I argue in this paper that some of the most basic commitments of Kantian ethics can be understood as grounded in the dynamic of sense that Merleau-Ponty describes in his Phenomenology of Perception. Specifically, I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s account supports the importance of universalizability as a test for the moral permissibility of particular acts as well as the idea that the binding character of the moral law is given as something like a fact of reason. But I also argue that (...) Merleau-Ponty’s account of reversibility suggests an important dimension of moral experience that is given in the experience of contact and that is underthematized in moral philosophies like Kant’s that emphasize the role of universalizability. Finally, I advance a positive account of moral experience that is centered on the idea of tact as ambiguous imperative. (shrink)

The sky proclaimed Emerson is “the daily bread of the eyes.” Despite the apparent truth of this observation, we often fail to appreciate the complex canopy of air above and around us in considerations of environmental aesthetics and ecological awareness. I examine the sky and aerial phenomena that are bound to, closely allied with, or materially emergent from, this ocean of blue. In the process, I develop a perspective for thinking about some of the aesthetic characteristics and dimensions of this (...) realm. I show that understanding and appreciating the sky must attend to features related to ephemerality, protean colors, the lack of aclear and definite frame, and other non-anthropogenic qualities. I pay particular attention to explorations of horizontally-mobile clouds and, for the sake of contrast, vertically-originating snow by painters, poets, and philosophers who are able to express imaginative components of these phenomena and to reveal or vivify aspects that complement or complete the more realistic descriptions provided by natural scientists. The always-accessible and ever-fluctuating beauty of the sky offers the potential for deepening our daily experiences of and encounters with the elemental world in which we are sensually immersed and physicallyembedded. It also helps to offer an indirect rationale for respecting and protecting this vital other-than-human sphere. (shrink)

In the operating theater, the micro-politics of practice, such as interpersonal communications, are central to patient safety and are intimately tied with values as well as knowledge and skills. Team communication is a shared and distributed work activity. In an era of "professionalism," that must now encompass "interprofessionalism," a virtue ethics framework is often invoked to inform practice choices, with reference to phronesis or practical wisdom. However, such a framework is typically cast in individualistic terms as a character trait, rather (...) than in terms of a distributed quality that may be constituted through intentionally collaborative practice, or is an emerging property of a complex, adaptive system. A virtue ethics approach is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a collaborative bioethics within the operating theater. There is also an ecological imperative - the patient's entry into the household (oikos) of the operating theater invokes the need for "hospitality" as a form of ethical practice. (shrink)

My aim is to develop a feminist theory of value—an axiology—which unites two notions that seem to have little in common for a theorizing whose ultimate goal is justice-driven emancipatory action, namely, the ecological and the aesthetic. In this union lies the potential for a critical feminist political praxis capable of appreciating not only the value of human life, but those relationships upon which human and nonhuman life depend. A vital component of this praxis is, I argue, the potential for (...) an aesthetic experience whose value is exemplified in those actions that tend to foster respect for biodiversity and ecological stability. (shrink)

This article explores a significant question, implicit in Kafka’s novel Metamorphosis, explicitly asked by Rorty: ‘Can I care about a stranger?’ Alphonso Lingis’s view is adopted to overcome a mainstream belief that there is a distinction between my community and the stranger’s community, or us community and the community of those who have nothing in common. His view is thus beneficial to reveal the in-depth paradoxical meaning in the relationship between the stranger and me: I am the stranger and the (...) stranger is me. Therefore, to care about the stranger is to care about myself. (shrink)

I examine the kindred phenomena of shadows and night in order to reveal their significance for better understanding our lifeworld and the elemental environment. I first describe how light is primary to ecological perception and how it conditions our conceptions of space, truth, and beauty. Light and darkness are involved in a dialectical relationship rather than conceived as polar opposites. Borne of the interplay of both realms, shadows have been disparaged historically and deserve to be reconsidered for their aesthetic appearance (...) and their relevance to an ecology and anthropology of perception. Night, in turn, is often marked by a negative ontology that points toward the possibility of a kind of elemental a priori, but it is important to characterize darkness in terms of its subtle shades and filtering by way of the creative matrix of the human imagination. Seeing the night in novel and unexpected ways, especially via the insights and descriptions of phenomenologists, poets, and artists, enables us to grasp the depth and atmosphere of the surrounding world and to light up our geographical perspectives, our philosophical visions, and our environmental awareness. (shrink)

Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen as horizonal, (...) aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)

