This essay provides an analysis of the role of affectivity in Martin Heidegger's writings from the mid to late 1920s. We begin by situating his account of mood within the context of his project of fundamental ontology in Being and Time. We then discuss the role of Befindlichkeit and Stimmung in his account of human existence, explicate the relationship between the former and the latter, and consider the ways in which the former discloses the world. To give a more vivid (...) and comprehensive picture of Heidegger's account of mood, we focus on the experience of anxiety by articulating both its function within fundamental ontology and, relatedly, its revelatory nature. We conclude by considering the place of emotions in Heidegger's thinking from this period. In a companion essay, ‘Affectivity in Heidegger II: Temporality, Boredom, and Beyond’, we complement our present analysis by revisiting the issue of affectivity in terms of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of Being and Time. We also expand our present discussion by considering the fundamental mood of boredom and other specific moods that Heidegger considers within his later thinking. (shrink)

In his argument for the possibility of knowledge of spatial objects, in the Transcendental Deduction of the B-version of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes a crucial distinction between space as “form of intuition” and space as “formal intuition.” The traditional interpretation regards the distinction between the two notions as reflecting a distinction between indeterminate space and determinations of space by the understanding, respectively. By contrast, a recent influential reading has argued that the two notions can be fused into (...) one and that space as such is first generated by the understanding through an act of synthesis of the imagination. Against this reading, this article argues that a key characteristic of space as a form of intuition is its nonconceptual unity, which defines the properties of space and is as such necessarily independent of determination by the understanding through the transcendental synthesis of the imagination. The conceptual unity that the understanding prescribes to the manifold in intuition, by means of the categories, defines the formal intuition. Furthermore, this article argues that it is the sui generis, nonconceptual unity of space, when takenas a unity for the understanding by means of conceptual determination, that first enables geometric knowledge and knowledge of spatially located particulars. (shrink)

This article focuses on situations and emotional perception. To this end, I start with the Kuleshov effect wherein identical shots of performers manifest different expressions when cut to different contexts. However, I conducted experiments with a twist, using Darth Vader and non-primates, and even here expressions varied with contexts. Building on historically and conceptually linked Gibsonian, Gestalt, phenomenological and pragmatic schools, along with consonant experimental work, I extrapolate these results to defend three interconnected points. First, I argue that while perceiving (...) expression is sometimes about reading minds, it is more squarely about perceiving solicitations or closures for action. Second, I frame expressions as a subcategory of Gibson’s affordances. This includes those showing up through context, in turn suggesting Kuleshov-like scenarios are not mere perceptual tricks. Third, I maintain that situations—with or without other human beings—have action-motivating expressive qualities or what Gestalt theorists called physiognomic characters, following Werner. These likewise emerge through ecological relations, and are very much like affordances and in the world as much as them. With resemblance theories, my account agrees that we perceive expression in the world. However, it indicates a broad range of cases in which expression shows up as consequences of overall situations that solicit or close actions, as opposed to mere resemblance between entities and human expressions. (shrink)

It can be tempting to think of affect as a matter of the present moment – a reaction, a feeling, an experience or engagement that unfolds right now. This paper will make the case that affect is better thought of as not only temporally extended but as saturated with temporality, especially with the past. In and through affectivity, concrete, ongoing history continues to weigh on present comportment. In order to spell this out, I sketch a Heidegger-inspired perspective. It revolves around (...) two claims. The first is that we should understand what Heidegger calls 'Befindlichkeit' (findingness) as radical situatedness. Affectivity is a matter of 'finding oneself' constellated – thrown – into the world in ways that outrun what an individual or collective might grasp and process. The second claim is that the temporal dimension, as a relatedness to the past, takes precedence in affect's situatedness. Key to affect is the way in which the past continues to hold sway over present comportment, collectively and individually. In order to articulate this perspective, it is important to overcome the idea that affect must be understood mainly in terms of feeling or experiential states of other kinds. Better suited to grasp the idea of findingness is the concept of 'disclosive posture', as proposed by Katherine Withy. I suggest that this notion should be put at the fore of a phenomenological approach to situated affectivity. (shrink)

Nursing practice invites nurses to embody caring practices that meet, comfort and empower vulnerable others. Such a practice requires a commitment to meeting and helping the other in ways that liberate and strengthen and avoid imposing the will of the caregiver on the patient. Being good and acting well (phronesis) occur in particular situations. A socially constituted and embodied view of agency, as developed by Merleau‐Ponty, provides an alternative to Cartesian and Kantian views of agency. A socially constituted, embodied view (...) of agency is less mechanistic and less deterministic than Descartes' and Kant's radical separation of mind and body, and more responsive and generative than Kant's vision of moral agency as constituted by autonomous choice makers who are uninfluenced by emotion. The role of emotion in perception and judgement is explored in this paper. Distinctions between techne and phronesis are drawn. The role of emotion in market relationships and procedural ethics drawn for the abstract, general other are strategies for exchange of goods and services, but these same market relationships are dependent on well‐functioning nonmarket relations of noncalculated giving and receiving. (shrink)

