MA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

Within Heidegger's work Being and Time, many scholars have argued that Heidegger's account of authenticity undermines elements of his project that were set out in the first division. One common complaint is that Heidegger's account of authenticity undermines his ability to account for Dasein as being-in-the-world. The concern, according to these scholars, is that the establishing normative force of the world gets stripped away through authenticity, which would lead to a worldless subject. My goal is to challenge these interpretations. I argue that authenticity actually brings into focus characteristics of the world like finitude, rather than creating a separation between subject and world. In doing this, I will lay out what exactly an account of authenticity centered on being-in-the-world looks like to show that it doesn't create problems for Heidegger's project.

Committee: Matthew Coate (Advisor); Kim Garchar (Committee Member); Michael Byron (Committee Member); Joanna Trzeciak-Huss (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

MA, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

Iain Thomson (2013) writes that no scholar has methodically thematized and addressed Heidegger's treatment of existential Angst about the global collapse of Dasein's identity-defining projects called death. This lack of attention has resulted in a tradition of conflating death and demise. This thesis revisits, in the spirit of the method of formal indication, what Heidegger meant by death as a way of being Dasein. I contend that equal consideration of underlying existential Angst can offer aid in the way of understanding not only the distinction between death and demise, but also the kind of entity Dasein is. This analysis will be followed by an examination of how these contentious notions of death and anxiety were taken up by Heidegger's first existential phenomenologist audience.

Committee: Kim Garchar (Advisor); Anthony Fernandez (Committee Member); Polycarp Ikuenobe (Committee Member); Mark Bracher (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

MA, Kent State University, 2020, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

In Being Given, Jean-Luc Marion claims that Heidegger errs in subordinating the givenness of phenomena to Ereignis, unduly restricting the ways in which phenomena can be said to “give themselves”. The problem, however, is that without this stricture, we are unable to make certain distinctions that are indispensable for understanding phenomena in the diversity of their appearing. Take, for example, technological phenomena (e.g., televisions, radios, computers, etc.) On Marion's account, these phenomena give themselves; show themselves insofar as they give themselves. But is this really giving, or instead, a kind of intrusion, a permeating of our space by technological phenomena? What Marion is missing, is a robust account of the context, or better, the locus of apparition that allows us to differentiate the ways in which phenomena show up. I will argue that Heidegger's notion of Ereignis is such a locus.

Committee: Gina Zavota PhD (Advisor); Michael Byron PhD (Committee Member); Berger Benjamin PhD (Committee Member); Joanna Trzeciak-Huss PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Bioethics

This thesis argues that the right to die should be understood as an attempt to palliate nihilism due to the encounter of an existentially impoverished ontology with death, informing clinical, ethical, and political accounts of physician aid-in-dying. Following Heidegger's critique of technology, contemporary medicine espouses a Nietzschean metaphysic predicated upon reducing its objects into `standing reserves' on call for efficient manipulation. Physicians become passive, anonymous technicians responding to technological frameworks, bodies become resources for maintenance and re-creation, and death appears an obstacle to overcome in this active nihilism. In this context, the birth of bioethics can be appreciated as a response to the hegemony of techno-logic at the end of life. I argue, however, that it has largely failed by capitulating to a similar procedural rationality, at best, and endorsing autonomy as a manifestation of the will to power at worst. After the death of God, ethics must be radically reframed as a human project resembling a cafeteria of lifestyle aesthetics where the moral good easily becomes free choice. The liberated, autonomous individual playing a leading role fits hand in glove with techno-logic. Thus, assisted suicide may appear as a personal `death-style' for fashioning the illusion of meaning and transcendence by the will, particularly in the post-Christian, generic spirituality of hospice and palliative care. Patients with existential or spiritual suffering – lives not worth living – can be relieved of the human condition within liberal politics, signifying new, deceptive rites for the end of life, an ars ad mortem. At the end of the day, however, the choice for suicide is predestined by the techno-logic critiqued in this thesis, suggesting that it may not, in fact, be the triumph of autonomy but rather of a violent nihilism and despair. This critique, then, moves towards clarity in the right to die movement regarding its quasi-religio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Matthew Vest PhD (Advisor); Ryan Nash MD (Committee Member); Dana Howard PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Medical Ethics; Philosophy; Philosophy of Science