As Michel Foucault and others have shown, from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, Western political discourse has perpetuated an art of governing aimed at societies and populations. This article argues that this modern art of governing is now coming undone, in the name of governance. The discourse on governance is taking us from an art of governing premised on producing policy for a society or a population to an art of governing premised on solving problems with no necessary reference (...) to any kind of society or population. Tracing the evolution of that discourse, the article argues that existing social and political theory has failed to make sense of this shift. It concludes that in order to access and assess the new art of governing on its own terms we need a sociological imagination that stretches beyond societies and a political imaginary without the presupposition of collectivities. (shrink)

This paper approaches the experience of wonder phenomenologically. The account is descriptive. I suggest that in addition to the familiar treatments of wonder as constituted through a break with everyday involvement, on the one hand, and an awareness of the sheer fact of existence, on the other, the experience of wonder involves an intensification of the primary contact by which the world is given. That contact is prior to and presupposed by both our involvement with objects as implements of mediation (...) and our relation to others as persons. Because of that, wonder is depersonalizing and neutralizing, and so takes place outside any sense of ethical obligation. In contrast to efforts that aim at linking wonder and the good, I suggest that wonder is more aptly understood as making us deeper without making us better. (shrink)

This article attempts to understand the reconstitution of the `present' in modern societies. I argue that this reconstitution is the result of work done on `bare life', which I associate with that little space of time between action and performance. The article goes on to consider the ways in which this reconstitution of the present is taking place, using examples from the economic sphere. Throughout the article, I argue that operations on bare life are not only instrumental but also open (...) up new spaces of biopolitical practice based on a greater recognition of the value of slowness in a world commonly figured as fast. (shrink)

The article deals with phenomenology in Lithuania. The main thesis of the article is this: phenomenology is a living tradition in need of both development and interpretation. The minor thesis follows from the main one: the Western phenomenological tradition and Lithuanian philosophy interact and develop in tandem with one another. According to the authors, the contact between poetics and philosophy is the dominant form of phenomenology in Lithuania. The phenomenological tradition is treated as creative and living philosophical thought.

This paper is based on the eco-pedagogical aspiration to live with domesticated animals in accordance with Alphonso Lingis's Community of those who have nothing in common. I draw upon this remarkable text as well as Lingis's animal writings in describing moments and movements of pathic community. Such a community in affective affiliation with one another, where symbiotic relations are possible and bodily kinships are exercised, exemplifies what is possible in more rational human communities where domesticating impulses seek to harness the (...) vital powers of coconstitutive life. Of telling significance are predatory threats, the manner in which they appear, and the protectionist responses they occasion. By recasting these threats and responses in terms of motional affordances, it may well be possible to move with non-human creatures, both literally and figuratively, beyond the anthropocentric confines of domestication. Animals with whom we appear to have nothing specifically, or in species terms, in common can show us how to cultivate more pathic communities of our own kind. (shrink)

Attention is drawn to the movements of the body and to the ethical imperative that emerges in compelling, flowing moments of teaching. Such moments of teaching are not primarily intellectual, discursive events, but physical, sensual experiences in which the body surrenders to its own movements. Teaching is recognized momentarily as a carnal intensity embedded in and emerging from the flesh. The ethical imperative to this teaching is felt proprioceptively and kinaesthetically when one holds in self-motion the well-being of another as (...) being of the same flesh. The teaching caress offers a primary example. This gesture of intimacy discloses an embodied ethic that contrasts with the transcendental ethics of curricular prescriptions, professional codes of conduct, and the presumptions of self-monitoring behavior. It is a gesture of care for another person, without fastidious carefulness. It is a gesture of pure duration, without sanctimonious purity, in its contact with the beauty, truth and value of the teachable moment. From earliest engagements with children to the dynamics of the university classroom, what makes for good teaching is essentially attentiveness to intimate gestures, such as the caress, that guide teachers kinethically in the moment. (shrink)

A key phrase in working with horses, “bringing up life” is taken in its literal sense of moving expressively and energetically in order to animate the movements of the horses. The phrase also points to both what the radical phenomenologist Michel Henry referred to as the auto-affectivity of life and the vital powers of an essential hetero-affectivity. “Bringing up life” is the kinetic, kinaesthetic, affective expression of this fundamental impression that life is shared with other animate beings and that it (...) is all the more powerfully felt for being so. Working with horses – in spite of all the human conceits that groundwork, liberty training, and the riding disciplines hold – can thus reveal what it means to “bring up life” as more than a topic of very practical interest and specific phenomenological description. Through the impressional investigation of this expression we may well begin to feel our way toward more life-affirming, life-enhancing interactions with others of our own and many other animal kinds. (shrink)