Both current and past analyses and critiques of transhumanist and posthumanist theories have had a propensity to cite the Greek myth of Prometheus as a paradigmatic figure. Although stark differences exist amongst the token forms of posthumanist theories and transhumanism, both theoretical domains claim promethean theory as their own. There are numerous definitions of those two concepts: therefore, this article focuses on posthumanism thought. By first analyzing the appropriation of the myth in posthumanism, we show how the myth fails to (...) be foundational and how we need to rethink the posthumanist mythological framework. We then introduce Haldane’s Daedalus figure as a fruitful analogy to understand the demiurgic posture that critics mean to unveil by first using Prometheus. Daedalus embodies the artisan role, whose status as an inventor for the mighty preserves from the gods' direct opprobrium. Thereafter, we introduce the Camusian Myth of Sisyphus as a competing analogy that ultimately serves as a myth better suited to address the posthumanist position on an existential standpoint. we ultimately show that Sisyphus, as the ‘absurd man’ that Camus claims him to be, is himself the posthuman, thus serving as a more ideal foundational myth for posthumanism and preserving the importance of narrative in posthuman discourses. To conclude, we specifically show that the concept of Sisyphus as a posthuman icon has significance that reaches beyond narrative value to current ecological debates in posthumanism. (shrink)

• An adequate conceptual framework is still needed to account for phenomena that (i) have a first-person, subjective-experiential or phenomenal character; (ii) are (usually) reportable and describable (in humans); and (iii) are neurobiologically realized.2 • The conscious subject plays an unavoidable epistemological role in characterizing the explanadum of consciousness through first-person descriptive reports. The experimentalist is then able to link first-person data and third-person data. Yet the generation of first-person data raises difficult epistemological issues about the relation of second-order awareness (...) or meta-awareness to first-order experience (e.g. (shrink)

Skilled activity, such as shaving or dancing, differs in important ways from many of the stock examples that are employed by action theorists. Some critics of the causal theory of action contend that such a view founders on the problem of skilled activity. This paper examines how a causal theory can be extended to the case of skilled activity and defends the account from its critics.

In this paper, I argue that self-awareness is intertwined with one's awareness of possibilities for action. I show this by critically examining Dan Zahavi's multidimensional account of the self. I argue that the distinction Zahavi makes among 'pre-reflective minimal', 'interpersonal', and 'normative' dimensions of selfhood needs to be refined in order to accommodate what I call 'pre-reflective self-understanding'. The latter is a normative dimension of selfhood manifest not in reflection and deliberation, but in the habits and style of a person’s (...) pre-reflective absorption in the world. After reviewing Zahavi's multidimensional account and revealing this gap in his explanatory taxonomy, I draw upon Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Frankfurt in order to sketch an account of pre-reflective self-understanding. I end by raising an objection to Zahavi’s claim for the primitive and foundational status of pre-reflective self-awareness. To carve off self-awareness from the self’s practical immersion in a situation where things and possibilities already matter and draw one to act is to distort the phenomena. A more careful phenomenology of pre-reflective action shows that pre-reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-understanding are co-constitutive, both mutually for each other and jointly for everyday experience. (shrink)

Approaches to the naturalization of phenomenology usually understand naturalization as a matter of rendering continuous the methods, epistemologies, and ontologies of phenomenological and natural scientific inquiry. Presupposed in this statement of the problematic, however, is that there is an original discontinuity, a rupture between phenomenology and the natural sciences that must be remedied. I propose that this way of thinking about the issue is rooted in a simplistic understanding of the phenomenological reduction that entails certain assumptions about the subject matter (...) of phenomenology and its relationship to the natural sciences. By contrast, Merleau‐Ponty's first work, The Structure of Behavior, presents a radically different approach to the phenomenological reduction, one that traverses the natural sciences and integrates them into phenomenology from the outset. I outline the argument for this position in The Structure of Behavior and then discuss consequences for current methodological issues surrounding the naturalization of phenomenology, focusing on the relationship between empirical sciences of mind, phenomenological psychology, and transcendental phenomenology. This novel exegesis of Merleau‐Ponty's view on the reduction offers new insight into his oft‐quoted remark that the phenomenological reduction is impossible to complete. (shrink)

