominant and (or) emerging ideological discourses, scholarly discourses in the humanities and the arts, and discourses aimed at the general public.- Finally the general social function of these practices
27
Sokolov, Dariush. "Nietzsche and social change." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2014. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/63021/.
Abstract:
This thesis develops a radical Nietzschean approach to social change. Its subject area is how social entities – for example, institutions, practices, norms, values, cultures – are reproduced or transformed. Its ethical and political starting point is one of resistance to capitalism. Its philosophical starting point is the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Its approach is eclectic, reading Nietzsche with post-Nietzschean philosophy and work in developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, feminist theory, and more. The thesis starts with Nietzsche's conception of history in On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche sees social transformation resulting from multiple contingent encounters of bodies with diverse ‘modes of valuation’ and forms of life. This view opposes the universalist approach Nietzsche calls ‘English Genealogy’, which runs from Hume through Darwin down to contemporary liberal ‘cultural evolution’ theories. The middle part of the thesis investigates Nietzsche's views on social processes following two main strands: the ‘psycho-physiology’ of sub-individual drives he develops in Dawn and other texts of the ‘free spirit’ period; and his encounter with Darwinism. These chapters offer accounts of mimetic and performative incorporation of values; of normalisation and subjectivation; and an ‘ecological’ approach to social evolution drawing on multi-dimensional accounts of heredity, Developmental Systems Theory, and Felix Guattari's conception of ‘the three ecologies’. The last part of the thesis applies these ideas to today's social struggles. It uses Nietzsche's Genealogy to understand technologies of domination at work in contemporary capitalism, alongside Foucault's work on power and Judith Herman's study of psychological trauma. The concluding chapter looks at how Nietzsche's thought can help develop projects of resistance to capitalism, drawing on James Scott's study of the ‘weapons of the weak’, and feminist debates on identity. Working with Nietzsche on resistance both brings out the power and takes us to the limits of his philosophy of self-transformation.
28
Bleazby, Jennifer History & Philosophy Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences UNSW. "Social reconstruction learning: Using philosophy for children & John Dewey to overcome problematic dualisms in education and philosophy." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of History & Philosophy, 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/31466.
Abstract:
Many of the problems in dominant Western education and philosophy can be connected to various dualisms, in particular reason/emotion, reason/imagination, reason/experience, mind/body, subject/object, individual/community, abstract/concrete, theory/practice and male/female dualisms. These pairs are considered opposites, with the attributes on the left supposedly superior to their dualistic partners on the right. While those attributes on the left, such as mind and reason, are traditionally associated with knowledge, autonomy, citizenship and learning, the attributes on the right, such as emotion and experience, are traditionally thought to be opposed to knowledge, autonomy, citizenship and learning. Drawing on the philosophies of John Dewey and various feminist philosophers, I will argue that the attributes that make up each of these dualistic pairs are not opposed but are actually interdependent and interconnected. For example, I will argue that all thinking and learning involves reason, experience, emotion and imagination interacting with one and other. Neither of these attributes or functions is complete or fully functional without the others. Since mainstream Western pedagogies incorporate such dualisms they are unable to fully facilitate the thinking skills, attributes, dispositions and understandings necessary for autonomy, democratic citizenship and leading a meaningful life. It will be shown that Philosophy for Children (P4C) has the potential to overcome many of the problems with mainstream education, including many gender equity problems, because it is based on Dewey???s philosophical ideals, which reconstruct many of these dualisms. An analysis of the ideals of truth, meaning, community, self, autonomy, democracy, thinking, emotion and imagination assumed by P4C will show how it reconstructs various dualisms and overcomes many problems with traditional schooling. However, it will also be shown that P4C fails to reconstruct the undesirable theory/practice dualism because it doesn???t require students to test and apply their ideas in the real world. This is even though many P4C theorists, such as Matthew Lipman, accept Dewey???s claim that all thinking and learning involve such practicality. Thus, I will reconstruct the P4C pedagogy by integrating it with a Deweyian type of service learning that I call social reconstruction learning. Social reconstruction learning involves students engaging in P4C style communities of inquiry with members of their community in order to reconstruct real social problems. Such a Practical P4C pedagogy can better facilitate reflective thinking, autonomy, active citizenship and meaningfulness.
