This project will concern itself with crafting an argument in favor of the legalization of assisted suicide as a viable medical treatment. It will do this in two ways; first by comparing the physical and experiential differences between assisted suicide and currently allowed end-of-life practices. With this accomplished, I then hope to demonstrate that for an individual patient there may in fact be a great sense of meaning that comes from giving her control over her own fate. By not granting seriously ill patients the opportunity to commit assisted suicide we are in fact harming some patients for whom the act of taking their own life may be very meaningful. This paper does not argue that the act of taking ones own life will always be a good end for all individuals, but rather it supports the idea that having the ability to choose assisted suicide may give meaning to a time in a persons life when meaning may be hard to come by. The paper also extends its pragmatic analysis of the aforementioned differences between practices to include a discussion of how, in light of work by William James, this added meaning is pragmatically good.

In the abstract, this thesis focuses on the subject of philosophical doubt. Both Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein criticize philosophical doubt, and their methods of criticism are both similar and complimentary. In the first two parts of the thesis, I explain some of their criticisms of philosophical doubt. Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein determine that philosophical doubt is an activity that relies on assumptions as it contravenes them. In his treatment of the subject, Wittgenstein approximates some of the impediments to the communication of the errors of philosophical doubt. In an effort to isolate the problem of communicating the errors of philosophical doubt, I explain and develop Kierkegaards analysis of the consciousness for which doubt is a possibility. I then draw upon Kierkegaards analysis of the consciousness for which doubt is a possibility to explain the following: how the activity of philosophical doubt produces error, and how the production of error helps the activity of philosophical doubt to sustain itself; the difficulty of communicating the error of philosophical doubt to the individual, and the resistence of the philosophical doubter to the disclosure of the nature of philosophical doubt. This analysis helps to frame the question of whether philosophical doubt is an essential part of philosophy. Finally, I return to Kierkegaards character Johannes Climacus, who both disproved philosophical doubt in the abstract and suffered it subjectively.

My dissertation tackles the question of how to theorize the democratic commitment that collective decisions must accommodate the voices and interests of those subject to them. The rigorous demands of this democratic commitment, on my view, require the thoroughly participatory stance embodied in radical democracy. Drawing on the work of George Herbert Mead, I maintain that we need an account of sociality that highlights its communicative dimension and that will allow us to critically and ethically evaluate political theory and practice. Ultimately I root a conception of democracy in a view of the normative ramifications of human communication that I call universalist perspectivalism. This formulation highlights the simultaneous commitment to (1) a rootedness in perspectives that forecloses the possibility of transcending all perspectives in order to attain an aperspectival standpoint and (2) a robust conception of universality that allows us to attain a critical and normative perspective on legitimacy claims. I argue that the communicative dimension of human sociality involves implicit appeals to universality as openness to an indefinite number of perspectives and contexts; and this can only be adequately translated into the political realm via a conception of cosmopolitan democracy, meaning a conception of democratic legitimation that goes beyond the bounds of territorially-defined nation-states to take into account the interests of all affected by political decisions. The democratic ideal itself consists in the freedom of individuals to criticize and work to reform the social order; as well as the subjection of the collective coordination of human social life to the constraint of legitimation via the input, evaluation, and interplay of the claims, interests, and perspectives of all subject to its decisions.

In this dissertation I use the philosophies of William James and Friedrich Nietzsche to draw a connection between metaphysical conceptions of experience and the meaning and practice of democratic education. I argue that without a coherent conception of experience, the meaning and social function of democratic education is unclear. In response to this problem, I develop a conception of experience as events of power that allows me to suggest that the Deweyan definition of educationthe renewal of life by transmissionhelps us to understand more clearly the role, institutions, and function of education in culture today. I deploy this metaphysics of experience in an analysis of some of the educative effects of large social forces such as war and religion in a democratic culture. Finally, I suggest that my conception of experience might help us understand how to make more democratic the relationship between explicitly educational institutions and the social forms of life in which they are imbedded.

PHILOSOPHY THE PHENOMENON OF MEANING AND HEIDEGGERS ONTOLOGY DAVID G. FRAHM Thesis under the direction of Professor Michael Hodges The thesis is presented that the ontological meaning of an individual thing (a being) is how its nature fits within its specific existential context(s). Martin Heideggers conception of meaning is examined (as well as several commentators on his conception), deficiencies are noted, and a new analysis of the phenomenon of meaning yields a fuller, more complex conception. That complex consists of six structural components (nature, vector, context, other things, humans, temporality) plus follow-on considerations (significance, the creation, and experience, of meaning). Further, this fuller conception of meaningor more accurately, meaningful thing, beingin turn illuminates both the conception of the Being of beings (e.g., hammers, jugs, human beings, artworks) and the meaning of Being in general, two main concerns of Heideggers ontology. It is argued that the Being of a being is how it exists, how it uniquely fits within its existential contexts, and ultimately suggested that the meaning of Being in general may be identity through time.

