Filósofos contemporâneos tendem a tratar o ceticismo de maneiras frequentemente descuidadas. Seja porque não apresentam uma noção clara do ceticismo, seja porque oferecem reações descabidas a ele. Alguns consideram que a maneira correta de abordar o ceticismo é enfrentá-lo, provando aquilo que o cético visa colocar em questão. Outros consideram que a maneira correta é recusar o desafio cético, pela rejeição das próprias questões levantadas pelo ceticismo. Uma reação diferente pode ser encontrada na forma de “argumentos transcendentais”, tais como aqueles paradigmaticamente utilizados por Peter Strawson em Individuals ([1959] 1971). Barry Stroud (1968) concebe esses argumentos como uma tentativa de mostrar que certos conceitos são necessários para o pensamento e para a experiência; conceitos que são condições para que a dúvida cética tenha sentido. Stroud sustenta que os argumentos transcendentais de Strawson, para terem um real efeito anticético, teriam de contar com um “princípio de verificação” que tornasse aquilo que o cético põe em dúvida suscetível de ser verificado ou falsificado. Em Ceticismo e Naturalismo ([1987] 2008), Strawson parece conceder a essa crítica quando passa a adotar um “naturalismo social”, o qual consiste em recusar tentativas de refutar diretamente o ceticismo, dado que os conceitos questionados pelo cético são, por assim dizer, inevitáveis por natureza, sendo, por isso, “isentos de dúvida”. No entanto, Putnam (1998) aponta uma tensão na postura anticética nessa obra que seria incompatível com os argumentos transcendentais. Frente a esses desenvolvimentos, as questões centrais que esta dissertação se propõe a responder são: como podemos compreender o ceticismo que surge na investigação de Strawson? Stroud está correto em sua objeção, segundo a qual um argumento transcendental exige um princípio de verificação para o seu efeito anticético? Existe apenas um tipo de argumento transcendental? Como deveríamos compreendê-lo? Strawson de fato muda de posição, de um argumento transcendental para um naturalismo social? Essas posições se harmonizam em suas reflexões? Argumentarei que o ceticismo de Individuals é melhor compreendido como uma variedade de ceticismo Kantiano (em oposição a um ceticismo Cartesiano) a partir dos estudos de Conant (2012). Pretendo mostrar a plausibilidade dessa leitura ao abordar detidamente duas espécies de cet icismo na obra, chamadas, “ceticismo sobre a reidentificação de particulares” (Capítulo 1) e “ceticismo sobre outras mentes” (Capítulo 2). A fim de examinar a natureza dos argumentos transcendentais e ver qual é exatamente o argumento encontrado em Individuals, apresento uma terminologia de tipos de argumentos transcendentais a partir de Stern (2000) (Capítulo 3). Isso permitirá mostrar que Stroud “erra o alvo” quando faz a sua objeção, pois o argumento transcendental que ele tem em vista é de outro tipo. Irei por fim explicitar o naturalismo de Strawson, buscando sustentar que o “espírito compatibilista” do autor, juntamente com a sua concepção de metafísica descritiva, oferece unidade à sua postura anticética. Defendo que tanto os argumentos transcendentais quanto o naturalismo social visam estabelecer certas interconexões entre nossos conceitos a fim de esclarecer o esquema conceitual que nós efetivamente temos. / Contemporary philosophers frequently tend to treat skepticism carelessly, either because they don‟t have a clear idea of it, or because they provide unreasonable responses to it. Some of them consider that the right way to treat skepticism is to confront it, proving that which the skeptic seeks to put into question. Others consider that the right way is to refuse the skeptical challenge, by rejecting the very question raised by skeptic. A different reaction can be found in the form of “transcendental arguments”, such as those paradigmatically used by Peter Strawson in Individuals ([1959] 1971). Barry Stroud (1968) conceives those arguments as attempts to show that certain concepts are necessary for thought and experience; concepts that are conditions for skeptical doubts to make sense. Stroud‟s claim is that, in order to have a real antiskeptical effect, Strawson‟s transcendental arguments would have depend on a “verification principle”, according to which what the skeptic puts in question is capable of being verified or falsified. In Skepticism and Naturalism ([1987] 2008), Strawson seems to grant that criticism, adopting instead a “social naturalism” which abandons the attempt to directly refute skepticism, since the concepts questioned by skeptics would be, as it were, naturally unavoidable, and therefore “exempt from doubt”. However, Putnam (1998) points to a tension in such an antiskeptic position, namely, that it would be incompatible with transcendental arguments. Having that debate in view, this dissertation proposes to responds to the following central questions: how can we understand the skepticism raised in Strawson‟s investigation? Is Stroud‟s objection correct, according to which a transcendental argument demands a verification principle to have an antiskeptic effect? Is