Dept. of Humanities

My thesis is that although knowledge acquired through philosophical discourse is necessary in ancient philosophy, it is not sufficient for the individual transformation which accompanies the choice of a way of life as proposed by the Hellenistic philosophical schools. This essay will have three parts. In the first part, I will reconstruct Cooper’s argument which stipulates, in contrast with Hadot’s thesis, that the essence of Hellenistic philosophy is simply the complete devotion to the practice of philosophical discourse in the form of study and discussion. Then, in the second part, I will show that Cooper’s thesis does not have enough evidential support and may also fail the sufficiency criteria. Finally, I will offer Cooper’s counter-argument to my objection before concluding. Given that Cooper and Hadot build their respective arguments using mostly texts from early Greek Stoics and later Roman Stoics respectively, the scope of my remarks in this essay will be largely limited to the review of stoicism.

In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate the problem of ethics in AI by suggesting an approach which breaks down the steps involved in the design of current AI systems in order to evaluate their vulnerability to either intended malicious actions or unexpected consequences. Rather than developing new ethical standards for automated machines or super-intelligent robots or enact regulations for their use, I believe that greater awareness about ethical issues among AI industry practitioners through training and oversight, combined with transparency on the deployment of AI tools involving public information would be a good way forward. The use of the term AI as applicable to a wide ranging number of computer applications and in robotics development has led to a general state of confusion about its impact on society and the measures necessary to ensure that this technology adheres to ethical standards and does not harm humans. For that reason, AI technology generates both great excitement about its positive impact to society, and instills fear about its effects on personal safety and infringement on individual rights. The ubiquity of very powerful computing capability, in an increasingly large number of personal devices from smart phones to semi-autonomous machines and vehicles which can assess large amount of data through the internet, increases the interaction between man and machines to an exponential level. In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate this problem by suggesting an approach which breaks down the steps involved in the design of current AI systems in order to evaluate their vulnerability to either intended malicious actions or unexpected consequences. My assessment will be largely limited to current AI technology since views on possible capabilities of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), its applications and related risks are highly speculative at this time. This evaluation will proceed as follows: first I will clarify the differences between conventional information technology, AI and AGI, identify the reasons for the current state of confusion about AI, then conduct the ethical risk assessment in the various

This paper re-evaluates moral and masculine constructs within Shakespeare's Hamlet. The moral and the masculine become conflated into hegemonic law, which Hamlet comes to challenge, giving him the appearance of madness as he confronts the Same while giving the audience the perspective of the Other.

In this paper I track the transformative process of Felix Faust from Goethe to Mann to DC. What is at play in the reception of Faust is a reflective relationship between US and German politics, which the character comes to represent in comic book text and the television series, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

What does it mean to have traditions intersect? The following presentation is a re-reading of monstrous figures through post-humanism. Euripides' Medea is one of many possible female characters who could be inter sectionally relevant to the divergence of femininst theory on a positive front.

This paper will address the complicated portrayal of women characters as female saviors in contemporary post-secular cinema. An objective of the post-secular film genre is to inspire belief in the world, often through sparking the imagination of the impossible (such as a filmic miracle) in order for the possibility of the world off-screen to be fully recognized. This chapter discusses three films of this genre, The Fountain (Aronofsky 2005), Silent Light (Reygadas 2007), and Tree of Life (Mallick 2011). The chapter demonstrates how female characters are given qualities to bestow redemption, belief, and restoration to their male counterparts and to the worlds around them. While this highlights strength, courage, and mobility of gender, it also creates a complex of woman as a body who is a vessel for transcendence. In assessing the evolving portrayal of women in the films we must ask the following questions of the post-secular genre: Are these women much different than the subjects of Laura Mulvey’s essay, Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema, who fall under the reign of the male gaze?[i] Are they much different than queen Jocasta, the ultimate symbol of the Oedipal desire?[ii]

I believe that they are different to an extent, as they are depicted as transcendental signifiers for the sake of providing belief in the world. However, the belief in the world turns into the questioning of unbalanced gender roles in the films and the search for authenticity in the female characters as both of these women aligned with the transcendental.

