In this paper, my aim is to develop a phenomenological understanding of discrimination from the perspective of the discriminator. Since early existential phenomenology, the phenomenon of discrimination has received a great deal of attention. While much of this work has focused on the experience of the discriminatee, recent scholarship has begun to reflect on the intentional structures on the side of the discriminator. In a contribution to this trend, I argue that our sense of what is (ab)normal plays a constitutively (...) significant role in the reiteration and reinforcement of harmful discriminatory practices. More specifically, I argue that Husserl's distinction between two forms of normality, namely, concordance-normality [Einstimmigkeit] and optimal-normality [Optimalität], is an important tool for illuminating otherwise overlooked aspects of the discriminator's experience. I achieve this by demonstrating how these two notions of normality play distinct constitutive roles when comparing deliberate acts of discrimination committed with malintent, compared with more primordial, habitual, and prereflective expectations which are already discriminatory in nucleo. I argue that at the heart of discriminatory practices there is a naïve, normalizing attempt to stabilize concordance at the expense of critical self-reflection, normative revisions, and enriched horizons of expectation. In doing so, this paper provides a novel and important contribution to philosophical discussions surrounding discrimination. (shrink)

Traumatic experiences do not merely impact on the individual’s body and psyche, they alter the way we experience others, our interpersonal relationships, and how we make sense of the world. In my dissertation, I integrate work in phenomenology, psychopathology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, and trauma studies, and draw on trauma testimonies ob- tained in an online questionnaire. I engage analytically with the question of what constitutes a trauma, whether psychological trauma is necessarily pathological, and what the causal and (...) im- plicatory relations between traumatising and post-traumatic experiences are. Informed by these preliminary elaborations, I focus on the intersubjective dimension of trauma, drawing on a qualitative study I conducted in 2020. I show that empathic abilities may be altered but are not necessarily diminished through traumatising experiences; I suggest a framework for under- standing feelings of alienation in the aftermath of trauma; and I demonstrate how feelings of belonging may be re-established. My dissertation is exemplary of how phenomenological frameworks can contribute to a better understanding of psychological trauma and that engaging with trauma can, in turn, inform and enrich philosophical thinking. (shrink)

En el presente artículo realizamos un análisis del estatus ontológico de la noción de psicopatología que se deriva de cuatro aproximaciones metodológicas a su estudio, a saber: aproximación psiquiátrica, fenomenológico-existencial, constructivista-histórica y antipsiquiátrica. Por medio de una metodología de revisión bibliográfica sistematizada y siguiendo el marco de trabajo metaframework ReSiste-CHS (Revisiones Sistematizadas en Ciencias Humanas y Sociales), sostendremos que dicha noción presenta divergencias en al menos tres puntos: (i) la relevancia de la sintomatología como característica, (ii) la existencia o inexistencia (...) del sufrimiento psíquico y (iii) la relevancia de los factores sociales en su configuración. En el apartado introductorio abordaremos las consideraciones históricas generales relacionadas con el estudio de los trastornos mentales. En el segundo apartado nos referiremos a la metodología empleada para la realización del artículo. En el tercer apartado expondremos los rasgos fundamentales de las cuatro metodologías de estudio mencionadas anteriormente, dividiendo la descripción en los siguientes puntos: orientación, etiología, clasificación, diagnóstico y tratamiento. En el cuarto apartado contrastaremos los conceptos de psicopatología que pueden ser extraídos de ellas. A modo de conclusión, propondremos una sistematización de las condiciones mínimas que debe cumplir una noción de psicopatología que sea fructífera desde un punto de vista teórico y práctico. Estas condiciones incluyen un posicionamiento crítico ante los extremos reduccionista y relativista, la consideración del sufrimiento psíquico como rasgo constitutivo y núcleo fundamental de este género de experiencia, así como una dimensión ética relacionada con su abordaje. Por último, mostraremos algunas limitaciones y futuras directrices que se derivan del trabajo realizado. (shrink)

The paper argues that the dynamics of personal and collective individuation could be interrelated and bear ethical significance thanks to an analysis of the Lifeworld and intersubjectivity that link together the genetic and the generative perspectives of phenomenology. The first section of the paper recalls the epistemological and ontological implications of Husserl's and Stein's analysis of personal individuation in relation to what Husserl would call, later, the “Lifeworld” and the intersubjective constitution of communities. The second section of the paper turns (...) to a phenomenology of the Lifeworld through an analysis of refugees' care and the intersubjective dynamics involved in the clinic of exile. Such an example will bring to light the importance of embodiment and intercorporeity to grasp the process through which the genetic constitution of the Lifeworld constitutes itself as a collective process of individuation trying to heal the scars of historicity. Consequently, individuation will appear as a personal and collective task, rather than a static and ego-centered achievement that would be forgetful of our fundamental interdependency. Finally, the last section argues that “healing the Lifeworld” does not amount to conceive of its “horizon” as being itself a predetermined “telos” of transcendental subjectivity, as if this open structure could be itself constituted. Rather, the varieties of the Lifeworld and its paradoxical movement of appropriation and differentiation point to a relational ontology that considers the becoming of a common and meaningful world as a _limit-problem_ of phenomenology and, perhaps, its ethical and critical promise. (shrink)

