Thèses sur le sujet « European Philosopy »

This dissertation tracks the development of German political philosophy over the course of the first half of the seventeenth century, with an emphasis on the disciplinary, methodological, and pedagogical concerns of Politica writers. These figures produced large-scale technical textbooks on politics, which attempted to make sense of the chaotic civil sphere through the application of disciplinary structures. The main influences on their thought came from the sixteenth century: Aristotelianism, reason of state, natural law, and neostoicism were the competing traditions that they attempted to fit into comprehensive treatments of their subject. Generally, these thinkers have been organized by historians into schools divided by their political and confessional commitments. I argue that, while these factors were important, their disciplinary and methodological choices also decisively shaped their vision of politics, and indeed their positions on the critical questions of their day. I do this by focusing on four specific writers, one from each of the four faculties of the early modern university: Bartholomaus Keckermann from the arts faculty, Henning Arnisaeus from Medicine, Christoph Besold from Law, and Adam Contzen from Theology. I show how each Politica author?s disciplinary background inflected their construction of politics as an academic discipline, and how this in turn shaped their opinions on the confessional and constitutional debates which were then fracturing the Holy Roman Empire. While the dissertation does focus on the differences among these figures, it also tracks a trajectory which they all participated in. I argue that their attempts to discipline politics as a subject resulted in the centering of the state as a disciplinary and administrative institution. Their motivation was to prevent political upheaval through the application of technical expertise, which meant that they were able to find ever more aspects of human life which required treatment under the rubric of political philosophy, because almost anything could be conceived of as either a threat or a source of strength for the political order. This in turn suggested a vastly expanded conception of the regulatory and disciplinary powers of the state. I thus contend that, although the Politica writers are mostly forgotten today, they represent a critical phase in the intellectual development of the idea of the state.

This dissertation attempts to fill, in part, three lacunae in contemporary philosophical scholarship: first, the failure to identify the two distinct types of dialogism—psychological and interpersonal—that have been operative in discussions of the dialogical self; second, the lack of acknowledgement of the six most prominent features of interpersonal dialogism; and third, the unwillingness to recognize that interpersonal dialogism is a crucial feature of human ethical agency and identity.

In Chapter One, I explain why dialogism has been relatively neglected—and certainly underappreciated—in contemporary Western philosophy. In Chapter Two, I offer a picture of Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of dialogism. I explain why and how Bakhtin focuses on the novel in his account of dialogism. I then offer an account of Bakhtin’s claim regarding the dialogism of the ‘inner’ speech of thought. In the second part of Chapter Two, I offer an account of Gadamer’s conception of dialogism. I begin my examination of Gadamer by discussing the event ontology that serves as the metaphysical framework for his account of “play” (Spiel) and dialogue. In doing so, I explain some of the most important ideas in this part of his thought, such as his notion of understanding, tradition, effective history, the fusion of horizons, and the text. I explain what Gadamer means by genuine conversation, or dialogue, and I then describe one of the most important ideas in Gadamer’s thought—his notion of “play.”

In Chapter Three, I give a critical account of the most influential contemporary account of dialogism in psychology, offered by Hubert Hermans et al., specifically in terms of their establishment of dialogical self theory. My examination consists of several parts. First, I discuss the ways they conceptualize the self, temporally and spatially. Second, I offer a description of their account of I-positions within the dialogical self. Third, I examine their claims about the necessary features of the dialogical self, and argue against one of their claims, which says that dominance relations are intrinsic to dialogue. Fourth, I describe their account of the four kinds of relations that can emerge within the self (2010, 121). Fifth, I briefly discuss their view regarding the “[t]hree models of self and identity, associated with different historical phases” (4), that have predominated in Western history. Sixth, I consider their claim that there are “positions” within the self in addition to the “I-positions” noted above. And lastly, I evaluate their account of (what they call) the nine “features of good dialogue” (10).

In Chapter Four, I offer a critical evaluation of the account of dialogue and dialogism developed by Dmitri Nikulin, arguably the leading contemporary philosopher on the subjects. While I address the features of his account that I think are correct, I ultimately argue that it is problematic for three main reasons: first, it fails to recognize the proper relationship between dialogue and agency; second, its elucidation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for dialogue contains conceptual inconsistencies; and third, its conception of the relation between dialogue and personhood has potentially disastrous ethical implications.

