About
Educator and researcher in post-Kantian philosophy. I received my PhD from the university of Southampton under the supervision of Christopher Janaway with my thesis 'Schopenhauer's Soteriology: Beyond Pessimism and Optimism'. My current research interests are in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's ethics and philosophies of value as well as 20th Century European existentialism. I work as a secondary and A-level teacher of Philosophy, Religion and Ethics. I also lecture in philosophy for lifelong learning students through the university of Southampton as well as offer private tuition for students of all levels.
University of Southampton life long learning course -
Ethics in the World: Is the weight of being bearable?
An introduction to Existentialism
Does existence precede essence? Is there such a thing as human nature? Are we condemned to freedom?
This course offers an overview of three 20th century philosophers in the European existentialist tradition. We will begin by exploring the cultural background through philosophers and writers including Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Husserl.
We will then explore the philosophy of Heidegger in his work ‘Being and Time’. Next we will explore Sartre’s existentialism including the ideas of ‘bad faith’, ‘anguish’ and ‘freedom'. Finally we will explore Albert Camus’ absurdism through the novella ‘The Stranger’ and the philosophical work ‘The myth of Sisyphus’.
Dates: Monday 13th January to Monday 18th Febuary 2025
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Location: Online Price: £115
CLICK ON LINK TO BOOK
Week 1:
Diverse origins.​
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Husserl
Week 4:
Is existentialism a humanism?
A practical philosophy?
Week 2:
To be or not to be?
Heidegger and Dasein
Week 5:
Is life absurd?
Camus the ‘stranger’
Week 3:
Are we condemned to freedom?
Sartre and Freedom
Week 6:
Keep on rolling!
Camus and the myth of Sisyphus
Private Tutoring Services
Expert Academic Support
Specialized in providing Tutition for GCSE RS, A-level RS, A-level Philosophy, and undergraduate units. Offering personalized one-to-one private tutoring to enhance academic performance and understanding. Tailored sessions to meet individual needs and goals. - Get in touch - timbirtles21@gmail.com
Doctoral Project
Schopenhauer's Soteriology:
Beyond Pessimism and Optimism
This thesis is first and foremost an attempt to solve some issues in Schopenhauer’s theory of salvation. It is a reconstructive attempt at providing ways in which Schopenhauer’s soteriology could work. My aim is to show that we are able to provide a much more cohesive and satisfying reading of Schopenhauer’s philosophical project if it is argued that the will is not the ultimate nature of reality in Schopenhauer’s system. While this reading is a departure from the traditional readings of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, I believe it has the advantages of both aligning Schopenhauer’s thought much closer with the eastern traditions he believes his work is in sympathy with, and ultimately, providing a new platform from which to assess the ‘traditional’ reading of Schopenhauer’s thought as ‘hopelessly pessimistic’. It is my contention that, while Schopenhauer is a pessimist about the world as manifested will, it is the perceived difficulties of his philosophy of salvation that has provided the most significant road block preventing critics from seeing that there is more to Schopenhauer’s philosophy than pessimism. This thesis is an attempt to shed light on possible new readings of Schopenhauer’s project in light of attempts at resolving issues in his soteriology.
I begin with an analysis of the terms ‘will’, ‘will-to-life’ and ‘affirmation and negation of the will-to-life’. I will attempt to argue that the will should not be seen as ‘Ultimate Reality’ in Schopenhauer’s system and that this is both closer to the account which Schopenhauer himself was inclining towards later in his writings and a necessary sacrifice in order to save Schopenhauer from more problematic inconsistencies.
I next attempt to solve inconsistencies in Schopenhauer’s account of personal identity. I argue that there can only be a denial of the will-to-life if there is more to our identity than willing. I will also examine the possibility of a denial of the will-to-life at all. I will be engaging with recent scholarship from Christopher Janaway on the possibility of negating the will to life and the implications of this for Schopenhauer’s account of willing.
I will then attempt to resolve the on-going debate in the secondary literature concerning Schopenhauer’s ethical pronouncements and his theory of the renunciation of the will. I will argue, contrary to Sandra Shapshay and Tristan Ferrell that it is possible to deny the will and to keep willing ethically if we focus on what Schopenhauer means by a compassionate will to help others. I will be asking why exactly it is ‘good’ to deny the will and what this means for our understanding of value for the will-less subject.
Finally, I will be focussing on Schopenhauer’s pessimism and how a new reading of Schopenhauer’s soteriology means that we can introduce new ways of assessing both the world and the place of Schopenhauer’s philosophical system within it.
Ultimately, I will conclude that any interpretation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy presents the scholar with a choice and that we are able to make new evaluative assessments on Schopenhauer’s philosophy and its nature as pessimistic only if we choose to accept major revisions to his metaphysics of the will. However, because Schopenhauer himself seemed to be moving towards such revisions, we should not be afraid of doing so.
MA Dissertation - Schopenhauer's Aesthetics
'In what sense can music be a direct representation of the will in Schopenhauer's philosophy?'
MA Dissertation -Â 'In what sense can music be a direct representation of the will in Schopenhauer's philosophy?'
