protein chemistry, unnatural amino acids, chemical biology, proteomicsThe foundation of political societies is a central theme in Rousseau's work. This is no surprise coming from a man who was born into a people who had their own celebrated founder and foundations, and immersed himself in the writings of classical republicans and the quasi-mythical histories of ancient city-states where the heroic lawgiver played an important and legitimate role in political foundations. However, Rousseau's propositional political writings (those written for Geneva, Corsica, and Poland) have been accused of being unsystematic and running the spectrum from conservative and prudent to radical and utopian. It is this seeming incongruence which is the subject of this thesis. In particular, it is argued that this confusion is born out the failure to recognize a systematic distinction between "founding" and "re-founding" political societies in both the history of political thought, and Rousseau's own work (a distinction in Rousseau which has rarely been noted, let alone treated to a study of its own). By recognizing this distinction one can identify two Rousseaus; the conservative and prudent thinker who is wary of making changes to established political systems and constitutional foundations (the re-founder), and the radical democrat fighting for equality, and claiming that no state is legitimate without popular sovereignty (the founder). In demonstrating this distinction, this thesis examines the ancient concept of the lawgiver, the growth and expansion of the idea leading up to the eighteenth century, Rousseau's own philosophic writings on the topic, and the differing political proposals he wrote for Geneva, Corsica, and Poland. The thesis argues that although there is a clear separation between these two types of political proposals, they remain systematically Rousseauvian.

In this doctoral thesis, Kant's distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is examined. The thesis begins with an exploration of how the distinction originates and evolves in the writings of three of Kant's most prominent natural law predecessors: Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, and Christian Wolff. The thesis then moves on to Kant's own writings. It is argued that Kant draws the perfect-imperfect distinction in as many as twelve different ways, that these ways are not entirely consistent with one another, and that many of them, even taken by themselves, do not hold up to scrutiny. Furthermore, it is argued that Kant's claim that perfect duties always trump imperfect duties - which can be referred to as "the priority claim" - is not actually supported by any one of the ways in which Kant draws the perfect-imperfect distinction. After this critical reading of Kant's writings, the thesis then switches gears and a more "positive" project is attempted. It is argued that the perfect-imperfect distinction, even though it does not support the priority claim, is not altogether normatively neutral or uninteresting. In particular, for some of the ways in which the distinction is drawn, it is shown that the distinction yields the following normative implication: Sometimes perfect duties override imperfect duties and all other times there is no priority one way or the other. Finally, it is explained that this normative implication - which can be referred to as the "privilege claim" - translates into the following practical directive: When there is a conflict between a perfect duty and an imperfect duty, sometimes one must act in conformity with the former duty and all other times one is free to choose which of the two duties to act in conformity with. This practical directive represents the ultimate finding of this thesis.

This thesis explores Herman Melville’s relationship to sceptical philosophy. By reading Melville’s fictions of the 1840s and 1850s alongside the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, I seek to show that they manifest by turns expression, rebuttal, and mitigated acceptance of philosophical doubt. Melville was an attentive reader of philosophical texts, and he refers specifically to concepts such as Berkeleyan immaterialism and the Kantian “noumenon”. But Melville does not simply dramatise pre-existing theories; rather, in works such as Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre he enacts sceptical and anti-sceptical ideas through his literary strategies, demonstrating their relevance in particular regions of human experience. In so doing he makes a substantive contribution to a philosophical discourse that has often been criticised – by commentators including Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift – for its tendency to abstraction. Melville’s interest in scepticism might be read as part of a wider cultural response to a period of unprecedented social and political change in antebellum America, and with this in mind I compare and contrast his work with that of Dickinson, Douglass, Emerson, and Thoreau. But in many respects Melville’s distinctive and original treatment of scepticism sets him apart from his contemporaries, and in order to fully make sense of it one must range more widely through the canons of philosophy and literature. His exploration of the ethical consequences of doubt in The Piazza Tales, for example, can be seen to anticipate with remarkable precision the theories of twentieth-century thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Stanley Cavell. I work chronologically though selected prose from the period 1849-1857, paying close attention to the textual effects and philosophical allusions in each work. In so doing I hope to offer fresh ways of looking at Melville’s handling of literary form and the wider shape of his career. I conclude with reflections on how Melville’s normative emphasis on the acknowledgement of epistemological limitation might inform the practice of literary criticism.