According to Heidegger's Being and Time, social relations are constitutive of the core features of human agency. On this view, which I call a ‘strong conception’ of sociality, the core features of human agency cannot obtain in an individual subject independently of social relations to others. I explain the strong conception of sociality captured by Heidegger's underdeveloped notion of ‘being-with’ by reconstructing Heidegger's critique of the ‘weak conception’ of sociality characteristic of Kant's theory of agency. According to a weak conception, (...) sociality is a mere aggregation of individual subjects and the core features of human agency are built into each individual mind. The weak conception of sociality remains today widely taken for granted. I show that Christine Korsgaard, one of the most creative contemporary appropriators of Kant, operates with a weak conception of sociality and that this produces a problematic explanatory deficiency in her view: she is unable to explain the peculiar motivational efficacy of shared social norms. Heidegger's view is tailor made to explain this phenomenon. I end by sketching how Heidegger provides a social explanation of a major systematic concern animating Korsgaard, the concern with the importance of individual autonomy and answerability in human life. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's account of attunement [Befindlichkeit] through mood [Stimmung] is unprecedented in the history of philosophy and groundbreaking vis-à-vis contemporary accounts of emotion. On his view, moods are not mere mental states that result from, arise out of, or are caused by our situation or context. Rather, moods are fundamental modes of existence that are disclosive of the way one is or finds oneself [sich befinden] in the world. Mood is one of the basic modes through which we experience the (...) world and through which the world is made present to us. Moreover, moods are the lenses through which things, people, animals, events, and aspects in the world matter to us. In this paper, I make the case that Heidegger's insights with respect to mood can and ought to be extended beyond the narrow scope of his fundamental ontology in which they were developed. I argue that contemporary accounts of mood within psychology ought to take these Heideggerian insights seriously and use them when defining, studying, evaluating, and drawing conclusions about the nature of moods. There are three sections to my paper. In section 1, I delineate Heidegger's account of mood. In section 2, I turn to some key studies on mood in psychology, and I elaborate upon some of the main shortcomings in this literature. In section 3, I suggest how psychology might benefit from understanding and utilizing a Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology of mood. (shrink)

Intentionality (‘directedness’, ‘aboutness’) is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, and one of the themes with which both analytic and Continental philosophers have separately engaged starting from Brentano and Edmund Husserl’s ground-breaking Logical Investigations (1901) through Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel C. Dennett’s The Intentional Stance, John Searle’s Intentionality, to the recent work of Tim Crane, Robert Brandom, Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, among many others. In this paper, I shall review recent discussions (...) of intentionality, including some recent explorations of the history of the concept (paying particular attention to Anselm), and suggest some ways the phenomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger can still offer insights for contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness. (shrink)

Heidegger argues that modern technology is quantifiably different from all earlier periods because of a shift in ethos from in situ craftwork to globalised production and storage at the behest of consumerism. He argues that this shift in technology has fundamentally shaped our epistemology, and it is almost impossible to comprehend anything outside the technological enframing of knowledge. The exception is when something breaks down, and the fault ‘shows up’ in fresh ways. Stiegler has several important addendums to Heidegger’s thesis. (...) Firstly, that Heidegger fails to fully appreciate the early Greek myth of Prometheus, and the technological depth that fire offers all human societies. Secondly, the fall, or failure, which is doubled in the myth of Prometheus, and shows up in epistemology accordingly. Thirdly the acceleration of technology since the onset of Information Technology, and the way this is disorientating our Being. I argue the fall in both Heidegger and early Stiegler has encaptured their imagination. In later work, Stiegler argues that acceleration is fused with algorithmic pretensions, that are distorting and undermining the creative political imaginary, and making it difficult to revalue the values that underpin the nihilist Anthropocene. The overcoming of the Anthropocene engages politics, economics, power, physics, and ecology. (shrink)

In this article, I propose that illness is philosophically revealing and can be used to explore human experience. I suggest that illness is a limit case of embodied experience. By pushing embodied experience to its limit, illness sheds light on normal experience, revealing its ordinary and thus overlooked structure. Illness produces a distancing effect, which allows us to observe normal human behavior and cognition via their pathological counterpart. I suggest that these characteristics warrant illness a philosophical role that has not (...) been articulated. Illness can be used as a philosophical tool for the study of normally tacit aspects of human existence. I argue that illness itself can be integral to philosophical method, insofar as it facilitates a distancing from everyday practices. This method relies on pathological or limit cases to illuminate normally overlooked aspects of human perception and action. I offer Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the case of Schneider as an example of this method. (shrink)

