Recent times have seen an emergence of cold-water sea swimming as a popular pasttime for increased numbers of people in coastal regions. Within this paper, we seek to outline the philosophical relationship between water and society, right back to Thales. From this we continue through anthropological sources to highlight the relationship between culture and the sea throughout much of human history. Sociology offers only piecemeal theoretical bases for this relationship. Here, the concept of liminality is deployed as a mechanism through (...) which we can interpret human-water relations. On from this, the concept of the ‘oceanic feeling’, coined by French intellectual Romain Rolland, is discussed to situate how the experience of swimming might offer one among many means through which we can return to the world as it is given to us, in a Nietzschean sense, and in doing so return at once to an experience of the eternal borne from presence. (shrink)

There is a need for inner recollection opposed to our everyday distraction. Our distraction is partly based on anthropological features and partly on social and cultural features. As well as feelings of distraction, we know experiences of being focussed from everyday life. As feelings in which distraction is absent, and as feelings in which we are partly and temporarily released from our own egocentric perspective, they remind us that a different kind of relation to ourselves and the world is possible. (...) Therefore, they can motivate a process of self-transformation aiming at a mystical state of mind, which is of a more profound and enduring kind than ordinary experiences of being focussed. The mystical state of mind is a state in which we transcend ourselves in the face of the universe and thereby relativize our own affective involvement. It is a feeling of an all-encompassing unity which ultimately concerns us; and it is a feeling of love, joy, and peace of mind. Mystical feelings thus shape and restrict spaces of possibilities, and they comprise an altered sense of what it means to be real. Therefore, they can be classified as existential feelings. Still, the mystical state of mind differs from prototypical existential feelings because it is a positive feeling, necessarily comprises active as well as passive moments, and presupposes an explicit way of attending to the world as world. (shrink)

Several enactive-phenomenological perspectives have pointed to affectivity as a central aspect of mental disorders. Indeed, from an enactive perspective, sense-making is an inherently affective process. A question remains on the role of different forms of affective experiences (i.e., existential feelings, atmospheres, moods, and emotions) in sense-making and, consequently, in mental disorders. This work elaborates on the enactive perspective on mental disorders by attending to the primordial role of affectivity in the self-individuation process. Inspired by Husserl’s genetic methodology and Simondonian philosophy (...) of individuation, sense-making is described as the process of progressive concretization and structuration of the self-world structures that support the intentionality of conscious experiences. Accordingly, affectivity is described as the force that anticipates a partial self-world coherence in sense-making. Structurally different types of affective experiences are integrated into the genetic picture and, on this basis, a reinterpretation and classification of certain mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, and the anxiety spectrum, is provided. In this way, this work contributes to a phenomenologically informed enactive account of mental disorders as disorders of affectivity. (shrink)

Matthew Ratcliffe has argued that existential feelings form a distinct class of bodily and non-conceptual feelings that pre-intentionally structure our intentional experience of others, the world, and ourselves. In this article, I will identify and discuss three interrelated areas of concern for Ratcliffe’s theory of existential feelings. First, the distinct senses in which existential feelings are felt as background bodily feelings and as spaces of possibility calls for further clarification. Second, the nature of the suggested bi-directional relationship between existential feelings (...) and intentional experience remains ambiguous. Third, viewed in light of existential guilt, the categorically non-conceptual nature of existential feelings may not be as definite as presumed. The aim of the article is to draw critical attention to aspects of the theory that would benefit from further development, and therefore, to advance the ongoing discussion about existential feelings. (shrink)

Compersion is an affective state commonly discussed in the context of consensually non-monogamous relationships. It is typically described as a positive emotional reaction to one’s partner’s enjoying time and/or intimacy with another person, sort of ‘the opposite of jealousy’. Recent years have seen an increased interest in this seemingly startling emotion. Part of what makes understanding compersion so difficult is the mononormative expectations of our culture. We suggest that a non-Western, in particular Buddhist, perspective might be more helpful to understand (...) that love and/or intimacy need not be an affair between two people only. We approach compersion through a Buddhist lens based on the ‘four immeasurables’, i.e. non-egocentric states that Buddhists take to promote well-being, and their ‘near enemies’, i.e. states which are easily conflated with them, but egocentric and harmful. Our goal is not to formulate a definition of compersion, nor to raise a normative bar for anyone who feels compersion, but to describe important facets of it that stand out more clearly against a Buddhist background than they might otherwise do. Such an approach not only enriches our understanding of compersion but contributes to people’s flourishing in all kinds of relationships and shows that non-monogamous relationships might be compatible with some forms of Buddhist practice. (shrink)