What is the nature of our society? What kinds of power regimes shape our existence? What forms of emancipatory resistance might chart the way towards a better future that responds to the dangers, injustices, and pathologies marking the present? These are just some of the questions my dissertation aims to answer through the help of the conceptual resources that Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault provide us with. Accordingly, whereas the few attempts that have been made been to compare their works remain inadequate, partial, or simply out-dated, my thesis offers a detailed and comprehensive appraisal of both the explanatory and reconstructive potential of Adorno’s and Foucault’s common project of developing a critico-theoretical account of modern Western society, with a view also to showing the often-neglected compatibility of their respective approaches. At issue, is not only the scholarly reconstruction of a possible dialogue beyond their differences, but also, and more importantly, the analysis of the continued relevance of their works for our understanding of the world we inhabit. To this end, Chapters 1 and 2 start with an examination of the historical conditions Adorno and Foucault see at the root of the dangers and pathologies ailing our age. More specifically, Chapter 1 starts with a review of Adorno’s conception of late modern society as a reified totality ruled by the logic of capitalist exchange. I then confront Adorno’s account of social domination with Foucault’s early analytics of power and illustrate the similarities between their pictures of the disciplinary mechanisms at the basis of the constitution of modern individuals. The chapter concludes by presenting their critique of the scientific discourses and ideological procedures that have supported these power mechanisms. After examining the connection they establish between the development of capitalism and modern biopower, Chapter 2 compares Foucault’s and Adorno’s portraits of the political culture of liberalism. Whereas the relevance of Adorno’s insights is manly confined to the processes of socialization characterizing the welfare states in the first half of the 20th century, I argue that Foucault’s later inquiries shed an instructive light on the reconfiguration determined by the rise of neoliberalism in the contemporary technologies of government, whereby the latter are no longer based on the rigid mechanisms of disciplinary power, but rather on the fabrication of the subject as a free and responsible entrepreneur through more indirect and flexible forms of control operating on the social environment. Chapters 3 to 5 explore the anticipatory-utopian dimension of Adorno’s and Foucault’s enterprises. Chapter 3 engages in a largely unprecedented comparison of their critical approaches. Despite their different targets and narratives, I contend that they converge in the project of a critical problematization of the present, which seeks to modify their addressees’ sensibility and experience not only to show the historical contingency of the present, but also to encourage its radical transformation. Contrary to the popular view that they lack normative theorizing, Chapter 4 reviews Adorno’s and Foucault’s accounts of the normativity of critique, while pointing to their common attempt at giving new impetus to the emancipatory thrust of Enlightenment modernity. Chapter 5 elaborates a much overdue evaluation of their responses to the ethico-political challenges of the present through a juxtaposition of Adorno’s minimal ethics of resistance with Foucault’s late ethical reflections on the ancient practices of care of the self, which lie at the source of his more ambitious politics of the governed. The chapter closes by proposing a possible way of integrating Foucault’s call for creative resistance with Adorno’s politics of suffering. In conclusion, my dissertation assesses Adorno’s and Foucault’s merits in the construction of a critical “ontology of the present” that stands opposed to the neo-Idealist turn of much of contemporary critical theory with its separation of normative and empirical claims from the material forms of power shaping individuals’ subjectivity, cultural patterns, and institutional structures, while eventually arguing that Foucault gives us a more effective toolbox not only to comprehend who we are, but also to imagine ourselves otherwise.

