Ce travail s’interroge sur le projet, commun à Fichte et à Hegel, de réaliser la philosophie comme système. Pour eux, la philosophie doit se résigner à n’être qu’une curiosité, ou devenir une science. Faut-il pour cela qu’elle imite les mathématiques, les sciences expérimentales ? Ou peut-on faire l’hypothèse qu’il existe un objet qui par nature échappe au savoir des sciences, et en conséquence, un autre savoir que celui des sciences particulières ? Pour Fichte comme pour Hegel, la philosophie a pour tâche d’explorer ce que les sciences ne peuvent pas connaître, d’être une science des « évidences » ou des « préjugés » qui demeurent présupposés dans les autres domaines du savoir. Mais une science absolue est un savoir qui ne présuppose rien, qui ne s’appuie sur aucun fait donné, qui ne tient aucun objet pour assuré. Que reste-t-il alors ? Pour Fichte, rien d’autre que ce qu’il appelle le Moi, c’est-à-dire la pensée ou la conscience en tant qu’activité libre, autonome, activité qui, dans le savoir philosophique, doit se démontrer comme étant la source créatrice du monde objectif qui nous entoure et que nous considérons spontanément comme indépendant de notre conscience. Voilà l’objet ou le savoir « absolu » dont s’occupe en particulier la Doctrine de la science. C’est pourquoi l’exigence d’absoluité de la philosophie ne peut être satisfaite que dans la figure d’un savoir circulaire, qui reprend et justifie à la fin ce qui semblait n’être à son début qu’un présupposé arbitraire. Pourtant, le système de Fichte a ceci de particulier qu’aussi impeccable que soit la chaîne de ses déductions, il débute par une fêlure qui, loin de se résorber dans la suite, est si bien assumée et travaillée, qu’elle prend finalement la forme d’une contradiction fondamentale qui est à la source de toute notre vie consciente : l’activité libre, qui doit se démontrer comme productrice d’objectivité, est en même temps ce qui par essence est le plus impossible à objectiver… / This work examines the project, common to Fichte and Hegel, to establish philosophy as a system. For them, philosophy must either resign itself to being a mere curiosity, or become a science. Should it then imitate mathematics, experimental sciences? Or can we make the assumption that there is an object that by nature remains beyond the realm of scientific knowledge, and consequently, another knowledge than that of particular sciences? For Fichte as for Hegel, philosophy has the task of exploring what science cannot know, to be a science of “truisms” or “preconceptions” that remain assumed in other areas of knowledge. But an absolute science is a knowledge that assumes nothing, that is not based on any particular fact, that does not regard any object as certain. What is left, then? For Fichte, nothing but what he calls the Ego, that is to say, thought or consciousness as a free, autonomous activity, which in philosophy must be proven as the creative source of the objective world that surrounds us and that we spontaneously consider as independent of our consciousness. That is the object or the “absolute” knowledge that the Doctrine of Science specifically deals with. Therefore the requirement of philosophical absoluteness can only be satisfied through the figure of a circular knowledge, which reproduces and in the end justifies what initially appeared to be nothing more than an arbitrary assumption. However, Fichte’s system is unique in that, as flawless as its chain of deductions can be, it starts with a crack which, far from disappearing thereafter, is so completely accepted and elaborated, that it finally takes the form of a fundamental contradiction which is at the source of our entire conscious life: free activity, which has to be proven as a producer of objectivity, is at the same time, by essence, that which is most impossible to objectify…

ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I occupy two realms of philosophy that have not been commonly associated. On the one hand, I enter into debates about the proper interpretation of Kant, specifically having to do with the very fractured debate on the nature and applications of transcendental idealism. I adjudicate on the matters of the relationship between appearances and things in themselves, i.e. whether it is epistemological or ontological, the way in which TI resolves the antinomial conflict of reason as it thinks the unconditioned in its exploration of cosmological questions, and the way Kant applies TI to articulate the intelligible and empirical characters in his metaphysics of agency. In addition to this historical research, I also turn to contemporary formulations of libertarian freedom. Libertarianism in free will debates is the view that free will is incompatible with determinism (i.e. incompatibilism), and free will exists. Libertarianism is a competitor to compatibilist views that claim that free will is compatible with determinism, i.e. the view that there is a unique outcome given a past and laws of nature characterizing the past. Within libertarianism, there are important differences in terms of the metaphysics of free will. Most contemporary libertarians opt for a reductionist metaphysics, in which causation consists in relationships between events and does not involve underlying grounds or substances. Both event-causal and non-causal libertarianism accordingly ground their views of freedom on the interplay of psychological events conceived of as states of affairs at instants in time. Event-causal accounts locate free will in indeterministic causal series, involve conflicting sets of motivations that resolve themselves probabilistically into a certain kind of action. Non-causal accounts do not attach free will to causality at all, instead associating it with a spontaneously occurring event. ECL and NCL struggle with establishing