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2020, Political Science (Arts and Sciences)

The following reflects on the 2016 election victory of Donald Trump. Most mainstream media accounts and a number of qualitative, Americanist studies propose a working-class “resentment” narrative to explain Trump's popularity. In contrast, I suggest that political theology and understanding western notions of “sovereignty” are more important for making sense of Trump's popularity. In what follows, I first provide a theoretical critique of genealogies of sovereignty in order to claim that identifying and intervening in situations of suffering are acts endemic to western sovereignty. My theoretical account expands notions of political theology to encompass the affective and the corporeal in order to claim that masculinity and sovereignty are co-constitutive forces in western cultural history. Have illustrated this claim in our canonical sources of political theory, I then return to the theological context of political `theology' in order to locate the importance of suffering. Generally speaking, identifying situations of suffering, intervening within these situations, and causing situations of suffering are all sovereign acts. The popularity of Donald Trump and the unwavering support of his base comes not from a place of political ignorance or a need to irrationally resent others, but from the embodied notions of western politics that conceives of political order anchored on a masculine, sovereign individual who bears and distributes suffering

Committee: Julie White Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Judith Grant Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jonathan Agensky Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrew Ross Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Ancient Civilizations; Biblical Studies; Classical Studies; European Studies; Gender Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; Religion; Religious History; Theology

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2019, Antioch Santa Barbara: Clinical Psychology

This phenomenological study examines the experiences of insomnia among sixteen Americans who are descendants of people who lived in the United States during chattel slavery. The investigation is guided by the following two central questions: Is the lived experience of insomnia among African Americans the same as the experience among non-Hispanic White Americans? In addition, what is the lived experience of sleep among African Americans and Non-Hispanic White Americans? Each participant met individually with the researcher and privately reflected on their experience with insomnia defined here as a condition in which individuals have difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep that furthermore affects their daytime functioning. As the investigation unfolded, the researcher studied the experiences of the participants through a multimodal lens informed primarily by Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Heidegger's Hermeneutics. As participants of this research investigation reflect on their experience, we observe the interplay between insomnia, race, and mental wellness coming into focus. Emotional experiences are captured, and the reflective experience allows for a re-examination of the legacies and effects of American history. Findings in this study support the notion that people tend to use cognitive dissonance when their beliefs are challenged, and those participants with a preference for consistency also experienced insomnia more frequently. No evidence was uncovered of the participants' insomnia being a direct effect of the inter-generational transmission of the trauma associated with chattel slavery. However, many African American families continue to report being severely negatively impacted by their ancestors' experiences during slavery and its aftermath. Insomnia, a common symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder can credibly be considered one likely sequela of the traumatic impact of slavery on the lives of African Americans. This Dissertation is ava (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Schwartz PhD (Committee Chair); Kia-Keating Kia-Keating EdD (Committee Member); Kimberly Finney PsyD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2018, Arts Policy and Administration

This thesis is a self-reflective autoethnographic exploration of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Andrew Feenberg, Franco Berardi, et al. The inspiration for this study came from my experience managing a crowdfunding campaign for a community-based program and is a personal exercise in reconciling the use of technology with the desire for human interaction and connection. The investigation is centered on the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, the critical theory of culture of Herbert Marcuse, and the work of both these philosophers – and their intellectual peers – to explain the interconnected relationships of people, technology, and art. This document serves as an artifact of personal examination and development through the reading, analysis, and application of philosophy in personal and professional contexts.