According to radical versions of embodied cognition, human cognition and agency should be explained without the ascription of representational mental states. According to a standard reply, accounts of embodied cognition can explain only instances of cognition and agency that are not “representation-hungry”. Two main types of such representation-hungry phenomena have been discussed: cognition about “the absent” and about “the abstract”. Proponents of representationalism have maintained that a satisfactory account of such phenomena requires the ascription of mental representations. Opponents have denied (...) this. I will argue that there is another important representation-hungry phenomenon that has been overlooked in this debate: temporally extended planning agency. In particular, I will argue that it is very difficult to see how planning agency can be explained without the ascription of mental representations, even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that cognition about the absent and abstract can. We will see that this is a serious challenge for the radical as well as the more modest anti-representationalist versions of embodied cognition, and we will see that modest anti-representationalism is an unstable position. (shrink)

While it is well known that the early Heidegger distinguishes between different ‘kinds of being’ and identifies various ‘structures’ that compose them, there has been little discussion about what these kinds and structures of being are. This paper defends the ‘Property Thesis’, the position that kinds of being (and their structures) are properties of the entities that have them. I give two arguments for this thesis. The first is grounded in the fact that Heidegger refers to kinds and structures of (...) being as ‘characteristics’ and ‘determinations’, which are just two different words for ‘properties’, in the broadest senses of these terms. The second argument is based on the fact that kinds and structures of being play three roles that properties are supposed to play: they are what account for similarities between things, they are what predicates express, and they are what abstract nouns refer to. (shrink)

Recent empirical findings from social psychology, ecological psychology, and embodied cognitive science indicate that situational factors crucially shape the course of human behavior. For instance, it has been shown that finding a dime, being under the influence of an authority figure, or just being presented with food in easy reach often influences behavior tremendously. These findings raise important new questions for the philosophy of action: Are these findings a threat to classical conceptions of human agency? Are humans passively pushed around (...) by situational factors, or are there agential aspects in the way we spontaneously experience and react to situations? How can one conceptualize the pervasive influence of situational factors on human action? What are situations in the first place, and how should the influence of these situations on action be thought of? This paper sets out to develop a new conceptual repertoire for thinking about the influence of situations on action, drawing on research from ecological psychology as well as from embodied and enactive cognitive science. The key proposal is the development of a philosophical sensorimotor account of agency: Action, it is proposed, should be conceived of as constant dynamical interaction of agential and environmental factors – factors which should all be conceptualized in new ways. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is well known that, from the beginning to the end of his philosophical trajectory, Martin Heidegger tries to develop a fundamental ontology which aims at answering the so-called question...

This article responds to critical views of John Rhym, Martin Rossouw, Ludo de Roo, and Annie Sandrussi on my 2017 book Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience. The article also takes up positive footholds from the analyses of Chiara Quaranta and Jason Wirth. The main topics addressed include Martin Heidegger’s ontic-ontological distinction; the notion of film-as-philosophy; being-in-the-world read as being-in-the-film-world; and questions surrounding the facticity and identity of the film viewer.

Recent years have seen growing evidence of a fruitful engagement between phenomenology and cognitive science. This paper confronts an in-principle problem that stands in the way of this intellectual coalition, namely the fact that a tension exists between the transcendentalism that characterizes phenomenology and the naturalism that accompanies cognitive science. After articulating the general shape of this tension, I respond as follows. First, I argue that, if we view things through a kind of neo-McDowellian lens, we can open up a (...) conceptual space in which phenomenology and cognitive science may exert productive constraints on each other. Second, I describe some examples of phenomenological cognitive science that illustrate such constraints in action. Third, I use the mutually constraining relationship at work here as the platform from which to bring to light a domesticated version of the transcendental and a minimal form of naturalism that are compatible with each other. (shrink)

This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to criticize these conceptions for ascribing content to the practical understanding they claim governs action. Part 3 then suggests an alternative, Wittgensteinian (...) account of the homology between practices and actions that avoids this pitfall. (shrink)

Heidegger also famously says that Being depends on Dasein, even though beings in general do not. This is perplexing. “Heidegger and the “There Is” of Being” offers an interpretation of what’s going on in the passages in which this sort of assertion is made.

This paper argues that the problematic of rule following in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Heidegger's analysis of anxiety in Being and Time have analogous structures. Working through these analogies helps our interpretation of both of these authors. Contrasting sceptical and anti-sceptical readings of Wittgenstein helps us to resolve an interpretive puzzle about what an authentic response to anxiety looks like for Heidegger. And considering the importance of anxiety to Heidegger's conception of authenticity allows us to locate in Wittgenstein's later philosophy (...) a covert appeal to something resembling Heideggerian authenticity. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or "Existential Analytic." In so doing, it points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of "world-traveling." In the end, the essay defends the view of a "multiplicitous" self which takes insights (...) from Lugones's view of the self that "travels 'worlds'" and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein. (shrink)

