There is a double meaning in the name of this thesis. This duality emerges from how the term ‘hermeneutics’ can be applied. In one sense the hermeneutics of this thesis is a textual interpretation of the philosophical history of ontology. This is an interpretation of ontological theory from its genesis with the Pre-Socratic concern with the ‘question of being’ and onwards through its salient historical developments up until the early twentieth century. The thesis interprets these developments as nevertheless maintaining a foundational understanding of ‘being’ as ‘quiddity’ or ‘what-ness’. While the ontological tradition diverges over disagreements about ‘realism’, ‘idealism’, or ‘nominalism’, for example, these disagreements are interpreted as having an unchanging understanding of ‘being’ in terms of ‘what-ness’ that unites them. Furthermore, this traditional understanding of ‘being’ as ‘what-ness’ is documented as having an implicit connection to a conceptual model of human understanding that divides the knowing subject from the known object. In opposition to a prominent interpretation that identifies this model as a Cartesian development, it is rather presented that it has roots that can be found within the philosophy of Plato. Moreover, this model is interpreted as being contingent on the technological development and adoption of literacy that predicated an emergent and reflexive understanding of the ‘what-ness’ of the self-subject. However, this textual hermeneutics of the history of ontology also presents the challenge to understanding ‘being’ as ‘what-ness’ that occurred in the early twentieth century. This is found in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and in particular in his treatise Being and Time. This alternative understanding of ‘being’ is interpreted as presenting an ontology of ‘how-ness’. This understanding of ‘being’ as ‘how-ness’, as opposed to ‘what-ness’, is presented through Heidegger’s introduction of the concept of the ‘ontological difference’. This concept, it is shown, enables Heidegger’s understanding of human existentiality as self-interpretation. In addition, the inheritance of this ontological thesis of self-interpretative existence is traced from its phenomenological, hermeneutic, and existentialist roots. This includes the analysis of the ideas of such scholars as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Edmund Husserl. Through documenting this provenance, the duality of this thesis’ title is demonstrated. It is not only a textual hermeneutics that is presented in this treatise, but also an example of hermeneutic phenomenology. Hermeneutic phenomenology, as Heidegger argued, is presented as the methodology for an ontology that understands human existentiality as self-interpretative. This methodology is analysed, and differing interpretations of its processes are critiqued. Furthermore, by interpreting human existentiality as hermeneutic, Heidegger’s understanding of ‘being’ as temporal is elucidated. The thesis of the temporality of human existentiality is then explained in terms of its structure as ‘being-in-the-world’. The equiprimordial characteristics of ‘being-in-the-world’ are analysed, such as ‘who-ness’, ‘there-ness’, and ‘world-ness’, and these are shown to together constitute human existentiality. The thesis then concludes by demonstrating how this hermeneutic phenomenology of ontological ‘how-ness’ also enables the explication of the temporality of technological existentiality.

No description available.

Jintae Lee, Thomas W. Malone. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 34-36). / Supported by Digital Equipment Corp., the National Science Foundation, Wang Laboratories, Inc., Xerox Corporation, General Motors and Bankers Trust Company.

The central concern of my thesis is to bring into focus the problematic relation between Georges Rouault's (1871-1958) pictorial vocabulary and his subject matter: on the one hand, abstract mark-making and on the other, a refusal to cede to abstraction or formalism through an insistence that these marks remain yoked to representation. The result is an examination a way of painting that embraces its state of uncertainty, which interrogates its own construction, and strains against the very materiality it simultaneously celebrates. Chapter one traces the critical reaction to Rouault's painting in the early years of the twentieth century, which was at best mystification, and at worst, disgust. This chapter also analyses the thick painterly terms of these paintings and their resistance to conventional meaning, arguing that there are parallels between Rouault's project and contemporary experimental forms of art and literature within modernism. Chapter two continues this exploration, attending to the various relationships between surface and depth that are interrogated by Rouault's canvases. These relationships reveal the deep philosophical and theological questions at stake Rouault's painting. Chapter three explores a theological reading of Rouault's work beginning with the aesthetics of his associate, the French Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain - a reading that shows how painting can be true to its material conditions and strain towards a higher, albeit obscure, form of knowledge. Against this, the last chapter argues that the paintings also support the possibility of a bleaker world-view, aligned with Dostoyevsky's kenotic theology, in which matter potentially overwhelms the possibility of transcendental meaning. In conclusion, I argue that Rouault's painting interrogates the vocabulary of modernism and presents the 'fallen' or 'wounded' state of a painting that acknowledges its material conditions.