29
Fourie, Carina. "Justice and the duties of social equality." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2007. http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/777/.
Abstract:
The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that John Rawls’s conception of social justice should be revised to include duties that will require individuals to uphold social equality. Social equality, as I describe it, is characterised by the values of, at a minimum, respect-for-persons, civility and toleration. Informal social equality occurs when these values are upheld outside of a legal or official institutional context, such as through personal choice and within civil society. Rawls’s conception of justice, which focuses primarily on institutional justice, does not include fair personal choice as a requirement of justice. As choice, I will argue, affects the distribution of primary social goods such as the social basis of self-respect, if we want to describe a fair society, we should include a description of fair choice. If informal social equality is upheld, justice in choice will also be upheld. To correct the neglect of justice in choice, we can thus describe a fair society as one where (1) institutions would be fair and (2) individuals would fulfil duties of social equality. In the context of current debate on the role of individual behaviour in social justice, my thesis can be distinguished from what I refer to as the original ‘personal choice argument’. According to this argument, advocated by G. A. Cohen and Liam B. Murphy, for example, Rawls’s principles of justice for institutions should be applied to individuals so that fair personal choice becomes a requirement of distributive justice. Cohen and Murphy’s arguments are unconvincing, however, because (i) we could apply principles other than the institutional, for example, principles for individuals, to choice and (ii) we have good reason not to apply the institutional principles to choice, for example, because they do not properly address interferences with self-respect. Instead of applying the institutional principles of justice to individuals, I argue that Rawls’s principles for individuals should be revised according to the values of social equality: 1. the duty of mutual respect needs to be revised to include requirements for individuals and associations to comply with the demands of social equality, which are (i) respect-for-persons, (ii) civility and (iii) toleration; and 2. the duty of justice should be adapted to specify that individuals are required to help establish and to uphold informal (not merely formal) justice, thus to uphold justice in personal choice.
30
Chadwick, Stephen. "The social contract tradition and international relations." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1998. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/R?func=search-advanced-go&find_code1=WSN&request1=AAIU105576.
Abstract:
This thesis is a study of the normative views of international relations proposed by philosophers in the social contract tradition of political theory. I have concentrated on the theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant and Rawls. Part one of the thesis provides the theoretical background to the practical issues of international relations discussed in part two. In chapter one I summarise the main points in their political theories which are necessary for a full understanding of their views of international relations. Chapter two is concerned with general approaches to international relations - internationalism, cosmopolitanism and international moral scepticism. Throughout part two, I use the internationalist/cosmopolitan distinction in order to evaluate the international norms proposed by the contract theorists. Part two is concerned with practical problems of international relations. Chapter three concentrates on issues of war and peace. Many of the contract theorists propose internationalist just war theories, but I show that such principles do not necessarily conflict with a cosmopolitan conception of morality. Inter-state government is discussed in chapter four. I ask whether such an institution is the logical outcome of Hobbes' political theory, and examine proposals for an international federation by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, who accepted much of Hobbes' domestic theory, and Kant who provides perhaps the most famous example. Chapter five is concerned with international distributive justice. I provide an interpretation of Locke's theory of property which leads to a radical stance in the international domain. As Rawls' theory of distributive justice has received much attention, I also examine how such a theory should apply to the international domain, paying particular attention to the views of Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge.
31
Fatic, Aleksandar. "Punishment and restorative crime-handling : a social theory of trust." Phd thesis, Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/143619.
Abstract:
The general aim of this work is to examine the main features of some of the
most influential contemporary theories of criminal justice, to look at their
conceptual and methodological relative advantages and shortcomings, and
to try to glean in them a direction for the devising of a more promising,
more optim ising way of accounting for crime and deviance, as well as for
prospects of successful social control. The general contention of the work is
that the key question to be asked in this respect is what value ought to lie at
the base of all such explanatory attempts. The general answer, with which
the 'restorative theory of crime-handling', espoused herein, deals, is that
this value ought to be trust. All those arrangements which can generally be
characterised as trust-enhancing appear to be optimising as well, and to
contribute in a constructive way to the resolution of conflicts. Punishment,
on the other hand, does not appear to be trust-enhancing; on the contrary, it
seems to play an essentially trust-degrading role in most contexts, and thus
creates an atm osphere and consequences which do not suggest the
possibility of both effective and humane social control mechanisms.
