This thesis is concerned to discuss two related questions in political theory. First, the relationship of 'theory' and 'practice', concentrating specifically on the relationship between 'philosophy' and 'polities'; and, secondly, how the political theory of the eighteenth century Enlightenment is helpful in revealing an answer to the first problem. In order to encompass this dual task, the thesis is divided into three parts. Part One, 'Philosophy in its Place', delineates two trends in modern political thought that most explicitly bracket off the theoretical and the practical. It goes on to discuss the thesis of Alisdair Maclntyre in AFTER VIRTUE, that it was the Enlightenment that was, in fact, the intellectual origin of these two trends. Chapter Two of Part One, continues this discussion by considering recent adaptations of the central claims (such as that offered by Bernard Williams), and challenges to them from thinkers who emphasise the methodological importance of the history of thought (such as Maclntyre himself, and Richard Rorty). It concludes with an analysis of an issue central to the discussions of all three thinkers: incommensurability. Part Two, 'Theory and Practice in the Enlightenment’s Politics ', consists of three chapters which together offer an interpretation of the Enlightenment's reflections on the relation between theory and practice and, specifically, of the two thinkers most important for this question, Hume and Kant. The analysis also discusses rival interpretations and concentrates specifically on refuting Maclntyre's arguments in AFTER VIRTUE on the nature, character and implications of Enlightenment thought. Part Three, 'Bringing Philosophy Back In', ties these various threads together by first discussing the methodological questions set out in Part One in more detail, and then by showing how the Enlightenment's thought on this topic is still of the utmost importance for modern political theorists and why this should be so.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2000. / Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 466-494). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2000.

Thesis (M.A.)--Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1999. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 37-03, page: 0787. Adviser: Roger Koppl.

I argue that a specific version of Theory theory is necessary and sufficient for attributions and predictions of others' emotions. Theory theory is the view that we attribute and predict others' mental states on the basis of a (tacit) body of generalisations about mental states, their situational input, and behavioural output. Theory's antagonist, Simulation theory, is the view that we ascribe mental states to others by simulating - or running ' off-line ' - their doxastic, emotional, and contextual situations. My argument for Theory's necessity and sufficiency develops in three stages: First, I show that some version of Theory is necessary for predictions of all mental states on the basis of the ascriber's knowledge of the subject's other mental states. The linchpin of the arguments here consists of considerations from relevant similarity between the ascriber's and the subject's mental states. Simulation cannot provide criteria for such similarity, and so, I argue, predictions must advert to Theory. Second, I develop a sui generis model of emotions, according to which (i) emoticns' necessary objects and typical causes are concern-based construals; and (ii) emotions qua attitudes are (a) complex states embedded in a narrative structure, (b) characterised in terms of their object, their expressive behaviour, and their phenomenology. Third, I show that, considering the nature of the objects of emotions, some Theory is necessary for emotion-predictions and -attributions. Moreover, I develop a version of Theory, based on my analysis of emotions and narrative structures, and argue that this version of Theory is both necessary and sufficient for emotion-predictions and -attributions.

This thesis explores the ethical impact of literary narrative fictions on the reader. It does so by focusing mainly on the reading experience since one of the main claims of the thesis is that literary narrative fictions are co-products of the author and the reader. In that sense the aforementioned impact cannot be understood without taking into account the creative acts of the reader. The exploration is carried out by focusing on three scholars whose investigations on the problem of literary experience can be read as complementary works. In the first chapter I descriptively lay out Roman Ingarden's investigation on the ontological and structural character of the literary work of art along with his phenomenological inquiry into the cognition of this work. By examining his basic claims about the nature of the literary work of art and its cognition, I discuss the ontological incompleteness of these works which necessitates the active role of the reader in giving the work its final shape. In the second chapter I focus upon Wolfgang Iser's reader-response theory. Iser's theory goes parallel to Ingarden's in the sense that they both accept the openness of the work to the creative acts of the reader. Iser, however by his notions of depragmatization, negation and negativity suggest us a two-way traffic between the fictional work and the reader. Through the reading proses, by virtue of the negations and de-pragmatizations, the work invites the reader to reflect on the familiar norms it represents and suggest to her a new model to understand the real world. In this way, while giving a shape to the work, the reader is also shaped by it. The third chapter addresses the phenomenological hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur. By exploring his notion of “narrative identity” as a mediator between the ipse and idem identities, my aim is to show the influence of the literary fictional narratives in understanding the identity of the individual subject as a temporal, historical, and intersubjective being. It is only through this understanding that we can construe the subject in her ethical identity. I will also focus on Ricoeur's notions of “emplotment,” and “threefold mimesis,” which implies the active role of the reader in realizing the literary narrative fiction, so that I can reveal how fictional narratives enhance the notion of narrative identity.