Committee: James H. Sanders III (Advisor); Jennifer T. F. (Eisenhauer) Richardson (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; Arts Management; Behavioral Sciences; Communication; Fine Arts; Language; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Museum Studies; Personal Relationships; Philosophy; Sociology; Technology; Web Studies

MA, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

I explore certain acute and timely tensions between contemporary, postmodern philosophy and the popular status of religious tradition. Such tensions appear to draw much of their strength from two prominent sources: Nietzsche's announcement of the death of the transcendent God, and Heidegger's rejection of absolutist metaphysics. The problem is that if the transcendent God has become superfluous to thought, and the treatment of the absolute metaphysical nature of things has become taboo, then the special status of religious claims as revealed, absolute truths of a transcendent Being, and of the natures of the world and humanity, has been seriously called into question. I will show that a consideration of two particular religious thinkers – Martin Buber and Ralph Waldo Emerson – will equip us with a sophisticated response in the current philosophical environment of postmodernity, and provide us with the resources to construct a nuanced religious narrative of creation, sin, and salvation within the broader contexts of metaphysical immanence, epistemological intertwining, and ethical instrumentalization that has followed in the de-absolutizing path laid by, among others, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Through an examination of the dialogical relations between persons described by Buber, and the relations of discipline between persons and the world described by Emerson, we will be able to resurrect a sense of immanent, non-absolute religious practice in the era of postmodernity, after the death of the transcendent God and the end of absolutist metaphysics.

Committee: Frank Ryan (Advisor) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Germanic Languages and Literatures

As one of modernity's central metaphors for existence, the sea has shaped the way in which we as humans have contemplated the earth, the cosmos, and our place within. Images such as life's journey at sea with its storms and calms, its shipwrecks, its promise of a port of arrival or its calamitous prospect of veering off course have haunted, captured, and exalted human imagination in profound ways: As an imaginary space for human self-reflexion, the cosmic ocean became either associated with hopes of a new sense of eternity (positive infinity) or, more dominantly, laden with an existential fear of forlornness (negative infinity): The philosopher Manfred Frank gives a detailed account about how the image of the endless journey and particularly its most popular example of the Flying Dutchman came to haunt the post-Copernican imagination until the late 19th century: Drifting on a de-centred cosmic ocean without a port, a beacon or a sense of direction, the endless journey became a metaphor for human forlornness in an infinite and desecrated cosmos. Mid and late 19th century psychology and psychophysics, on the other hand, provide an example of sea imagery associated with positive infinity: For Gustav Theodor Fechner, the metaphor of the cosmic ocean indicated that despite modernity's compartmentalization, everything was connected and all individuals were streaming together as waves of the cosmic ocean. At the threshold to the 20th century, however, neither the negative infinity of the endless journey nor the positive infinity of the Fechnerian waves maintained their presence and significance in the modern cultural imagination: Technological progress and steam navigation rendered the negative infinity outdated and obsolete. Fechner's theory of the cosmos, on the other hand, seemed increasingly esoteric and was viewed with mockery. My dissertation examines how these two conflicting associations of the sea constitute the basis of a metaphorical topology in the works (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bernhard Malkmus (Advisor); Katra Byram (Committee Member); Robert Holub (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature

BA, Oberlin College, 2014, Comparative Literature

This paper advances a re-reading of psychoanalytic “anxiety” as it is constructed through the modern novel, invoking contemporary affect theory, and finding an origin in the Heideggerian notions of Stimmung, Unheimlich and Angst. Looking at two works at the margins of the period and genre of the 20th Century modern novel that both share a fascination with introspective male protagonists--a Japanese “I-novel” called No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku) by Dazai Osamu, and The Sea, The Sea, by British writer Iris Murdoch--reveals a peculiar aesthetic questioning of subject and object specific to these works' varied usages of ekphrasis and fascination with seascape.

Committee: William Patrick Day (Advisor); John Harwood (Committee Member); Ann Sherif (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; Asian Literature; Comparative Literature; Literature

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Urban humans have accepted a role in false realities brought on by an unsustainable flux in technological advances that has left the natural world as a backdrop to life as opposed to the main source of it. Greater awareness about the benefits of temporarily removing ourselves from our over-indulgence in technology and becoming reintroduced with our natural surroundings will begin to balance our lifestyles holistically as opposed to linearly. Creating a Natural Architecture for Urban Humanity will form culturally significant spaces for personal reflection through nature in an urban setting, resulting in a complete release from the urban fabric for short periods of time.