Husserlian Essentialism is the view, maintained byEdmundHusserl throughout his career, that necessary truths obtain because essentialist truths obtain. In this thesis I have two goals. First, to reconstruct and flesh out Husserlian Essentialism and its connections with surrounding areas of Husserl's philosophy in full detail – something which has not been done yet. Second, to assess the theoretical solidity of the view. As regards the second point, after having presented Husserlian Essentialism in the first two chapters, I raise a serious problem for it in Chapter 3. In the remainder of the thesis I endeavour to solve the problem. In order to do so, I propose to amend both Husserl's theory of essence and his theory of predication. The bulk of the emendation consists in working out an account of essence and an account of predication that do not presuppose, or in any way imply, the claims that: 1) for a universal to be in the essence of an object, either the object or one of its parts must instantiate the universal; 2) for a universal to be truly predicated of an object, either the object or one of its parts must instantiate the universal. These claims, notice, apart from being what gets Husserl in trouble, are well entrenched not only in Husserl's, but in most theories of essence and predication (at least in those that feature universals). It is thus interesting to see what an alternative option may be – even regardless of the Husserlian setting in which I work it out.

This dissertation defends an answer to the question: to what extent, if any, are aesthetic values in art objective? I defend what I call Moderate Aesthetic Objectivism, which can be summarised as follows. A work of art has a certain aesthetic value if and only if a human critic, in the circumstances ideal for the aesthetic experience of that work, would experience the work as having that aesthetic value. ‘Experience’ here is meant in a broad sense, encompassing imagination and understanding as well as perception. We should regard such a critic as someone who would detect the aesthetic value rather than make it the case that the work had that value. Experiencing a work as being aesthetically valuable in a certain way involves having an aesthetic experience which is itself valuable. Such an experience will be pleasurable, often in complex ways. Although critics in ideal circumstances for the aesthetic experience of a work detect aesthetic values rather than making it the case that the work has certain aesthetic values, the work only has those values because the resultant aesthetic experiences had by such critics are themselves valuable. The aesthetic values of a work are, however, realised by properties of the work which dispose it to cause such valuable aesthetic experiences for humans in the circumstances ideal for the aesthetic experience of the work. Those properties are what is aesthetically valuable in the work, and they are objective in the sense that their existence and character is independent of whether they are detected or responded to. This account therefore retains elements of both subjectivist and objectivist approaches to aesthetic value. It can, I argue, make sense of our conflicting intuitions about the objectivity or subjectivity of aesthetic values in art.

