Philosophy

Kant developed a distinctive method of philosophical argumenta-tion, the method of transcendental argumentation, which continues to have contemporary philosophical promise. Yet there is considerable disagreement among Kant's interpreters concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. On ambitious interpretations, transcen-dental arguments aim to establish certain necessary features of the world from the conditions of our thinking about or experiencing the world; they are world-directed. On modest interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to show that certain beliefs have a special status that renders them invulnerable to skeptical doubts; they are belief-directed. This paper brings Kierkegaard's thesis of the "subjectivity of truth" to bear on these questions concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. I focus on Kant's argument for the postulate of God's existence in his Critique of Practical Reason and show that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us construe the argument as both belief and world directed. Yet I also argue that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectiv-ity of truth can help us understand the source of our dissatisfaction with Kant's transcendental arguments: It can help us understand that dissatisfaction as an expression of what Stanley Cavell calls the "cover of skepticism," the conversion of metaphysical finitude into intellectual lack.

Understanding of another person predominantly informed by observation is more complete and dynamic than understanding available to an audience for whom they are curating their self- presentation. Interpersonal encounters conducted via digital media platforms lack the physical proximity that lets us observe other persons’ accidental self-disclosure in real-life encounters, as distinct from being the audience of their explicit self-disclosure. However, in online interpersonal interactions we can still place others in the role of observer by allowing them to watch our interactions with external texts, without focusing on those others as audience or on the text as demonstratively referential to oneself.

NB: This paper was submitted as the culmination of my senior thesis project under my former legal name but is my own work.

An analysis of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde within the context of his encounter with Arthur Schopenhauer's writings. Wagner's pervasive use of harmonic suspension in the opera and its dramatic narrative structure were reactions to his study of Schopenhauer's metaphysics but show an as-yet immature grasp of Schopenhauerian ethics, especially in comparison to his later works.