Silence and madness can be likened to irritating cousins. Both introduce questionable or negative elements to the ideals of dialogue and rational communication. Silence can disturb and disrupt the rational pursuit of truth, while madness can noisily provoke a mockery of any meaningful or reciprocal exchange of ideas and thoughts. In the work and life of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, silence and madness highlight more positive features.To study and articulate these features, this paper relies on the central themes of two prominent (...) thinkers, the archaeological and genealogical studies from the late Michel Foucault and the revived forces of phenomenology from American philosopher Alphonso Lingis, to present the case that Nietzsche embraced a late 19th century disorder called the fugue. This disorder, what Ian Hacking calls a transient mental illness, involves nomadic life. Nietzsche exemplified such a life. His writings and experiences comprise a mixture of travels, arts of the self, willful forgetfulness, and a philosophical play with madness. From conventional perspectives, this play is viewed as irrelevant or detrimental to Nietzsche's philosophical importance. From Nietzsche's own perspective, however, this play might be appreciated as a gift from the insights of madness and the enriching contacts with silence. (shrink)

This article is about our relationship with things; about the abundant material geographies that surround us and constitute the very possibility for us to be the beings that we are. More specifically, it is about the question of the possibility of an ethical encounter with things (qua things). We argue, with the science and technology studies tradition (and Latour in particular), that we are the beings that we are through our entanglements with things, we are thoroughly hybrid beings, cyborgs through (...) and through – we have never been otherwise. With Heidegger we propose that a human-centred ethics of hybrids will fail to open a space for an ethical encounter with things since all beings in the sociomaterial network – humans and non-human alike – end up circulating as objects, enframed as ‘standing reserve’, things-for-the-purposes-of the network. We suggest that what is needed is an ethos beyond ethics, or the overcoming of an ethics – which is based on the will to power – towards an ethos of letting be. We elaborate such a possibility with the help of Heidegger, in particular with reference to the work of Graham Harman and his notion of ‘tool-being’. From this we propose, very tentatively, an ethos that has as its ground a poetic dwelling with things, a way of being that lets being be (Gelassenheit). We show how such a poetic dwelling, or ethos of Gelassenheit, may constitute the impossible possibility of a very otherwise way of being with things – an ethos of a ‘community of those who have nothing in common’ as suggested by Alphonso Lingis. (shrink)

In this experimental piece of writing I want to think about the pedagogy of contact and the plight of the hikikomori or social recluse in Japan. I am interested in exploring how the hikikomori practices a kind of contactlessness or what I will call a deadly ipseity of desire. What does it mean to resist contact, to be without contact, to be without desire? What does it mean to risk contact, to risk being tactile with the other, to risk affirming (...) one’s desires? I want to generate a discussion about what has happened to desire, to its promise and possibility and why it is so difficult to anticipate or forecast what is to come. For me the BwO of hikikomori is the ruin of desire, the collapse of desire, a disaster of desire. I am pursuing a line of thought which highlights the loss of the possibility of processual schizophrenic breakthrough and in its place the becoming-autistic of the self, the perilous breakdown of the self. (shrink)

I argue that Heidegger’s account of technology as “enframing” is a helpful lens through which to understand the possible effects and dangers of transhumanism. Without resorting to nebulous concepts such as “dignity;” Heidegger’s analysis can help us understand how new technologies employed to modify the body; brain; and consciousness will enframe our own bodies and identities as something akin to “standing reserve.” Under transhumanism; the body is enframed as an external; technologically modifiable product. I indicate some of the problems that (...) might arise when our own bodies no longer appear as central to our identity as embodied beings. Further; I argue that; by treating aspects of our own consciousness as technologically modifiable; we will be driven into a commodified and inauthentic relation to our identities. By examining the work of prominent transhumanists – including Brad Allenby; Daniel Sarewitz; and Andy Clark – I show how the threat that technology poses can be hidden when the essence of technology is not uncovered in a primordial way. I argue that by threatening to obscure death as a foundational possibility for Dasein; transhumanism poses the danger of hiding the need to develop a free and authentic relation to technology; Truth; and ultimately to Dasein itself. (shrink)

Using the 2010 film Into Eternity as a springboard for thought, this article considers how archaeologies of the future might help us make sense of how to seek commonality and take care across vast temporal scales. The film, about a nuclear waste repository in Finland, addresses the impossibility of communicating across millennia. In thinking with this film, we engage with recent responses to the post-human call, arguing that they are inadequate in dealing with the new questions that are asked by (...) post-human thought. Instead, we attempt to engage the work of Spinoza and Sloterdijk in rethinking the human as a strategic position or point of purchase amongst the shared materiality of present and future worlds. We offer the concepts of the materially affective and atmosphere in order to identify points of connection, drawing on moments in Into Eternity to work through these arguments in a tentative repositioning of the human as a site of concern. (shrink)