From its very beginning, sociological thought has been concerned with a topic central to our daily lives: social distance. Since inception, the concept of social distance has referred to the relationships of familiarity and strangeness between social groups, which is experienced in the social world in terms of “We” and “They”. This article covers the main tenets of a Schutzian phenomenological approach to the study of social distance and group relationships. Specific focus is placed on the different attitudes and valuations (...) of the in-group towards the out-group considered as a stranger, the invisible excess of meaning that emerges in these types of social relationships and the conceptual construction of the Other that explains the phenomenon of discrimination. (shrink)

The concept of depth is central to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and informed not only his philosophy of perception but also his thinking about psychology, art and politics. This article traces the ways the notion of depth appears in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking in these fields, contrasting it with Husserl’s own phenomenological investigations. The article starts with a comparison of the function of perception in Husserl’s phenomenology and then proceeds with an analysis of how the issue of depth reappears in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, (...) phenomenology of art and political philosophy. I argue that while Husserl’s approach to phenomenology led him to analyses of aesthetics stemming from works of art as random examples, and to non-participation in politics, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology leads to the opposite approach, inviting concrete criticism in art and active participation in politics. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s approach is more philosophically consistent. The choice of particular works of art, and the particular political engagements, can retrospectively clarify the transcendental phenomenological investigations themselves. (shrink)

In a world where, as Martin Heidegger puts it, ‘homelessness’ has become its destiny, the colonized/Oriental Other that once exclusively constituted and was neglected from the matrix of the Western imaginary has no longer maintained its distance as ‘out there’. Instead it is embodied as a ‘refugee’ appearing on the borders of the ‘home’ with its complex cultural, colonial history. The majority of refugee studies feature the refugee as the outcome of the interplay of the two concepts of the ‘rights (...) of man’ and the ‘rights of the citizen’, who resides on the threshold of nativity and nationality as the limit phenomenon of the nation-state stands before the law in its totality but cannot be classified under any of its provisions. However, this thesis investigates the philosophical underpinnings of the emergence of the phenomenon of the refugee that appears at the threshold of one’s own experience of home as an alien who does not belong to the privileged normative structure of the home. Drawing on Anthony Steinbock’s approach to the Husserlian phenomenology of generativity, this study phenomenologically examines the possibility of an ethical relation in the Homeworld and Alienworld encounter. Focusing on the mode of givenness of the alien to the home in interpersonal relations, the main question of the thesis is:If phenomenologically the Other is accessible to home in a mode of inaccessibility, then how can the ‘I’ initiate an ethical relation to the Other?As the result of addressing this question, building on Edmund Husserl’s late project of ethical renewal and Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenological ethics of Responsivity alongside Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, I develop a new understanding of the experience of violence versus morally experiencing the Other. Although James Dodd contributed greatly to the development of the phenomenology of violence, this thesis gives a new perspective to the concept of ‘violence’ versus the ‘ethical’ from the perspective of types of phenomena and various modes of givenness. From a phenomenological perspective, by analyzing the mode of givenness peculiar to the experience of the Other in the intersubjective realm, I propose that violence is a disposition toward receiving the Other in experience as a denigrated phenomenon. However, an ethical relation to the Other means to receiving the Other as saturated phenomenon that is non-objectifiable. Chapter One discusses how phenomenology as critique can be a critical reflection on experience in order to justify and turn back to the question that concerns the refugee subject as ‘an alien other’. Applying Besinnung enables me to unravel the meaning structure that is operative in colonial subjectification and de-subjectification and the concept of violence that is embedded in the colonial situation. Dodd’s phenomenological account of violence and Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of ‘the camp’ gives me the opportunity to analyze the current manifestation of colonial violence in Australian offshore refugee detention camps. Considering various sorts of violence that are operative in the colonial structure, Chapter Two focuses on a specific type of violence that is hidden in the cognitive structure of our consciousness: epistemic violence. Building on Miranda Fricker’s notion of ‘epistemic injustice’ and Husserl’s phenomenological notion of ‘horizon-structure of experience’ that he proposed in Experience and judgment I develop a phenomenological analysis of the horizon structure of experiencing two types of epistemic injustice, which are testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Phenomenologically thematizing the intersubjective structure of the home, Chapter Three investigates the way the institutional violence of the colonial system can affect meaning constitution. A regressive inquiry into the pregiven lifeworld of the colonial situation as a violent situation that emerges out of the disrupted world of sense, the chapter enquires into the relation of the ‘I’ with the ‘alien’, and asks how does the ‘I’ experience the Other and constitute it as alien? Doing so, I argue that I experience the other as always present in its absence in a way that its presence is withdrawn from the accessibility of home as inaccessible. Chapter Four examines the mode of experiencing the alien Other by the home as a liminal experience in which the alienworld is inaccessible and incomprehensible to home. Furthermore, building on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Steinbock, I intend to liberate the phenomenon of the alien from the constitutive conditions of the home by discussing how the Other person is absolved from a disposal relation with me. This is to discover the most profound relation to the other that is given in moral experience. Chapter Five analyzes the moral experience of the Other in terms of the modality of the givenness of the Other, and in terms of the type of phenomena given in vertical givenness in the intersubjective realm. Reading Steinbock together with Marion, I explore the type of phenomenality of the alien Other who is given in the mode of revelation as a saturated phenomenon. I argue that by abandoning the givenness of the Other as a saturated phenomenon, I open the possibility of violence toward the Other. This way, I propose that the two concepts of violence and ethics are phenomenological orientations toward the reception of the call of the Other as a saturated phenomenon. (shrink)

