Both Plato's theory of virtue and his attitude towards democracy -the two being correspondent- change significantly as we move from the middle to the late dialogues. The Republic is a substantially authoritarian work which expresses an unmitigated rejection of democracy. Its authoritarianism is deeply rooted in the fact that its ethical and political assertions are justified on a metaphysical basis. Plato suggests that virtue and metaphysical knowledge legitimize political power, but both virtue and knowledge are so defined as to be attainable only by a tiny minority. In the Politicus Plato reasserts the superiority of a complete virtue grounded on philosophical knowledge, but seriously questions the attainability of this ideal. In the closing part of this dialogue Plato demonstrates an interest in history and in this respect the Politicus anticipates the Laws, where political theory is not justified by metaphysics, but is informed by historical experience. More specifically, Plato attempts to reproduce on a theoretical level a legislation similar to the actual historical legislation of Solon and he underlines the need for a moderate state involving elements from different constitutions. Because Plato adopts a historical perspective in the Laws, his earlier authoritarianism is severely curtailed (though not completely abandoned). So, despite still holding a low opinion of democracy, Plato does use some democratic elements in his Magnesian constitution and the predominant conception of moral virtue put forward in the Laws is not the highly exclusive virtue of the Republict but a virtue falling within the capacities of the ordinary citizen. In comparison to the state of the Republic the city of the Laws is for Plato only a "second best". Even so, however, the latter dialogue with its moderation, its rejection of absolutism and its surprisingly modern emphasis on the accountability of all officials constitutes a contribution of lasting interest to Western political thinking.

This thesis uses Deleuzian cybernetics to advance upon post-modern accounts of the contemporary image economy. It begins with the hypothesis that the schizophrenic behaviours of late capitalism have induced an irreparable crisis in the inherited `specular economy' (Irigaray). This is manifested as the breakdown of the laws of generalised equivalence between truth, value and meaning and the end of a stable signifier-signified relationship - theorised as the escape of reality into 'hyperreality', or the world become simulation according to Baudrillard. It will expose the insufficiency of post-modern accounts which theorise this crisis in representation via methods which fail to escape their own always already representational terms and it will then rigorously follow through the implications of an image economy which is constituted by simulations which are `genuinely' sourceless, which do not imitate a prior reality but which rather synthesise forces and relations. To escape the closed loop of representationalism, it will divert attention away from the signifier and will concentrate on the sub-representational power of images to re-engineer reality and to re-invent the limits of the body. Using the theory and practice of Deleuze, Spinoza, Bergson, Benjamin and Virilio, it will treat images as planes of corporeal becoming - as material entities, virtual avatars, possessional states and conductors of pre-personal affect. Post-modem accounts which cite the overwhelming predominance of images sit uncomfortably with the theories of French anti-ocularcentrism - accessed here via Irigaray and Lyotard - which mark the demise of vision and its attached representational order. This paradox requires that a new perceptual relation be mapped - figured here as entirely corporeal, as tactile and synesthetic (Mcluhan) and therefore immersive. Both 'affect' and 'intensity', as modes of pre-personal perception, will be treated as tactile interactions for these responses to images demand that a body be always 'in touch' with its environment, always anorganically altering its perceptual capacities by rules of feedback. It will be argued that in this reality studio, the body no longer perceives via a specular light source, solid form and assumed phallocentric meaning. The proposed synthesis between cybernetic imaging technologies, immanent perceptual criteria and the ever-changing state of the body requires an engagement with the female since she bears a privileged relation to this scenario. In the specular economy, women have been assumed, like faithful images, to secondarily reproduce an underlying, phallocentric truth. However, it will be shown that just as images can work nonrepresentationally, so too can female bodies; on the one hand appearing representational but on the other conducting radically subversive effects. Where bodies and images are such simulatory becomings it will be shown how the female is neither representationally ordered (social constructivism) nor essentially defined (biological reductivism) but is rather cybernetically engineered. Throughout, her privileged access to the virtual realm beyond language will be used to substantiate the major claim of this thesis that cybernetic simulation is more concerned with the material alteration of an environment rather than with the implementation of linguistic obligation.