I argue that embodied understanding and conceptual-representational understanding interact through schematic structure. I demonstrate that common conceptions of these two kinds of understanding, such as developed by Wheeler (2005, 2008) and Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013), entail a separation between them that gives rise to significant problems. Notably, it becomes unclear how they could interact; a problem that has been pointed out by Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013) and McDowell (2007) in particular. I propose a Kantian strategy to close the gap between (...) them. I argue that embodied and conceptual-representational understanding are governed by schemata. Since they are governed by schemata, they can interact through a structure that they have in common. Finally, I spell out two different ways to conceive of the schematic interaction between them—a close, grounding relationship and a looser relationship that allows for a minimal interaction, but preserves the autonomy of both forms of understanding. (shrink)

An action is typically carried out over time, unified by an intention that is known to the agent under some description. In some of our habitual doings, however, we are often not aware of what or why we do as we do. Not knowing this, we must ask what kind of agency is at stake in these habitual doings, if any. This paper aims to show how habitual doings can still be considered actions of a subject even while they involve (...) a sense of involuntariness and there is a temporal displacement in the self-understanding they afford. It turns out that in some forms of habitual agency, we do not have the relevant intentional description at hand when we are engaged in the process of doing what we so typically do; on the contrary, such a description can only be appropriated with effort and subsequent to the time of the action. I will focus on two approaches to habits, broadly construed; a phenomenological and an action theoretic one, and I will suggest that both approaches focus too narrowly on a synchronic relation between habitual action and self-understanding. I will suggest that we need a diachronic account of the potential for self-understanding required for agency that allows us to explain the experience of diminished control and alienation involved in certain of our habitual actions. The suggested perspective enables us to explain how some habits can be experienced as both momentarily involuntary and unconscious while at the same time they play a significant role for self-understanding. (shrink)

Skepticism about the limits of online learning is as old as online learning itself. As with other technologically-driven innovations in pedagogy, there are deep-seated worries that important educational goods might be effaced or obscured by the ways of teaching and learning that online methods allow. One family of such worries is inspired by reflections on the bodily basis of an important kind of understanding, and skepticism over whether this bodily basis can be inculcated in the absence of actual, flesh-and-blood, classroom (...) interactions. This paper focuses on the ways in which such worries arise in the influential work of Hubert Dreyfus. The negative conclusion for which I argue is that endorsing Dreyfus's Merleau-Pontian picture of the relationship between bodily skill and understanding does not commit us to his general pessimism concerning online learning—bodily, emotional, and interactive dimensions might be essential to learning, but we lack reasons to think that online learning necessarily lacks these dimensions. The negative argument motivates a positive claim: rather than giving up on online learning we should focus on designing courses and pedagogies that scaffold the bodily, affective and interactive dynamics constitutive of understanding in a particular domain. (shrink)

I argue that Hubert Dreyfus’ work on embodied coping, the intentional arc, solicitations and the background as well as his anti-representationalism rest on introspection. I denote with ‘introspection’ the methodological malpractice of formulating ontological statements about the conditions of possibility of phenomena merely based on descriptions. In order to illustrate the insufficiencies of Dreyfus’ methodological strategy in particular and introspection in general, I show that Heidegger, to whom Dreyfus constantly refers as the foundation of his own work, derives ontological statements (...) about the conditions of possibility of phenomena not merely from descriptions, but also from analyses. I further show that deriving ontological statements directly from descriptions entails implausible results. I do so by discussing representative cases. Based on these general methodological considerations, I show that Dreyfus’ work on action, skill and understanding is introspective. First, I demonstrate that Dreyfus’ influential claim that rules and representations do not govern skillful actions is the result of introspection, because it is merely founded on the absence of rules and representations in representative descriptions of skillful actions. Second, I show that Dreyfus’ work on embodied coping, the intentional arc, solicitations and the background is also based on introspection. These ontological structures are merely reifications of descriptions and are not further substantiated by analyses. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 712-730, December 2021.

Early Heidegger argues that a “homogenous space of nature” can be revealed by stripping away the intelligibility of Dasein's everyday world, a process he calls “deworlding.” Given this, some interpreters have suggested that Heidegger, despite not having worked out the details himself, is also committed to a notion of deworlded time. Such a “natural time” would amount to an endogenous sequentiality in which events are ordered independently of Dasein and the stand it takes on its being. I show that Heidegger (...) was indeed committed to such a temporal realism even though his treatment of these issues is somewhat scattered and pulled in different directions. In the course of my reconstruction, I renew an interpretation of Heidegger that stresses Dasein's thrownness into nature and I answer William Blattner's powerful interpretation of Heidegger as a failed temporal idealist who was unable to derive the sequentiality of ordinary time from Dasein's non-sequential originary temporality. Heidegger did not attempt to derive sequentiality; instead, he understood it as a built-in feature of the natural universe by which Dasein's activities are constrained. World-time turns out to be a co-production of Dasein's non-sequential originary temporality and the endogenous sequentiality of events in nature. (shrink)