The present work is an exploration of the relationship between love and law in Islam and Christianity through the works of al-Ghazālī (c.1056-7-1111 C.E.) and Thomas Aquinas (c.1224/5-1274 C.E). In doing so, it aims to provide the historical theological perspective of two thinkers, each pivotal to their respective tradition, with a view to contributing to contemporary Christian-Muslim discourse, which, since the 2007 Common Word initiative, has had a strongly scholarly focus on love. Notably, however, this discourse has tended to avoid discussion pertaining to how we ‘act out’ such love, particularly in regard to legal frameworks. To redress the balance of scholarly discourse, this thesis aims to present key aspects of al-Ghazālī’s and Aquinas’ thought in order to provide the conceptual background necessary to understand and then synthesize how they likely conceived of the love-law relationship. From this, it becomes clear that for al-Ghazālī, the relationship between the heart, intellect, and various categories of knowledge is integral in fostering love for God. In a similar manner, the intellect for Aquinas is integral and its formation is based on our cumulative knowledge and experience. The key facet of the intellect for both is its ability to abstract from particulars to universals. This position is essential to the thought of both writers as God for them is beyond creation and yet in some sense also reflected in and intimately related to creation. As such, the intellect acts as a ‘bridge’ between the immanent and the transcendent. It is both affected by the knowledge gained through this-worldly legal frameworks and the other-worldly divine attributes in which it can share: this includes the divine attribute of love. The extent to which one can share the latter is dependent on the extent to which one is formed by the former. The intellect is, however, aided in this process by the gratuitous gift of revelation, which acts as immanent ‘certain’ knowledge of the transcendent. Such thinking provides the background for a detailed exploration of love and law. Towards this end, first noted is how both authors consider this-worldly law to be an appropriation of other-worldly law, represented by The Preserved Tablet for al-Ghazālī and the eternal law for Aquinas. Reasoning is essential in mankind’s attempt to understand this divine, other-worldly paradigm, although man is aided by a partial manifestation of ‘certain’ knowledge within the created order by way of revelation. Human reasoning on law results in this-worldly legal frameworks, which, in some sense, aim to provide knowledge of God either explicitly or implicitly by way of orientating towards the maintenance of the common good. However, as all good is derivative of God, this-worldly law, whether orientated to a temporal or ultimate good, should be understood as orientation to God. Inclining to our good according to our nature is something both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas maintain is ‘in-built’ within us. At its most fundamental level this good is God, but it does not exclude the material goods and objects that constitute the necessities of life. Thus law orientated towards the good (to whatever degree) encourages orientation to God (to some degree). Inclination to the good is natural within our being, and both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas define love, in the first instance, as inclination to the good according to our nature. The more we are inclined to the good, the more ‘goodness’ is made manifest within us; that is, the more we ‘participate’ in or ‘reflect’ the divine attributes. Thus the more law-abiding we are, the more we are drawn to the good. This eventually forms the intellect in such a way that it is drawn to the good in itself: al-Ghazālī calls this ‘contentment’ and Aquinas calls this ‘charity’. Based on their respective positions, this thesis will therefore firstly argue that the relationship between love and law for al-Ghazālī and Aquinas is as follows: before one can love, one must know, and law provides knowledge; however, such knowledge reflects a gratuitous gift from the creator and therefore divine love underpins the knowledge that enables human love. In course of this study, it will become evident that both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas have a strong apophatic-cataphatic emphasis to their work. That is, their methodologies affirm issues of immanence and transcendence, the knowability and unknowability of God. The only ‘certain’ knowledge for both authors is that which is represented by revelation, and to which all other knowledge should be correlated. However, all other knowledge is reflective of acquired knowledge and human reasoning, which are by nature imperfect. Providing we deploy ‘reason’ effectively in relation to the ‘certain’ knowledge of revelation, we can talk about God to an extent. In such an instance, human language points towards and reflects the divine, but does not totally encapsulate or definitively define the divine. Ultimately, the divine is beyond comprehension while equally somehow reflected or detectable within creation. Indeed, for both authors, genuine experience of the divine exhausted their prolific works and words; this realisation resulted in each adopting a state of ‘silence’ at various points in their respective careers. That is, both come to an appreciation of the insufficiency of words and concepts in the face of a transcendent, immutable God. Noting the centrality of this emphasis in both authors, this study then turns to the present day Christian-Muslim milieu touching upon the ‘reason debate’ that formed the background to the Common Word initiative. Using this as a platform, this thesis argues for a ‘re-emphasis’ or ‘re-discovery’ of the apophatic-cataphatic reasoning that both al-Ghazālī and Aquinas display for contemporary Christian-Muslim discourse. The final hope for the study is two-fold. Firstly, to encourage further discourse on how ‘love’ is ‘acted out’ between the two traditions. And secondly, to remind Christians that law has an important theological tradition within their heritage with a view to providing encouragement for further studies in the neglected area of comparative law in Christian-Muslim discourse.

