This essay addresses the question of virtual church, particularly on whether or not liturgy can be done virtually. We will approach our subject from a somewhat unusual perspective by looking to types of aesthetic experiences which we have been doing “virtually” for a long time. By exploring how we experience art in virtual and physical contexts, we gain insight into the corresponding experiences in liturgical practices. Drawing on Mikel Dufrenne, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gabriel Marcel, I first examine the importance of (...) the body when we experience “presence” in aesthetic environments. Next, I consider the weight of the body in experiences of presence in liturgical practices, both in person and virtual, guided again by Gabriel Marcel as well as Bruce Ellis Benson, Emmanuel Falque, Christina Gschwandtner and Éric Palazzo. Through these reflections, I argue that what art teaches us about the significance of the physical closeness of the human applies to the practice of liturgy and that, while unexpected benefits will surface in virtual settings, nothing replaces the powerful experiences that arise when the body is physically present. (shrink)

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning. But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational (...) knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged—or even engaging—epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren’s idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower’s being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other. (shrink)

In this article I will claim that from a Thomist perspective the question “Soul or Brain: What makes us human?” presents us with a false dilemma and hence must as such remain an unanswerable question. In order to corroborate this claim I will do two things. First, I present the framework of a Thomistic anthropology in so far as it relates to the unity of soul and body in the human person. Next, I deal with the question that immediately results (...) from this unity, i.e. the subsistence of the soul. From a Thomist perspective this question can be answered apart from any findings from neuroscience. (shrink)

The idea of moral progress is a necessary presupposition of action for beings like us. We must believe that moral progress is possible and that it might have been realized in human experience, if we are to be confident that continued human action can have any morally constructive point. I discuss the implications of this truth for moral psychology. I also show that once we understand the complex nature and the complicated social sources of moral progress, we will appreciate why (...) we cannot construct a plausible comprehensive action-guiding theory of moral progress. Yet while the nature and sources of moral progress consistently thwart many theoretical hopes, the idea of moral progress is a plausible, critically important and morally constructive principle of historical interpretation. (shrink)

There is one concept in medicine which is prominent, the symptom. The omnipresence of the symptom seems, however, not to be reflected by an equally prominent curiosity aimed at investigating this concept as a phenomenon. In classic, traditional or conventional medical diagnostics and treatment, the lack of distinction with respect to the symptom represents a minor problem. Faced with enigmatic conditions and their accompanying labels such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, medically unexplained symptoms, and functional somatic syndromes, the contestation of (...) the symptom and its origin is immediate and obvious and calls for further exploration. Based on a description of the diagnostic framework encompassing medically unexplained conditions and a brief introduction to how such symptoms are managed both within and outside of the medical clinic, we argue on one hand how unexplained conditions invite us to reconsider and re-think the concept we call a “symptom” and on the other hand how the concept “symptom” is no longer an adequate and necessary fulcrum and must be enriched by socio-cultural, phenomenological and existential dimensions. Consequently, our main aim is to expand both our interpretative horizon and the linguistic repertoire in the face of those appearances we label medically unexplained symptoms. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between two conceptions of philosophical counseling. The one focuses on the clarification of the individual's psychological and philosophical self and the other on the transcendence of that self. A comparison of the latter conception with the self-transcendence that takes place through Zen Buddhism contributes to the examination of the question of whether philosophical counseling can indeed overcome potential psychological obstacles to attaining a transcendent aim. Possible influences of the integration of psychological intervention into the philosophical search for (...) transcendence are also discussed. (shrink)

Challenging a long-standing assumption of the separation of ethical from poetic activity, this essay develops the basis for a theory of moral life as inherently and radically creative. A range of contemporary post-Kantian ethicists--including Ricoeur, Nussbaum, Kearney, and Gutiérrez--are employed to make the argument that moral practice requires a fundamental capability for creative transformation, imagination, and social renewal. In addition, this poetic moral capability can finally be understood only from the primordial religious point of view of the mystery of Creation (...) as such. Humanity as an image of its Creator is called to the endless impossible possibility of the re-creation of its own complex, plural, and fallen social world. Such a perspective is opposed to views of moral life as the application of law-like principles or the recovery of past moral histories. Without a better understanding of moral life's radically creative imperative, we miss a vital element of social relations' distinctive humanity. (shrink)

This reflexive account is of a phenomenological study that took place over two years. It explores how a group of primary-aged children perceive, express and reflect on their embodiment through movement. Children aged between four and eleven took part in sessions of yoga, somatic movement and developmental play during the school day. The data include field notes, observations, a reflexive journal, photographs of and by the children, their drawings, mark-makings, writing and posters. Children were also interviewed at the end of (...) the study, when they had an opportunity to reflect on all their work and experiences. All the children were capable of expressing and reflecting on their experiences, and the oldest children in particular appeared to enjoy and seemed to benefit from the reflective process. By linking together a sense of self-awareness and reflection, the children appeared able to gain insight into their embodied experience and reflect on emotions, feelings and events. Embodiment is a process as much of a state of being, and as such has implications for perceptions of mind and body, learning, and reflective practice. This approach to embodied reflective practice thus has potential for educators, and teacher trainers as well as direct work with children. (shrink)

Understanding between care providers and patients with stroke and aphasia: a phenomenological hermeneutic inquiry The present study illuminates the understanding in communication between formal care providers and patients with stroke and aphasia. Five care providers and three such patients participated in the study. Video recordings were made during conversations about pictures (n = 15), and the care providers were also interviewed (n = 15) after the video‐recorded conversations. A phenomenological hermeneutic method of interpretation of the interview text was used. The (...) findings showed that a range of conditions for ‘understanding and being understood’ in the communication on the part of the care providers exists. These different conditions are: lacking both knowledge and understanding; having knowledge but not necessarily accompanied by understanding; and being in understanding. Within the condition ‘being in understanding’, the care providers create a feeling of at‐homeness in a relaxed atmosphere and thus have the opportunity to be in ‘understanding and being understood’ together with the patient. The condition ‘being in understanding’ appears in connection with the care providers’ creating of a ‘calm liturgy of caring’ by mediating humility and calm vitality affects to the patients, and further, when needed, being present on the level of mystery, i.e. caring communion. (shrink)