how the agent actually settles her action. If the action is merely the indeterministic byproduct of a set of psychological processes or process, then what ultimately occurs is not up to the agent but a product of chance. ECL and NCL nevertheless object that even an action settled by chance is done consciously and according to reasons. But these criteria are aligned with compatibilist criteria for free will. Compatibilists deny to the agent the unconditioned power to choose, which is independent of any prior determination but also not subject to chance. They point out, though, that the action is externally unconstrained, or that, if the reasons had been different, the agent would have acted differently. Since contemporary libertarianism deprives the agent of control, and creates a kind of pseudo-agent that acts ultimately according to chance, I explore other metaphysical frameworks for free will. Agent-causal libertarianism involves the agent directly causing her action as a substance. It is not some state of affairs that causes the action—a desire or belief characterizing the agent’s psychology at a certain time—but the agent herself. Agent-causation promises to resolve the problem of control associated with event-causation. The agent-caused action is neither produced deterministically from a prior event, nor is it an indeterministic fallout from probabilistic causation. Instead, it is caused by an agent-substance able to act independently of events. Timothy O’Connor is a well-known and articulate defender of agent-causation, but he also subscribes to the naturalistic framework popular in contemporary metaphysics. Even though he accepts the reality of emergent properties, the agent-cause, which has a special capacity for self-determination, is supposed to be causally united to a microphysical level where there is only passive event-causation. In this dissertation, I seek to frame agent-causation in terms of transcendental idealism. Rather than establishing the level of event-causation as metaphysically fundamental, I explore an idealistic metaphysics in which the empirical world in the spatiotemporal framework of human experience is not an absolute measure of reality. The human person is a hybrid creature, spanning two domains. On the one hand, the person exists in the empirical order in space and time. It is characterized by events subject to a causal law, by which they are accounted for in terms of prior events. On the other hand, there is a deeper level to the person, not encompassed within the limited structures of human experience. On this deep intelligible level, the human person is able to serve as the unconditioned ground of its empirical character. / Philosophy

Recently, a number of scholars have sought to reveal the extent to which the concept of religion and the discipline of religious studies depend upon a distinction between humans and other animals for their conceptual and disciplinary integrity. This dissertation is an attempt to deepen this insight by (re)turning to one of the central figures in the history of thinking about religion, G.W.F. Hegel, whose Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion represent one of the first forays into the academic study of religion. By employing the non-human animal as a limit-case, this project attempts to probe Hegel’s concept of religion for a place where it might be possible to think “religion” anew. This “place” can be found in Hegel’s concept of habit or Gewohnheit, since habit unsettles the distinction between nature and spirit, leaving open a way to rethink “religion” as being rooted in the animal or quasi-natural. Chapter 1 considers Alexandre Kojève’s worry that, at the proverbial “end of history,” the human being will become “reanimalized.” We argue that the (im)possibility of such a reanimalization lies in Hegel’s concept of habit or Gewohnheit, that “mechanism,” which aids the natural or feeling-soul in its “transition” to spirit or, more specifically, consciousness. In chapter 2, we consider the relationship between nature and spirit further, exploring the relationship between thought and feeling as thematized in Hegel’s philosophy of religion. Hegel argues (in contrast to the likes of Schleiermacher) that religion cannot have its essence in feeling, because feeling is a form of thought. In chapter 3, we take a closer look at how habit aids in the “transition” or passing-over from nature to spirit, highlighting habit as skill. Habit is a means for the purification of the natural drives and for replacing these drives with those of another, spiritual nature. However, we will find that the transition from nature to spirit cannot be accomplished through habit alone; it depends upon an encounter with the infinite or death, wherein the subject realizes her own in/finitude. In chapter 4, we consider how spirit expresses itself through the human body and, most importantly, through language and (the language of) sacrifice. While the death of the animal is the becoming of spirit, spirit depends upon the death of the animal even after it makes its first appearance in language since speech or language is dependent upon the animal voice. In the final chapter, we discover that religion too is predicated on the death or sacrifice of the animal. Moreover, it is through religion that human beings raise themselves above the animals and learn how to recognize themselves as essentially spiritual beings. Religion brings about this realization, this conversion from nature to spirit, through the cultus – a form of religious practice akin to a habit as skill. In the cultus, the human subject undergoes a conversion and becomes aware of herself as a spiritual rather than a natural being. When performed continuously, this cultus becomes the basis of the ethical as well as the philosophical life.