The thesis explores how Shelley Jackson’s hypertext work Patchwork Girl (1995) provides a feminist alternative to dominant Frankensteinian mythologies of unethical creation, arguing that it succeeds in doing so by offering alternative approaches to linear and positivist knowledge production. The hypertext work mobilises representational elements of horror, abjection and “unnaturalness” whilst operating on the symbolic, cultural, and imaginary level. The role the technologically mediating apparatus of the Storyspace software plays in this figuration is central. The interplay of texts stemming from various sources and dictions combined with striking images creates a quilt of multiple truths; in this manner, Patchwork Girl expresses a non-hierarchical stance between truth and untruth, as well as fact and fiction. Additionally, the thesis suggests that the hypertext provides an accessible, albeit complex, journey into the land of feminist theory, stopping at various key terms and concepts, such as human and non-human agency, text/author, body/text, and memory/subjectivity. The deployed theoretical framework draws on visual culture, women’s studies, literary studies, and philosophy; nevertheless, the dominant analytical toolbox is that of a literary close-reading.

Keywords: materiality, gender, feminism, hypertext, Frankenstein, Patchwork Girl, monster, Shelley Jackson.

Instead of analysing Winterson’s texts from a postmodern and/or lesbian angle, which constitutes the main focus of many investigations of her texts, the thesis explores whether the intersecting themes of embodiment and story-telling propose innovative ways to represent bodies and narrate stories in Sexing the Cherry and The PowerBook. The deployed theoretical framework consists of psychoanalytic theories, women’s studies, philosophy and science studies, which are put into practice through the methodology of close-reading and textual analysis. The thesis argues that the two novels echo and interweave each other’s themes. Consequently, The PowerBook, published eleven years after Sexing the Cherry, discloses the methods used in the latter to re/write history. Similarly, the subject matter of virtual communication in The PowerBook serves as a foil for the use of multiple narratives in Sexing the Cherry. Thus, even though Sexing the Cherry and The PowerBook are separated by eleven years of time, many instances of cross-fertilisation occur.

Keywords: Jeanette Winterson, psychoanalysis, materiality, gender, English literature.

Disrupting the Laws of Physics: Anti-Linear Time 1.2 Shifting Perceptions toward Counter-Historical Narratives 2. STORY-TELLING IN THE POWERBOOK 2.1 Journeys through Space and Time 2.2 Not One but Many: Multiplying Narratives PART TWO: EMBODIMENT 3. EMBODIMENT IN SEXING THE CHERRY 3.1 Dissecting the Monstrous Grotesque 3.2 Weight and Lightness 4. EMBODIMENT IN THE POWERBOOK 4.1 Virtuality Engendered: Fluid Gender Constructions in Cyberspace 4.2 Experiencing/Embodying the Text CONCLUSION WORKS CITED PROLOGUE My education at the English department of Utrecht University has informed, formed, and inspired me in multiple ways. Most of all, it has given me a thorough foundational passion for literature in its infinite shapes and forms, as well as catalysing my desires for teaching during my two-year student assistantship for the English language proficiency courses. The James Boswell Institute in Utrecht further developed my skills and experiences in teaching: I am thankful to my Chinese students for their patience and enthusiasm. The Students of Utrecht Drama Society (SUDS) fuelled my budding passions for all things performative, which remain an integral part of my life. Thank you, Roselinde, for your meticulous corrections, tireless interest, passionate supervision and for keeping my feet firmly on the ground. Rias, for being my second reader at such short notice. Bernadette de Zeeuw, for telling me I should do it. Brigit, for telling me I can do it. Sophie Wils at the IVLOS, for showing me what writing is about. Marijke, for your capitalised text messages, wishing me good luck and strength. Domitilla, for being next to me. Your unconditional physical, emotional, gastronomic, and intellectual support has made writing this thesis so much more enjoyable, fulfilling and adventurous. I thank you profoundly. 'Trust me. I'm telling you stories.' (Winterson, The Passion 40) Jeanette Winterson was born in 1959, and grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the United Kingdom. She published her first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, in 1985. Her debut proved an immediate success, and won the Whitbread Best First Novel Award of 1985. In 1987, Winterson became a full-time writer. This thesis focuses upon Winterson's Sexing the Cherry, published in 1989, and secondly upon The PowerBook, which was published in 2000. Predominantly, the critical reception of Winterson's novels in general, and of Sexing the Cherry and The PowerBook in particular, focuses either on the postmodern or on the lesbian elements of the novels. Especially Sexing the Cherry has sparked substantial debate as to its lesbian elements. Merja Makinen states that Winterson "herself has helped fuel the debate as to whether her texts are successful lesbian texts" (2). In an interview in 1992, Winterson said that while she "herself was a lesbian feminist, [her] work should not be seen under that definition" (2). The debates on whether Winterson should be positioned as a lesbian writer are heated and ongoing. 1 Broadly speaking, this debate entails positioning her works as universalising, and hence normalising, lesbianism; alternatively, other critics regard her works as successfully deconstructing gender identities. The question whether Winterson should be considered a postmodern writer has, instead, resulted in a general consensus of affirmation. Winterson's meta-narrative and self-reflexive texts, which challenge the divisions between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, and femininity and masculinity all 1 In the debate concerning Winterson's status as a lesbian writer, especially Lynne Pearce has been vocal. She provides a clear overview of the debate until 1994, and does so by surveying Winterson's first three novels. Her main argument is that Winterson's novels are popular because they allow a reading of a universalising lesbian love: "This is an ambivalence that centres on the tension between the perception of romantic love as a non-gendered, a-historic, "cultural universal", and as an "ideology" which the specificities of gender and sexual orientation constantly challenge and undermine. By attending to the "universalising" discourses in Winterson's work the (heterosexual) "general reader" can, of course, see the texts as transcending the particulars of sexual orientation; regard the fact that s/he is reading about lovers of the same sex as incidental and, consequently, apolitical. Indeed, the fact that in her later fiction Winterson has shown many different combinations of love-relationship (homosexual and heterosexual) has, perhaps, contributed to the reader's impression of (great) "Love" as being transcendent of history, culture and gender" (149).