In this article I will show that the problem of embodiment goes back to the question of the mind-body split, as this has been established and discussed by the philosophical tradition. With the digital turn and the advent of ubiquitous computing the problem of embodiment has taken new forms that have led scholars to introduce the notion of a “new digital Cartesianism.” Subjectivation processes within digital culture have mostly been explained by resorting to what I will call the “E-D-R scheme,” (...) which assumes that a real detachment between the body and the mind really occurs in digital processes. Since—as I will show—this is not actually the case, I will suggest replacing this epistemological scheme with a new one, which I will call the “double-embodiment scheme,” in order to acquire a more fitting epistemological account of the underlying digital ontology. Finally, I will discuss the distinction between bodily extension and the incorporation of non-bodily objects introduced by Helena De Preester in order to show that, in the digital realm, this distinction is much more blurred and complex than she acknowledges: digital interaction requires both bodily extension and the incorporation of objects as complementary processes. (shrink)

The translation of honraisei as “authenticity” has caused scholars to compare Watsuji with Heideggerian and Taylorian accounts of authenticity. In this article, it will be demonstrated that this translation of “authenticity” is misleading insofar as it suggests a sense of subjective individuality as prevalent within Western philosophical thought. However, rather than rejecting a Watsujian account of authenticity, it will be argued that we can salvage this understanding by rethinking honraisei as a distinctly Japanese approach to authenticity and one which is (...) underpinned by the Buddhist concept of emptiness. (shrink)

In the division between analytic and continental thought, pragmatism has often been cast as a middle way. Fundamentally critical of each, it also shares resonances with both of these traditions. However, while this observation is common, remarkably little has been done to examine its truth in contemporary political thought. Drawing on recent trends in political theory, including ‘New Realism’, critical genealogical methods and a surge in pragmatic approaches, this article identifies an emerging situated turn in political thought. Emerging from several (...) major traditions in contemporary political thinking, this trend has pragmatic themes at its centre. Having identified this as a fertile opportunity for inter-methodological work across the analytic/continental divide, it then turns to the late work of Richard Rorty in order to expose his productive framework for such cross-border exchanges. Arguing for its fundamentally democratic and pluralistic nature, this analysis also exposes this framework’s weaknesses before illustrating how recent methodological exchanges between genealogy and pragmatism rectify these deficiencies while providing a viable model for future work across traditional philosophical boundaries. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to important questions raised by Gallagher and Jacobson in the field of cognitive science about face-to-face interactions in Heidegger’s account of ‘intersubjectivity’ in Being and Time. They have criticized his account for a lack of attention to primary intersubjectivity, or immediate, face-to-face interactions; he favours, they argue, embodied interactions via objects. I argue that the same assumption underlies their argument as did earlier critiques of a lack of an account of the body in Heidegger ; (...) namely that because the body is not explicitly discussed in Being and Time, embodiment, rather than stressing the immediacy of experience, is insufficiently acknowledged in his emphasis on ‘being-in-the-world’. Through placing Gallagher and Jacobson’s accounts of intersubjectivity and the body alongside Heidegger’s accounts of Mitsein and Leib, this article shows Heidegger’s radical position on the body as immersed in a holistic environment, and its reverberations on his account of intersubjectivity. I argue that Dasein’s embodied engagement in the world is always one of immediacy and that the body of the other is perceived as ‘tied into’ its context, as well. In so doing, I offer an Heideggerian account of ecstatic involvement which moves away from the distinction between primary and secondary intersubjectivity toward an immediate engagement with objects and people always already ‘tied into’ a context; an account that, through the concept of Fürsorge, includes shifts of attention between objects and people that allow for the ethical distinctions Gallagher and Jacobson are looking for. (shrink)

