This study offers a comparative investigation into selected figurative and nonfigurative, monochromatic (and mainly monochromatic) artworks by Ad Reinhardt, Ultimate Painting nr 39 (1963), Yves Klein, Monochrome bleu (IKB 3) (1956) and The thin red line (1970) by Douglas Portway. The aim of this research is to examine the possible subjective, meaningful function of the seemingly objective artworks. The selected artworks represent the formalist tendency of the high-Modernist conception of art-as-art, or the artwork as an autonomous objective object. At first sight the objective artworks seem to refute the subjective intentions of the artists who present them as both an externalisation of subjective experience and as possibly meaningful to the viewer. The investigation into the possible subjectively meaningful artworks is guided by an Existential approach to the aesthetic experience, as proposed by Nietzche’s Dionysian and Apollonian concepts as well as Sartre’s conceptualisation of néantisation and the imagination respectively. Both philosophers describe aesthetic experience as a meeting between both subjective and objective elements of their philosophy. The experience of the aesthetic (in the artworks) ultimately leads to a subjective space within which the seemingly objective artworks function as a subjective platform on which the Existential search for meaning can be considered (and possibly relieved). / MA (History of Art), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Kungsgatan av Ivar Lo-Johansson visar urbaniseringen och moderniteten i mellankrigstidens Sverige. Romanen har framför allt studerats genom protagonisten Adrians bildningsresa, men denna uppsats framhåller statardottern Martas fall som kvintessentiell för Lo-Johanssons gestaltning av moderniteten. Med avstamp i det frihetstema Ola Holmgren identifierat i Lo-Johanssons författarskap tillämpar jag existentialistiska begrepp från Jean-Paul Sartre i syfte att undersöka vad Martas fall orsakas av och hur hennes fall relaterar till moderniteten såsom den beskrivits av Marshall Berman och Georg Simmel. Slutsatsen blir att Martas livsöde bör förklaras i termer av att hon agerar i ond tro och att hon därigenom antar ett omodernt levnadsmönster som inte fungerar i moderniteten. Orsaken till hennes agerande härleds till en obalans mellan transcendens och fakticitet, en orsak som rättfärdigas med hjälp av Lo-Johanssons andra skildringar av statarnas livsvillkor. Slutsatsen blir att moderniteten gestaltas som krävande invånarnas anpassning och att alla inte är kapabla till sådan, vilket förtydligas om man utvecklar Holmgrens forskning genom existentialistiska begrepp och nyttjar dem till att analysera Martas fall.

Juan Luis Segundo (1925-1996) was a Uruguayan Jesuit priest who, I argue, based his liberation theology on his understanding of existentialism. The major contribution of this thesis is the exploration of unknown and unexplored sources in Segundo's work. These sources support my thesis of his basis in existentialism and are corroborated by his mature theology. This thesis is significant because the connection between existentialism and liberation theology has been widely overlooked. My starting point is Segundo's 1948 book, in which he combines existentialism with personalism and develops a transcendental method grounded in love and inter-subjectivity. The following three chapters develop my argument through his engagement with four existentialist thinkers: Berdyaev, Sartre and Camus, and Heidegger. Chapter 3 demonstrates how Segundo follows Berdyaev's primacy of freedom, which allows for human creativity, but Segundo takes it as a "quality of the will" and relates freedom to love. Berdyaev influences Segundo's preference for a methodology yielding consistent growth rather than a systematic approach to theology. Chapter 4 shows how Sartre's and Camus' understanding of freedom and limits influenced Segundo's sense that a person's lived reality must be the starting point for theological reflection (e.g. the hermeneutic circle). In chapter 5, I use an unpublished manuscript to show how Segundo uses the place of tradition in the Christian church and the role of tradition in Heidegger's phenomenological analysis of Dasein in order to build his theology of "liberative human seeking and divine revelation". In the final two chapters, I draw the new sources together with two of Segundo's widely read books: Faith and Ideologies (1982) in chapter 6 and The Liberation of Theology (1975) in chapter 7. In chapter 6, the transcendental method he first wrote about in 1948 returns and he addresses materialism and personalism. Chapter 7 serves as my conclusion and uses Segundo's hermeneutic circle as the fullest manifestation of my argument.