Nous présentons l'auto-assemblage 2D de molécules Donneuses (D) et Acceptrices (A) d'électrons sur Au(111), ainsi que leur étude par un dispositif de Microscopie à Effet Tunnel couplé à une excitation lumineuse (LA-STM). Dans un premier temps, des systèmes 2D supramoléculaires robustes (liaisons hydrogène) D et/ou A ont été élaborés par un procédé en solution. Des liaisons hydrogène sont mises en évidence sur un assemblage d'un dérivé de porphyrine (D) pouvant en établir plusieurs, montrant le lien entre les liaisons établies et la géométrie obtenue. D'autre part, un réseau poreux "hôte" à base de molécules de PTCDI (A) et de mélamine est utilisé pour diriger la croissance de molécules "invitées" à l'intérieur des pores. Des systèmes hôte-invités sont alors élaborés en utilisant soit un dérivé thiolé de porphyrine (D), soit un polyoxométalate (POM). Une étude infrarouge de surface (PM-IRRAS) montre en plus que le réseau a une influence différente sur le processus d'organisation des deux molécules.Dans un deuxième temps, la mise en place d'un dispositif de LA-STM est décrite, avec une étude réalisée sur une bicouche moléculaire D/A constituée d'un polymère (PTB7) et d'un dérivé de fullerène (PC71BM). Premièrement, les effets photo-physiques, non spécifiques aux molécules et inhérents à la technique, ont été étudiés. Cela a permis de mesurer le courant à potentiels opposés DI=I(V+)-I(V-), attribué aux transferts de charge aux jonctions D/A. La localisation de ce courant permet d'identifier les jonctions D/A actives en surface avec une résolution nanométrique. / We present the 2D self-assembly of molecular electron Donors (D) and Acceptors (A) on Au(111) and their study by Light-Assisted Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (LA-STM). Firstly, hydrogen bonded supramolecular assemblies are elaborated from solutions. On one hand, a the self-assembly of a porphyrin derivative (D) show the relationship between the established hydrogen bonds and the obtained geometry. On the other hand, a PTCDI-melamine porous host network was used to template the growth of guest molecules within the pores. Host-guest systems are then elaborated using a thiolated porphyrin derivative and a polyoxometalate (POM) molecule. A surface infrared analysis (PM-IRRAS) shows that the network has different effects on the growth process and orientation angles of the two molecules.Secondly, we developed a LA-STM setup and we analysed a polymer/fullerene (PTB7/PC71BM) D/A molecular system. After the study of the photo-physical phenomena giving rise to the photo-current, we measured the current at opposite bias voltages DI=I(V+)-I(V-). We attribute this current to the photo-absorption of the molecules and to the electron transfer at the molecular D/A junctions which allows us to identify the active junctions on the surface with the nanometre resolution.

In this thesis, I apply Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s ontology of becoming to my own learning, thinking and writing. The adopted method - nomadic inquiry, is derived from the philosophising of Deleuze, whose concepts function as pedagogic values that I mobilise throughout my writing and perform – not merely explain, to problematise common perceptions of the thesis, supervision and doctoral experience. Deleuze resists models that inhibit context-specific creativity, yet I can readily identify the defining features of my own supervision: resolutely student-centred, facilitative of free experimentation, supportive of my becoming as an academic subject and the writing through which this was achieved. Non-teleological nomadic writing does not preclude strategic intent. Hence, the thesis records the process of my learning but equally functions as a crucial resource for additional and post-doctoral writing. It was conceived as a ‘body without organs’ – a surface of inscription for affective learning processes arising in a supervisory assemblage where rigid distinctions between self and other proved unsustainable. Contra characterisation of doctoral research as solitary scholarly activity, the heterogeneity and relationality of learning emerges through my writing and in the areas to which I am drawn in my theoretical engagement. I consider former academic experiences and characterise my current supervisory assemblage as rhizomatic - a complex relational space where connections are continually made, but not fixed, in the knowledge-seeking process. Such connections are not wholly undetermined but reveal processes of stratification and destratification. I seek to show that the creative potential of the rhizomatic supervisory assemblage lies in the tensions thereby generated. I also lay bare sedimented resistances that arise as I mobilise the concept of theoretical assemblage and connect with writers like Butler and Cixous. This thesis defies the ascetic ideal pervading normative accounts of doctoral experience, academic textual production and theoretical engagement. It embodies my desire to embrace an ontology of becoming and its pedagogic corollaries.

