In this essay I attempt to answer a fundamental question about ieks heterodox reading of Hegels dialectic: what project sustains this reading in the first place? That is, what is at stake for iek himself? The purpose of this essay is to develop in this fashion a reading of iek (since he does not programmatically answer this question), although not one that is necessarily meant to compete against other alternatives. My argument, then, is that ieks ontological and hermeneutical project is ultimately political, that when iek says we need Hegel now more than ever, he has a political situation in mind. By finding an element of Hegels thought, the political subjectivity of the rabble, that resists the traditional picture of dialectical system (especially the critical picture of the post-structuralists), iek can overturn the distinction between Hegelian method and system by suggesting that theres no comprehensible distinction at all. And by politicizing Hegel and drawing out the seeds of Lacanian thought that were nonetheless incomplete until Lacan, ieks historiographical project takes on the character of ideological critique. As such, Hegel and Lacan reach us anew, as theoretical players in an anti-postmodern political gambit.

Taking seriously Ovids claim that Echos voice has life, this thesis examines the use of the myth of Echo and Narcissus, as presented in Ovids Metamorphoses, in 20th century literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, especially as to how it pertains to the creation of the human subject. I argue in favor of John Hollanders restoration of the trope of metalepsis, and show how that trope is connected to a variety of topics, including, but not limited to, the imagery of echo in Mark Z. Danielewskis novel House of Leaves; how the myth relates to the Freudian notions of primary and secondary narcissism; Jacques Lacans attempts to incorporate psychoanalysis into the history of philosophy, vis-à-vis Hegels dialectical method; the relation between subjectivity and love in both Freud and Jacques Derridas works; and how echo operates within the discourse of écriture feminine. Finally, I end the thesis with a critical reading of the film Its All Gone, Pete Tong, and a brief discussion on treatment of the female voice today.

Religious congregations and social work have long been a neglected field of research. Although the number of studies have increased during the last twenty years. With a starting point in the situation in this field of research and in the current public debate in Sweden the focus of this study will be on how Christian and Muslim congregations view cooperating with the municipalities, organizations, the religious community to whom which the congregation belongs and how the congregations view cooperating with other religious communities. Qualitative method of research was used. Representatives of four religious congregations was interviewed; a deacon in a congregation in the Swedish Lutheran Church, a pastor in a congregation belonging to the Mission Covenent Church of Sweden, the chairman in a the board of a Muslim congregation and volunteerleader in another Muslim congregation. For analyzing the transcribed interviews the method of sentence – categorization was used and institutional theory, political opportunity structure and Bauböcks theory of integration was applied. The result showed the degree and form of cooperation varies between the congregations but all four congregations are overall positive towards cooperating with the municipality, organizations, the own religious community and other religious communities.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine various attempts to disarm the externalist threat to self-knowledge. That threat is engendered by a certain causal theory of meaning and reference, which suggests that empirical investigations may be required to know the contents of our own thoughts. It is claimed, then, that direct, non-inferential self-knowledge of our own mental states, is not possible if externalism is true. The leading compatibilist strategies that attempt to reconcile these apparently conflicting theses are explored and criticized. I conclude by offering what I take to be the essential features of a more successful compatibilist strategy.

The linguistic structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) attracted the attention of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, prompting what is thought to be Merleau-Pontys linguistic turn of 1947. Saussures theory of the self-referential structure of linguistic signs as constitutive of value, was tied by Merleau-Ponty to his conception of the structure of intercommunication as constitutive of human value and meaning. Jacques Derrida, in the 1960s, also appealed to Saussures theory in formulating his thesis of a deferring and differing relationship between linguistic signs as constitutive of meaning, but rejected what he saw as the privileging of a metaphysics of presence-to-meaning in Saussure. One set of questions raised here concerns the relationship between thought and perception and calls for a reevaluation of Merleau-Pontys thesis of the primacy of perception in light of his final, posthumously published work. The possibility of a full philosophical dialectic between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida was rendered impossible by Merleau-Pontys sudden death. In the interest of such a dialogue, this study addresses the similarities and dissimilarities in their positions regarding language and meaning within a central theme of: truth. An area of concern is how their views come to bear upon the ongoing debate between subjectivist and objectivist theories of meaning. Can we arrive at an authentic understanding and expression of truth and meaning? Getting there entails an iv understanding of the formal structure of language and its role in the genesis of linguistic meaning. This study treats the subject of the origins of language and meaning in terms of a phenomenological approach which places all origin squarely in the lived-world of experience. If we agree that our very being is constituted by and in an immersion and interaction in the world, this will suggest that meaning is posited by consciousness in a process of repetition in which thought serves to confirm an initial pre-reflective perception. Merleau-Pontys interwoven flesh of the world and Derridas interwoven textuality are proposed as alternatives to tradition's reliance upon external referents in intellectualism and internal intuitions of empiricism for validation of what we name truth.