The Vanishing of Jean Baudrillard examines the question of Jean Baudrillard's desire for his own disappearance as theorist. The thesis is an evaluation of the philosophical significance of his work. This is only possible by disengaging his writing from the problematic of 'postmodernism'. The category as applied to his work serves to justify perceived frivolity and aesthetic indulgence. The age of post-modernity is understood to herald a civilization of the image, or of simulation. Baudrillard's analysis of the simulacrum is often brought to bear as a theoretical justification for this argument. However for Baudrillard the simulacrum is not an image. As he conceives it, the simulacrum has the effect of undermining basic principles of reason and causality. The simulacrum qua model has the structure of anterior finality. Ultimately it renders problematic traditional conceptions of theory and its relation to the world. The transformation of the question of production provides the key to his work. Production as the fundamental logic of political economy and representation is superseded by the process of reproduction and simulation. The scene of the real and representation gives way to the exacerbated representation of the obscenity of the hyperreal - the absolute proximity of the more real than real. The hyperreal is not the simple destruction of causality or the production of ends and values but their excess. According to Baudrillard all critical discourse is a function of the previous order of representation. It only serves to sustain the myth of the real and the values of subjectivity. Through his elaboration of the processes of seduction and the fatal strategy Baudrillard attempts to access events which absorb the subject, the real, value and all sense. In this way the vanishing which Baudrillard aspires to can be perceived, though not as a project. His writing becomes the attempted elucidation of an impossible event, without reason, use or future. It is an event that cannot be reconciled to any form of subjectivity.

In this thesis I argue that friendship holds a unique and unusual place in the work of Maurice Blanchot (1907-). It traces the appearance of this relation in his essays during the period from 1946 to 1962. Key to his work at this time, j argue, is the work of his friend Georges Bataille (1897-1960), whom he met in 1940. The influence of each writer upon the work of the other, I argue, is inseparable from the thought of friendship which both pursue, albeit in different and apparently conflicting ways: Bataille figures the relation to the friend as complicity, a term which he presents in terms of a quasi-ontological determination 'the labyrinthine constitution of beings'; and Blanchot locates friendship in terms of a movement of discretion or discontinuity which interrupts being in order for there to be relation as such. It is shown how both thinkers reinscribe friendship into their work in general through these figures, which allow them to articulate questions of memory, death and the 'work'. It is in this sense that friendship, for both writers, is 'at work' within their work. Central to this determination of 'the work' is G. W. F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, which had been introduced into French intellectual life principally by two commentators, Alexandre Kojeve and Jean Hyppolite. The figural differences between complicity and discretion are traced to their respective readings of Hegel. Bataille's debt to Kojeve's interpretation forms the starting point of this linkage between the question of friendship and the status of the work. The pivotal role which Kojeve ascribes to the relation of mastery and slavery - the emergence of self-consciousness as the work of recognition [Anerkennung] - is used to draw out Hegel's genetic account of intersubjectivity (in recognition, love, and friendship). I show that Bataille's conception of sovereignty not only seeks to oppose this dialectic of mastery ... Hegelianly ... ; it also situates itself within this dialectic at the very moment which Kojeve defines in terms of the limited aniniality of friendship and love. As a result, Bataille's thought of friendship extends to characterise the impossibility into which this dialectic is inevitably collapsed. Yet the question remains as to how far his reliance upon Kojeve puts this strategy of collapse under an ever-present threat of having to repeat those 'Hegelian' strategies which he claims to have 'undone'. The final chapter in the thesis, therefore, sets out a characterisation. of Blanchot's reading of Hegel. Against the grain of most Blanchot commentaries, I show that Blanchot's reading cannot be derived solely from Kojeve. By linking the pivotal function of terms such as 'disquiet' ['Unruhe'] and key passages from Hegel's texts, it is argued that he draws extensively upon the commentaries and translations of Hyppolite: this approach allows him to amplify the importance of language in the Phenomenology of Spirit; and to identify in this text key questions of ambiguity - such as the relation of language and negativity; the place of memory in the work of art; and the fate of art in the modem world. It is Hegel's ambiguous linkage of friendship with the latter which leads to his own effacement of Bataille's relation between friendship and art, and to the definition of a 'work of friendship' in the self-effacement of discretion.