I question whether Schopenhauer’s proposal that music is a direct representation of the will in book III of The World as Will and Representation (WWR) is consistent with his overall metaphysics, and, if not, to what extent this actually matters. As the closest humans can come to a full expression of the will as it exists in-itself, there is a great deal that Schopenhauer appears to have invested in music, there are, therefore, many questions that should be asked of it. Firstly, how is music or any art form able to adequately represent the un-representable or un-representational? Secondly, assuming that music does this, how are we to know that it has succeeded if this is the only, or the closest possible, representation we can have of the will? The question here is to do with verifiability, how can we know that music has represented something if we are not certain what it is in itself? Thirdly, what are Schopenhauer’s true intentions in book III? If he believes that he is philosophising at the limits of conceptual thought, then to what extent would he be concerned by these philosophical problems? We may ask, how much of his philosophy at this stage does not rely instead more on the mystical and poetic rather than the strictly logical and rational?
MA Essays
Transcendental Ideality and the Kantian Noumenal
At the heart of Kant’s project in the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ is the contention that our necessary forms of sensibility, as well as understanding, do not give us knowledge of the world as it is in itself beyond these necessary modes of cognition. The thing-in-itself, beyond our necessary comprehension of it, is, by definition, unknowable, an ‘island, enclosed by nature itself within unalterable limits’ (Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), B295). And yet, the Transcendental Aesthetic contains the bold claim that both space and time are ‘nothing but’ (CPR B66) the forms of all outer appearances. It would seem that there is then at least one thing we can know of the thing-in-itself, that it is a-spatial and a-temporal. In this essay, I maintain that Kant has invoked a paradox and not a contradiction and that this paradox is no more problematic than any other paradox in the history of philosophy.
Nietzsche: Genealogy vs. History
In so far as history is understood as the impartial, dispassionate and objective study of the past, that is, history as an academic exercise, Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ (GM) is emphatically not an exercise in history, nor does Nietzsche intend it to be. I argue that this is for the following reasons: 1.) Nietzsche has consciously titled his work a ‘Genealogy’ of morality and not a ‘History’ of morality or a ‘On the Origins’ of morality and that this is significant. 2.) The genealogical pursuit is not an ultimate end in the work but rather is subordinate to a more profound end which is meta-historical and normative in nature: a revaluation of values. 3.) Nietzsche is at best ambivalent towards the status of ‘historical truth’ as an ultimate value and would rather argue that a commitment to truth for truth’s sake is a symptom of the very ascetic ideal he is railing against.
Adorno's Aesthetics
I defend Adorno’s critique of popular music against two related criticisms: firstly, that Adorno is guilty of violating his own methodology when he classes music under broad categories – and, secondly, that Adorno does not correctly identify genuinely informative categories by which to class music. I explore Adorno’s critiques of popular music, specifically those found in ‘The Dialectic of Enlightenment’ (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1973), ‘On Popular Music’ (Adorno, 1941) and ‘On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening’ (Adorno, 1991). I then attempt to respond to Douglas Kellner’s suggestion in his essay ‘Adorno and the Dialectics of Mass Culture’ that Adorno is perhaps guilty of betraying his own insistence on the priority of the particular over the abstract concept (Kellner, 2002). I analyse this claim by paying particularly close attention to Adorno’s comments on the nature of his immanent critique in ‘The Essay as Form’ (Adorno, 1984) and to a lesser extent ‘Negative Dialectics’ (Adorno, 2007).
Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium
I attempt to demonstrate how Plato’s middle dialogues, Phaedrus and Symposium, provide a new pedagogical model for lovers of wisdom. I argue that Plato’s aim in the dialogues is, amongst others, to reassess the pederastic dynamic between erastes and eromenos and, in so doing, communicate a new method for conducting philosophical enquiry. My overall argument is that love does not lead to knowledge and knowledge does not lead to love. Instead, both states operate in a mutually dynamic and symbiotic relationship with one another. The apt knower is a lover and the apt lover is a knower. Love and knowledge are, if properly understood, inseparable. The highest pursuit is the love of knowledge (philos-sophia) and the greatest exemplar of the lover of knowledge is he who only knows erotics (Socrates). I propose that Plato wishes to convey to his reader an understanding that the connection between episteme and eros is that of an energetic pursuit which must begin, not in a static dynamic of exchange and favour seen in the traditional Greek pederasty, but in the passionate intellectual sparring between equal rational souls committed to a joint philosophical endeavour.
Hilary Putnam and Brains in Vats
Hilary Putnam and Brains in Vats
I analyse Hilary Putnam’s anti-skepitcal argument presented in chapter two of Reason, Truth and History (Putnam, 1981). I argue that, in its literal sense the argument succeeds. However, my disagreement is with the implications that are drawn from this. Given acceptance of his account of meaning and the causal intentionality upon reference, Putnam, at best, is able to demonstrate that a radically skeptical scenario as we are capable of conceiving it is impossible. However, this does not necessarily prove beyond doubt that a similar skeptical scenario that we are not capable of conceiving is not, in theory, possible even if I can have no conception of it.
Evolution and the argument against moral realism
In this paper I defend Sharon Street’s arguments in her paper ‘A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value’ (Street, 2006) in order to argue that the most tenable explanation for evaluative judgements makes no reference to independent evaluative truths. However, I go further by exploring the possibility of evolutionary theory extending a blanket scepticism across not just moral realism, but realism relating to all supposed independently existent truths (aesthetic, scientific, mathematic et cetera). I explore this as a form of transcendental argument. The contingent ‘fitness’ of beliefs, as well as the instruments upon which these beliefs are formed (the human brain), are the necessary conditions behind having any beliefs at all. Subsequently, if the independent beliefs we practically assume to be true have formed through their instrumental role in aiding fitness, this may suggest that, if there is objective non-evolutionarily-conditioned objective true-beliefs, we can have no access to them.