there only one kind of transcendental argument? How must we understand it? Did Strawson‟s position change, from a transcendental argument to a social naturalism? Could these positions be harmonized in his reflections? Following a terminology proposed by Conant (2012), I will argue that skepticism in Individuals is better understood as a variety of Kantian skepticism (as opposed to Cartesian skepticism). My aim is to show the plausibility of that reading by presenting a careful reconstruction of two variants of skepticism, namely, skepticism about reidentification of particular (Chapter 1) and skepticism about other minds (Chapter 2). In order to examine the nature of transcendental arguments and to clarify what exactly is the kind of argument to be found in Individuals, I will also make use of a categorization of kinds of transcendental arguments proposed by Stern (2000) (Chapter 3). Stroud‟s objection misses its target, given that the transcendental argument that he had in view is not the one Strawson himself employs. Finally, I will try to make explicit the content of Strawson‟s naturalism, seeking to support his “compatibilistic spirit”, showing that his conception of descriptive metaphysics offers a unity to his work. I maintain that both transcendental arguments and social naturalism aim at establishing certain interconnections between concepts for the purpose of clarifying the conceptual structure that we actually use.

O presente estudo pretende fornecer um esclarecimento acerca do idealismo transcendental de Kant, através da análise de um problema específico e recorrente no âmbito de sua interpretação: o chamado “problema da afecção” (aqui compreendido como a dificuldade de se compatibilizar (i) a tese da incognoscibilidade das coisas em si mesmas e (ii) a tese de que coisas existentes independentemente de nós nos afetam). A relevância da análise desse problema para a compreensão da posição kantiana reside na ligação mantida entre as duas teses litigiosas que o constituem e dois aspectos gerais e absolutamente fundamentais do idealismo transcendental, que são, respectivamente, seu aspecto idealista e seu aspecto realista. Essa ligação também explica porque mal-entendidos acerca da macro-estrutura da posição de Kant (i.e., acerca de seu caráter “realista” e/ou “idealista”), podem ter sido responsáveis por interpretações equivocadas do papel das duas teses pontuais que constituem o problema em pauta — e isso tanto por parte dos seus críticos, quanto por parte dos seus presuntivos “defensores”, como tentarei mostrar através da análise de alguns casos exemplares. A convicção que move o presente estudo ´e a de que, para impedir tais mal-entendidos, faz-se necessário um esforço reflexivo que priorize a natureza peculiar do procedimento argumentativo de Kant, o qual prescinde e mesmo se opõe a qualquer modelo intuitivo que possamos ter acerca das relações entre “sujeito” e “objeto”, “mente” e “mundo”, exigindo, consequentemente, para sua melhor compreensão, que se proceda a uma inversão completa da “imagem” que guia nossas especulações acerca dessas relações — exatamente como nos pede o autor da Crítica ao apresentar sua proposta de “revolução copernicana”. Como resultado, defenderei que o “problema da afecção” só constitui um “problema” legítimo se supusermos uma determinada compreensão da macro-estrutura do idealismo transcendental, e, por conseguinte, dissolve-se quando a abandonarmos em prol de uma compreensão alternativa, fundamentada em um novo modelo de explicação da cognição humana, no qual o sujeito assume um papel central, sem prejuízo do ponto realista expresso pela tese da afecção. O que tentarei mostrar ´e que esse “realismo” não é de fato uma posição filosófica: ele não ´e o resultado de nenhum argumento — como, per contra, o é o “realismo empírico” — nem tampouco é assumido dogmaticamente no ponto de partida da análise — como faria o defensor do “realismo transcendental”, guiado por um modelo da cognição posto em cheque por Kant. O que este último autor pretende contemplar, no nível filosófico da análise da cognição, ao afirmar a necessidade da afecção, é simplesmente o que se poderia chamar de atitude realista “ordinária”, “pré-reflexiva”, da qual todos n´os compartilhamos, e que pode ser expressa linguisticamente pelo dito: “experimentar não é inventar”. Ao contemplar essa atitude, Kant d´a um passo em sua análise que não é passível de justificação — pelo menos no sentido do fornecimento de uma “prova” — mas que tampouco pode ser posto em dúvida, uma vez que a própria pergunta que deveria expressar essa dúvida exige que se fale acerca daquilo que está aquém dos limites do sentido, e, por isso mesmo, não pode ser formulada (com sentido). / The present study aims to offer a clarification of Kant’s transcendental idealism, fo- cusing the analysis on a specific and recurrent problem of his interpretation: the so called “problem of affection” (understood here as the difficulty of making compatible (i) the thesis of the incognoscibility of the things in themselves, and (ii) the thesis that things existing independently of us affect us). The