Experientialist semantics has contributed to a broader notion of linguistic meaning by emphasizing notions such as construal, perspective, metaphor, and embodiment, but has suffered from an individualist concept of meaning and has conflated experiential motivations with conventional semantics. We argue that these problems can be redressed by methods and concepts from phenomenology, on the basis of a case study of sentences of non-actual motion such as “The mountain range goes all the way from Mexico to Canada.” Through a phenomenological reanalysis (...) of proposals of Talmy, Langacker, and Matlock, we show that non-actual motion is both experientially and linguistically non-unitary. At least three different features of human consciousness—enactive perception, visual scanning, and imagination—constitute experiential motivations for non-actual motion sentences, and each of these could be related to phenomenological analyses of human intentionality. The second problem is addressed by proposing that the experiential motivations of non-actual motion sentences can be viewed as sedimented through “passive” processes of acquisition and social transmission and that this implies an interactive loop between experience and language, yielding losses in terms of original experience, but gains in terms of communal signification. Something that is underestimated by phenomenology is that what is sedimented are not only intentional objects such as states of affairs, but aspects of how they are given, i.e., the original, temporal, bodily experiences themselves. Since cognitive semantics has emphasized such aspects of meaning, we suggest that phenomenology can itself benefit from experientialist semantics, especially when it turns its focus from prepredicative to predicative, linguistic intentionality. (shrink)

In this paper I explore a series of fertile ambiguities that Merleau-Ponty’s work is premised upon. These ambiguities concern some of the central methodological commitments of his work, in particular his commitment to transcendental phenomenology and how he transforms that tradition, and his relationship to science and philosophical naturalism and what they suggest about his philosophical methodology. Many engagements with Merleau-Ponty’s work that are more ‘analytic’ in orientation either deflate it of its transcendental heritage, or offer a “modest” rendering of (...) its transcendental dimensions. This is also true, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent, of the work of the more empirically-minded phenomenological philosophers who engage very seriously with Merleau-Ponty—e.g. Hubert Dreyfus, Shaun Gallagher, Evan Thompson, Alva Noë, and others. At the same time, many other scholars contest these proto-scientific and more naturalistic uses of Merleau-Ponty’s work on hermeneutical and exegetical grounds, and they likewise criticise the deflated reading of his transcendental phenomenology that tends to support them. By working through some of the key passages and ideas, this paper establishes that the former view captures something pivotal to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. I also extend these interpretations by arguing that, at least around the time of Phenomenology of Perception, his philosophy might be reasonably regarded as a form of minimal methodological naturalism. (shrink)

The focus of this article is the relation between life, sport, and disciplined movement. How do these enhance life? This means looking at sports in terms of the qualitative experiences they afford and considering the role of disciplined movement. Phenomenological description helps explore the normative paths that heighten said experiences. At their best, such paths result in skillful strivings to excel within communitarian frameworks, of which the Japanese practices of self-cultivation are exemplary. Sheets-Johnstone’s forays into kinesthesia, Ortega y Gasset’s meditations, (...) and Husserl’s historical lifeworld animate this account. The aim is to show how sports and movement, in bridling an exuberant temperament, cultivate our abilities, creativity, and excellence, ultimately encouraging stimulating lives. (shrink)

This paper explicates Husserl’s usage of what he calls “radical Besinnung” in Formale und transzendentale Logik. Husserl introduces radical Besinnung as his method in the introduction to FTL. Radical Besinnung aims at criticizing the practice of formal sciences by means of transcendental phenomenological clarification of its aims and presuppositions. By showing how Husserl applies this method to the history of formal sciences down to mathematicians’ work in his time, the paper explains in detail the relationship between historical critical Besinnung and (...) transcendental phenomenology. Ultimately the paper suggests that radical Besinnung should be viewed as a general methodological framework within which transcendental phenomenological descriptions are used to criticize historically given goal-directed practices. (shrink)

In Heidegger’s last seminar, which was in Zähringen in 1973, he introduces what he called a “phenomenology of the inconspicuous”. Despite scholars’ occasional references to this “approach” over the last 40 years, this approach of Heidegger’s has gone largely under investigated in secondary literature. This article introduces three different, although not necessarily conflicting ways in which these sparse references to inconspicuousness can be interpreted: The a priori of appearance can never be brought to manifestation, and the unscheinbar is interwoven with (...) the scheinbar as an active characteristic or form of “hiddenness”, therefore making inconspicuousness inherent within all phenomenology. Or, there is now a particular step or reduction within phenomenology that involves one’s being attuned to the various modes of potential hiddenness, of which “inconspicuousness” is a particular character trait. Or there are particular, unique, and specific phenomena that give themselves “inconspicuously,” and there is also thus a corresponding, particular phenomenology in which one must engage in order to gain some kind of access to these specific things’ phenomenal strata. This paper introduces Heidegger’s “phenomenology of the inconspicuous” most especially in his last seminar in Zähringen in 1973, engages related references to unscheinbar in his 1942/1943 Seminar on Parmenides, and then puts forward an interpretation of what these somewhat ambiguous references could mean when contextualized according to Heidegger’s overall interests. This essay brings these references to light, and puts forward a proposal as to what kind of phenomenology Heidegger was–somewhat inconspicuously–referring. (shrink)