This thesis examines the possibilities for feminism that arise from the work of Michel Foucault, which I explicate by comparison it with humanist existentialism. I begin with The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir's application of existentialism to women. I expose the problems that arise in Beauvoir's project. Woman's body is an obstacle to her transcendence, and further, she must abandon her feminine desires and values, and accommodate herself to masculine patterns if she is to overcome her immanence and subordination. To understand why such problems recur in The Second Sex, I turn to Sartre's Being and Nothingness. After examining the conceptions underlying his thought, I conclude that his philosophy is unable to encompass difference, and is therefore antithetical to the feminist project. ¶ Foucault's philosophy offers solutions to these problems by eliminating consciousness as universal subject of action, and by making subjectivity a product of time, through showing how subjects are formed though the changing effects of power upon bodies. His thought encompasses difference at a fundamental level, through understanding human beings as particular 'events' in time. I argue that Foucault's philosophy does not depend fundamentally, as does Sartre's, upon woman as Other. ¶ Foucault shows how our particular historical form of rationality, created within power relations, sets limits on what we can think, be and do. He shows how thought can overcome some of these limits, allowing us to become authors of our own actions. Misunderstandings are common, particularly of his conception of power and its relation to subjectivity. Many commentators demand changes that reinstate the concepts he fundamentally rejects. Others do not see the unity of his philosophy. I show its importance to women's emancipation and to a feminist ethics. ¶ Finally, I compare Foucault's thought with feminism of difference. With the help of Heidegger, I argue that Foucault offers a superior but complementary way to know who we are, through understanding the history of our making. I show how the masculine and the feminine can be reconciled through a reconceptualisation of the relation of sex to time. All told, Foucault is a philosopher of freedom and for him the practice of freedom is an ethics.

The rise of the middle class to power and influence in European culture and politics in the nineteenth century created the conditions of modern life which to many European intellectuals were distasteful and ominous. They viewed urbanization, commercialization, industrialization and the qualities of life that they engendered, such as anxiety, limitation of freedom, and pervasive mediocrity in cultural expression, as being inimical to the traditional and more reliable values of European civilization or, in some instances, as being incapable of providing the bases for a free and humane existence. This study focuses on the attack on bourgeois society in Europe in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in an attempt to expand the definition of “cultural despair,” a term to which it is related. Although others have discussed this general topic, cultural despair, the present study takes for its starting point the limited outlines offered in Fritz Stern’s The Politics of Cultural Despair. This is undertaken for the dual purpose of exposing to historical scrutiny a background theme of European intellectual activity of the former and present centuries, and to help construct a historiographical tool with which the historian can seek to understand more readily the impact of the rise of the middle class and its consequences on the mind of Europe. To reinforce the understanding of the topic of cultural despair, the essay offers four illustrations of cultural despair from traditions of the European intellectual milieu. These are the revolutionary, represented by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the critique of bourgeois economics; the literary, represented by T. S. Eliot and the critique of modern culture; the Catholic, represented by Emmanuel Mounier and his critique of bourgeois life; and the existentialist, represented by Jean-Paul Sartre and the redefinition of freedom in modern life. Finally, this effort concludes with an attempt to synthesize the attitudes of these four men in their relation to the general subject.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the novel “The Magus” written by John Fowles through the theoretical lens of postmodernism, and the aim is to highlight the existentialism behind the story. The study seeks to explain the intricate relationship described in the novel between societal norms and manipulation, and existential themes such as the fragmentation of reality, the autonomy to choose, and the search for meaning in life. The analysis focuses on four characters, in particular their role in the narrative, as well as the use of intertextuality and specific narratological solutions like the first-person narrator and non-linear storytelling. Through the understanding of the sub-stories in the novel, this paper aims to offer a better understanding of Fowles’ ability to interconnect postmodernism with existential themes to create a rich and complex story, and ultimately to underscore the human condition within our society.