relevance of the analysis of this problem, in order to understand Kant’s position, lays in the connection between the two litigious theses which constitute it and two general and absolutely fundamental aspects of the transcendental idealism, viz., respectively, the idealist and the realist ones. Attending to this connection may also help to explain why misunderstandings concerning the ma- crostructure of Kant’s position (i.e., concerning its “realist” and/or “idealist” character) could have been responsible for mistaken interpretations of the role of the two theses which constitute the problem of affection — and this both from the side of his critics and of his presumptive “defenders”, as I shall show through the analysis of some exemplary cases. The conviction which moves the present study is that, to prevent such misunders- tandings, a reflective effort must be done in order to understand the peculiar nature of Kant’s argumentative procedure, which does without and even opposes any intuitive mo- del which we can have concerning the relations between “subject” and “object”, “mind” and “world”, demanding, therefore, for its better comprehension, that we proceed to a complete inversion of the “picture” which guides our speculations about these relations — as it is required by the author of the Critique himself, when presenting his proposal of a “Copernican revolution”. The main result is that the “problem of affection” only constitutes a legitimate “problem” if we assume a specific understanding of the macros- tructure of transcendental idealism, and, consequently, it dissolves when we replace that understanding by an alternative one based on a newmodel of explanation of the human cognition, in which the subject assumes a central role, without damaging the realist point expressed by the affection thesis. What I shall defend is that this “realism” is not in fact a philosophical position: it is not a result of any argument — as, per contra, it is Kant’s “empirical realism” — neither it is assumed dogmatically at the starting point of the analysis — as a “transcendental realist” would do, guided by a model of the cognition which Kant wants to replace. What it is intended by Kant, in the philosophical level of the analysis of cognition, when affirming the necessity of affection, is simply what we would call the “ordinary”, “pre-reflexive”, realist attitude, which we all share and which can be linguistically expressed by the dictum: “to experiment is not to invent”. When addressing this attitude, Kant takes a step in his analysis which is not capable of justification — at least in the sense of having to receive a “proof” — but which we are equally not capable of doubting — given that the question itself, which should express that doubt, requires that one speaks about that which is prior to the bounds of the sense, and, therefore, cannot be formulated (with sense).

Submitted by Paula Quirino (paula.quirino@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-11T18:05:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO Cleonardo Gil de Barros Junior.pdf: 1931785 bytes, checksum: 3c0c805ea814bd6bb4118d09a2a6a07d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-11T18:05:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO Cleonardo Gil de Barros Junior.pdf: 1931785 bytes, checksum: 3c0c805ea814bd6bb4118d09a2a6a07d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / CNPq / Este trabalho tem como objetivo entender a formação dos pastores pentecostais: o processo da constituição de suas subjetividades, bem como as práticas e representações envolvidas na definição daqueles que seguirão a carreira de pastor pentecostal. Apresentarei dois processos que entendo serem essenciais para a formação do pastor: o primeiro é a construção da narrativa do chamado, na qual o líder pentecostal consolida sua vocação e mostra que foi escolhido por Deus para exercer um ministério específico no mundo. O segundo processo consiste na necessidade – e obrigação - que os vocacionados têm de serem “usados por Deus”, ou seja, agirem direcionados pela unção de Deus, termo por eles designado para representar o poder transcendental, especial e principalmente, na performance da prédica direcionada ao restante dos fieis. As análises aqui apresentadas baseiam-se em trabalho de campo conduzido, primeiramente, na Escola de Líderes da Associação Vitória em Cristo (ESLAVEC), realizada na cidade de Águas de Lindóia, em São Paulo, em dezembro de 2012. Após o congresso, acompanhei jovens pastores e candidatos ao pastorado pentecostal em algumas igrejas, principalmente nas filiais da Assembleia de Deus Vitória em Cristo no Recife, nos bairros de Boa Viagem (a sede pernambucana) e Cordeiro. Tendo percebido a dimensão interdenominacional da ESLAVEC, também acompanhei e entrevistei jovens pastores pentecostais das igrejas Vida e Paz, na cidade de Camaragibe (PE), e a Igreja Batista Missionária Palavra Viva, no bairro da Várzea, em Recife, como contraponto reflexivo, no intuito de testar os limites de minhas generalizações no campo pentecostal a respeito da constituição do líder pentecostal.

