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Philosophy Postgraduates

Michaela Baker

Degree: PhD
Thesis topic: A Sartrean account of subjectivity and intersubjectivity
Supervisor: Associate Professor Nicholas Smith
Associate Supervisor: Dr Robert Sinnerbrink
Scholarship: Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (EIPRS) and International Macquarie University Research Scholarship (iMURS)

My research focuses on the existential phenomenological account of subjectivity outlined by Jean-Paul Sartre in his early works (The Transcendence of the Ego, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions and Being and Nothingness).  I aim to provide a unified account of this way of accounting for subjectivity and to defend it against what I take to be the most common objection to such an account of subjectivity, namely that it has unpleasant consequences for intersubjectivity.  In order to do this, I will examine Sartre's account of concrete relations with others in Being and Nothingness and explain what causes him to develop such an account.  I will then put forward an account of intersubjectivity and ethics that draws on the account of subjectivity, without leading us by necessity to 'hell is other people'.

I completed a BA in Philosophy, English Literature and Drama at Rhodes University (in Grahamstown, South Africa).  I then completed an Honours degree in Philosophy and English Literature and a Masters in Philosophy, also at Rhodes.  I have been at Macquarie since April 2006, and aim to finish my PhD by the end of 2009.

Conference papers

• 2001: 'Brandom's account of assertion as a theory of meaning' at the Annual Spring Philosophy Colloquium (Rhodes University)
• 2003: 'The Self in Nietzsche's metamorphoses' at the Philosophical Society of South Africa Conference (Rhodes University)
• 2004: 'Self-knowledge as a dialogic encounter' at the Winter Philosophy Colloquium (Rhodes University)
• 2006: 'Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity: Sartre and Critical theory' at the Critical Theory in Crisis? Postgraduate Conference (Macquarie University)
• 2007: 'Subjectivity or intersubjectivity as a basis for Critical Theory?' at the Philosophical Society of Southern Africa Conference (Stellenbosch University)

Teaching and other work at Macquarie

• Tutor for PHIL137 - Critical Thinking
• Tutor for PHIL134 - Introductory Formal Logic
• Tutor for OUA PHI 350 - Philosophy and Cinema
• Research assistant for grant application on Neuroethics (2006)

Other roles at Macquarie

Philosophy Postgraduate Representative (2008)