In this article, I address problems associated with ‘Modernity’ and those encountered at the impasse of post-modernity and the newly named phenomenon of ‘post-secularism’. I consider more specifically what I call ‘moral emotions’ or essentially interpersonal emotions can tell us about who we are as persons, and what they tell us about our experience and concepts of freedom, normativity, power, and critique. The moral emotions, and retrieving the evidence of the ‘heart’, point to the possibility of contributing to the social (...) imaginary of the Modern and its post-modern variants, playing a significant role in shaping civic life and relations of power. (shrink)

This paper argues that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy attempts to reopen the question of human transcendence in contemporary terms. While his conception of language as self-transcending is deeply Husserlian, Ricoeur also responds to the analytical challenge when he deploys a basic distinction in Fregean logic in order to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology of world. Ricoeur’s commitment to a transcendental view is evident in his conception of narrative, which enables him to emphasize the role of the performative in literary reading. The meaning (...) of the self in time provides Ricoeur with a discursive basis for distinguishing his own position from that of Kant and other philosophers in the transcendental tradition. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the contemporary field of phenomenological psychopathology, or the phenomenological study of psychiatric disorders. The work proceeds with two major aims. The first is to show how a phenomenological approach can clarify and illuminate the nature of psychopathology—specifically those conditions typically labeled as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The second is to show how engaging with psychopathological conditions can challenge and undermine many phenomenological presuppositions, especially phenomenology’s status as a transcendental philosophy and its corresponding (...) anti-naturalistic outlook. In the opening chapter, I articulate the three layers of the subject matter of phenomenological research—what I refer to as “existentials,” “modes,” and “prejudices.” As I argue, while each layer contributes to what we might call the “structure” of human existence, they do not do so in the same way, or to the same degree. Because phenomenological psychopathology—and applied phenomenology in general—aims to characterize how the structure of human existence can change and alter, it is paramount that these layers be adequately delineated and defined before investigating these changes. In chapters two through five, I conduct hermeneutic and phenomenological investigations of psychopathological phenomena typically labeled as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. These investigations address the affective aspects of depression and mania, and the embodied aspects of depression. In addition to clearly articulating the nature of these phenomena, I show how certain psychopathological conditions involve changes in the deepest or most fundamental layer of human existence—what I refer to as existentials. As I argue, many of the classical phenomenologists (including Husserl and Heidegger) believed that these structural features were necessary, unchanging, and universal. However, this presupposition is challenged through the examination of psychopathological and neuropathological conditions, undermining the status of phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy. While this challenge to classical phenomenology is only sketched in the early chapters, in chapters six and seven I develop it in more detail in order to achieve two distinct ends. In chapter six I argue that psychopathology and neuropathology not only challenge phenomenology’s status as a transcendental philosophy, but also supply a key to developing a phenomenological naturalism (which I contrast with a naturalized phenomenology). Phenomenological naturalism, as I articulate it, is a position in which phenomenology is not subsumed by the metaphysical and methodological framework of the natural sciences, but nonetheless maintains the capacity to investigate how the natural world stands independent of human subjectivity (and how events in the natural world can bring about changes in the most fundamental structures of human existence). In the seventh chapter I argue that a phenomenology in which existentials are contingent and variable rather than necessary and unchanging allows phenomenologists to contribute to new dimensional approaches to psychiatric classification. Rather than begin from distinct categories of disorder, these approaches begin from distinct core features of human existence. These features, referred to as either dimensions or constructs, can vary in degree and are studied in both normal and pathological forms. (shrink)

Within the phenomenological tradition, one frequently finds the bold claim that interpersonal understanding is rooted in a sui generis form of intentional experience, most commonly labeled empathy (Einfühlung). The following paper explores this claim, emphasizing its distinctive character, and examining the phenomenological considerations offered in its defense by two of its main proponents, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. After offering in section 2 some preliminary indications of how empathy should be understood, I then turn to some characterizations of its distinctive (...) structure, considering, in section 3, the Husserlian claim that certain forms of empathy are perceptual in nature, and in section 4, Stein’s insistence that empathetic experience frequently involves explicating the other’s own intentional experiences. Section 5 concludes by assessing the extent to which their analyses lead support to a conception of empathy as an intuitive experience of other minds. (shrink)

This is a critical review of David Carr's Experience and history: phenomenological perspectives on the historical world. Oxford University Press, 2014.

_Phenomenological insights into health issues relating to bodily self-experience, normality and deviance, self-alienation, and objectification._.