Submitted by Paula Quirino (paula.quirino@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-05T17:33:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO Paulo Vicente Gomes Silva Filho.pdf: 806657 bytes, checksum: 3fb51cea6cbfe5f5ab6c062cb7e1b30e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T17:33:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO Paulo Vicente Gomes Silva Filho.pdf: 806657 bytes, checksum: 3fb51cea6cbfe5f5ab6c062cb7e1b30e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Nossa dissertação tem como objetivo principal analisar a teoria da verdade em santo Tomás de Aquino, mais especificamente, o problema da adequação entre o objeto conhecido e o intelecto que conhece. Através da análise epistêmico-metafísica, santo Tomás deve demonstrar como é possível obter conhecimento racional dos diversos entes e como este conhecimento deve estar exatamente proporcionado ao intelecto que conhece. Santo Tomás também resolve um problema que reside no fato de a alma dos indivíduos serem essencialmente unas e distintas umas das outras, necessariamente o conhecimento gerado por elas ser também individual e, contudo, a verdade, que é universal deve ela ser comunicada a todos, gerando assim uma tensão entre as diversas almas que conhecem individualmente e a noção da unidade na universalidade da verdade.

Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a combat sport where pugilists combine various martial art forms to compete in sanctioned bouts of hand-to-hand cage fighting. Through immersive ethnographic research at an MMA gym, this thesis presents a carnal sociology that investigates rigorous human sparring as a method of human liberation. Carnal sociology is a method of embodied inquiry where the sociologist uses their own body to investigate social phenomena of interest. Chapter 1 reveals connections between modern sparring encounters and early religious violence as described in Émile Durkheim’s sociology. I argue that human sparring is a form of violent and primitively religious prayer that allows the sparrer to extract originary feelings of human agency that are stored in the social energies of sparring intensity. Chapter 2 explores current debates regarding gender in modern mixed-sex martial arts gyms, arguing for a more patient approach to conceptualizing gender in sparring. Despite scholars depicting the history of sparring as being saturated with violent expressions of masculinity, modern sparring practices appear to present a novel space for men and women to enter into freer associations with gender on their own terms. In Chapter 3, I expand on Dale Spencer’s (2009) concept of body callusing, where instead, I argue that sparrers are primarily drawn to sparring to engage in existential callusing where the sparrer is driven towards a mastery of the non-body to overcome death anxiety. Drawing on participant diary entries, field notes, and immersive ethnography, this thesis argues that human sparring is best understood as a mechanism of human liberation that is undertaken by sparrers through a unique transcendental phenomenology. Sparring violence allows practitioners to overcome certain limitations embedded in everyday human thought by becoming intoxicated by especially altered states of consciousness as a means of accessing primary qualities of the human condition. / Graduate / 2022-04-14

ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I occupy two realms of philosophy that have not been commonly associated. On the one hand, I enter into debates about the proper interpretation of Kant, specifically having to do with the very fractured debate on the nature and applications of transcendental idealism. I adjudicate on the matters of the relationship between appearances and things in themselves, i.e. whether it is epistemological or ontological, the way in which TI resolves the antinomial conflict of reason as it thinks the unconditioned in its exploration of cosmological questions, and the way Kant applies TI to articulate the intelligible and empirical characters in his metaphysics of agency. In addition to this historical research, I also turn to contemporary formulations of libertarian freedom. Libertarianism in free will debates is the view that free will is incompatible with determinism (i.e. incompatibilism), and free will exists. Libertarianism is a competitor to compatibilist views that claim that free will is compatible with determinism, i.e. the view that there is a unique outcome given a past and laws of nature characterizing the past. Within libertarianism, there are important differences in terms of the metaphysics of free will. Most contemporary libertarians opt for a reductionist metaphysics, in which causation consists in relationships between events and does not involve underlying grounds or substances. Both event-causal and non-causal libertarianism accordingly ground their views of freedom on the interplay of psychological events conceived of as states of affairs at instants in time. Event-causal accounts locate free will in indeterministic causal series, involve conflicting sets of motivations that resolve themselves probabilistically