Sammanfattning Utgångspunkten i masteravhandlingen är att mellanmänsklig dialog är en förutsättning för tänkande i konstnärliga processer. Mitt syfte är att undersöka vilka dialogiska former som är verksamma i tänkande och hur relationen mellan dialog och tänkande kan interagera i olika konstnärliga kontexter. Masteravhandlingen är uppbyggd med tre spår: teorispåret, samtalsspåret och dramatikspåret. I teorispåret utgår jag ifrån Martin Bubers, Michail Bachtins och Hannah Arendts texter om dialog och tänkande. I samtalsspåret diskuterar jag teoretikernas idéer med en fokusgrupp bestående av yrkesverksamma konstnärer inom skilda konstnärliga discipliner. Informanternas erfarenheter kommer i dialog med teorierna. I dramatikspåret presenterar jag exempel på hur sceniska dialoger kan tillföra ytterligare en komplexitetsnivå i diskussionen om vår förmåga och oförmåga till mellanmänsklig dialog. De tre spåren visar tillsammans, utifrån skilda infallsvinklar, att dialog i konstnärligaprocesser inte är möjlig utan en ömsesidig tillit. Tilliten ska i sammanhanget förstås som en aktiv handling att vilja samtala, för att kunna samtala. Det framkommer också hur betydelsefull frågan och lyssnandet är för att kunna tänka och ha en dialog. När vi ställer frågor behöver vi öppna oss för att vi inte vet och lyssna för att höra även det vi inte förväntar oss. De oväntade frågorna och det oväntade lyssnandet. Spåren visar också hur tänkande inbegriper ett görande, i en konkret och fysisk bemärkelse, som en förutsättning för att fördjupa tankeprocesser. Kroppen som en del av tanken. Till detta utmärks konstnärligt arbete av att ha en riktning utanför sig själv, en riktning vars vilja är att kommunicera med den andre. Utan riktning till konstverkens mottagare faller dialogen samman. / Abstract The premise of this master’s thesis is that - within the context of the artistic process -interpersonal dialogue is a prerequisite for the act of thinking. My aim is to investigate which dialogue forms are active in such acts of thinking and how dialogue and thinking can interact in different artistic contexts. The thesis consists of three tracks: a theory track, a conversation track and a drama track. In the theory track, I expand on Martin Buber’s, Michail Bachtin’s and Hannah Arendt’s texts on dialogue and the act of thinking. In the conversation track I discuss these theories with a focus group of professional artists active in a variety of fields. Here the practical experiences of the informants come into dialogue with the theories expressed in the thesis. In the drama track, I show how different scenic dialogues are able to add yet another level of complexity to the discussion of our ability (or inability) to participate in interpersonal dialogue. The three tracks show from a variety of perspectives that dialogue within the artistic process is not possible without mutual trust. In this context trust is understood as an act of intending to engage in dialog. Mutual trust also exposes the importance of questioning and listening in order to be able to think and participate in dialogue. When we ask a question we must be open to that which we do not know and to that we do not expect to hear. The tracks also show that the act of thinking is also an action, in a physical, practical sense, which is itself a prerequisite to being able to think more deeply. It is also important that artistic work be characterized by having an aim beyond itself - an ambition to communicate with an Other. Without such an aim, dialogue can only fail.

In this thesis Hannah Arendt’s theories of science and technology are applied in an ethnographic study of engineering ethics. Seeking to gain further understanding of Arendt’s thoughts, her concepts of The Archimedean Point and Earth Alienation is applied in interviews with engineering students in Sweden’s Uppsala University. The purpose directing this study is thus twofold, it is an attempt to anthropologize Arendt’s thoughts of science and technology, and to further understand engineering’s ethical engagement. The study identifies a dynamic where engineering students create dichotomous mentalities. One mentality is engineering’s demand of a desubjectified instrumental rationality in inherent contradiction to an ethical consciousness, this mentality can be identified as Arendt’s Archimedean Point. In conflict to this mentality lies the intersubjectivity of a socio-politically engaged student concerned with engineering’s ability to create evil. This study makes the claim that Uppsala University’s student traditions and culture encourage the second mentality and forms an important resource for ethical engagement among students.