The claim that, in some nontrivial sense, nursing can be identified with caring has prompted a search for the philosophical foundations of care in the nursing literature. Although the ethics of care was initially associated with Gilligan's ‘different voice’, there has more recently been an attempt – led principally by Benner – to displace the gender perspective with a Heideggerian one, even if Kant is the figure to whom both Gilligan and Benner appear most irretrievably opposed. This paper represents the (...) first half of a double-edged project: initially, to point out that Heidegger explicitly disowns any ethical implications for his ontological thinking, and to argue that no ethical theory (including an ethics of care) can be derived from Being and Time; and then to argue that Kant's categorical imperative is not only compatible with the ethics of care but actively entails it. In this, Heideggerian, part of the argument, I consider three attempts to wrest an ethics from Being and Time– those of Benner, Olafson and Guignon – suggesting that, for different reasons, they all fail. Benner systematically confuses the ontological with the ontic, not recognizing that care, concern and solicitude have ‘deficient’ modes as well as positive ones, and that Heidegger's ontology retrieves the possibility of an ethics-in-general without at any point implying an ethics-in-particular (whether of care or justice). Olafson does recognize this, and to that extent admits his failure, but his efforts to amplify Heidegger's thought in such a way as to generate an ethical theory involve both the importing of Kantian premises, and an appeal to some rather doubtful empirical observations. Guignon resorts to Heidegger's discussion of authenticity, and the idea that authentic Dasein ‘may choose its hero’, suggesting a morally reassuring list of heroes who might fit the bill. However, there is nothing in Heidegger's account of this choice that justifies his confidence, and I conclude by proposing that we should take Heidegger at his word when he says that ontology has ‘no result, no effect’. (shrink)

This essay discusses the normative significance of the spatial dimension of conflict events. Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with political actors – politicians, officials, and activists – and on Heidegger’s account of spatiality in Being and Time, I will argue that the experience of conflict space is co-constituted by the respective conflict participants, as well as the location where the conflict unfolds. Location and conflict parties’ (self-)understandings ‘open up’ a space that enables and constrains ways of seeing and acting. Yet, (...) a purely transcendental phenomenology will remain oblivious to the quasi-transcendental, societal structures of power that shape a person’s conflict experience. To illuminate these facets of the phenomenon, phenomenology has to join forces with critical theory. Introducing Garland-Thomson’s feminist distinction of fit/misfit, I will illustrate how power shapes conflict space in manifold ways. The essay thereby fills a gap in the philosophical literature that rarely analyses political conflict as a phenomenon sui generis. (shrink)

What is the ontological significance of sustainability crises – and the struggles to overcome them? Drawing on Heideggerian perspectives – in dialogue with Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theories – I argue sustainability crises become meaningful at the level of everyday experience when they disrupt the flow of ordinary skilled practices and their orientations towards the future. Such disruptions trigger what Heidegger termed ‘anxiety’, which implies an erosion of life's coherence, meaning and purpose. Developing skills to ‘cope’ with sustainability crises may (...) enact alternative ontologies that restore what anxiety threatens; ‘skills for sustainability’ potentially disclose new worlds, meanings, values and goals. I illustrate this through vignettes of individuals transitioning to organic farming in India. I show how disruptions to farmers’ skilled practices triggered anxiety while also prompting the development of skills for alternative agricultural practice. These skills enabled new ways of experiencing worlds, non-human entities and the telos of everyday activity. (shrink)

Philosophy is commonly criticized for being too abstract and detached from practical spheres. Upon chronicling how philosophy has gained this reputation, the authors explore the philosophical fields of phenomenology and hermeneutics that have explicitly attempted to merge philosophy with everyday life contexts. In recent decades, phenomenology and hermeneutics have been applied to healthcare. In the realm of nursing, Patricia Benner's nursing theory is especially informed by phenomenology, which is briefly explored through her relationship with one of her mentors, the philosopher (...) Hubert Dreyfus. The authors then turn their attention to Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophy in an attempt to mine concepts relevant to the practice of nursing. Gadamer juxtaposed the human sciences from the natural sciences and thought that both needed different approaches: whereas natural sciences are guided by episteme, that is, universal knowledge, human sciences are guided by phronesis, that is, practical wisdom. Gadamer's philosophy is especially helpful in understanding how to cultivate phronesis in nursing wherein a nurse relies upon one's clinical experience to masterfully navigate each unique patient relationship. Nurses must serve as authorities in the realm of healthcare but also be open to the authority of their patients, who ultimately choose their course of treatment in our contemporary era of patient autonomy. Gadamer's philosophy can help us understand why phronesis requires not only practice but also reflection on that practice to be appropriately cultivated. The authors apply this to the realm of nursing in showing how both practice—clinically and via simulation—and reflection—through journaling or dialogue—are necessary for phronesis to emerge. (shrink)

Current theoretical account of judgment has a difficult time saying anything positive about the experience of judging and, when they do offer positive accounts, they seem to overlook much that we know about the capacity already in our daily lives. Following the work of Martin Heidegger and Hubert Dreyfus, this article provides a phenomenological consideration of the structure of judging that considers judgment not as an intellectual act, but as a comportment. The article proceeds in two parts. The first offers (...) a brief consideration of the assumptions of intellectualist accounts and shows why, ultimately, they may be unable to bring judging into focus. The second section offers a phenomenological account of judging. The argument of section two is that deliberate judgment is a continuation of the structure of judgment understood as comportment and, in turn, that intellectualist accounts come onto the scene too late. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 182-204, March 2022.