Goethe' s Phenomenology - Abstract The aim of this thesis was to explain the philosophical foundations and horizons of the work of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, with an emphasis on his concept of phenomenon and appearing, in which he is presented as a significant contributor to the reflection of the category of mediation in German late Enlightenment and idealistic discourse. The work showed how Goethe's (including poetic) works show some theoretically based or systematizable aspects which genealogy, reception and applicability in general the author attempts to interpret. He also interprets the philosophemes connected with Goethe's work: he puts Goethe in the contexts of the German and European thinking of the age of the Enlightenment, of its rationalist bases and of its rethinking of the nineteenth- century concepts of thought. The work shows the breadth and complexity of Goethe's spiritual resources and their creative appropriation by him, as well as the far-reaching influence of Goethe on the German philosophy already in his time (Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, etc.). He tries to overcome the stereotypes or shortcomings he finds in several previous interpretations, discussing first the philosophical literature about Goethe. In systematic and historical contexts, he represents Goethe confrontations with the...

[pt] Esta pesquisa busca analisar a dependência que o sistema metafísico de Schopenhauer possui em relação às filosofias de Kant e Platão. Para tanto, argumentamos a favor de uma maior proximidade de Schopenhauer da matriz racionalista do Ocidente, ainda que pese ser o elemento central de sua filosofia uma coisa-em-si irracional. O trabalho percorre os aspectos epistemológicos, cosmológicos, estéticos e éticos de seu pensamento tanto em relação às suas duas maiores influências, Kant e Platão, quanto em relação ao contexto do Idealismo Alemão. Portanto, o texto investiga como uma metafísica do irracional surge a partir da assimilação, ressignificação e subversão do estatuto racionalista ocidental. / [en] The aim of this research is to analyze the dependence of the metaphysical system of Schopenhauer in relation to the philosophies of Kant and Plato. For such, we argue in favor of a closer proximity of Schopenhauer to Western rationalist sources, even if the central element of his philosophy is an irrational thing-in-itself. This work follows the epistemological, cosmological, aesthetic and ethical aspects of his thought in relation to his two greatest influences, Kant and Plato, as much as to the context of German Idealism. Therefore, the text investigates how a metaphysics of the irrational springs from the assimilation, resignification and subversion of the Western rationalist statute.