Several commentators have argued that with his concept of anonymity Merleau-Ponty breaks away from classical Husserlian phenomenology that is methodologically tied to the first person perspective. Many contemporary commentators see Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity as a break away from Husserl’s framework that is seen as hopelessly subjectivistic and solipsistic. Some judge and reproach it as a disastrous misunderstanding that leads to a confusion of philosophical and empirical concerns. Both parties agree that Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of anonymity mark a divergence from classical (...) Husserlian phenomenology. I will question this view and demonstrate that Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity remains Husserlian in two important senses: it analyses senses in terms of constituting selves and communities of such selves, and it accounts for the formation of experience by the temporal sedimentation of intentional activity. The argument proceeds in four steps. The first section argues against the widely spread notion according to which Merleau-Ponty’s anonymous subject is collective. In the second section, I offer an alternative reading by demonstrating that Merleau-Ponty uses the term “anonymous” primarily to characterize the lived body of a personal subject. In section three, I introduce Merleau-Ponty’s idea of trace and show that for him both the perceived thing and the perceiving body are traces and as such refer to earlier constitutive acts of alien subjects. I then argue that Husserl’s concepts of sedimentation are crucial for the understanding of this idea. Finally, in section four, I show how Husserl’s theory of depresentation informs Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity. (shrink)

O artigo procura mostrar em que sentido a democracia deliberativa proposta pela teoria discursiva de Jürgen Habermas dá conta do problema dos reducionismos econômicos e juridificantes da mundialização ou globalização, entendida como uma colonização técnico-sistêmica do mundo da vida. Recorrendo a sua concepção de um ethos democrático transnacional embasado na soberania popular, a teoria habermasiana logra resgatar o caráter normativo da mundialização através da irredutibilidade de valores humanos como a liberdade, a dignidade e os direitos humanos, inerentes às mais diferentes (...) e incompatíveis autocompreensões de mundos da vida. (shrink)

This article proposes an analysis of a ritual glitch and resulting “misfire” from the standpoint of a phenomenologically informed anthropology of human interaction. Through articulating a synthesis of some of Husserl‘s insights on attention and affection with concepts and methods developed by anthropologists and other students of human interaction, a case is made for the importance of understanding the social organization of attention in ritual encounters. An analysis of a failed toast during President Obama’s 2011 State Visit to the United (...) Kingdom is used to illustrate how attention is directed toward certain participants, actions, and objects – as opposed to others. Affect-loaded empathic reactions are explained by the protracted temporal unfolding of an action whose successful conclusion – or “repair” - is ostensively and publicly delayed. (shrink)

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

The world of scholarship on Husserl’s phenomenology of inner timeconsciousness is a small and very intense one. Most analyses focus either on developments in Husserl’s earliest works, published in Hua. X (Bernet, 1985; Brough, 1972), or on his latest writings on time, found in the unpublished notes called the “C-manuscripts” (Held, 1966). Some compare these two periods, and recently a small number of writings have appeared on Husserl’s analyses found in what are called the “L-manuscripts”, which were written between these (...) two periods (Bernet and Lohmar, 2001). Although these latter manuscripts were studied and written on prior to their publication in Hua. XXXIII, they seemed to have gained renewed interest lately, once they became more accessible. A few scholars may have worked through Husserl’s writings on time from earliest through to the latest on their own; but fortunately for everyone else, Toine Kortooms, in his Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness, presents an analysis of these works, from beginning to end, for us. His work at first appears primarily exegetical and historical; however, Kortooms also introduces some significant interpretations and arguments to the discussions on time-consciousness. (shrink)

This article studies our philosophical understanding of experience in order to question the current political and theoretical dismissal of experiential accounts in feminist theory. The focus is on Joan Scott's critique of experience, but the philosophical issues animating the discussion go beyond Scott's work and concern the future of feminist theory and politics more generally. I ask what it means for feminist theory to redefine experience as a linguistic event the way Scott suggests. I attempt to demonstrate that the consequences (...) that she draws from such a theoretical move are both philosophically and politically problematic. A critical study of the evidence of experience does not have to imply metaphysical or epistemological foundationalism, as Scott claims, but on the contrary, such a study is indispensable for challenging them. We must hold onto experience as an important resource for contesting sexist discourses and oppressive conceptual schemas. (shrink)

In the Logical Investigations, Ideas I and many other texts, Husserl maintains that perceptual consciousness involves the intentional “animation” or interpretation of sensory data or hyle, e.g., “color-data,” “tone-data,” and algedonic data. These data are not intrinsically representational nor are they normally themselves objects of representation, though we can attend to them in reflection. These data are “immanent” in consciousness; they survive the phenomenological reduction. They partly ground the intuitive or “in-the-flesh” aspect of perception, and they have a determinacy of (...) character that we do not create but can only discover. This determinate, non-representational stratum of perceptual consciousness also serves as a bridge between consciousness and the world beyond it. I articulate and defend this conception of perceptual consciousness. I locate the view in the space of contemporary positions on phenomenal character and argue for its superiority. I close by briefly arguing that the Husserlian account is perfectly compatible with physicalism (this involves disarming the Grain Problem). (shrink)

Some of Catherine Malabou’s recent work has developed her conception of plasticity (originally deployed in a reading of Hegelian Aufhebung ) in relation to neuroscience. This development clarifies and advances her attempt to bring contemporary theory into dialogue with the natural sciences, while indirectly indicating her engagement with the French tradition in philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine, especially the work of Georges Canguilhem. I argue that we can see her development of plasticity as an answer to some specific (...) shortcomings in Canguilhem’s conception of organic or biological normativity as advanced in The Normal and the Pathological . Such a view of plasticity shows its potential to provide the basis for a powerful critical engagement with contemporary conceptions of selfhood, self-transformation, subjectivation, and the general theory of norms. (shrink)