into a certain kind of action. Non-causal accounts do not attach free will to causality at all, instead associating it with a spontaneously occurring event. ECL and NCL struggle with establishing how the agent actually settles her action. If the action is merely the indeterministic byproduct of a set of psychological processes or process, then what ultimately occurs is not up to the agent but a product of chance. ECL and NCL nevertheless object that even an action settled by chance is done consciously and according to reasons. But these criteria are aligned with compatibilist criteria for free will. Compatibilists deny to the agent the unconditioned power to choose, which is independent of any prior determination but also not subject to chance. They point out, though, that the action is externally unconstrained, or that, if the reasons had been different, the agent would have acted differently. Since contemporary libertarianism deprives the agent of control, and creates a kind of pseudo-agent that acts ultimately according to chance, I explore other metaphysical frameworks for free will. Agent-causal libertarianism involves the agent directly causing her action as a substance. It is not some state of affairs that causes the action—a desire or belief characterizing the agent’s psychology at a certain time—but the agent herself. Agent-causation promises to resolve the problem of control associated with event-causation. The agent-caused action is neither produced deterministically from a prior event, nor is it an indeterministic fallout from probabilistic causation. Instead, it is caused by an agent-substance able to act independently of events. Timothy O’Connor is a well-known and articulate defender of agent-causation, but he also subscribes to the naturalistic framework popular in contemporary metaphysics. Even though he accepts the reality of emergent properties, the agent-cause, which has a special capacity for self-determination, is supposed to be causally united to a microphysical level where there is only passive event-causation. In this dissertation, I seek to frame agent-causation in terms of transcendental idealism. Rather than establishing the level of event-causation as metaphysically fundamental, I explore an idealistic metaphysics in which the empirical world in the spatiotemporal framework of human experience is not an absolute measure of reality. The human person is a hybrid creature, spanning two domains. On the one hand, the person exists in the empirical order in space and time. It is characterized by events subject to a causal law, by which they are accounted for in terms of prior events. On the other hand, there is a deeper level to the person, not encompassed within the limited structures of human experience. On this deep intelligible level, the human person is able to serve as the unconditioned ground of its empirical character. / Philosophy

The following inquiry pursues two interlinked aims. The first is to understand Wittgenstein's idea of non-foundational certainty in the context of a reading of On Certainty that emphasizes its Pyrrhonian elements. The second is to read Wittgenstein's remarks on idealism/radical skepticism in On Certainty in parallel with the discussion of rule-following in Philosophical Investigations in order to demonstrate an underlying similarity of philosophical concerns and methods. I argue that for the later Wittgenstein, what is held certain in a given context of inquiry or action is a locally transcendental condition of the inquiry or action in question. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein's analysis of the difference between knowledge and certainty forms the basis of his critique of both Moore's "Proof" and radical skepticism. This critique takes the shape of rejection of a presupposition shared by both parties, and utilizes what I identify as a Pyrrhonian-style argument against opposed dogmatic views. Wittgenstein's method in this text involves describing epistemic language-games. I demonstrate that this is consistent with the rejection of epistemological theorizing, arguing that a Wittgensteinian "picture" is not a theory, but an impressionistic description that accomplishes two things: (i) throwing into relief problems with dogmatic theories and their presuppositions, and (ii) describing the provenance of linguistic and epistemic practices in terms of norms grounded in convention. Convention, in turn, is not arbitrary, but grounded in the biological and social natures of human beings--in what Wittgenstein calls forms of life. Thus there is a kind of naturalism in the work of the later Wittgenstein. It is a naturalism that comes neatly dovetailed with Pyrrhonism--a combination of strategies traceable to Hume's work in the Treatise. I read Hume as someone who develops the Pyrrhonian method to include philosophy done "in a careless manner," and argue that Wittgenstein adopts a similar method in his later works. Finally, I explain the deference to convention in the work of both Hume and Wittgenstein by reference to a passage in Sextus' Outlines, on which I provide a gloss in the final chapter of this work.