Ce mémoire propose d’élaborer une philosophie du meurtre politique, entendu comme mise-à-mort de l’oppresseur dans un contexte de lutte d’émancipation, à partir de celle que l’on peut trouver dans l’œuvre de Jean-Paul Sartre. Il nous faudra d’abord identifier cette philosophie en commençant par ses prémisses dont il sera suggéré qu’elles se trouvent dans le corpus dramatique de l’auteur puis en examinant les prolongements de celles-ci dans son œuvre philosophique. Après l’exposition de la cohérence de ces deux ensembles, ce mémoire s’intéresse à la réception critique de cet aspect de la philosophie sartrienne, afin d’en relever les limites et apories auxquelles il s’agira de proposer des solutions, en greffant à cette philosophie les apports d’autres perspectives que l’on trouve dans les pensées féministes et décoloniales contemporaines. / This dissertation proposes to develop a philosophy of political murder, understood as the killing of the oppressor in the context of an emancipatory struggle, based on that found in the works of Jean-Paul Sartre. We shall first identify this philosophy, starting with its premises, which we shall suggest are to be found in the author's dramatic corpus, and then examining its extensions in his philosophical work. After demonstrating the coherence of these two bodies of work, this dissertation will turn to the critical reception of this aspect of Sartre's philosophy, in order to identify its limitations and aporias, and propose solutions by grafting onto this philosophy the contributions of other perspectives found in contemporary feminist and decolonial thought.

This dissertation is an empirically responsive philosophical exploration into the incorporation of technological tools within a framework comprising the structures of experience laid out in the early phenomenological tradition and an analysis of agency drawing from the analytical tradition. Technological tools have become so deeply integrated in our lives that they function like a part of us, transforming what we feel we can do and even who we are. Although new spaces of autonomous agency have been opened up, since the inner workings of technological tools can remain invisible, we risk diminishing our own capacities. Since we are fundamentally embedded in the world, we cannot understand ourselves without reference to the world and we cannot understand the world without reference to the way we are. The uniqueness involved in our use of technological tools grows out of a more primordial uniqueness that makes technological tool use possible and sets us apart from our closest evolutionary relatives. Several animals extend their physical influence on the environment by means of tools. We humans, however, use tools to extend our cognitive abilities as well. And since the computer is the most universal human tool, which can be put to sensorimotor and cognitive purposes alike, we take the computer to be...

Orientador: Carlos Eduardo Jordão Machado / Banca: Carlos Alberto Sampaio / Banca: Célia Reis Camargo / Banca: Miguel Vedda / Banca: Isabel Maria Frederico Rodrigues Loureiro / Resumo: Trata-se de uma investigação sobre as posições políticas de Jean-Paul Sartre relacionadas ao Terceiro Mundo, entre 1947 e 1979. A investigação tem dois objetivos fundamentais: estabelecer as relações possíveis entre o contexto histórico - o mundo pós-guerra, as guerras de descolonização, a emergência dos países do Terceiro Mundo e o cenário político-intelectual francês - e a trajetória de Sartre; e analisar, por meio das fontes documentais, os problemas que o Terceiro Mundo - a Guerra da Argélia (1954-1962), a Revolução Cubana (1959) e a Guerra do Vietnã (1946-1975) - colocam às posições políticas de Sartre / Abstract: This study investigates Jean-Paul Sartre‟s political positions and their relationship with the Third World, between 1947 and 1979. Generally speaking, this research aims to establish a possible link between the historical context - the postwar world, the descolonization wars, the rising of third world countries, the French political and intellectual setting - and Sartre‟s trajectory. More accurately, this investigation, above all, aims to analyse by means of documental sources, the problems that the Third World - The Algeria War (1954-1962), the Cuban Revolution (1959) and the Vietnam War (1946-1975) - bring forward to Sartre‟s political positions / Doutor

Thèse-Zurich. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: p. 131-137.