This research used selected structuralist and post-structuralist theory to investigate the notions of genre, discourse and subjectivity in the contemporary self-help book. It argues that these texts have links with classical and modern ethics of optimum living and are predicated on an ontology of transformative possibility which is expressed through typical rhetorical strategies. Furthermore, that the publications are a significant element in the therapeutic discourse prevalent in contemporary society. It suggests that as well as being a highly successful commodity, the self-help book is theoretically remarkable for two reasons. Firstly it operates as a redemptive paradigm for the reader; secondly it is an 'actantial' genre because each text participates as a 'protagonist' in the 'heroic' narrative of transformation which it articulates. Furthermore a self/subject dyad inhabits the genre because while advice literature is predicated on a humanistic discourse of essential, telic selfhood, critical analysis detects the underlying dynamics of socially-constructed subjectivity. Three levels of subject activity in the self-help book are distinguished: sub-stratum (ontological level of humanistic assumptions), inter-stratum (archetypal level: the reader as 'hero'; the book as 'helper' etc.) and super-stratum (the level of every-day matters). The research concludes that the selfhelp book is a paradoxical phenomenon for the cultural theorist because it asserts the survival of personal agency in the postmodern episteme which has seen the discrediting of grand narratives and the decentring of the human subject. Additionally, the lexicon of genre studies is extended by the coining of new terms to better describe the emergence of 'symbiotic' commercial materials and a generic twelve-step sequence of discourse emergence is also offered. This traces the discourse of post-traumatic stress from its diffuse beginnings to its present linguistic entrenchment in commercial publications. The research is thus original at two levels: it provides a detailed exploration of the self-help book qua text and extends the reach of critical theory.

The thesis consists of two main divisions. The first presents an original interpretation of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. The second---premised on the first---presents a fundamental and internal critique of his philosophy. The interpretative division demonstrates the way in which the history of being is structurally grounded in the ontological conformation of Dasein. This amounts to evincing the unity of Heidegger's development of his basic philosophical project: the raising of the question of being, and requires an original account of both the philosophy of the history of being and the existential analysis of Dasein, as well as of the so-called Kehre. The critical division, which is founded upon the conclusions of the interpretative division, focuses on the structural grounding that Heidegger attempts to provide, within the existential analysis of Dasein, for his ontological demand for the overcoming of the epoch of metaphysics. This grounding is the cornerstone with which Heidegger's philosophy as a whole stands or falls. It is shown that, for internal reasons, Heidegger's grounding fails, and that the existential structures of Dasein found an essentially different ontological imperative. The most basic consequences of this failure and substitution are subsequently drawn out both for Heidegger's philosophy in particular and more generally.

Heidegger is commonly assumed to have been at first uninterested in science, and then later on positively hostile towards it. This thesis sets out to re-evaluate Heidegger's attitude towards science in general by carefully reconstructing an account of natural science that lies, I claim, at the heart of his major and early work, Being and Time. The existential conception of science articulated in this account revolves around three main issues: 1. ) The genesis of science from everyday pre-theoretical behaviour; 2. ) The structural necessity of crisis to the 'progress' of the sciences; 3. ) The transformation of the concept of scientific foundation in the light of the permanent necessity of scientific revolution. In the course of the reconstruction it becomes apparent that certain basic concepts of the existential analytic are in urgent need of reinterpretation. In particular, the concepts of objectivity and presence-at-hand need to be disentangled. Once separated, it becomes clear that Heidegger's work is not a critique of the notion of objectivity, but rather an attempt to salvage it from the wreckage of epistemology. Equally, the charge first levelled by Karl Löwith and then repeated by Paul Ricoeur that Heidegger 'forgets nature' proves premature. This rereading of fundamental ontology suggests, in addition, that Heidegger opens up a path largely not taken by 20th century philosophy of science. Heidegger's interpretation of relativity theory, taking its cue from Weyl's attempt to extend Einstein's thinking to electromagnetism, differs fundamentally from the response of figures such as Cassirer, Reichenbach, Carnap and Schlick. It offers a perspective on questions about the status of scientific theory outside of the usual three-cornered debate between empiricism, realism and constructivism. Finally, the recovery of a specifically Heideggerian conception of science, allows us to understand and evaluate Heidegger's claim that philosophy is the science of Being.

