Browsing by Subject "Paradox"
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(2020)Tiedekunta/Osasto – Fakultet/Sektion – Faculty Faculty of Arts and Humanities Tekijä – Författare – Author Jake Tippett Työn nimi – Arbetets titel – Title Beyond the Doxa: Accounting for Paradox in Niccolò Machiavelli Oppiaine – Läroämne – Subject General History Työn laji – Arbetets art – Level MA Aika – Datum – Month and year August 2020 Sivumäärä– Sidoantal – Number of pages 63 Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract This thesis examines paradox in a small, yet diverse, selection of Niccolò Machiavelli’s writings — his letters, poems, and his major political/literary writings — and sets out to address the gap that exists in the critical appreciation of paradox in his work. Contextualising his writings in relation to the Italian Renaissance culture of paradox, I have examined paradox here in connection to questions of human agency. I discuss the way paradox can be seen to function as a literary site of cultural conflict and construction and argue that Machiavelli utilised the paradoxical form as a creative tool to enable his own innovative artistic acts of agency. Lastly, I argue that paradox informed his own theoretical mediations on effective human action. In doing so, I draw on upon Saussure’s language theories to reconceptualize the way paradox works to challenge orthodoxy and cultural convention and to consider how it may be seen to function as a tool of human agency in Machiavelli’s work. I argue that the power of paradox derives from its presentation of something being what it is considered not to be. This expression of “difference” in relation to doxa works to challenge any objective or fixed status held by the particular formulation that it confronts. I also argue that, in marking a difference, paradox points back, at the same time, towards its own possibility of difference and its own paradoxicality, and that this alterity and indeterminate character of paradox can be located in Machiavelli’s own theories surrounding effective human action. I conclude, by suggesting that paradox can be considered a central form and concept in Machiavelli’s writings. And that his work may be read intertextually in relation to the Italian Renaissance culture of paradox. Furthermore, the reconceptualization of paradox offered here has highlighted its potential as powerful tool of human agency. Avainsanat – Nyckelord – Keywords Machiavelli, Paradox, Agency Säilytyspaikka – Förvaringställe – Where deposited Muita tietoja – Övriga uppgifter – Additional information
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(2018)Paradox has always been a central topic in the study of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). In scholarship on Heart of Darkness attention has, for example, been paid to the paradox between the imperialism in Heart of Darkness and Conrad’s deconstruction of imperialism. Some have discussed the impact of Conrad’s life on its paradoxical narrative, while others have pointed to Conrad’s own attitude to the paradoxical discourse of his novella. In 2009, Ludwig Schnauder interpreted Conrad’s paradoxes in Heart of Darkness in terms of the problem of free will and determinism, and laid out three possible philosophical approaches to Conrad’s fiction, namely hard determinism, near-determinism, and radical indeterminism. My own thesis develops Schnauder’s thoughts on Conrad’s radical indeterminism, which is a philosophy which denies free will and order, and considers human powerlessness, randomness and loss of morality to dominate in the world. This thesis is composed of three parts: the introduction, the main argument and the conclusion. Chapter one provides a review of the literature, definitions of radical indeterminism and presents the research methodology. Chapter two discusses how different aspects of radical indeterminism are represented by both Marlow and Kurtz. Chapter Three discusses the paradoxes of imperialism and morality in Conrad’s novella and then interprets the paradoxes in terms of their connection with radical indeterminism. Chapter four concludes the discussions in chapters two and three. My thesis argues that radical indeterminism is central to an understanding of Marlow’s analysis of imperialism and morality. The paradoxes which are raised in his narrative can be seen as the human attempt to establish cause and effect (or morality) countered by a sense of chaos and disorder that seems to be everywhere. Ultimately, Conrad explores the notion of paradox by revealing that the gap between our cognitive world view and the evidence of our senses is fundamental to the notion of radical indeterminism — there is no connection between cause and effect and humans are subject to chaotic forces.
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