Thesis advisor: Marius Stan / This dissertation is about the immortality of the self and whether from a transcendental idealist perspective, one could sustain this notion based on theoretical grounds. It is well known that Kant closed this door in the Critique, and this is the position that Kantian scholars defend. But has Kant set up a series of dogmatic premises that presuppose that we accept conclusions for which Kant offers no argument? Thus, this dissertation aims at a minimal ontology of the human self within an idealist framework. To do this, I turn to Schopenhauer’s ‘perfected system of criticism.’ Without abandoning idealism, Schopenhauer introduces an objective perspective that suggests a more ontological robust understanding of the self. Although Schopenhauer’s position can be interpreted in a way favorable to theoretical arguments for the immortality of the self, his commitment to an identity of brain/mind, and the consequences that he draws from this, obscures some of his most important contributions. To tackle this issue and others, I analyze the Plotinian perspective, a philosophical position that blends epistemology and ontology which I think solidifies my interpretation of Schopenhauer and breaks the supposed identity between brain/mind. Thus, theoretical arguments for the immortality of the self are possible when idealism is an account in which epistemology and ontology intermingle. Specifically, an argument is supported by a premise that is accepted by both Plotinus and Schopenhauer, namely, that of the existence of Ideas, real objects external to the human mind which are responsible for the existence of sensible individuals. These ideas are in themselves unified by a higher principle which Plotinus names the One and Schopenhauer the Thing in Itself. In absolute terms, this ultimate reality is the root of our true self, but we are not identical to it because in human beings there is multiplicity which manifests itself in us by how we cognize things as external to ourselves (understanding) and how we desire things that we do not find within us (will). Chapter 1 opens with a discussion about the ‘true self’ according to Kant. Although this true self could be identified with the pure apperception of the Transcendental Deduction given that Kant argues that it is the source of unity of experience, after examining the different degrees of unity in representations, I conclude that the unifying principle of all sensible experience and the subject itself exist in a non-sensible world. The intelligible character of the Third Antinomy could be that principle, but I reject this in favor of the thing in itself. Nevertheless, the intelligible character’s residence as an individual in the non-sensible world hints at the construction of theoretical arguments for the immortality of the true self. Chapter 2 argues that Schopenhauer also rejects the role assigned to the pure apperception: only the thing in itself is the original source of unity. Schopenhauer accepts the Kantian intelligible character with clear indications that it is an ontologically real entity. The ontological import of the intelligible character reinforces its role in seeking a theoretical argument for the immortality of our true self. I propose that a pathway to a theoretical argument in favor of the immortality of the true self is also suggested in Schopenhauer’s doctrine of Ideas. The subject of cognition, through the alteration of its cognitive faculties in aesthetic contemplation, discovers itself as the correlate of a Pure Subject of Cognition whose objects are Pure Objects or, as Schopenhauer calls them, Ideas. In this alteration, the empirical subject of cognition is ‘elevated’ to the intuitive grasping of Ideas as a Pure Subject. Among Ideas, I argue that Schopenhauer points to something that can be interpreted as an idea of individual. Given the immortal nature of Ideas, we must also be immortal. Chapter 3 focuses on the question about immortality in both Kant and Schopenhauer. On the one hand, I show that Kant has not abandoned the notion of the human soul or its immortality. Instead, he claims to have clarified the origin of all disputes regarding the human soul while laying out the rules for guarding ourselves against future errors. On the other hand, Schopenhauer has no problem accepting that immortality is a fact of common sense, but he rejects that the individual survives. He bases this conclusion on his conviction that individuality emerges with the intellect, while the intellect only emerges with the brain. The subjection of the intellect to the brain is one of the most salient features of Schopenhauerian psychology. However, I propose that Schopenhauer’s objective perspective, a perspective whose implications are hardly at the center of attention in Schopenhauer’s studies, cannot be used to its full potential – as for example to defend that the individual human being is immortal too – unless this identification of intellect and brain is abandoned. To find arguments that can be used to differentiate the mind from the brain, I propose the study of Plotinus. Chapter 4 aims to provide a framework to illuminate the possibilities built into Schopenhauer’s objective perspective. The survey of Plotinus’ philosophy of self and immortality in this chapter suggests interesting starting points for a new interpretation of some of Schopenhauer’s insights. An important consequence of this study is the formulation of arguments to show that the mind or intellect cannot be characterized as identical to the brain. After studying Plotinus, a fact becomes clear, namely, that Schopenhauer, although critical of the concept ‘soul’, does not discard its content; instead, he finds ample use of it for his own unique purposes. Chapter 5 concludes that the discussion of Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s psychology reveals the flaw in their respective projects, namely, their demand that cognition of the human soul should mirror cognition of sensible objects. This is a conclusion that is also revealed by the study of Plotinus. However, I reaffirm my position that Schopenhauer’s idealism is a step forward in the right direction. I discuss four ‘great themes’ – born from the encounter between Schopenhauer and Plotinus – which provide the general context that helps me propose how the theoretical argument for the immortality of the true self works in transcendental idealism. I argue that these four great themes, areas where ontology and epistemology intersect, refocus not just Schopenhauer’s philosophy by helping us to become aware of the nonverbalized implications of his metaphysics, it even suggests that Plotinus’ metaphysics could benefit from the Schopenhauerian reflection. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

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