It has been the aim of theories of social control for decades to avoid
excessive punitiveness and maximise the consensus which is built around
the particular policies to that effect. Yet, most such theories have ended up
neglecting the role of trust, and em phasising justice instead. Another
contention of the arguments contained herein is to the effect that justice
ought not to play such a prom inent role in any theory of social control
which aspires to be trust-enhancing. Following the unavoidable directions
of argum ents advanced over decades, the argum ents herein deal with
theories such as 'retributivism ' and 'utilitarianism ', 'com m unitarianism '
and 'republicanism ', thereby bordering on political, and even on sociological theory. Yet, they do not remain on the level of presenting argum ents for
and against these theories - the value of what is argued here against such
theories, if there is any value in it, lies in its contribution to the fuller
illum ination of the real role of trust in a social theory of crime-control
which would derive strongly from the popular 'conflict-resolution' theories,
but which, at the same time, would seek to avoid some of their greatest
calam ities. To w hat extent this w ork m ight have succeeded in
accomplishing that end, however, is, of course, up to the reader to judge.
32
MacNeil, C. Jessie M. "Philosophical perspectives on corporate social responsibility: Theory and practice." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/28573.
Abstract:
Ethical theory must be applied in business for it to benefit society concretely. This thesis examines the problem of the relationship between theory and practice in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). After describing CSR, its evolution, and main theoretical approaches, we provide critical analyses of CSR theories, the academic literature (re: theory and practice), and Alasdair MacIntyre's views on the gap between moral theory and social practice. Key insights are: that CSR needs a robust and comprehensive ethical framework; that gains on the side of theory cannot be sought at the expense of application; and that CSR theory requires ethical tools both to understand and evaluate business practices, and to critically analyze the intersection between business and society. MacIntyre's ethical theory, his notion of a 'practice', and his analysis of how social practice distorts moral theory may be helpful in bridging the gap between theory and practice in CSR.
33
Toews, David. "The social occupations of modernity : philosophy and social theory in Durkheim, Tarde, Bergson and Deleuze." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2001. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4206/.
Abstract:
This thesis explores the relationship between occupations and the ontology of the social. I begin by drawing a distinction between the messianic and the modern as concentrated in the affective transformation of vocation into occupation. I then, in the Introduction, sketch an ontic-ontological contrast proper to the modern, between modernity, as the collective problematization of social diversity, and the contemporary, as the plural ground of need which provides a source for these problematizations. I argue that this distinction will enable me to shed new light on the occupational as a distinctly modern event. In Part I, I begin by providing a reading of Durkheim in which I argue that the occupational is to be understood ontologically, but no longer by means of the theorization of society and social types. This kind of theorization, exemplified in Durkheim's concept of solidarity, contains a fundamental ambiguity between this concept's ontological senses of original diversity and of unity in diversity. Durkheim's thought is thus first intelligible in terms of an implicit evolutionary sense of coherence or `need of wholeness.' However, the explicit evolutionary framework and its central typological difference between the mechanical and organic is an attempt to resolve the ambiguity that must fail because it addresses primarily a distinction of obligation rather than a distinction of need. Obligation is shown to be a concept of facticity which overcodes and obscures the distinction of need. I then go on to argue that sociality can be better accounted for in terms of a continuity of social becoming which is revealed in a perspective of modernity purged of the modernist tendency to metaphorize this continuity in terms such as `solidity' (Durkheim) and `flow' (Tarde). This perspective is the irreducibly plural perspective of the contemporary, which, I conclude Part I by suggesting, lies in a sense of merging with a social outside. In Part II, I turn to investigate the outside by discussing the social thought of Bergson and Deleuze. Bergson's thought is presented as an alternative to the deductivesociologistic approaches of Durkheim and Tarde, because it attempts to critically affirm the smooth duration of social continuity. However, I argue that the notion of `open society' that Bergson presents is still too tied to a model of rare spirituality and hence to the messianic perspective. I then proceed to a social-theoretical analysis of Deleuze's oeuvre, in order to show how he uses elements of a thought of continuity from Tarde (microsociology) and from Bergson (multiplicity), but that he is able to transcend the family-model-centeredness of Tarde and the rare-spiritual-modelcenteredness of Bergson, by theorizing non-modelled figures of transformative affective multiplicity inscribed within the actual, ie. `full particularities'. In my concluding chapter, I show how the intellectual trajectory which takes us from Durkheim to Deleuze can be analysed as a movement from a doctrine or relatively passive notion of social externality towards a more active social image of the outside. In particular, I am concerned to show how this image of the outside can be recontextualized in terms of a movement of occupation that can be thought of as always combining a sense of the contemporary with a sense of modernity.