This dissertation is a polemical exegesis of Heidegger's 1920's position with respect to the foundational, extracting from his thought an original pre-conception of the foundational which does not conform to current patterns of Heidegger interpretation. This might be expressed as a rescuing of foundations from metaphysics. The first half of the dissertation concentrates on methodological idiosyncracies in the semantic, syntactic and macrostructural organisation of foundational ideas, an analysis which begins to yield a number of "patterns" embedded in the language and thinking of Heidegger, patterns which, for example, subvert the propositional and reverse the normal processes of understanding. These patterns are "paratypes", the tools of "disas-sembling" (the latter term describes that in Heidegger's thought which provides the original motivation for the later development of deconstruction). The second half of the dissertation applies and extends these findings in two directions: firstly, with respect to the internal development of the Sein und Zeit project, by exploring the coalescence of temporality and foundations; secondly, with respect to the direction and fate of the Sein und Zeit project, by exploring a limited number of "foundational" aspects (fugue, Kehre, Abgrund, Ereignis) of a single but singularly important writing from the 1930's: Beiträge zur Philosophie. In so doing the dissertation aims to bring out the Copernican thought-revolution in the early work, and to provide both the conceptual motivation and the methodological tools for a more farreaching reappreciation of Heidegger's early work. Thus the dissertation has consequences, not only for the foundational, but also for the language-thought problematic, for the possibility of overcoming metaphysics, for Heidegger's general development, and for the appraisal of the position of time in his work.

If something new has appeared in philosophy and that "this work is as beautiful as those it challenges" we shall see that it all takes place in a new dimension, "which we might call a diagonal dimension, a sort of distribution of points, groups or figures that no longer simply act as an abstract framework but actually exist in space". The spaces that constitute this immanent dimension are topological or as Foucault says - "heterotopological". We shall designate these heterotopologies: Knowledge, Power and Self. Although these sites are irreducible to each other they seep into and 'capture' each other through a series of multiple and complex relations in such a way as to suspect, neutralise or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect. If within these sites subjects, objects and concepts disappear it is only in order to 'disperse' or 'distribute' them according to their variable functions and make them reappear again, released of their 'self-evidence', in a new space of immanence. Each heterotopology is capable of juxtaposing within itself and outside of itself, or rather across its folded surfaces, several formed spaces that are not isomorphic or even compatible but are heterogeneous and communicate with or 'encounter' each other through a pure transmission of elements.

This study presents a discourse on the question of incompletion and simultaneously inaugurates the development of a critical approach to contemporary social and political questions concerning selfhood, thought and community in terms of incompletion. Such a strategy has taken place on two main levels in this work. Firstly, there is a close textual reading and analysis of texts where the question of incompletion has been engaged with. Secondly, there is a historical/social analysis of existing institutions, this is a secondary analysis of how the United Nations can be conceived in terms of completion or incompletion in relation to the quest for community. A major part of the close textual reading deals with French post-structuralist writers such as Bataille, Derrida, Foucault and Jean Luc Nancy. These writers are of interest in this work to the extent that they think central problematics of the philosophical tradition as necessarily and unavoidably incomplete. An important tension in the work of these writers is explored by showing that they theorise the central concepts of the self, thought and community as being impossible to resolve in any reachable present and yet they also do not abandon these central problematics either. The theoretical task entails bridging the gap between the deconstructive and the constructive, the nihilistic and the utopian within poststructuralism itself, and this, paradoxically, is to attempt an agitated reconciliation. Such a reconciliation may only act to deepen the difficulties to be found within the thought of such writers, but the theorization of incompletion does ultimately seek to both comprehend and critique contemporary difficulties surrounding the questions of community and selfhood.

No description available.