What types of unity and disunity belong to a group of people sharing a culture? Husserl illuminates these communities by helping us trace their origin to two types of interpersonal act—cooperation and influence—though cultural communities are distinguished from both cooperative groups and mere communities of related influences. This analysis has consequences for contemporary concerns about multi- or mono-culturalism and the relationship between culture and politics. It also leads us to critique Husserl’s desire for a new humanity, one that is rational, (...) cooperatively united, and animated by a universal philosophical culture. Reflecting on culture, a spiritually shaped and shared domain of the world, draws us to reflect also on ourselves as social and rational animals, and to ask, what should we reasonably hope for—and aim for—in a human culture that expresses and supports our shared lives of reason? Aristotle is used for occasional comparisons and contrasts. (shrink)

Today many philosophers of mind accept that the two cortical streams of visual processing in humans can be distinguished in terms of conscious experience. The ventral stream is thought to produce representations that may become conscious, and the dorsal stream is thought to handle unconscious vision for action. Despite a vast literature on the topic of the two streams, there is currently no account of the way in which the relevant empirical evidence could fit with basic Husserlian phenomenology of vision. (...) Here I offer such an account. In this article, I show how the empirical evidence ought to be understood in a way that is informed by phenomenology. The differences in the two streams are better described as differences in spatial and temporal processing. Rather than simply “unconscious,” the dorsal stream can be better described as making a special contribution to what Husserl identified as the visual horizon. (shrink)

Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential phenomenology provides the resources for an alternative interpretation and treatment of agoraphobia that locates the problem of the disorder not in something lying beyond home, but rather in a flawed relationship with home itself. More specifically, I demonstrate that agoraphobia is the lived body (...) expression of a person who has developed an inward-turning tendency with respect to being-at-home, and who finds herself, as a result, vulnerable and even incapacitated when attempting to emerge into the public arena as a fully participatory agent. I consider this thesis in light of the fact that since World War I agoraphobia has been diagnosed significantly more in women than in men; indeed, one study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia. I conclude that agoraphobia is a disorder that stands as an emblematic expression of the ongoing pathology of being a woman in contemporary society–a disorder that reflects that even today women belong to a political world in which they are not able to feel properly at-home. (shrink)

Current scientific research on consciousness aims to understand how consciousness arises from the workings of the brain and body, as well as the relations between conscious experience and cognitive processing. Clearly, to make progress in these areas, researchers cannot avoid a range of conceptual issues about the nature and structure of consciousness, such as the following: What is the relation between intentionality and consciousness? What is the relation between self-awareness and consciousness? What is the temporal structure of conscious experience? What (...) is it like to imagine or visualize something, and how is this type of experience different from perception? How is bodily experience related to self-consciousness? Such issues have been addressed in detail in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and developed by numerous other philosophers throughout the 20th century. This chapter provides an introduction to this tradition and its way of approaching issues about consciousness. We first discuss some features of phenomenological methodology and then present some of the most important, influential, and enduring phenomenological proposals about various aspects of consciousness. These aspects include intentionality, self-awareness and the first-person perspective, time-consciousness, embodiment, and intersubjectivity. We also highlight a few ways of linking phenomenology and cognitive. (shrink)

The essay examines the idea of ―biological space and time‖ found in Evan Thompson‘s Mind in Life and Gilles Deleuze‘s Difference and Repetition. Tracking down this ―new Transcendental Aesthetic‖ intersects new work done on panpsychism. Both Deleuze and Thompson can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That‘s what ―Mind in Life‖ means: mind and life are coextensive; life is a sufficient condition for mind. Deleuze is not just a biological panpsychist, however, so we‘ll have to confront full-fledged panpsychism. At (...) the end of the essay we‘ll be able to pose the question whether or not we can supplement Thompson‘s ―Mind in Life‖ position with a ―Mind in Process‖ position and if so, what that supplement means both for his work and for panpsychism. (shrink)

What does Husserlian phenomenology have to offer feminist theory? More specifically, can we find resources within Husserl’s account of the living body ( Leib ) for the critical feminist project of rethinking embodiment beyond the dichotomies not only of mind/body but also of subject/object and activity/passivity? This essay begins by explicating the reasons for feminist hesitation with respect to Husserlian phenomenology. I then explore the resources that Husserl’s phenomenology of touch and his account of sensings hold for feminist theory. My (...) reading of Husserl proceeds by means of a comparison between his description of touch in Ideas II and Merleau-Ponty’s early appropriation of this account in the Phenomenology of Perception, as well as through an unlikely rapprochement between Husserl and Irigaray on the question of touch. Moreover, by revisiting the limitations in Husserl’s approach to the body—limitations of which any feminist appropriation must remain cognizant—I attempt to take Husserl’s phenomenology of touch beyond its initial methodologically solipsistic frame and to ask whether and how it can contribute to thinking gendered and racialized bodies. The phenomenology of touch, I argue, can allow us to understand the interplay between subjective, felt embodiment and social-historical context. In opening up Husserl’s account of touch to other dimensions—intersubjective and affective—sociality is revealed as residing within, and structuring of, touch. Such touch can allow us to think embodiment anew. (shrink)