34
Naughton, Linda. "Geographical narratives of exercised social capital." Thesis, Staffordshire University, 2013. http://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/2043/.
Abstract:
Social capital, as conceptualised to date, has looked at the composition of social networks and the socio-economic outcomes they produce, with very little reference to context, space, place, agency, or power. This thesis contributes to our understanding of social capital by looking systemically at the socio-spatial context in which networks emerge, and how social capital is exercised through mediating relationships with the objective of understanding how these processes are enabled or constrained in practice. Jane Jacobs approach to observing real-world, city processes from the ground up is applied to a case-study of creative practitioners working in the Stoke-on-Trent area from 2007-2011. Research methods were designed to elicit narratives from participants using a mapping exercise as a way to enact the everyday practices of the participants. These enactments were filmed as participants performed/narrated the story of their network. The narratives collected show that when social capital is conceptualised as an effect of dynamic social networks, rather than a static fund of potential resources, the processes by which individuals and groups win, lose or maintain advantage are uncovered. Exercised social capital has its own spatialities and modalities which place us nearer to, or further away from our goals. This thesis contributes both a novel framework and methods for analysing the exercise of social capital in a real world context which furthers our understanding of the co-constitution of space and society.
35
Fallis, Don. "Epistemic Value Theory and Social Epistemology." University of Edinburgh, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105269.
Abstract:
In order to guide the decisions of real people who want to bring about good epistemic outcomes for themselves and others, we need to understand our epistemic values. In Knowledge in a Social World, Alvin Goldman has proposed an epistemic value theory that allows us to say whether one outcome is epistemically better than another. However, it has been suggested that Goldmanâ s theory is not really an epistemic value theory at all because whether one outcome is epistemically better than another partly depends on our non-epistemic interests. In this paper, I argue that an epistemic value theory that serves the purposes of social epistemology must incorporate non-epistemic interests in much the way that Goldmanâ s theory does. In fact, I argue that Goldmanâ s theory does not go far enough in this direction. In particular, the epistemic value of having a particular true belief should actually be weighted by how interested we are in the topic.
36
Whittingham, Matthew. "The self and social relations." Thesis, University of Kent, 2014. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/47434/.
Abstract:
The central subject of this thesis is the nature of the self. I argue against an atomistic conception which takes the human self to exist self-sufficiently and prior to social relations, and in favour of a holistic conception which takes the self to be constitutively dependent on social relations. I defend this view against criticisms that a holistic account undermines the need for what I call 'critical distance' between subjects and their communities. This involves answering the charges that such constitutive dependence: 1) removes the possibility for individuals to determine themselves freely apart from the communities in which they engage; and 2) deprives us of an external standard with which to engage critically with those constitutive communities. I argue that the above criticisms are encouraged by reliance on a certain epistemological picture. This picture involves a foundationalist construal of knowledge that ultimately depends on a notion of an immediately given epistemic content that can serve to give us an absolute conception of an objective reality with which we can do away with partial or relative conceptions of ourselves and the world we inhabit. It is this that leads the critic to demand a standard external to communities, which in turn encourages a notion of the self and freedom that can ultimately be grounded apart from the "distortions" of social practice. I directly attack the notion of an immediately given epistemic content through a series of transcendental arguments, showing that the condition of possibility for our forming any conception of ourselves or the world is participation in social forms of life. I further argue that properly human identities are essentially shaped by the self-conceptions these forms of life make available to us. Since freedom can no longer depend on radical detachment, I offer a new account of freedom as a social achievement, based on a notion of rational progress which allows us to develop ourselves and our social world critically, drawing only on those standards available within our practices. With the notion of an immediately given epistemic content undermined, I have shown not only that freedom and rational progress are consistent with a holistic account, but that in fact they depend on such a holistic account.