Animals have populated philosophical texts in various forms: idioms, jokes, metaphors, and examples. But most often they are summoned as a foil to illustrate what it means to be human. Animals are instrumental in the construction of the human subject. How should we understand this human-animal divide? Not only does it inform us of who we are, it also tells us how we should relate to other creatures and the larger non-human world. In this dissertation I interrogate the human-animal divide by looking at our linguistic differences. Specifically, I examine why the question of language remains relevant in animal ethics, and how the linguistic divide functions in our relationships with animals. Drawing on the works of Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger, I articulate a theory of language that emphasizes kinship and relational possibilities. By showing that our linguistic capacity is intertwined with our relational capacity, this dissertation seeks to reinvigorate the question of language in animal ethics.

Utilizing a brand of pragmatism influenced very largely by John Dewey, Pragmatism and Modern American Democracy examines the state of American democracy and the ways in which it falls short of its purported ideals. By adopting Deweys definitions of both democracy and philosophy, the paper argues that the purpose of democracy is to identify and subsequently actualize the collective will of the public. However, American democracy has consistently fallen short of this ideal. The paper extrapolates from Deweys explicit argument against the modern American democracy in order to argue that philosophy must be given a central role in empowering the public and therefore helping democracy live up to its ideals. The solution provided by Deweys model is to educate the population to incubate and adhere to a critical disposition with regard to their environment. By so doing, the public would be able to more accurately identify their collective needs and subsequently actualize them. Deweys model guides people to be critical, identify trends, communicate and to act more intelligently, with the end goal of politically enfranchising the public.

My dissertation suggests a new approach to political and ethical questions surrounding immigration by providing an account of the ways that illegal aliens are constituted as subjects in the contemporary United States context. Through an analysis informed by Michel Foucaults description of normalizing power and Gloria Anzaldúas conception of mestiza identity, I analyze the constitution of the illegal alien on the United States southwest border in particular, both materially (in terms of locations of governmental institutions and disciplinary and regulative technologies) as well as symbolically (in terms of language, race, ethnicity and culture). In providing this account rooted in present struggles and interests as well as the work of Foucault, Anzaldúa and other feminist and critical race theorists, the dissertation is organized around different aspects of this type of subject as it is constituted by contemporary practices and discoursesas racialized, criminal, perverse and deathly. In so doing, I show how race, criminality, and perversion have themselves been reformed by their constitutive involvement with alienness, suggesting that an analysis of this form of subjectivity is central to understanding the way that normative power operates in these domains. By focusing on what I contend are central characteristics of illegal aliens as constituted in the contemporary United States context, I argue that this subjectivity functions differently from simple juridical categories which purport to determine it. For this reason, I suggest that resistance to oppressive structures of power with regards to immigration should be rooted in resisting the normalizing dichotomy I describe between the brown, criminal, and perverse anti-citizen and the white and virtuous citizen. I draw on Anzaldúas conception of Mestizaje show how the structures of power that constitute the alien anti-citizen might be reformed.

Dance receives relatively little attention in the history of philosophy. My strategy for connecting that history to dance consists in tracing a genealogy of its dance-relevant moments. In preparation, I perform a phenomenological analysis of my own eighteen years dance experience in order to generate a small cluster of central concepts or Moves for elucidating dance. At this genealogical-phenomenological intersection, I find what I term positure most helpfully treated in Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche; gesture similarly in Condillac, Mead and Kristeva; grace in Avicenna, Schiller and Dewey; and resilience in Fanon, (Judith) Butler and Deleuze. With these analyses in place, I apply the four Moves in analyzing various forms of dancing (including salsa dancing and the pollen dance of the honeybee) and coordinate them to outline a comprehensive philosophy of dance. This philosophy points to certain conditions for an ideally flourishing, dancing society. And these conditions create the possibility of a coalition of sympathetic discourses (including critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies and democratic theory) united in pursuit of political virtue. The development of a philosophy of dance offers a deeper understanding of the intellectual values of a practice often identified with bodily immediacy and therefore judged uninteresting. It also reinvigorates philosophy with the dynamism and bodily relevance of the practice of dancing. Most important, it demonstrates the meaningful intersection of aesthetics and ethics, by exploring how aesthetic practices underlie and inspire human flourishing.

I demonstrate how listening functions in deliberative endeavors. Because speaking does not much matter if no one is listening, I argue that democratic participation can be undermined by those who simply refuse to listen to some speakers or who willfully misunderstand some speakers contributions. I rebalance the responsibilities of communicators by defending an account of epistemic interdependence where both speakers and listeners have duties to each other, focusing on the duties that listeners have to being open-minded, empathetic, and reflexively critically aware. Because acknowledging listener responsibility does only so much to actually improve listening, I propose a transformation of formal educational programs into models of inclusive democratic communities. Poor listening leads to invidiously oppressive epistemic injustices, not because we do not teach listening skills, but because we are mis-educating students into prejudiced trust and credibility assessments. I argue that we can transform communities by transforming schools, and we must transform schools because we are committed to valuing and listening to all community members.