This article critically analyses transhumanism, an ideological movement that advocates the radical biomodification of the human body in order to overcome our deficiencies and progress towards our next phase in evolution. Following previous criticism against the depoliticization within transhumanism, the article will aim to highlight the difficulty within transhumanism to balance the respect for diversity against the imperative for human enhancement. This paper then turns to the political theory of Hannah Arendt as the theoretical lens to highlight the source of this tension as the ideology’s reductive view of politics. The paper concludes on the difficulties reconciling diversity with human enhancement, as well as raising awareness of the possibility of conscious action in concert related to the use of biomodification technologies advocated by transhumanists.

The central aim of this dissertation is to introduce tools for studying a form of political violence in Michel Foucault's genealogical methodology. This is accomplished by reformulating theories from Hannah Arendt on violence to sync with Foucault's understanding of power, knowledge and experience. Violence is shown to be a relationship where one subject is prevented from fulfilling a strategy by another, which over time accumulates into widespread power relations, or nexuses of violence, within a society. This is contrasted with power, which is when one subject attempts to control the outcome of a situation, and as such it is productive. This method of genealogy is then employed in the case of national identity (i.e., nationalism) in Turkey. Tracing its historical emergence, the late Ottoman Empire becomes the focal point. A network of allegiances, referred to as sultanic power, constituted the relationships that were exercised prior to the nineteenth century. While one pledged their loyalty and subservience to their ruler, this required their ruler to offer them security and prosperity in return. Over the Long Nineteenth Century, a new network of power relations emerged based on representation through the practices and discourses that developed. I come to outline what I term representative power....

La presente investigación propone explorar el componente político y los diversos discursos provenientes de los actores del Estado y víctimas en el caso de las ejecuciones extrajudiciales de Accomarca bajo las categorías del mal en Hannah Arendt. Es así que para dicho análisis se ha recogido la información de la audiencia pública de Accomarca la cual califica como la esfera pública por excelencia, en la cual se narran los hechos y el contexto, asimismo, una exhaustiva revisión de textos de corte filosófico y político. Es entonces que se trata de tipificar el uso del mal para diversos fenómenos, como lo es la <<banalidad del mal>>, acontecimientos e incluso políticas <<mal radical>>, las cuales en muchas ocasiones se convierten en técnicas premeditadas para el abuso del propio mal en contexto de emergencia y de esa forma poder deslindar lo “bueno” de lo “malo”. Si bien el caso Accomarca lleva de por sí mucha dificultad al momento de intentar explicar el por qué, en esta investigación se intenta dar una respuesta a partir del motor de los perpetradores desde una perspectiva político-filosófica arendtiana, con luces de pluralidad e in-acción.

This dissertation offers a philosophical analysis of the ecological crisis through the lens of Hannah Arendt. It frames the ecological crisis as a struggle for situated cohabitation. By analyzing the work of Arendt, this dissertation shows the ways in which the ecological crisis is entwined with the political crisis of plurality. I suggest that these two issues are interconnected and that we need to address both for situated cohabitation. This dissertation is an interdisciplinary work, drawing from environmental philosophy, feminist philosophy, and educational practice. The work is intended to provide novel insight into the current ecological crisis in three ways. First, it grounds its theory in the work of Arendt, a thinker not usually situated in the prevue of environmental scholarship. Second, by synthesizing Arendt's account of plurality with the work of Judith Butler and Ricardo Rozzi, this dissertation explores a politics of plurality that can take account of social and ecological conditions of plurality. Third and finally, the dissertation merges theory with praxis by offering a practical program for doing environmental philosophy with children, a program derived from my sustained experiences working as a facilitator of a philosophy for children (P4C) program. This dissertation does not seek just a theoretical understanding of the ecological crisis, but also a practice of situated cohabitation in the crisis.