The institution of marriage has historically functioned as the foundation of both the Iranian family and society. This study examines the significant changes that have occurred during the rule of the Islamic Republic that have delayed marriage formation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Iran between 2017 and 2020 and in-depth interviews with more than one hundred university-educated young Iranians, this dissertation explores new patterns of youth intimacy, the evolution of young people’s perspectives on premarital relationships, and explores the reasons behind the widespread delay in marriage. Since the Revolution of 1979 that led to the fall of the Shah’s modernizing regime, Iranian society has experienced many changes in the realm of marriage and premarital intimacies despite the Islamic Republic’s imposition of conservative religious values designed to reinforce traditional marriage practices. These have included a decline in marriage rates and an increased rate of divorce, as well a rise in the ages of first marriages accompanied by alternative lifestyles that reject marriage as an institution. While economic difficulties, increases at the level of education, and the existence of discriminatory family laws in Iran have often been cited as reasons for these changes, this dissertation argues that it is a dialectical interaction among sociocultural, psychological, moral, and legal factors that better explains this change. Interviews revealed that conflicting attitudes of idealism, cynicism, and moral ambivalence play a significant role in marriage postponement. This was most apparent in the young peoples’ dissatisfaction with khāstegāri, a traditional method of marital partner-evaluation by a young person’s family, which was rejected because it conflicted with a more personal and intimate model of partner selection. That model, however, suffered from excessive idealism that set the standards for a suitable partner so high they could not be easily met. Classical Persian poetry, with its ideals of unconsummated love, reinforced such romantic idealism. In response, a growing number of educated middle-class young Iranians chose to enter into intimate relationships outside of marriage facilitated by the emergence of new social spaces that allowed these new intimacies to flourish in spite of government attempts to discourage them. The research concluded that as a result of marriage postponement and the rise of premarital and non-marriage practices and lifestyles such as dating and cohabitation, intimacy has been transformed in contemporary Iran and as a result, significant changes are recognizable in gender relations and family structure. Young women and men demand a more egalitarian relationship, mutual emotional support and intellectual compatibility, a satisfying sex life, and someone with whom they can share their interests. / 2026-03-25T00:00:00Z

Thesis advisor: Marius Stan / This dissertation is about the immortality of the self and whether from a transcendental idealist perspective, one could sustain this notion based on theoretical grounds. It is well known that Kant closed this door in the Critique, and this is the position that Kantian scholars defend. But has Kant set up a series of dogmatic premises that presuppose that we accept conclusions for which Kant offers no argument? Thus, this dissertation aims at a minimal ontology of the human self within an idealist framework. To do this, I turn to Schopenhauer’s ‘perfected system of criticism.’ Without abandoning idealism, Schopenhauer introduces an objective perspective that suggests a more ontological robust understanding of the self. Although Schopenhauer’s position can be interpreted in a way favorable to theoretical arguments for the immortality of the self, his commitment to an identity of brain/mind, and the consequences that he draws from this, obscures some of his most important contributions. To tackle this issue and others, I analyze the Plotinian perspective, a philosophical position that blends epistemology and ontology which I think solidifies my interpretation of Schopenhauer and breaks the supposed identity between brain/mind. Thus, theoretical arguments for the immortality of the self are possible when idealism is an account in which epistemology and ontology intermingle. Specifically, an argument is supported by a premise that is accepted by both Plotinus and Schopenhauer, namely, that of the existence of Ideas, real objects external to the human mind which are responsible for the existence of sensible individuals. These ideas are in themselves unified by a higher principle which Plotinus names the One and Schopenhauer the Thing in Itself. In absolute terms, this ultimate reality is the root of our true self, but we are not identical to it because in human beings there is multiplicity which manifests itself in us by how we cognize things as external to ourselves (understanding) and how we desire things that we do not find within us (will). Chapter 1 opens with a discussion about the ‘true self’ according to Kant. Although this true self could be identified with the pure apperception of the Transcendental Deduction given that Kant argues that it is the source of unity of experience, after examining the different degrees of unity in representations, I conclude that the unifying principle of all sensible experience and the subject itself exist in a non-sensible world. The intelligible character of the Third Antinomy could be that principle, but I reject this in favor of the thing in itself. Nevertheless, the intelligible character’s residence as an individual in the non-sensible world hints at the construction of theoretical arguments for the immortality of the true self. Chapter 2 argues that Schopenhauer also rejects