This dissertation argues that the impetus, growth, and financial success of many North American high-tech companies—biotechnology, computer software development and design, as well as Internet startups—are partly due to their collective way of organizing the production and distribution of gross profits received. The dissertation shows how and why these collectives can be conceived as an alternative to the conventionally understood forms of enterprise organization. Hence, the analysis demonstrates how industrial success and technological innovation can be at least partly attributed to a kind of economic and social energy emanating from collectively structured production sites. The dissertation also presents and analyzes what it defines as the hybrid nature of many high-tech companies. That is, these companies often exhibit at one and the same time both collective and non-collective ways of organizing the production and distribution of gross profits. A class analysis reveals how and why these hybrids are formed, what happens to them, and why enterprises containing these collectively organized class structures can become caught up in cyclical growth patterns—where their collectives emerge from, only to reabsorb back into, fully capitalist class structures. Some famous examples evolved from small, informally run ventures producing in residential car garages into multi-billion dollar public companies with eventual spin-offs of their own. Consequently, the dissertation brings into focus the ironic conclusion that capitalism's supposed “high-tech revolution” might actually derive from different forms of collective production. Accordingly, economic theorists are forced to consider the political as well as economic effects of an analysis that treats collectivity not as the basis for some alternative, potential society that is entirely “futuristic” but rather as an enterprise component contemporarily “realistic.”

This thesis explores how we might think the relation between psychoanalysis and the cultural field through Donald Winnicott's concept of the environment, seeking to bring the concept into dialogue with more “classical” strands of psychoanalytic theorizing. A substantial introduction sets out the rationale behind the thesis by reading Freud and Winnicott in relation to the “classic” and the “romantic” (Strenger 1989), or the “negative” and “positive” (Rustin 2001), in psychoanalytic thought. It goes on to outline the value of bringing these tendencies together in order to think the relationship between psychoanalysis, culture and change. The chapters which follow move from psychoanalysis as a “cultural cure” – a method and discourse drawing on and feeding into a broad conception of cultural life – towards a notion of “culture as cure” informed by Winnicott's theory of the environment. Chapter one examines Freud's refusal of the “culture”/ “civilization” distinction and considers what it means for the idea of a cultural cure. Chapter two considers whether Winnicott's thinking about “culture” ultimately prioritises the aesthetic over the political. Chapter three uses Aldous Huxley's Brave New World ([1932] 1994) to explore an analogy between totalitarianism, technology and maternal care. Chapter four turns to the series In Treatment (HBO 2008-) to think about the intersections of therapy and technology in terms of reflection and recognition. Chapter five employs Ian McEwan's Saturday (2005) as a means to reflect on the capacity of culture to cure. Ultimately, I suggest that social “cure” may require more than “good-enough” cultural forms and objects, but Winnicott's “romantic” theorization of the aesthetic, coupled with a “classic” attention to structures of power and oppression may offer a means of thinking the relationship between psychoanalysis and culture in potentially transformative ways.

This thesis emerges from and responds to certain recent philosophical writings on conceptual art, in particular from the British analytic tradition. Having identified a recent tendency implicit within this tradition towards an increasingly phenomenological reading of the ontology of the conceptual artwork, I aim to develop such ideas through an analysis of Heidegger's theory of art, and through a subsequent enquiry into its applicability to conceptual art. This will involve a lengthy analysis of several conceptual artworks on the basis of this theory. The thesis consists of three substantive chapters. The first is a critical examination of certain recent philosophical texts on conceptual art. This chapter takes a series of philosophical texts representing a range of positions with regards to both the specific role and, by virtue, the significance accorded to the material in the constitution of the conceptual artwork. The second chapter looks at Heidegger's phenomenological enquiry into the ontology of the artwork, and specifically at the role of the concepts of Earth and World in this ontology. On the basis of this study of Heidegger, the third chapter engages with a range of conceptual artworks. Each artwork is shown to exemplify a general tendency of conceptual artworks to explore of the bounds of the artwork as such and its relation to its context.