Cette thèse se situe dans la perspective de la philosophie de l’éducation et de l’art. Elle propose d’aborder, au travers de grands textes issus de la philosophie et de l’esthétique, la question des valeurs éducatives des arts. Cette question est ici considérée dans une perspective comparative et historique entre la culture chinoise et la culture occidentale. Le critère de comparaison, notamment inféré depuis des données de la mythologie chinoise et/ou de la Grèce ancienne, est celui d’approches soit « binaires », fondées sur deux pôles, ce que nous qualifions aussi de « bipolaire », soit « ternaires » ou « tripolaires », avec le rôle d’un Tiers, d’un « milieu ». La problématique ainsi retenue est la suivante :Quelles sont les valeurs éducatives des arts attribuées par de grandes approches de la culture occidentale et chinoise, par rapport à une configuration « bipolaire » ou « tripolaire » ?Au niveau historique, pour chaque culture, deux périodes jugées « significatives » dans le cadre de la philosophie de l’éducation esthétique/artistique ont été retenues. La première période correspond à l’Antiquité. Pour la chine, il s’agit de l’époque des Printemps et Automnes (771 à 476 av. J.-C.), pendant laquelle sont nés les courants philosophiques du confucianismeet du taoïsme. Pour l’Occident, il s’agit de la pensée grecque telle qu’elle est soulignée par Platon et Aristote. La seconde période, ne correspond pas à une synchronie entre la Chine et l’Occident. En revanche, elle se traduit dans un cas comme dans l’autre, par une profonde réforme des valeurs éducatives des arts. Cette réforme correspond pour l’Occident aux Lumières, notamment allemandes, par exemple avec la naissance, au XVIIIe siècle, de l’esthétique sous la plume de Baumgarten. Si la Chine était restée en phase avec la tradition de l’époque des Printemps et Automnes, il fallut attendre l’époque républicaine, à partir de 1919, pour que cette réforme se produise, précisément sous l’influence d’intellectuels chinois qui introduisirent de nouvelles conceptions très influencées par les Lumières européennes.Tel est le parcours historique que propose cette thèse, pour revenir finalement à la question de sa démarche comparative sur la base du « binaire » ou du « ternaire », base sur laquelle oscille l’ensemble du corpus présenté, tant en Chine qu’en Occident. Cette double configuration, repérée au centre des axiologies ici présentées, se prête ainsi, au-delà des valeurs éducatives des arts, à articuler un opérateur comparatif « transculturel » dont la proposition et l’essai constituent l’originalité de cette thèse au regard des approches sino-occidentales. / This thesis is situated in the perspective of the philosophies of education and of art. It proposes to broach, through the principal texts stemming from philosophy and aesthetics, the question of the educational value of the arts. This question is considered in a comparative and historical perspective between Chinese and Western cultures. The object of the comparison, especially inferred from the figures of Chinese and/or ancient Greek mythology, is that of the “binary” approach, based on two poles that we also describe as “bipolar”, or of the “ternary”/“tripolar” approach, with the role of a Third, or a “middle”. The issue retained is as follows: What are the educational values of the arts attributed by the approaches of Western and Chinese cultures, in relation to a “bipolar” or “tripolar” configuration?At a historical level, for each culture, two periods judged “significant” within the context of the philosophy of education/aesthetic/art were retained. The first period corresponds to antiquity. For China, it is the Spring and Autumn period (771 to 476 BC), during which the Confucianism, and Taoist movements were born. For the West, it is Greek thought asemphasized by Plato and Aristotle. The second period does not correspond to synchrony between China and the West. However, it manifests in both cases a profound reformation of the educational value of the arts. For the West, this reform corresponds to the Luminaries, especially German, for example with the 18th century birth of aesthetics in the writings ofBaumgarten. If China stayed within the tradition of Spring and Autumn, it wasn’t until the republic period, from 1919 onward, that this reform happened, precisely under the influence of the Chinese intellectuals, who introduced new conceptions which were highly influenced by the European Luminaries.This is the historical course that this thesis proposes, in order to return to the question of its comparative approach on the basis of the “bipolar” or the “tripolar” configuration. The entire corpus that we present oscillates on this basis, in China as well as in the West. This double configuration, found at the center of the axes presented here, is well suited, beyond the educational value of the arts, to articulate a “transcultural” comparative operator. This proposition constitutes the originality of this thesis with respect to Chinese-Western approaches.

This thesis presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent years have seen a surge of interest in Bayle, there is as yet no consensus on how to interpret Bayle’s ambiguous stance on reason and religion, and how to make sense of the Dictionnaire: although specific parts of the Dictionnaire have received much scholarly attention, the work has hardly been studied as a whole, and little is known about how the Dictionnaire was influenced by Bayle’s polemic with Jurieu. This thesis aims to establish a new method for reading the Dictionnaire, under a dual premise: first, that the work can only be rightly understood when placed within the immediate context of its production in the 1690s; second, that it is only through an appreciation of the mechanics of the work as a whole, and of the role played by its structural and stylistic particularities, that we can attain an appropriate interpretation of its parts. Special attention is paid to the heated theological-political conflict between Bayle and Jurieu in the 1690s, which had a profound influence on the project of the dictionary and on several of its major themes, such as the tensions in the relationship between the intellectual sphere of the Republic of Letters and the political state, but also the danger of religious fanaticism spurring intolerance and war. The final chapters demonstrate that Bayle’s clash with Jurieu was also one of the driving forces behind Bayle’s reflection on the problem of evil; they expose the fundamentally problematic nature of both Bayle’s theological association with Jurieu, and his self-defence in the second edition of the Dictionnaire. The title of this thesis comes from Herman Melville’s novel: ‘Pierre, or the Ambiguities’.