I formulate a hybrid theory of perception, one in which the minds interaction with the world is a more direct affair than many suppose (no perceptual mental representations, no sense data, no Cartesian Theater), but one in which our concepts also play a role. My claims have implications for philosophical attempts to understand perception, cognitive science theories of vision, debates over the nature of consciousness, and philosophical debates concerning Artificial Intelligence.

Herein, I will reconsider the works of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas with a feminist focus. Through a careful analysis of both the Heideggerian and Levinasian placement of the feminine and of sexual difference, I will suggest alternatives to some traditional readings of these two prolific figures offered by feminists and feminist philosophers. I will argue, in effect, for a Heideggerian model for re-thinking sexual difference. In addition, I will offer what I believe should be a 'new' goal toward which feminism should work, one beyond the goals that have been in place thus far and one based upon a Heideggerian model.

I provide a close analysis of truth and freedom in Heideggers work during the passage from Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927 to the Contributions to Philosophy (Beiträge zur Philosophie) in 1938. This analysis demonstrates the passage from a Kantian style transcendental analysis of the self to an Idealist inspired study of being-historical thinking. Throughout this shift in thinking, the work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling is shown to play an increasingly decisive role in Heideggers thought, finally leading him to an understanding of the self in terms of freedom, community, culture, and history that carries important implications for political philosophy.

Phenomenology and cognitive science present two very different ways of looking at mental activity. Recently, however, there have been some attempts to incorporate phenomenological insights and methods into cognitive science, drawing especially on the works of Martin Heidegger. The purpose of this thesis is to determine if a useful combination of cognitive science with Heideggers phenomenology is possible, and to determine the form such a combination might take. This thesis begins with a brief overview of the field of cognitive science, and of some of the problems within the field that might benefit from a phenomenological analysis. It then reviews Winograd and Flores attempt to rethink cognitive science in Heideggerean terms. Next, Heideggers work is analyzed in order to see how scientific experimentation is viewed in his phenomenology. Finally, this thesis argues that any useful attempt at reconciling cognitive science and phenomenology must start from a phenomenological, rather than a scientific, standpoint.

In his account of intentional interpretation, Donald Davidson assumes that people are mostly rational. Several psychological experiments though, reveal that human beings deviate drastically from the normative standards of rationality. Therefore, some psychologists arrive to the conclusion that humans are mostly irrational. In this thesis, I raise some objections to both points of view. On the one hand, ascribing rationality to humans in an a priori manner seems a suspicious position to adopt, considering the empirical data that show otherwise. On the other hand, the validity of the experiments and what exactly they test can also be put in question, since the position that humans are in general irrational is also unacceptable intuitively. In this thesis, I suggest that the discrepancy is due to the notion of rationality we adopt, which I bring into question. I do not find convincing reasons that humans should be thought a priori as rational and I do not also see why humans should be called irrational just because they fail certain tests. Many of the alleged "irrationalities" in the tests can be explained if we adopt different styles of reasoning than the "traditional" ones. Hence, humans can count as rational in another way. But, is this what Davidson thinks of rational, or does he think of rationality in the traditional sense? I think the type of rationality that Davidson endorses relies on Classic Logical conditions, which makes it inflexible. A type of rationality that relies on Fuzzy Logical conditions, as I claim, is more appropriate to describe human rationality.