J’analyse la nature des relations entre art et métaphysique dans la tradition de la musique classique, de la performance, et de la restauration de l’art. La première partie de la thèse est dédiée à l’étude de l’ontologie de la musique. Le Chapitre 1 examine les théories concernant ce que c’est une œuvre musicale d’un point de vue ontologique, à savoir l’Idéalisme, le Nominalisme et le Platonisme en défendant l’idée qu’aucune de ces théories n’est entièrement satisfaisante. Cela conduit dans le Chapitre 2 à une discussion sur la méthodologie adéquate à l’enquête ontologique et à une analyse metamétaphysique de l’ontologie de l’art. Je considère quatre objections contre l’ontologie de l’art: l’eliminativisme, l’esthétisme, l’historicisme et le sémantisme. La deuxième partie est dédiée à une étude de l’art performatif et de la restauration. Dans le Chapitre 3, j’étudie le concept d’œuvre en général, en soutenant que ce n’est pas nécessaire de classer tout l’art sous ce notion : il faut faire une distinction entre œuvres et d’autres phénomènes artistiques pour donner sens aux pratiques artistiques non traditionnelles. Dans le Chapitre 4, je considère la notion de performance d’une perspective historique et philosophique: les performances peuvent être comprises à travers la comparaison avec jeux et expériences scientifiques. Enfin, j’examine pourquoi l’art performatif défie notre compréhension standard de l’appréciation artistique en introduisant les notions d’immersion et d’interaction. Dans le Chapitre 5, j’étudie le concept d’authenticité par rapport à la restauration. Je me réfère à l’œuvre de Cesare Brandi pour aborder les questions ontologiques que la restauration nous présente. / I investigate the nature of the relationships between art and metaphysics in the tradition of classical music, performance art, and art restoration. The first part of the thesis is dedicated to musical ontology. I begin in Chapter 1 by analyzing theories of what a classical musical work is ontologically. I focus on Idealism, Nominalism and Platonism. I defend the view that none of these proposals is satisfactory nor able to resist objections. This leads in Chapter 2 to a discussion of the appropriate methodology for doing musical ontology. I thus propose a metametaphysical account of the ontology of art. I examine four objections against art ontology: Eliminativism, Aestheticism, Historicism and Semanticism. The second part of the thesis is devoted to the study of the cases of performance art and restoration. In Chapter 3 I investigate the concept of a work of art in general, arguing that there is no need to subsume all art under the work-concept. I claim that drawing a distinction between artworks and other art-phenomena is important to make sense of nontraditional contemporary art. In Chapter 4, I consider the notion of performance art both historically and philosophically. I contend that performances can be understood in the comparison with experiments and games. I examine the way in which performance art challenges our common understanding of art appreciation by introducing the contrasting notions of immersion and interaction. In Chapter 5, I consider the topic of art authenticity with regard to restoration. I refer to the work of Cesare Brandi to address some of the ontological problems that a philosophical analysis of restoration presents us with.

Ontologies are descriptions of the knowledge about a domain of interest encoded in computer processable languages, e.g., Description Logics, which are decidable fragments of First Order Logic. The main aim of ontologies is to define unambiguous vocabularies to facilitate knowledge sharing and integration. A critical issue with ontologies consists of their increasing complexity. To address this problem several notions of modularity have been recently proposed. Modularity notions can help in two ways: 1) If we know what sub-part of the ontology we want to work with, obtaining the appropriate module will allow us to work with that sub-part in a principled way; 2) a notion of module might induce a modular structure which allows users to explore the entire ontology in a sensible manner (perhaps finding appropriate sub-parts to work on). However, the most popular notion --- locality based modules --- while excelling at modular extraction have thus far resisted attempts to induce a modular structure. Indeed, due to their nature, locality based modules tend to occur in unfeasible numbers in ontologies. We tackle this problem by identifying basic building blocks of modules as sets of axioms which 'cling together', that is, sets of axiom such that if any element appears in a module, then all the rest due. This notion of an 'atom'' proves key to defining a useful family of locality based modular structures, the (Labelled) Atomic Decompositions ((L)ADs). In this thesis, we define (L)AD and explore its properties. We show that ADs are efficiently computable and, with appropraite labellings, provide a reasonably terse representation of the entire set of locality based modules. From ADs, we are able to distinguish so-called "genuine" modules, i.e., modules that cannot be decomposed further as the union of two or more modules. Finally, we explore several of the applications to which (L)ADs have been applied including module extraction, ontology comprehension, and modular reasoning.