Joseph Butler's moral thought and the ethical rationalism of Samuel Clarke, and his followers, John Balguy and Richard Price, are frequently distinguished, as a result of: (a) Butler’s empirical method (e.g., Kydd, Sturgeon); (b) Butler's emphasis upon self-love in the 'cool hour passage' (e.g., Prichard, McPherson); (c) Butlerian conscience, where, on a neo-Kantian reading, Butler surpassed the Clarkeans by conveying a sense of Kantian 'reflective endorsement' (e.g., Korsgaard, Darwall). The neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans in (c) are consistent with (d) Francis Hutcheson's and David Hume's criticisms of the Clarkeans; (e) modern criticisms of rational intuitionism that follow Hutcheson and Hume (e.g., Mackie, Warnock); and (f) the contention that the Clarkeans occupied an uneasy position within 'post-restoration natural law theory' (e.g., Beiser, Finnis). (d)-(e) thus underpin the distinction between Butler and the Clarkeans in (a)-(c), where the Clarkeans, unlike Butler, are criticised for representing moral truth as the passive, and self-evident, perception of potentially uninteresting facts. This study responds to (a)-(f), by arguing that Butlerian and Clarkean conscience possessed more than one referent; so that conscience meant an individual's experience of his own judgement and God’s judgement and the rational moral order. As a result of their shared theory of conscience, Butler and the Clarkeans held the same theory of moral development: moral agents mature as they move from obeying conscience according to only one of conscience's referents, to obeying conscience because to do so is to satisfy each of conscience's referents. In response to (a)-(b), this study demonstrates that the Clarkeans agreed with Butler’s method and 'cool hour': natural considerations of individual judgement and self-interest were necessary aspects of the progress towards moral maturity in both Butler and the Clarkeans. With respect to (c), it is argued that Butler and the Clarkeans shared the same understanding of practical moral reasoning as part of their shared understanding of conscience and moral development. This study places limits upon proto-Kantian readings of Butler, and neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans, while making it inconsistent to divide Butler and the Clarkeans on the basis of Butlerian conscience. In answer to (c)-(f), Clarkean conscience shows that the Clarkeans were neither complacent nor ‘externalists’. Clarkean conscience highlights how the Clarkeans positioned themselves within the tradition of Ciceronian right reason and Thomistic natural law. Consequently, in both Butler and the Clarkeans, the intuition of moral truth was not the passive perception of an 'independent realm' of normative fact, but the active encounter, in conscience, with reason qua the law of God’s nature, human nature, and the created universe.

A critical investigation of the public/private distinction as it has been conceived in Anglo-American political thinking in the second half of the 20th century. A broadly held consensus has developed amongst many theorists that public/private does not refer to any single determinate distinction or relationship but rather to an often ambiguous range of related but analytically distinct conceptual oppositions. The argument of this thesis is that if we approach public/private in the search for analytic or conceptual clarity then this consensus is correct. Against this I propose that a number of the most dominant invocations of the distinction can be understood to express public/private as an irreducibly political dialectic that mediates the relationship between the subjective and objective side of social and political life. By locating these conceptually diverse invocations within a broader and more determinate framework of the historical development and contestation of the boundaries which establish the conditions for subjectivity, as the assertion of political agency, on the one hand, and which demarcate, police and defend these particular boundaries, as part of the objectively given character of social life and institutional organisation, on the other hand, then a more determinate character to public/private can be recognized. I then seek to explore the capacity of this model to capture and explain the peculiar post-war problematisation of public/private amongst a number of new left thinkers in Britain and America.

This dissertation engages with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the issue of self-knowing with respect to the notions of honesty and authenticity. Accounting for the two philosophers' developing conceptions of these notions allows a response to interpreters who conceive the activity of self-knowing as a primarily personal problem. The alternative accounts proposed take as a point of departure transitional texts that reveal both thinkers to be engaged in processes of revision. The reading of honesty in Chapters 1 and 2 revolves around Nietzsche's groundwork on prejudice in Morgenröthe (1880-81), where he first problematizes the moral-historical forces entailed in actuating the 'will to truth'. The reading of authenticity in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around Heidegger's lectures on what motivates one's thinking in Was heißt Denken? (1951-52). The lectures call into question his previous formal suppositions on what calls forth one's 'will-to-have-a-conscience', in an interpretation of Parmenides on the issue of thought's linguistic determination, discussed further in the context of Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Chapter 5 shows how Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche contributed to his ongoing revisions to the notion of authenticity, and to the attending conceptions of critique and its authority. Particular attention is given to the specific purposes to which distinct Nietzschean foils are put near the confrontation's beginning--in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche's second Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (1938), and in the monograph entitled Besinnung (1939) which they prepare--and near its end, in the interpretation of Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) presented in the first half of Was heißt Denken? Chapter 6 recapitulates the developments traced from the vantage point of the retrospective texts Die Zollikoner Seminare (1959-72) and the fifth Book of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887). Closing remarks are made in relation to recent empirical research on the socio-environmental structures involved in determining self-identity.