Committee: Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Chair); George Bible M.C.E. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MA, Kent State University, 2015, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

My project is to establish a secularized concept of evil by filtering F.W.J. Schelling's philosophy through that of Martin Heidegger. Schelling's philosophy is essential to my project, because he seeks to claim a positive ontological status for evil, as do I. Schelling's evil, despite its religious context, is not mired in concepts of malformation, or even original sin, as is the evil of his predecessors. I offer Aristotle and Immanuel Kant as Schelling's key secular predecessors, in whose philosophies we find the beginnings of Schelling's free-will theodicy. Similarly, Schelling stands apart from modern theodicy—that is, from G.W. Leibniz, who coined the term “theodicy”—in three key ways: Schelling focuses on human beings, rather than on God; he embraces nature, rather than seeking to overcome it, which requires that he also embrace chaos; and he insists that evil has a positive ontological status, rather than a negative one. These departures show the influence of both Kant and Aristotle on Schelling's conception of evil. Over the course of this project, we will find that when we uncover evil's positive ontology and lay bare its actualization by humans, we ground an approach to evil suited to the political necessities of the twenty-first century. That is, we see that a proper philosophical understanding of evil necessarily calls us to a political address of the same. What the evils of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have shown us, especially, is that a stronger, positive conception of evil enables us to assign accountability more effectively to those who commit evil acts. Hence, crafting a positive conception of evil outside of a theological framework will necessitate a moral framework. To that end, I engage the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt in order to make clear the implications of an ontologically positive evil and draw conclusions regarding the best concept of evil for a contemporary context. My view is that the best concept of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gina Zavota PhD (Advisor); Kim Garchar PhD (Committee Member); Michael Byron PhD (Committee Member); Tammy Clewell PhD (Other) Subjects: Philosophy

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2014, Comparative Studies

The guiding questions of this essay are: What is meant by dwelling? And, how is it that people dwell? In the process of approaching these questions, several key terms are employed. These terms are: dwelling; making; technique; modern technology; and the Gestell of modern technology. Gestell, a term borrowed from the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger, describes an orientation to the physical world unique to the apparatus of modern technology and anathema to dwelling. Dwelling is understood through notions of gathering and relationality: how practices of dwelling weave together a multiplicity of things and experiences. Making, here, refers to that aspect of dwelling which constructs regions and transforms space into made place. Yet, the essay is also attuned to how dwelling takes care, that is, how it makes meaning and thus makes sense. Modern technology represents the process whereby the centrality of technique is made peripheral to production, externalized. It suggests the erosion of meaningful technique in modernity and how this erosion effects the characteristically modern experience of alienation. Four textual sites frame the investigation: First, are selections from the later writings of Heidegger on technology and the plight of dwelling. Second, is an engagement with the writing of anthropologist Tim Ingold. In Ingold, both the dwelling perspective and technique are given a more complex ethnological and environmental elaboration. The other two sites provide the actual sociographic settings in which these terms are enacted and tested: Bronislaw Malinowski's classic, early twentieth-century ethnographic account of Melanesian garden making, Coral Gardens and Their Magic: Soil-tilling and Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands; with particular attention to the process of new garden construction. And Henry David Thoreau's Walden, an experiment in construction and cultivation made in explicit tension with, if not resistance to, the categories and expectations (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Leo Coleman (Advisor); Philip Armstrong (Committee Member); Bernhard Malkmus (Committee Member) Subjects: Agriculture; Comparative Literature; Cultural Anthropology; Environmental Studies; Landscaping; Literature; Philosophy

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

The objective of this thesis is to give a phenomenological account of the relationship between imagination and aesthetic experience. To begin, I give a preliminary sketch of some monumental figures in the area of aesthetics that have influenced phenomenological reflection on art. I then use the philosophy of Mikel Dufrenne to provide the basis of a phenomenological aesthetics, emphasizing the distinction between the work of art and the aesthetic object as well as providing an account of the structure of aesthetic experience. I then turn to Edward Casey's analysis of imagination to argue that the relationship between aesthetic experience and imagination is mutually beneficial. Finally, I apply this line of reasoning to the art of photography to give an example of the reciprocal relationship between imagination and aesthetic experience.