Despite resistance from various societal actors, the development and deployment of lethal autonomous weaponry to warzones is perhaps likely, considering the perceived operational and ethical advantage such weapons are purported to bring. In this paper, it is argued that the deployment of truly autonomous weaponry presents an ethical danger by calling into question the ability of such weapons to abide by the Laws of War. This is done by noting the resonances between battlefield target identification and the process of ontic-ontological (...) investigation detailed in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, before arguing that the nature of lethal autonomous weaponry precludes them from being able to engage in such investigations—a key requisite for abiding by the relevant legislation that governs battlefield conduct. (shrink)

In everyday life, we constantly encounter and deal with useful things without pausing to inquire about the sources of their intelligibility. In Div. I of Being and Time, Heidegger undertakes just such an inquiry. According to a common reading of Heidegger's analysis, the intelligibility of our everyday encounters and dealings with useful things is ultimately constituted by practical self-understandings. In this paper, I argue that while such practical self-understandings may be sufficient to constitute the intelligibility of the tools and equipment (...) specific to many practices, these “tools of the trade” are only a small portion of the things we encounter, use, and deal with on a daily basis. Practical self-understandings cannot similarly account for the intelligibility of the more mundane things—like toothbrushes and sidewalks—used in everyday life. I consider whether an anonymous self-understanding as “one,” “anyone,” or “no one in particular” —das Man—might play this intelligibility-constituting role. In examining this possibility, another type of self-understanding comes to light: cultural identities. I show that the cultural identities into which we are “thrown,” rather than practical identities or das Man, constitute the intelligibility of the abundance of mundane things that fill our everyday lives. Finally, I spell out how this finding bears on our understanding of Heidegger's notion of authenticity. (shrink)

Doctoral programmes in nursing are charged with developing the next generation of nurse scholars, scientists, and healthcare leaders. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) endorses the inclusion of philosophy of science content in research‐focused doctoral programmes. Because a philosophy course circumscribed to the natural or social sciences does not address the broad forms of knowledge that are relevant to nursing practice, we have developed and co‐taught a course on the philosophy of knowledge that introduces students to competing claims (...) regarding the nature of knowledge, truth, and rationality. In addressing broad themes related to science and knowledge of the body, health and illness, and ethics, the course equips students to tread the rough and shifting ground of nursing scholarship and practice. Providing doctoral students with this philosophical footing is intended to give future scholars, researchers, and healthcare leaders the intellectual skills to critically reflect on knowledge claims, to challenge the hegemony of science, and to recognize the disciplinary forms of knowledge that are left out or trivialized. Our pedagogical approach to knowledge development does not denigrate scientific knowledge, but elevates forms of inquiry and notions of clinical knowledge that are too often marginalized in doctoral education and the academy in general. (shrink)

In the following I show that Hubert Dreyfus’ account of skill rests on a misguided interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s work on understanding in Being and Time. Dreyfus separates understanding according to the analytic philosophical concept pair, so called ‘know-how’ and ‘knowledge-that’, that corresponds for him to the pragmatist differentiation between skillful acting and theoretical conceptual thinking. Contrary to that, Heidegger argues that only one form of understanding exists that is neither captured by ‘know-how’, ‘knowledge-that’ or a combination of both. Instead (...) of presupposing two radically different ways to engage with the world, one practical-agential, the other theoretical-conceptual, Heidegger shows that all genuine forms of comportments rest on the same form of understanding that exhibits the highest degree of intelligibility when we deal with the world ordinarily. The Heideggerian account therefore comes without the many dichotomies so often criticized in the literature on skill and understanding, and offers a radically different view of world disclosure and of what we do when we ‘theorize’. (shrink)

A central question along which phenomenological approaches to sociality or intersubjectivity have diverged concerns whether concrete interpersonal encounters or sharing a common world is more fundamental in working out an adequate phenomenology of human sociality. On one side we have philosophers such as the early Sartre, Martin Buber, Michael Theunissen, and Emmanuel Levinas, all of whom emphasize, each in his own way, the priority of some mode of interpersonal encounters (broadly construed) in determining the basic character of human coexistence. On (...) the other side, we have philosophers such as the early Heidegger and the early Merleau-Ponty (and here I would also include Gadamer and the later Wittgenstein), who argue that an adequate account of human sociality must begin, in the proper order of understanding and hence explanation, with how we always already exist in a shared or common world. Which side is right in this debate? I argue that once we correctly understand the precise sense (or way) in which the common world is more fundamental than concrete interpersonal encounters, this enables us to understand how there is no real opposition between the phenomenological conception of the common world and the experience of the other, even in its radical otherness. (shrink)