37
Forbes, Ian. "The individual in Marx's social and political thought." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.372555.
38
Sheehy, Paul Andrew Patrick. "The ontological and moral status of social groups." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.271170.
39
Garcia, Quesada George Ivan. "Karl Marx : historian of social times and spaces." Thesis, Kingston University, 2017. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/40677/.
Abstract:
This thesis systematizes the role of the categories of social space and social time in the diverse phases of Karl MArx's philosophy of history, emphasizing his decisive rupture with the Enlightenment evolutionist conception of World-History in and after his 1856 'Grundrisse'. Marx's conception of social forms, rather than stages, as historical totalizations enables him to clarify essential spatio-temporal issues for his theory of history, such as multilinearity as well as combined and uneven development, thus contributing to the explanation of concrete socio-historical problems. This argument is framed by a critical engagement with Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of history, as elaborated in his 'Memory, history, forgetting'. Hence after the first chapter problematizes current Marxist and post-Marxist scholarship on the categories of socio-historical space and time, the second chapter investigates the Marxian ontological foundations of history, which in turn direct us towards the historical ontology of capitalism. The final three chapters draw on the critical realist philosophies of Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier and Andrew Sayer, in order to reveal Marx's understanding of the epistemological phases of history. The third chapter looks at Marx's theory of hsitory, which constructs historical explanations by mediating between concepts at an abstract level and empirical evidence at a more concrete level. The role of abstraction is fundamental to this phase, as it differentiates between 'modes of production' and 'social formations'. The fourth chapter examines Marx's archive and his use of source material, analyzing his critical method, his treatment of biases in his archive, and how his explanations stand up against recent investigations using other sources. The fifth and final chapter discusses the problems of spatio-temporalizing the literary form of historiographical presentation ('Darstellung'). Here the elaboration of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the 'chronotope' through Ricoeur's concept of emplotment and Hayden White's theory of tropes enriches the analysis of Marx's strategies of presentation. This is evident at the level of both a mode of production and actual social formation, namely their respective roles in relation to historical knowledge and politics. The analysis of the different phases of Marx's philosophy of history in this thesis thus possesses a normative dimension: it has the potential to spatio-temporalize the philosophy of history in general and social scientific methodology in particular - although this is not systematically developed in Marx's historiographical narratives.
40
Wissa, Matthew T. "The Case Against Redistribution: F.A. Hayek on Social Justice." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/512.
Abstract:
In this thesis, F.A. Hayek's argument is against social justice is given context, discussed, and evaluated. Hayek was one of the leading voices of libertarian ideology in the Twentieth Century. While Road to Serfdom is his most popular work, Hayek's philosophy is most fully expressed in his three volume set, Law, Legislation and Liberty. His thoughts against social justice are found the in the second volume, entitled The Mirage of Social Justice. It is the conclusion of the author that Hayek's argument against social justice, in the form of redistribution, falls short as it depends on a presupposition that an evolutionary moral and legal process will necessarily end in securing a libertarian style of government. The only possible means of salvaging the argument would to accept inherent and inviolable human rights, which Hayek fundamentally rejects as he claims the Kantian tradition.
41
Lambert, Ian J. "Realism and social science." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.278516.
42
Robinson, Paul David. "Social Theories of Reasoning." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595031126513538.
43
Ng, Kam Weng. "From Christ to social practice : Christological foundations for social practice in the theologies of Albrecht Ritschi, Karl Barth and Juergen Moltmann." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.315913.
44
Bahar, Saba. "Mary Wollstonecraft's social and aesthetic philosophy : "an Eve to please me" /." Basingstoke [etc.] : Palgrave, 2002. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy02/2001054887.html.
45
Indart, Rafael T. "Karl Popper's philosophy of social science and the problem of tyranny." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0003/NQ43428.pdf.