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The thesis repeats a becoming of difference and Otherness. It seeks to fold, refold and unfold an Otherness of representation. Attention is given to the core process of becoming. A disrupted pattern is maintained throughout and, sometimes, this takes the form of a labyrinth produced by an assemblage of inversions and pseudonymous writings. In this way, linear and hierarchical ordering and organization is strongly contested. A textual multiplicity is affirmed, which challenges orthodox organizational thought and conventional philosophy based on the repetition of the same, similar and identity. Experientially, immanence is made material for form an image of thought with fragments, fluctuating speeds and intensities. These folds produce four middles of thought. These arrangements of multiplicities and singularities explicate, implicate and attend to the participation of the Other. The movement is productive of inclusive Heterotopic spaces that are, at once, hospitable to the arrivante, nomads and the repetition of difference. Other theoretical developments are accommodated that address the Eternal Return, autonomy, chance, multitudes, hospitality and the folds of the inside and the outside. The Otherness of Art and Eastern thought are brought forth within the poesis of the thesis. A paradox addressed, amongst others, concerns alterity and the manner in which the thesis has and can be presented, and/or re-presented, to make clear an immanence and socially productive image of thought, which seeks only a repetition of difference.

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This thesis explores the implications for the social sciences of a thought that would loosen its ties to foundational beginnings or determinate ends, and instead seek to grasp things through the middle. Following in the wake of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, the thesis argues that to 'see things in the middle' requires the elaboration of a new image of thought, one that asserts the primacy of forces and processes of ontogenesis (or, a thought of the 'becoming of being') over the static abstractions of 'subject' and ' object' that define classical ontology. More specifically, the thesis explores the way in which theories of ontogenesis allow us to rethink a particular kind of middle gaining increasing visibility within social science and public discourse - the field of art-science collaborations - as a sites of encounter that generates new material relations of thought and bodies. To think art-science ontogenetically, I argue, is to foster a sharper orientation in thinking to the novel emergences, immanent experiences, and transversal encounters that play out prior to the bifurcation of 'Art' and 'Science' into the institutional forms that capture their creative energies and judge them according to criteria of the already-existing. Empirically, this argument is made through engagement with two contemporary examples of art-science encounter: the bioartistic practice of the SymbioticA artistic research laboratory and the Bristol-based nanoart collective danceroom Spectroscopy. This thesis is therefore an experiment in how thinking might inhabit the middle of art-science differently, and seeks to valorise those singular practices and encounters today that open potentials to exceed the ready-made channellings of disciplinary thought and practice in ways that activate other creative possibilities of life.

This thesis is dedicated to exploring the ways in which Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic philosophical school, employed beauty terms (especially to kalon) in his arguments, and what conceptualisation of aesthetic properties these usages underpin. It consists of an introduction, five chapters and an epilogue. I start my enquiry by presenting some general philosophical issues pertinent to theories of the beautiful and discussing methodological issues, including the problematic nature of fragmentary Stoic sources. Then the consecutive five chapters are dedicated to analysing and discussing the following Chrysippean ideas and arguments: the Stoic definition of beauty as summetria, the role that beauty plays in the process of acquiring philosophical knowledge, the argument that only the beautiful is the good, the Stoic theological and theodicean arguments that use the presence of beauty to establish the rational generation/maintenance of the world and, finally, Stoic ideas on human beauty, particularly concentrating on their paradoxical claim that only the wise man is beautiful. In the epilogue, I briefly summarise my arguments and discuss how Stoic ideas could be of interest even today. All my examinations of Chrysippus' ideas in this work result in the reconstruction of his theorisation of aesthetic properties in more generally as well as the evaluation of not only the significance of his ideas in their historical context but also their contribution to the aesthetic tradition in general.

Thus thesis addresses the need within human geography to attend to the ontological premises ti1at we operate amongst. It acknowledges its humanist position - written by a human, for the human - in order to consider a materialist phenomenological approach which suggests that the human is exposed to the world and that the world is 'under the skin' of the human. Through the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, the thesis proposes that we consider experience in terms of infinitely-finite and individual-worldly selves (a term specific to the thesis), who sense towards the world prior to signifying it. A self's sensory movement towards-the-world is ended by its transition into signification (representation); but, the frequency with which this occurs means that the self is necessarily infinitely finite. This ontological process fragments being and yet coheres it given that it is our participation in each other's finitude (signifying and being signified) that we share in common.