In Chapter Five, I show how Heidegger’s notions of Dasein’s “Being-with” (Mitsein), “discourse” (Rede), and “solicitude” (Fursorge) help lay the groundwork for recognizing some important features of dialogism. I do three things in Chapter Six. First, I briefly discuss Charles Taylor’s work on dialogism. Second, I offer my account of the seven most prominent features of dialogism. And third, I argue that dialogism is a crucial feature of ethical agency and identity. To do so, I offer an example of a personal (and social) virtue, namely, empathy, which illustrates the important role dialogism plays in ethical agency.

Theorists of the sublime have struggled to make the category coherent because they have collapsed its causes, the experience of the event itself, its subsequent effects on a subject, the symptomatic appearance of those effects in written texts, and the effects such texts have on a readership or audience, all into one concept: "the sublime." However, by slowing down the sublime event, parsing out its stages temporally, and drawing out their distinctive qualities, we not only can make some parts of the total sublime experience effable and coherent, but also we can discover meaning and significance in texts, such as strange or difficult poems, that may otherwise seem to be incomprehensible, irrational, or irresponsible uses of language. In turn, because such sublime texts refer both to experiences and to the subject that has them, such readings invite expanded understandings of human being (noun) and human being (gerund). This hypothesis is not new, but I complicate it by understanding human being through not one but at least three interrelated lenses: existential/experiential, biological/embodied, and social/civilizational. Therefore, to show adequately the sublime event's reputed "interruption of being", its continued relevance to the study of being, and what it reveals about human being, I analyze three types of poetries interested in these three aspects of human being.

In my introductory chapter, I critically review arguments made about the sublime in literary history, both canonical – such as Longinus's, Burke's, and Kant's – and more recent, such as Suzanne Guerlac's, Francis Ferguson's, and Neil Hertz's. I attend to the sublime's delineations as well as its rewards and risks. I differ, however, when I conclude that the cause is a perception that interrupts meaning-making and self-making cognitive processes. I clarify why the experience of the event is reputably private, contingent, and virtually ineffable. I argue that the sublime can only enter public discourse through the logic of symptom, of which poems can be examples. In other words, because poems are in and of language, they show a recovery from the sublime event, to which they can refer but which they cannot represent. I read Sappho's Ode and a section of Wordsworth's "Prelude" to demonstrate the effectiveness of reading poems in this way.

In each of the chapters that follow, I read both typical poems and sublime recovery poems, highlighting the qualities that make a sublime recovery poem recognizable within the context of its respective poet's work. Thereafter, I discuss the consequences of the meaning these poems make. In my analysis, I remain faithful to the terms the poet develops across his body of work.

I introduce the existential sublime event through Zagajewski's poetry. I build the contextual background that the sublime event interrupts through an overview of Zagajewski's more typical Dasein poems. Against this background, his sublime recovery poems emerge. They expand the meaning of human being (gerund) to include atemporal experiences – a virtual contradiction in terms considering that being happens in time and that time plays a strong role in Zagajewski's poetics. As a consequence, I argue, his sublime poems propose to the reader possible being that is non-ethical, asocial, and transcendent and that contrasts with Zagajewski's speaker's more usual ethical stance of praise. They also invite important questions about human consciousness that can reinvigorate our understanding of Dasein.

In chapter three, I examine the biological sublime, an interruption in Holub's organic, empirical context that typically acknowledges both failure and paradox in science, thought, and art. In response, poems act as intensive care for being by holding off the encroachment of non-being, which threatens in moments of failure or paradox. In "Transplantace Srdce," however, Holub's speaker adopts uncharacteristic language associated with sublime recovery and reaches unempirical, rational certainty about being's presence where non-being should be. This conclusion redefines the parameters of embodied being.

In chapter four, I begin with the civilizational sublime, to which Grossman's elaborate edifice of poetic theory and poems, on which he seeks to hang the value of persons, responds. The rupture in civilization is marked by Trinity, the first atomic explosion that entered social consciousness and ushered in the use of nuclear weapons and the ever-imminent threat to repeat sociability's utter failure. Grossman's search for a non-violent account of representation that protects sociability culminates in a collection of poems distinguished by their inclusion of others' speech, which I read as a poetics of courtesy that is not violent. Courtesy requires the simultaneous presence of both the speaker and the one who is offered a chance to speak; otherwise, it fails.

In the Coda, I discuss the relevance of my approach to other theories of the sublime, to the study of poetry, and to the philosophy of consciousness. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)