46
Tikhanov, Galin. "Bakhtin and Lukacs : the theory of the novel as social philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.388956.
47
Taqizadih, Davarii Mahmood. "Social-political philosophy in the works of Murtaza Mutahhari (1920 - 1979)." Thesis, University of Manchester, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.498400.
48
Chaplin, Joyce. "Mrs. Oliphant and Victorian moral philosophy : a view of social morality." Thesis, University of Reading, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.369569.
49
Brower-Latz, Andrew Phillip. "The social philosophy of Gillian Rose : speculative diremptions, absolute ethical life." Thesis, Durham University, 2015. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11302/.
Abstract:
This thesis provides an original reconstruction of Gillian Rose’s work as a distinctive social philosophy within the Frankfurt School tradition that holds together the methodological, logical, descriptive, metaphysical and normative moments of social theory; provides a critical theory of modern society; and offers distinctive versions of ideology critique based on the history of jurisprudence, and mutual recognition based on a Hegelian view of appropriation. Rose’s philosophy integrates three key moments of the Frankfurt tradition: a view of the social totality as both an epistemological necessity and normative ideal; a philosophy that is its own metaphilosophy because it integrates its own logical and social preconditions within itself; and a critical analysis of modern society that is simultaneously a critique of social theory. Rose’s work is original in the way it organises these three moments around absolute ethical life as the social totality, its Hegelian basis, and its metaphysical focus on law and jurisprudence. Rose’s Hegelian philosophy includes an account of reason that is both social and logical without reducing philosophy to the sociology of knowledge, thereby steering between dogmatism and relativism. Central to this position are the historically developing nature of rationality and knowing, and an account of the nature of explanation as depending on a necessarily and necessarily imperfectly posited totality. No totality is ever fully attained but is brought to view through the Hegelian-speculative exposition of history, dirempted experience, and the tensions immanent to social theories. Rose explored one main social totality within her social philosophy – absolute ethical life – as the implied unity of law and ethics, and of finite and infinite. This enables a critique simultaneously and immanently of society and social philosophy in three ways. First, of both the social form of bourgeois property law and social contract theories reflective of it. Second, of social theorising that insufficiently appreciates its jurisprudential determinations and/or attempts to eliminate metaphysics. Third, the broken middle shows the state-civil society and the law-ethics diremptions as two fundamental features of modern society and as frequently unacknowledged influences on social theorising.
50
Leboeuf, Celine. "The Social Constitution of the Body: Bodily Alienation and Bodily Integrity." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493502.
Abstract:
My thesis offers an account of the phenomenon of bodily alienation. Bodily alienation marks the failure to realize oneself in one’s bodily activities. I argue that realizing oneself in one’s bodily activities requires the pursuit of bodily activities for their own sake—not for the appearance they produce, and the ability to deal skillfully with one’s environment.
I characterize bodily alienation by examining three cases concerning gender and race: (i) the tendency, inflected by gender norms, to identify with certain fetishized body parts and to modify one’s body accordingly, (ii) the physical incapacitation that the gaze of a member of a dominant group (e.g., a white person’s gaze) can provoke in a member of an oppressed group (e.g., a person of color), and (iii) the personal transformations that members of non-oppressed groups achieve when they reform the bodily habits that alienate members of oppressed groups.
I vindicate the use of the concept of bodily alienation for ontologies of the body that aim to ground social criticism. I explain that the concept of bodily alienation can accomplish this task because it is descriptive and normative. Applying this concept both describes someone’s relation to her body and judges that relation as defective. Describing social practices as alienating entails that things are not as they should be. And that raises the question of how they should be changed.
My use of the concept of bodily alienation for a critical project concerning gender, race, and the body sets this project apart from other forms of social critique, such as social constructionism. Social constructionists typically make descriptive claims about the relative naturalness of a state of affairs and then make the case for changing it. For example, feminist social constructionist critiques move from the claim that gender differences are not merely a matter of biology and can be reformed, to arguments about why they should be reformed. My account avoids this two-step argumentative strategy. The concept of bodily alienation simultaneously uncovers and evaluates phenomena, while tying them to a conception of human flourishing as embodied.Philosophy