Abstract: In philosophy, perceptual constancy refers to the puzzling phenomenon of the perception of properties of objects despite our changing experience of those properties. Husserl developed a sophisticated description of perceptual constancy. In this paper I sketch Husserl's approach, which focuses on the suggestion that perception is partly constituted by the continuous interplay of intention and fulfilment. Unlike many contemporary theories, this framework gives us a way to understand the relationship between different appearances of the same object. I will show (...) how Husserl's work connects with contemporary theories which emphasize perceptual constancy from particular perspectives. These theories include appeals to perspectival properties and Cohen's counterfactual theory. Also, I show how Husserl's account shares important themes with Kelly's recent interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on perceptual constancy. (shrink)

Though “dwelling” is more commonly associated with Heidegger’s philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, “being-at-home” is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-Ponty’s more familiar notions of the “lived body” and the “level,” and, in particular, I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that (...) rests in the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our “conscious” control—being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain . This analysis of home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving. (shrink)

Interpreters generally agree that the Fifth Cartesian Meditation fails to achieve its task, but they do not agree on what that task is. In my essay, I attempt to formulate the question to which the Fifth Cartesian Meditation gives the answer. While it is usually assumed that the text poses a rather ambitious question, I suggest that the text asks, How is the Other given to me on the most basic level? The answer would be that the Other is given (...) as accessible in the mode of inaccessibility. Husserl’s failure to convey this question clearly seems rooted in ambiguities concerning the concepts of solipsism and the sphere of ownness. (shrink)

The article asks how phenomenology, understood as a philosophical method of investigation, can account for gender. Despite the fact that it has provided useful tools for feminist inquiry, the question remains how gender can be studied within the paradigm of a philosophy of a subject. The article explicates four different understandings of phenomenology and assesses their respective potential in terms of theorizing gender: a classical reading, a corporeal reading, an intersubjective reading and a post-phenomenological reading. It concludes by arguing that (...) phenomenology can extend its analysis to the question of gender only if its method is radically revised. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology aims to discover what makes us human, but it has produced accounts that exclude some members of our species. It relies often on a non-naturalistic “philosophy of consciousness” and locates humanity in the cognitive capacity to objectively represent things, to reason teleologically and use tools, to use symbols and language, or to be self-conscious and question existence. This work pursues an alternative, thoroughly naturalistic philosophical anthropology in the tradition of Arnold Gehlen. Combining Gehlen’s theory of our behaviorally-detached and (...) culturally-determined impulses with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views on intersubjectivity, affect, sexuality, and social institutions, the present work locates the human within the unique structure of human feeling. This produces a truly inclusive account of “the human as the other” or Homo alter. The human is deeply and thoroughly dependent on affective, bodily, communicative bonds, in which others appear as sources of meaning, norms, pleasure, and approbation and disapprobation. This socio-biological account of the human makes institutionality central to our form of life but rejects any political anthropology that attempts to use human nature to prescribe a necessary form to institutions such as the home. Such a social and affective account of the human produces a novel approach to the affect of shame as the feeling of institutional rejection. Ultimately, this work uses philosophical anthropology to combat dehumanization. Our unique form of dependency on others and institutions is present, for example, in infants and the severely disabled who may not possess the forms of consciousness and cognition that traditionally are identified with being human. (shrink)