Disrupting the Laws of Physics: Anti-Linear Time 1.2 Shifting Perceptions toward Counter-Historical Narratives 2. STORY-TELLING IN THE POWERBOOK 2.1 Journeys through Space and Time 2.2 Not One but Many: Multiplying Narratives PART TWO: EMBODIMENT 3. EMBODIMENT IN SEXING THE CHERRY 3.1 Dissecting the Monstrous Grotesque 3.2 Weight and Lightness 4. EMBODIMENT IN THE POWERBOOK 4.1 Virtuality Engendered: Fluid Gender Constructions in Cyberspace 4.2 Experiencing/Embodying the Text CONCLUSION WORKS CITED PROLOGUE My education at the English department of Utrecht University has informed, formed, and inspired me in multiple ways. Most of all, it has given me a thorough foundational passion for literature in its infinite shapes and forms, as well as catalysing my desires for teaching during my two-year student assistantship for the English language proficiency courses. The James Boswell Institute in Utrecht further developed my skills and experiences in teaching: I am thankful to my Chinese students for their patience and enthusiasm. The Students of Utrecht Drama Society (SUDS) fuelled my budding passions for all things performative, which remain an integral part of my life. Thank you, Roselinde, for your meticulous corrections, tireless interest, passionate supervision and for keeping my feet firmly on the ground. Rias, for being my second reader at such short notice. Bernadette de Zeeuw, for telling me I should do it. Brigit, for telling me I can do it. Sophie Wils at the IVLOS, for showing me what writing is about. Marijke, for your capitalised text messages, wishing me good luck and strength. Domitilla, for being next to me. Your unconditional physical, emotional, gastronomic, and intellectual support has made writing this thesis so much more enjoyable, fulfilling and adventurous. I thank you profoundly. 'Trust me. I'm telling you stories.' (Winterson, The Passion 40) Jeanette Winterson was born in 1959, and grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the United Kingdom. She published her first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, in 1985. Her debut proved an immediate success, and won the Whitbread Best First Novel Award of 1985. In 1987, Winterson became a full-time writer. This thesis focuses upon Winterson's Sexing the Cherry, published in 1989, and secondly upon The PowerBook, which was published in 2000. Predominantly, the critical reception of Winterson's novels in general, and of Sexing the Cherry and The PowerBook in particular, focuses either on the postmodern or on the lesbian elements of the novels. Especially Sexing the Cherry has sparked substantial debate as to its lesbian elements. Merja Makinen states that Winterson "herself has helped fuel the debate as to whether her texts are successful lesbian texts" (2). In an interview in 1992, Winterson said that while she "herself was a lesbian feminist, [her] work should not be seen under that definition" (2). The debates on whether Winterson should be positioned as a lesbian writer are heated and ongoing. 1 Broadly speaking, this debate entails positioning her works as universalising, and hence normalising, lesbianism; alternatively, other critics regard her works as successfully deconstructing gender identities. The question whether Winterson should be considered a postmodern writer has, instead, resulted in a general consensus of affirmation. Winterson's meta-narrative and self-reflexive texts, which challenge the divisions between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, and femininity and masculinity all 1 In the debate concerning Winterson's status as a lesbian writer, especially Lynne Pearce has been vocal. She provides a clear overview of the debate until 1994, and does so by surveying Winterson's first three novels. Her main argument is that Winterson's novels are popular because they allow a reading of a universalising lesbian love: "This is an ambivalence that centres on the tension between the perception of romantic love as a non-gendered, a-historic, "cultural universal", and as an "ideology" which the specificities of gender and sexual orientation constantly challenge and undermine. By attending to the "universalising" discourses in Winterson's work the (heterosexual) "general reader" can, of course, see the texts as transcending the particulars of sexual orientation; regard the fact that s/he is reading about lovers of the same sex as incidental and, consequently, apolitical. Indeed, the fact that in her later fiction Winterson has shown many different combinations of love-relationship (homosexual and heterosexual) has, perhaps, contributed to the reader's impression of (great) "Love" as being transcendent of history, culture and gender" (149).