Farmer suicide is at crisis levels in the United States and India. This crisis is both a problem of experiential knowledge within infrastructure as well as a problem of discourse power. I argue that the logical abstraction required to conceptualize and evaluate farmer suicide cannot be separated from the overall experience of farmer suicide. Rather than existing as distinctly separate phenomena, these elements are co-constitutive. Despite the Centers' for Disease Control identification and designation of farmer suicide as complex, statistically relevant, and elevated, nearly all the policy efforts addressing farmer suicide focus on narrow economic impact and narrow economic relief. While these economic vectors are important, the problem is multifaceted and requires a broadening of policy discourse to include additional factors (e.g. philosophical, existential, psychological, etc.). Using Hannah Arendt's work on politics and the human condition, I connect the conditionality of homo faber (human fabricator/maker), animal laborans (laboring animal), and vita activa (active life) with farmer struggle and suicide. Through the work of Georges Canguilhem and Achille Mbembe, I critique and analyze the predominant discourse and framing of suicide as a disease. Last, but not least, I propose decolonial theory and degrowth theory as viable critical pathways to shift the scale of farming infrastructure towards a more equitable and just future.

This essay is an attempt to conduct a reading of Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth through the lens of cultural materialism with John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty as intertext. The essay conducts a brief survey of previous scholarly treatment of the play, explains the theoretical background of cultural materialism that the essay operates on, and briefly introduces the intertext. The treatment itself is based around the invocation of historical and mythical roots in the play, exploring the relevant parts of the intertext, interspersed with close reading of the play itself. The essay culminates in the understanding that the climax and ending of the play is not an end to the concept of liberty evoked in the play, but that it is a call to action for it. While the play offers no unproblematic image which could guide the direction of action, it does offer liberty as a guiding principle.

One of the most defining moments in the histories of British satire and the public sphere took place in the late 1790s in an abandoned house in Piccadilly. Here George Canning and several fellow conservatives began writing and circulating their weekly newspaper the Anti-Jacobin. Although the periodical has been critically neglected, it is a valuable model for exploring how literary (partisan) politicians attempted to form a rational and critical public sphere through their satiric poetry. Founded by George Canning and edited by William Gifford, the Anti-Jacobin seems to reflect a reactionary conservative's ideology and has been summarily dismissed because of this one-sided nature. In this essay, I suggest a more nuanced reading of both Canning's biography and his Anti-Jacobin poetry that will give a fuller and more accurate version of Canning, one that illustrates a moderate reformer who is concerned with centralizing the extremism of the 1790s.

The aim of this study is to explore how the concept of sin, guilt and responsibility can be used in the contemporary discourse of the climate catastrophe. In a comparative textual study on Sallie McFague’s A New Climate for Theology and Richard Bauckham’s Bible and Ecology these concepts are analyzed. The conclusion is that McFague and Bauckham both uses “responsibility” frequently, but neither “sin” or “guilt” are well used in there works. Yet, when they reflect on “sin”, both of them abandons the (in the western theology classical) Augustine theology on sin. McFague when she argues that “evil” is a perversion of good rather than a consequence of an external reality, Bauckham when he claims that the fall of sin is an ongoing process rather than a momentary event.   Hannah Arendt and Alistair McFadyen are used as an interpretative and theoretical background to the conclusions of McFague and Bauckham in the discussion that follows the comparative textual study. Arendt and McFadyen reflects on sin, guilt and responsibility with the Holocaust as context. In the discussion, their thoughts on the Holocaust are essayed to apply on the contemporary climate catastrophe. Hannah Arendt talks about “collective responsibility” and “personal guilt”, concepts that in the discussion part, when applied on the climate catastrophe and in a better way fits the contemporary situation, inverts to “collective guilt” and “personal responsibility”. The talk of collective guilt tangent the Augustine teaching of original sin where sin is a common heritage from the fall of sin. McFadyen uses original sin to explain the mechanism of the German people during the Holocaust which in many ways are similar to the processes of the climate catastrophe of today.    In the discussion of this study, original sin is used as a model to better understand the fact that people cannot escape guilt in the contemporary situation and to comprehend why people act as they do. The study intends accordingly to in a constructive way contribute with new perspectives on sin, guild and responsibility to the ecological theology of today.