Recent research in human genetics has sparked popular interest in genetic explanations for all human phenomena. In turn, bioethicists have been busy responding to their own call for stringent guidelines for the use of genetic information. But bioethicists in general fail to attend to deeper considerations of the nature of scientific knowledge and its role in the transformation of human subjectivity. For this reason, bioethicists are accessories after the fact to that transformation, and hence in order to study that change we must displace bioethical analyses of the Human Genome Project --that is, displace virtually all of the literature on the HGP. In this thesis, I offer a different and more radical interpretation of the role of scientific knowledge in altering our conception of what it is to be a human being. Physicians, genetic counsellors, and other experts in our gene culture offer fundamentally questionable and yet practically unquestioned genetic explanations of who and what we really are. These genetic experts, by virtue of their prestigious position in our economy of knowledge, impute needs only they can satisfy, impart a vocabulary only they are invited (and certified) to understand, and draw us into new networks of administration and control at the subcellular level. Drawing on the work of Duden, Foucault, Illich, and Poerksen, I argue that our attraction to technoscientific understandings of our "essence" is dangerous and disabling, and I sketch a strategy of resistance. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Il s’agit de renouveler la lecture des quatre textes de Rousseau dans la perspective de la consolation, et de déterminer les enjeux historiques, philosophiques et littéraires de l’exigence de consolation chez l’auteur.La Lettre à Voltaire essaie, par une interprétation originale de l’optimisme, la réconciliation de sa philosophie critique et de sa foi, d’une part, et d’autre part, de l’idéal antique et de l’idéal chrétien de la consolation. Mais il s’avère que cette synthèse est insuffisante, et ce fait trahit la position difficile de Rousseau sur la consolation traditionnelle.La Nouvelle Héloïse découvre l’implication du dysfonctionnement de la consolation chez le sujet moderne. Notre tentative de lire le roman épistolaire du point de vue de la consolation vaine du héros éclaire un moment existentialiste de la subjectivité dans sa résistance à la consolation.Le sujet qui définit son existence par la difficulté d’être consolé cherche une nouvelle rationalisation de son état. En ce sens, une lecture comparative du livre I des Confessions avec le livre IV de l’Emile montre la tentative de consoler une conscience malheureuse par une reconstitution génétique du moi sans se référer à un modèle extérieur.Au bout de ces tâtonnements exigeants mais révélateurs, les Rêveries ne se donnent pour la consolation ultime de Rousseau qu’en radicalisant les éléments consolateurs précédents et qu’en exprimant cette radicalisation par une radicalisation double de la solitude. En sondant l’abîme de la subjectivité moderne dans son état-limite, Rousseau s’interroge sur une condition essentielle du sujet moderne qu’est l’inconsolable. / The objective is to reinterpret four of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's texts through the facet of consolation; and to determine historical, philosophical and literary implications of the search for consolation in his writings.Letter to Voltaire details Rousseau’s efforts to reconcile not only the conflict between his critical thought and his faith through the interpretation of the optimism, but also the dichotomous nature of ancient and Christian ideals of consolation. But the synthesis turns out to be insufficient, revealing his difficult position on traditional consolation.In New Héloïse, Rousseau discovers the prevalence of consolatory dysfunction in the modern subject. Our attempt to read the epistolary novel from the perspective of vain consolation for the hero underscores the hero's resistance to consolation and, thereby, illuminates the existentialist essence of subjectivity.The subject, whose being is defined by his inconsolability, looks for a new rationalization of his state. In this sense, our comparative reading of the first book of Confessions with book IV of Emile shows an attempt to console the misery of his consciousness through the reconstitution of self without referring to any external model.After these demanding but revealing searches for comfort, the last consolation of Reveries radicalizes the preceding elements of consolation through a double-stylistic radicalization of solitude. Marking the abyss of modern subjectivity in its limited situation, Rousseau examines the intrinsic condition of the inconsolable modern subject

Using recent scholarship on intersubjectivity and cultural cognitive narratology, this project explores the disruption and reformation of early modern identity in Elizabethan revenge tragedies. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how revenge tragedies contribute to the prevalence of a dialogical rather than monological self in early modern culture. My chapter on Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy synthesizes Debora Shuger’s work on the cultural significance of early modern mirrors--which posits early modern self-recognition as a typological process--with recent scholarship on the early modern dialogical self. The chapter reveals how audiences and mirrors function in the play as cognitive artifacts that enable complex experiences of intersubjectivity. In my chapter on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, I trace how characters construct new identities in relation to their shared suffering while also exploring intersubjectivity’s potential violence. When characters in Titus imagine the inward experience of others, they project a plausible narrative of interiority derived from inwardness’s external signifiers (such as tears, pleas, or gestures). These projections and receptions between characters can lead to reciprocated sympathy or violent aggression. My reading of John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge explores revenge as a mode of competition. Marston suggests a similarity between the market conditions of dramatic performance (competition between playwrights, acting companies, and rival theaters) and the convention of one-upmanship in revenge tragedy, i.e. the need to surpass preceding acts of violence. While other Elizabethan revenge tragedies represent reciprocity and collusion between characters as important aspects of intersubjective self-reintegration, Marston’s play emphasizes competition and rivalry as the dominant force that shapes his characters. My final chapter provides an analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I argue that recent scholarship on intersubjectivity and cognitive cultural studies can help us re-historicize the nature of Hamlet’s “that within which passes show.” Hamlet’s desire for the eradication of his consciousness explores the consequences of feeling disconnected from others in a culture wherein identity, consciousness, and even memory itself depend on interpersonal relations.

of the diploma thesis Janoščík Václav The Concept of Autonomy (Conditions of modern subjectivity, of the concept of law and of historicity) Submitted thesis aims at articulation of the concept of autonomy in its complexity. At first it pursues specific contexts of the notion to arrive at its structure. At first we try to explore prospective of analytical philosophy of law to situate the concept of autonomy to the heart of the idea of law. This efforts unfolds itself by an unorthodox interpretation of natural right theory of Herbert Hart's early work. Second chapter discusses the framework of the philosophy of history, that are based on the idea of an autonomous subject. Seemingly paradoxical linkage of Heidegger's fundamental ontology and Kosík's dialectics of the particular articulates the historical function of the autonomy. Next chapter connects Kosík with Cornelius Castoriadis in the perspective of social theories. Also in their normative core we can identify our notion of autonomy. Fourth chapter follows the theory of disenchantment of the world of Marcel Gauchet. We reformulate it as a realization of the ideal of autonomous subject in order to contextualize the concept historically. Last topic of the first part is the framework of the intellectual history. Here we situate Dieter Henrich and...