Philosophers and critics of social media warn us of a lurker's complex: the unsettling belief that "real" communication is happening on someone else's blog or Facebook page. But this complex is hardly new. In popular works of fiction, the bored postal clerk has been a recurring symbol of the alienated, modern gossip hound stuck on the fringes of someone else's discourse. Rereading these post office novelists can help us clarify and critique our own online behaviors.

Does it still make sense to talk about transcendence when so much of our lives is routinized, restricted, and under surveillance? Increasingly, secularists and theists are shifting their focus to modern sports arenas. When the Dutch striker Robin van Persie scored his ''out of this world'' goal against Spain at the 2014 World Cup, soccer fans and pundits alike had a difficult time making sense of it all. But when we look at the construction of the stadium, the lines on the pitch, and even the specific tiki-taka tactics employed by both coaches, we see how secular regulations help lay the foundation for the freeing transcendence of the modern sports fan.

In trauma studies, resilience refers to one’s ability to confront, work through, and rise above traumatic experiences.
Sophocles encourages us to rethink our admiration for such heroic efforts. In Sophocles’s Ajax, it isn’t modern conceptions of resilience, but a stripped-down compassion that helps sheathe our most destructive
thoughts.

Confucius constantly bemoaned that he was living in a dangerous time when people were easily ruled by fear and profit. Students only wanted to make their private fortunes. They therefore looked to copy and regurgitate answers, and that only when required. Few people had the motivation or the capability to think for themselves. In one famous remark, Confucius claimed that if he held up one side of a square, he expected his students to come back with the other three sides. But that happened rarely. Confucius teaches us that we can take pleasure in learning rather than always seeing it as a chore. In the very first line of the Analects, "The Master said, Studying, and from time to time going over what you learned-that's enjoyable isn't it?" Studying the world means learning about ourselves and where we fit into this vast and constantly changing universe. The mystery of it should help supply us with a lifetime of questions that we can happily return to throughout our lives. Time and again Confucius reminds us that learning for learning's sake is insufficient. Memorizing formulas night and day was not the solution to complex social ailments. Instead, we also need experiential learning that applies our studies to real-life situations. "The Master said, A man may be able to recite all three hundred odes, but if you assign him as an envoy to some neighboring state and he can't give his answers unassisted, then no matter how many odes he might know, what good is he?" 283 There's no point in blandly memorizing facts if you don't have the courage to put them into action. The 12th-century Confucianist Zhu Xi put it more succinctly. He wrote, "The student takes it and puts it into practice." 284 Spending too much time studying what others have said is fruitless at best and cowardly at worst. When told about a respected scholar and politician who always thought things over three times before doing anything, Confucius's answer was simple. "Twice is enough." 285 Learning past history is only valuable if it helps us to do what's right in the present. The goal is not simply to print more books, but to develop ren, or humanity. Ren involves deepening empathy for others, recognizing their suffering and lifting them up through good words and deeds. Paying closer attention to how we comport ourselves in the world shows others what we respect and value, and the quality of our concerns. When we make it clear in our everyday interactions that small things matter, the bigger things tend to take care of themselves. In Chinese the word ren (see next page) is written with two horizontal lines, which represent ourselves and our relationship with others. Attaining ren can never be accomplished in isolation. Confucianists maintain that "the virtue of humanity is meaningless unless it is involved in actual human relationships." 286 We need others to develop ourselves. Or put another way, we become our best selves in concert with others. Without this reciprocity, love is unfulfilled, societies fracture, and empires fall. In such times, simple acts of kindness are more important than ever.