This thesis is primarily a philosophical exploration of emotions. From a feminist, liberal perspective, I focus on the cultivation of morally appropriate emotions, particularly compassion, in education. My central claim is that emotions are essential elements of human intelligence and wellbeing. They are complex responses to events of significance to us and, because emotions play a central role in our lives, they help to define who we are and why we are as we are; they are expressions of our values and what we value. Emotions can motivate us to action, and so we need, if we want just institutions, to ensure that those actions are ethical and proportionate. On the view that emotions can be rational, and that they result from eudaimonistic judgements, if we want a society of healthy human beings who have concern for others, who know how to treat others fairly and sensitively, how to take action when things go wrong, then we need to attend, I argue here, to emotional health in education. We should aim to habituate the emotional capacities of all individuals as an enduring resource of good character. At issue, is how to educate young people to have healthy emotions that are ethical, proportionate, discerning and deliberative, that have ethical action as their goals, and which do not negatively discriminate on the basis of gender. In the development of emotional wellbeing and moral character, compassion is an emotion that merits particular attention. Such is the potential ethical power of this emotion, that I propose compassion to be the arch-guardian of the moral domain and, accordingly, a prerequisite for the cultivation of moral sentiment and respect for human dignity. A consideration of emotions will raise questions about who should feel, how we should feel, when, and to what extent, emotions such as compassion, sympathy or anger in acceptable and appropriate ways. I argue, too, that we should attend to the how and why of interpreting these emotions. Whilst a number of analyses reveal how powerful emotional interpretations are in stigmatising, labeling or stereotyping men and women, rarely, if ever, are questions raised in education about the assumptions on which gendered emotions rest. I respond here by proposing that if education is to serve a role in the cultivation of morally appropriate emotions, then we must question, and should no longer accept, gendered emotions, that is emotions that belong to, or are more ‘natural’ for one sex than another. Acknowledging the importance of care for wellbeing, I question the claims of some care ethicists who would have us believe that care does not require moral theory and that it is not an issue of justice. I assert, to the contrary, that unless an ethics of care rests on sound moral and conceptual constructs, it will perpetuate a bifurcation of emotion and reason whilst sustaining stereotypically gendered emotions. In order to illuminate my argument for the cultivation of de-gendered, just emotions, I draw upon empirical research on the effects of deformed emotional attitudes towards women and children which seriously impede their wellbeing and functioning. I draw, too, on novels, both for the exemplification of my arguments and as a vehicle which, creatively and sensitively used, can help us to shape our imaginative and empathic capacities to take into the folds of our consciousness people who are both similar to and remote and different from us. I am accompanied throughout the thesis by a fictional pupil ‘Nancy’ with and through whom I exculpate complex theoretical and philosophical issues. The thesis re-affirms the importance of cultivating morally appropriate de-gendered emotions, particularly compassion, and concludes with the proposal that we should incorporate and embed an understanding of the emotions in the education curricula, for both pupils and those who teach them. I propose, too, that emotions might be regarded as an architectonic capability anchoring and influencing all other human capabilities.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that the truthful life was at risk of being lost in Western technological culture in the name of increasing control, efficiency, and agility.  As the risk is actualised, so the human essence as truth maker is obscured and life itself feels poorer. This thesis draws on Heideggerian philosophy to demonstrate the loss in two dominant styles of contemporary strategic management: the world-picturing and, more recent, agile style. It builds a theory of post-agile strategic practice, which I call adaptive, to address this loss. Consistent with Heideggerian philosophy, I utilise a transformative disclosure methodology and a literary, paradigmatic case reading method to address the questions: Why is agile strategic management so unsatisfying? How do Heideggerian scholars shed light on this dissatisfaction? How do Heideggerians understand the emerging style and what strategic management practices can I propose for the future? After introducing agile strategic management and the impoverishment of life that it fosters, I set out how Heidegger’s philosophy of truth, thinking, and the sacred both sheds light on the problem and suggests a remedy for it. I closely read paradigmatic texts of the world-picturing and agile strategic management styles to demonstrate how business strategy theorisation lines up with extraordinary closeness to Heidegger’s philosophical assessment. I then analyse three Heideggerian prototypes for an adaptive style of strategy practice, concentrating on one paradigmatic text to identify their principal weakness: the omission of the sacred. I illustrate and contrast paradigmatic cases of both the agile and adaptive styles drawn from the beer industry and draw on the adaptive case to construct a theory of adaptive strategy practice, which addresses the problem of the loss of truth, suggesting pedagogical and strategic management practices. I conclude by summarising its findings and contributions, noting some limitations and connections to other studies and suggesting further lines of research.