Committee: Gina Zavota Ph.D. (Advisor); Frank Ryan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Linda Williams Ph.D. (Committee Member); Navjotika Kumar Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; Philosophy

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

This paper attempts to develop and apply two contrary concepts, referred to as perfect character and imperfect character. Both have to do with a very broadly construed notion of universals, wherein a universal is anything predicable of more than one other thing. The point of this definition is exclude particulars, or individuals, and thereby limit the scope of inquiry, while also avoiding traditional disputes over the metaphysical reality or non-reality of universals. The concept of perfect character is drawn from relevant works of Plato, and is hypothesized to be the usual way in which universals are understood. That of imperfect character is drawn largely from relevant works of Jacques Derrida, although those of Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein are considered as well. In developing these concepts, a certain amount of logical analysis is employed, although the limits of such analysis are also made clear. An attempt is then made to show the relevance of this distinction for feminist philosophy, in particular with respect to concerns that contemporary constructions of femininity function oppressively. To this end, works by several feminist thinkers are consulted, an article by Sandra Lee Bartky providing the focal point. The basic conclusion is that to understand femininity as having imperfect, rather than perfect, character, would undermine any oppressive functions of current constructions of femininity. The relevance to other feminist concerns of the distinction between perfect and imperfect character is also indicated. Besides feminist thought, this distinction should also be relevant to other inquiries, such as those concerning race and racism, post-colonial thinking, justice, and ecological concerns.

Committee: Gina Zavota (Advisor); David Odell-Scott (Committee Member); Jung-Yeup Kim (Committee Member); Jennifer Larson (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Philosophy

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2014, Philosophy

The following presents an existential investigation into the particular ethical demands of the relationship between the artist and her audience from the perspective of Simone de Beauvoir. While Beauvoir spends ample time discussing this interaction from the viewpoint of the artist, as she herself identified first and foremost as a literary artist, she spends surprisingly little time approaching the intersubjective experience from the eyes of the witnesses to works. A deeper look into her discussion of the audience's role presents tensions the results of which emerge from the privilege Beauvoir gives to the artistic project as concerns the constraints of temporal situations. Whereas she insists that the limits that temporality, and more especially mortality, place upon the choices individuals make within society must be assumed in order to justify one's existence and “disclose the truth of being,” in her ethics generally, only the artist is capable of outstripping death and achieving a sense of immortality that is not relegated to the realm of imagination alone. This view of death and the processes of time appears early in her works and continue to build throughout her career, all in respect to Martin Heidegger's own philosophy of Being-toward-death. I will argue that Beauvoir scholars of today's community must seek to rejoin Being-toward-death with Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity if we hope to overcome the problems that arise from conflicting accounts of the artist-audience relationship.

Committee: Ammon Allred (Committee Chair); Jeanine Diller (Committee Member); Benjamin Pryor (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

MSARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

This thesis is an effort to unfold the disclosing power of mood as the basic character of all experiencing as well as theorizing in architecture. Having been confronted with the limiting ways of the scientific approach to understanding used in the traditional theoretical investigations, (according to which architecture is understood as a mere static object of shelter or aesthetic beauty) we turn to Martin Heidegger's existential analysis of the meaning of Being and his new interpretation of human emotions. Translations of philosophers Eugene Gendlin, Richard Polt, and Hubert Dreyfus elucidate the deep meaning of Heidegger's investigations and his approach to understanding mood. In contrast to our customary beliefs, which are largely informed by scientific understanding of being and emotions, this new understanding of mood clarifies our experience of architecture by shedding light on the contextualizing character of mood. In this expanded horizon of experiencing architecture, the full potentiality of mood in our experience of architecture becomes apparent in resoluteness of our new Mood-Consciousness of architecture. Martin Heidegger's interpretation of ‘human condition' goes against the traditional notions we have inherited from Descartes' scientific way of thinking. “Dasein,” Heidegger's new term for ‘human condition,' is not an object but an “interrelation with the world.” This “mediation” between “ourselves and the world” takes place in a deeper “pre-ontological” level. Dasein's structure can be analyzed by “attunement” of “understanding” of “mood.” Based on this “interpretation,” architecture, rather than taken as a static object of use or perception, is characterized within a phenomenal mode of experience. Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals project in Vals, Switzerland, unfolds the “disclosive” power of mood in our experience of space, while “maintaining” the “resoluteness” of the “phenomenal ground” of our experience. In making “transparent” the ultimate “work” in a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Eliot Hancock MARCH (Committee Chair); Nnamdi Elleh PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