Support in different modes, expressions and actions is at the core of the public welfare culture. In this paper, support is examined as an everyday interpersonal phenomenon with a variety of expressions in language and ways of relating, and its essential meaning is explored. The fulcrum for reflection is the lived experience shared by a young woman with mental health problems of her respective encounters with two professionals in mental health facilities. A phenomenological analysis of the contrasting accounts suggests that, (...) when the professional relationship includes openness and risk, a certain degree of freedom of action is possible for both parties involved in the inevitably asymmetrical relationship. Support as “given” eludes controllable and measurable objectives, but imposes itself on the lived experiences of both the giver and the receiver as subject to readiness for acceptance. By not making assumptions about what support is, we open ourselves to the possibility of reciprocally experiencing moments revealing the essential meaning of support as lived. (shrink)

In the nursing literature, a number of qualities are associated with loving care. Reference is made to, among other things, humility, attentiveness, responsibility and duty, compassion, and tenderness. The author attempts to show that charm, in the Marcelian sense, also plays a central role. It is argued that the moral foundation of charm is a unity of agape and eros. An impartial giving of the self for others is clearly of fundamental importance in an ethic of care. Including charm in (...) the discussion points to the fact that eros also plays a crucial role. Eros produces a passion for people and for life. It is a physical and spiritual energy that animates a person in all facets of her life, including her caring work. (shrink)

In a pessimistic view, the world is a series of struggles and sufferings. The tribulations are inevitable to man’s life for he is in the world. Pandemic, poverty and corruption are the most prominent and prevailing faces of struggles in the world. It affects the individual’s lives deeply for it undercuts the experience of being alive and free. It weakens man’s appreciation of moments due to misery. The conflicts in the world holds man to appreciate moments for they are occupied (...) on their functionality. The world simply becomes a mechanical for the people lives like a machine where working is much important than reflecting. These problematic figures were paralleled to Gabriel Marcel’s concept of broken world. The paper tends to justify that the world is broken for the reason that first, its problems that could be seen in the contemporary world as pandemic, poverty and corruption. Second, man becomes alienated from himself for he ceases on living due to this problematic world. This paper also ventured to Gabriel Marcel’s concept of broken world which eventually paralleled to the mainstream problems in contemporary world. The author intended to present a pessimistic view about the world which he claimed to be mad and broken. (shrink)

Multiple disciplines have contributed to acculturation research with aims to measure, conceptualize, and theorize this complex phenomenon. Few studies, however, have attempted to find meaning in how acculturation is lived and, this lack may have contributed to acculturation being understood as a construct removed from human experience. The purpose of this article is to show how a research methodology based on phenomenological epistemology can humanize the understanding of the acculturation experience. This contribution is demonstrated in a study that used a (...) phenomenological approach to describe and elucidate acculturation as a lived experience in the context of Latina adolescents who emigrated from Mexico to the US. Thus, this article illustrates how the phenomenological approach used in this study allows new meanings of acculturation to be experientially revealed. (shrink)

Purpose. To examine the existential anthropology of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in order to demonstrate the necessity of distinguishing the universal-spiritual, as human in human being, apart from the individual-existential in him, and to reveal the hierarchical correlation of biosocial, existential and spiritual spheres in personality. Theoretical basis. Within existential philosophy the author differentiates two separate traditions and proceeds from the insufficiency of the distinction of existential sphere, proposed by phenomenological tradition, showing the necessity of its correlation with the (...) spiritual sphere as a sphere of humanity, proposed by non-phenomenological tradition of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski. Originality. The author presents the anthropological conception of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski, in which human personality is understood as unity of individual-existential and universal-spiritual, which requires a special trans-empirical field of culture, which contains senses, images and symbols of humanity. Also, the author presents the recent developments of existential thinkers in distinguishing existential and spiritual dimensions, both not reducible to the physical and social dimensions. Conclusions. In both existential traditions, the specifically human was founded as a trans-biological and trans-social phenomenon, which appears as indefinable and non-predetermined. But in first tradition, humanity is understood as an existence, as a unique individuality, "project", variant of humanity, equivalent to other variants, and universal is understood as a community of human condition in the world. While in the second tradition, the universal is understood as spiritual. Thus, horizontal level of our private existence, as the process of movement from birth to death, is supplemented by vertical of human, universal ideals and images. Humanity appears as a task, on the way to which human being transcends beyond the limits of his individual "self" to the "super-individual", through inclusion into spiritual community, into universal culture. (shrink)

On the basis of extensive research on the relationship between physical activity, exercise and health, as well as strong support from policymakers and practitioners, the “Exercise is Medicine” initiative has become something of a linchpin in the agenda for modern healthcare reform and reflects a broader acceptance that the philosophy of health politics must shift from social engineering to performativity. However, in spite of the avowed commitment to encouraging individuals to take on a more reflexive relation to their health, it (...) remains unclear as to whether an initiative such as this is, unambiguously, a good thing. In this paper, a number of cautionary remarks are made with respect to “Exercise is Medicine” in principle as well as in practice. Firstly, it is argued that equating exercise with medicine is to equate it with a definition of and relation to the body to which it is not entirely akin. And secondly, it is argued that any proposed alignment of the fitness and healthcare industries needs further critical examination, a realigning of interests, and a thorough reconsideration of their suitability of fit. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 63-64.