the role assigned to the pure apperception: only the thing in itself is the original source of unity. Schopenhauer accepts the Kantian intelligible character with clear indications that it is an ontologically real entity. The ontological import of the intelligible character reinforces its role in seeking a theoretical argument for the immortality of our true self. I propose that a pathway to a theoretical argument in favor of the immortality of the true self is also suggested in Schopenhauer’s doctrine of Ideas. The subject of cognition, through the alteration of its cognitive faculties in aesthetic contemplation, discovers itself as the correlate of a Pure Subject of Cognition whose objects are Pure Objects or, as Schopenhauer calls them, Ideas. In this alteration, the empirical subject of cognition is ‘elevated’ to the intuitive grasping of Ideas as a Pure Subject. Among Ideas, I argue that Schopenhauer points to something that can be interpreted as an idea of individual. Given the immortal nature of Ideas, we must also be immortal. Chapter 3 focuses on the question about immortality in both Kant and Schopenhauer. On the one hand, I show that Kant has not abandoned the notion of the human soul or its immortality. Instead, he claims to have clarified the origin of all disputes regarding the human soul while laying out the rules for guarding ourselves against future errors. On the other hand, Schopenhauer has no problem accepting that immortality is a fact of common sense, but he rejects that the individual survives. He bases this conclusion on his conviction that individuality emerges with the intellect, while the intellect only emerges with the brain. The subjection of the intellect to the brain is one of the most salient features of Schopenhauerian psychology. However, I propose that Schopenhauer’s objective perspective, a perspective whose implications are hardly at the center of attention in Schopenhauer’s studies, cannot be used to its full potential – as for example to defend that the individual human being is immortal too – unless this identification of intellect and brain is abandoned. To find arguments that can be used to differentiate the mind from the brain, I propose the study of Plotinus. Chapter 4 aims to provide a framework to illuminate the possibilities built into Schopenhauer’s objective perspective. The survey of Plotinus’ philosophy of self and immortality in this chapter suggests interesting starting points for a new interpretation of some of Schopenhauer’s insights. An important consequence of this study is the formulation of arguments to show that the mind or intellect cannot be characterized as identical to the brain. After studying Plotinus, a fact becomes clear, namely, that Schopenhauer, although critical of the concept ‘soul’, does not discard its content; instead, he finds ample use of it for his own unique purposes. Chapter 5 concludes that the discussion of Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s psychology reveals the flaw in their respective projects, namely, their demand that cognition of the human soul should mirror cognition of sensible objects. This is a conclusion that is also revealed by the study of Plotinus. However, I reaffirm my position that Schopenhauer’s idealism is a step forward in the right direction. I discuss four ‘great themes’ – born from the encounter between Schopenhauer and Plotinus – which provide the general context that helps me propose how the theoretical argument for the immortality of the true self works in transcendental idealism. I argue that these four great themes, areas where ontology and epistemology intersect, refocus not just Schopenhauer’s philosophy by helping us to become aware of the nonverbalized implications of his metaphysics, it even suggests that Plotinus’ metaphysics could benefit from the Schopenhauerian reflection. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

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The ‘race for talent’ on the global labor market is an increasingly discussed subject amongst EU policymakers. Skilled migration schemes have therefore been on the rise. By using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), the paper analyses 12 documents published by the EU between 2009 and 2021 regarding skilled migration. The theoretical framework the discussion is entrenched in is the ethical political spectrum reaching over political idealism and realism. Within the EU, migration policy is described to have an idealist character, with free movement and clear democratic values. Towards its neighboring countries, it is less clear where the EU stands in terms thereof. Dissecting EU skilled migration schemes and discourse hopes to locate EU foreign policy on that spectrum more clearly. An additional question to this main research topic is whether the EU adjusts its migration policies according to the governments of the countries of origin. As two increasingly important countries of origin for skilled migrants, the examples of Tunisia and Egypt were chosen. The analysis exemplifies thereby the EU’s approach to a democratic and an authoritarian government. The selection of the documents was therefore guided by their link to those countries.The study found that though the EU does not overtly discriminate against non-democratic forms of government in the context of skilled migration, they nonetheless organize their relations with third countries in a hierarchical manner. This entails certain privileges for countries committed to democratic values. Moreover, the EU skilled migration policy is found to be neither distinctly realist nor idealist. Instead, an overview of the different components of EU skilled migration policy and places them on the political ethical spectrum is provided.