Date of Award
Spring 2015
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Daniel Smith
Committee Chair
Daniel Smith
Committee Member 1
William McBride
Committee Member 2
Christopher Yeomans
Committee Member 3
Todd May
Committee Member 4
Kevin Thompson
Abstract
Political agency concerns the transformation of the conditions of social organization through collective action. In order to treat the set of necessary conditions for such agency, I develop a detailed reconstruction of Michel Foucault's political philosophy, placed in relation to the work of Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze. I argue that the key to Foucault's political thought is contained in two crucial but neglected concepts, verticality andtransversality, and that the systematic exposition of these concepts yields an account of what must obtain for political agency to be possible, realizable, and sustainable.
Recommended Citation
Penfield, Christopher S., "Foucault, Kant, Deleuze, and the problem of political agency" (2015). Open Access Dissertations. 534.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/534