In difficult times, political, social or economic, it is usually the case that opportunities for politicians, bureaucrats and men of power to exploit their fellow men and to threaten their liberties increase. No apology, therefore, is required to justify a re-examination of the nature of coercion, and the moral grounds, if any, for its justification. These two concerns constitute the scope of this thesis. A number of approaches are used to examine the concept of coercion and issues relating to it. These include conceptual analysis, a historical and comparative survey and evaluation of selected relevant idealist theories of freedom, a meta-ethical analysis of the logical structure of moral judgements and the origin and justification of moral principles, and a normative analysis of the bases upon which coercion might be justified in particular cases in the light of established and agreed basic moral principles. Philosophizing, which is not just analytic but prescriptive too, should not be limited to metaphyusical reasoning but grounded firmly in the empirical. The first two chapters comprise a linguistic analysis of the concept of coercion. In Chapter 1 R.F. Nozick's excessively refined concept of coercion is supplemented by the notion of coercion posited in this thesis. Whereas Nozick intentionally limits the notion of coercion to a reactive relation between two individuals thereby stressing the cause of individual liberty, it is proposed in this thesis that institutions representing the collective will of individuals may also properly be regarded as agents capable of coercing and being coerced. Additionally, it is proposed that coercion be not confined to coercion by threat, as Nozick supposes, where the individual is left with a choice of sorts, but also include coercion by irresistible physical and/or psychological force which leaves little if any choice to the victim at all. In Chapter 2 a variety of concepts relating to coercion in the context of getting a person to do or not to do something or other are analysed, and the conditions necessary for the two kinds of coercion suggested in this thesis are stipulated: coercion by threat and coercion by irrestible force. In Chapter 3 the notion of justification is introduced; the notion of coercion as the antithesis of freedom is examined; the assumed presumption in favour of freedom, which requires that coercion be justified, is explained; and negative, positive/idealist and commonsensical interpretations of the notion of social freedom are analysed. The relation of coercion to free will is noted and free will in the form of personal freedom of choice, assuming men may responsibly and dutifully choose to do things that their desires may not necessarily prompt or cause them to do, is recognised as a necessary condition in both agents in a coercive relationship. But the metaphysics of free will is not explored in detail. In Chapter 4 selected idealist theories of freedom principally from Rousseau, Hegel and Marx are compared and evaluated in the context of what might appear to be the paradoxical claim that individuals may be coerced to be free. An analysis of Christian or other theological or divine metaphysical theories as instruments of coercion in this context is noted but is not pursued in detail. The notion of personal autonomy is considered and it is suggested that on all counts, including Kantian and existentialist views of autonomy, it presents a logical barrier or limit to the extent to which the assertion may be made that a person can be forced to be free. In chapter 5 a variety of suppositions or claims of what coercion might do are eliminated on empirical and/or logical grounds, and it is argued that individuals cannot be successfully coerced to know, understand, believe, love or be moral, though it is conceded that coercive interference might be conducive to the development of such ends. Additionally, the logical possiblity of a person being able to coerce himself is questioned.

There is perhaps no epistemological theory more universally rejected, by modern philosophers and commentators, than transcendent apriorism. In fact, the notion that the pure human intellect, purged of sensory contamination, can somehow transcend the limits of all possible experience is now disdainfully regarded as an obsolete Platonic fantasy. In the latter half of the eighteenth century Immanuel Kant had vilified those who defended such extreme versions of rationalism as, "dogmatic champions of supersensible reason". Regrettably, during more than two centuries of philosophical inquiry, this derogatory attitude has hardened into an obstructive prejudice. It is certain that the process has done much to impede, truly objective modern research into transcendent apriorism's basic epistemology. In fact, even foundational issues relating to the definition and categorization of the theory have been neglected, or only superficially considered. As a result, numerous misleading "straw man" versions of the doctrine have been promulgated, by the Logical Positivists and others, and then very enthusiastically denigrated. The consequent defective analysis and the prejudice that engendered it have seriously distorted modern appraisals of the theory's epistemological legitimacy. Similarly, contemporary studies of transcendent apriorism's philosophical history have been infected with damaging errors. This contamination is particularly transparent in the flawed theory of K. Ajdukiewicz that "radical apriorism" had adherents "almost entirely among ancient thinkers". The aim of this thesis is to provide a new and comprehensive analysis of transcendent apriorism that remedies such prevalent misconceptions. The principle objective will be to remove the encrusting layers of prejudice, error and confusion that blight conventional epistemological and historical treatments of the subject. Ultimately, this procedure will function to disclose the doctrine's essential nature, its origins and the true course of its historical development. In the light of this analysis, we will be in a better position to determine whether extant arguments claiming to refute or undermine transcendent apriorism are legitimate or erroneous.