The Finnish architect and theoretician Juhani Pallasmaa writes in The Geometry of Feeling that “the quality of architecture does not lie in the sense of reality that it expresses, but quite the reverse, in its capacity for awakening our imagination.” Architecture is a multi-sensory experience that draws upon the physical, emotional, and intellectual parts of our being. Yet beginning in the mid part of the 20th century much of architectural theory gravitated towards the intellectual and abstract. Exceedingly academic, categorized, and frequently dissociated from emotional and physical experience, architecture as commonly practiced has not only contributed to the alienation of the architect and much of his work from the understanding of the common man, but to our estrangement from an authentic experience of place and being. In opposition to this and established in theory informed by Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Peter Zumthor it is argued that design rooted in the holistic and sensuous experience of architecture, tuned to the particular needs of site and context, solidly grounds us to a genuine connection of place and being. Centered on concrete human experience and architecture's holistic ability to connect with us on a physical, emotional, and intellectual level, this research is applied to the design case study of an art museum presenting the work of the late Italian-American artist, sculptor, and furniture designer Harry Bertoia.

Committee: Elizabeth Riorden MARCH (Committee Chair); Aarati Kanekar PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MS ARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture

The problem of Modernity and Modern architecture has been a constant focus for the scholars of architectural theory in the last fifty years and yet, despite the critical reactions it generated, we are neither fully aware of the philosophical ground that sustained it nor its subversive influences on contemporary architecture. Although architectural theorists like Alberto Perez- Gomez (1989) and Colin Rowe (1992) have had very important contributions through revealing the connections between modern architecture and modern science from the 17th century on, their investigation did not further acknowledged the metaphysical foundations of both these areas.Exemplifying with significant architectural writings, I will trace the philosophical origin of twentieth century themes of concern, such as the moral task of the architect (the desire to solve the problems of society through architecture), or value and the criteria for value in architecture, to a tradition, started with Plato and refined by Descartes, that has a particular take on the question of the nature of the existent (Being) and on the nature of truth. This analysis will be guided by Martin Heidegger's essay, “The Age of the World View” (1976), a critical exploration of the nature of modern times, which concludes that modernity distinguishes itself by the change of the essence of man in that man becomes a subject (“man becomes the center to which the existent as such is related”) and the transformation of the world into a world view (the existent is understood as existent “when and to the degree to which it is held at bay by the person that represents it and establishes it”). This investigation will demonstrate that in spite of revealing the scientific approach of architecture, that the modern movement practiced, as problematic, its authority is still acting upon contemporary architecture through the philosophical concepts that originated it. As a result of providing a more appropriate account for the origins of mo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Hancock MArch (Committee Chair); James Bradford MA (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture

The desire for immortality and the difficulty in accepting the finality of death are universal. This acceptance, or “facing up to” one's mortality, allows for greater importance to be placed on each moment, thus permitting one to live more fully. Influencing one to face up to mortality can be initiated by expressing the primary emotions related to death. In a work of art/architecture, expressing certain emotions can be thought of as making them more real, more tangible. The ineffable, painful emotions are then seen more clearly and can be dealt with more holistically. In contemporary western culture, the architecture of death has severely lacked in this expression and has generally focused on being neutral, or only warm and comforting. This thesis aims to create a method for this expression in the funeral rituals and in a design of a funerary chapel with crypts and columbaria, located in the central wooded area of Spring Grove Cemetery. This method will not have any religious affiliation, but will seek to identify and express archetypal views and emotions commonly held by all individuals. The expression of trying to make sense of existence and the mystery of death will be brought about by the “presencing” of more of what the forms of architecture are in reality. This will be done by Michael Benedikt's components for direct esthetic experiences of the real. These components will be arranged in a fashion recalling the archetypal Hero's Journey, which aims to reify the daunting repressed emotions and to transition one from the everyday environment to the environment of deep existential questioning. Lastly, components of eliciting memory in architecture will also be employed to amplify the state of remembrance in the individual.

Committee: Gordon Simmons (Advisor) Subjects: Architecture