The paper introduces the concept of “spaces of meaning,” distilled from the work of political theorist Hannah Arendt, and used as an interpretative tool to understand some central theoretical moves in the The Human Condition. By focusing on activities which actualise conditional structures and which thereby generate experiences and meaning, I present a phenomenological re-interpretation of Arendt’s three basic activities of labour, work, and action, which actualise the conditions of life, worldliness, and plurality. The term “spaces of meaning” indicates how (...) the unfolding of certain activities simultaneously creates and structures spaces and meaningful orientation which involves a certain temporality, spatiality, corporeality, and intersubjectivity. I differentiate between activity-based and visibility-based spaces of meaning and present a dynamic interpretation of their interplay. In doing so, I challenge Seyla Benhabib’s view that part of Arendt’s methodology contains what Benhabib calls “phenomenological essentialism.” Furthermore, this analysis aims at developing an analytical tool and flexible framework also beyond Arendt scholarship. Phenomenologists can use this model of “spaces of meaning” for the task of reclaiming experience as world-building and world-opening, also in a normative sense, and of demonstrating how structures and orders are lived while they condition and form spaces of meaning. If we want to understand, criticise, act, or change something, this subjective and intersubjective perspective will remain indispensable. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that one’s participation in the experience of pregnancy is an essential part of the constitution of selves. Taking the radical notion of concrete essence as my point of departure in the first part of my paper, as well as the fundamental continuity between essences and facts proposed by Husserl, I will briefly map out my proposal within the contemporary feminist debate. In particular, I will argue for re-framing the role of pregnancy, rejecting the idea (...) of birth as an unattainable limit for human selfhood, and defending two complementary theses: the experience of pregnancy essentially shape the self/other distinction; the continuity between our “pre” and “post” natal lives is primarily expressed through the embodied nature of the self. The core of my argument is this: everyone has taken part in the experience of pregnancy and, in doing so, their self-constitution and development have been shaped during this deeply transformative process. The implication is that the self has an essentially embodied origin which is closely connected to another self ; relationality, intersubjectivity, and affectivity turn out to be the grounding features in defining the self. Even though arguments about embodied aspect of the self have been widely discussed from several philosophical perspectives, there is a significant lack of phenomenological attention in this regard for the issue of pregnancy as the constitutive experience for self’s constitution. Conversely, the literature focused on maternal-fetal encounters, and on the process of pregnancy, tends to address unilaterally the experience of the maternal subject, and then to neglect the proper view of the fetus as pre-infant. When attention has been paid to the fetal perspective, the issues tackled are mostly bioethical. In this context, I offer an account of the complexity and non-linearity of fetal-maternal bodily encounters on a phenomenological level, putting forward a third alternative. In particular, I aim to show the intertwining of fetal and maternal perspectives, and to analyse and articulate philosophically the empirical fact that everyone has been a pre-infant. In the second part of my paper, I will take into account some essential structures that shape and constitute the process of pregnancy, as well as the actors involved – that is to say, the maternal subject and the fetal self. All in all, I aim, as a theoretical outcome of the paper, to build a phenomenology of pregnancy that contributes towards a rethinking of embodied selfhood from their origin. In this context, I offer a proposal of accounting for the complexity and non-linearity of fetal-maternal bodily encounters on a phenomenological level: my aim is to show the intertwining between fetal and maternal perspectives, as well as to eviscerate and articulate philosophically the empirical fact that everyone has been a pre-infant. In doing so, the theoretical outcome is to build a phenomenology of pregnancy that may actively contribute to the general movement of rethinking the embodied aspect of the self.In the second part of my paper, I will take into account some essential structures that shape and inform the experience of pregnancy, and also the actors involved, that is to say the maternal subject and the fetal self. (shrink)

I argue that, on Husserl's account, affectivity, along with the closely related phenomenon of association, follows a form of sui generis lawfulness belonging to the domain of what Husserl calls motivation, which must be distinguished both (1) from the causal structures through which we understand the body third-personally, as a material thing; and also (2) from the rational or inferential structures at the level of deliberative judgment traditionally understood to be the domain of epistemic import. In effect, in addition to (...) recognizing a “space of causes” and a “space of reasons,” Husserl’s account of affectivity and the epistemology of passive synthesis in which it is situated suggest that we should recognize a separate “space of motivations.” Within this space, on Husserl’s phenomenological picture, we can isolate two different sorts of epistemic import, one belonging directly to the passive-synthetic content of experience, as explained in Husserl’s account of association and his closely aligned notion of nonlinguistic sense, and a second—my primary focus—affectivity, which is still relevant for that content, albeit indirectly, and holds epistemic import in its determination not of what that content is but of how it comes to matter for us. (shrink)

Technology always provides a new perception of the world. However, it is not clear when technology produces “mere” new informations and when it provides something more such as a production of new objects in our world which start to “live” around us. The aim of this paper is to study how technology shapes our surrounding world. The questions which we are going to answer are: Is it really adding new objects to our world? If yes, does every technology have this (...) potentiality? We are going to tackle the problem using a phenomenological and post-phenomenological approach focussing our attention on the perceptual level. Using Husserl’s philosophy we will study how technology are deeply involved in our perception and, thanks to post-phenomenology and its concept of “embodiment relations,” we will be able to determine which kind of technologies have the potentiality to change our surrounding world introducing and producing new objects in it. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the role of the lived body in meaningful understanding beyond linguistic conceptualization in phenomenologically oriented inquiries. In this exploration we consider the role of visuality and enactment as possibilities for accessing meaning beyond language-bound descriptions of the phenomenon of moving childhoods--that is, children's lived experiences of immigration. We suggest that immigration is an experience that interrupts the familiarity of the lifeworld, and thus brings immigrant children's awareness of their bodies to a conscious level. We ask: (...) What methods of inquiry can be used to access more directly the "embodied understanding" and, in particular, the lifeworlds of immigrant children as they leave the familiar "home world" and enter the "alien world" of a new school? In addressing this question, we focus on one aspect of phenomenological inquiry--gathering experiential accounts, or lived experience descriptions, in investigating childhood phenomena--which presents a particular challenge to researchers working with young children. We present an example of a method that bridges hermeneutic phenomenology and arts-based research methodology developed specifically to engage immigrant children bodily in accessing their lived experiences of their first day of school in the host country, and in the development of a polymedia text showing these experiences. We believe that the example demonstrates how fotonovela facilitates immigrant children’s recollection of and reflection on their experience of being at the door of a new classroom. Moreover, the production of visual texts, when shared with or read by others, has an evocative power similar to that of a phenomenological text. Thus, we argue, fotonovela is a particularly suitable method for engaging children in developing polymedia descriptive texts about their lived experiences. (shrink)

Phenomenology of religion is among the oldest branches of the discipline founded by Husserl. It has always been difficult to define its outlines: from the very first essays of Scheler, Reinach and Heidegger to the so-called “theological turn” of French phenomenology, one has always feared the transformation of the phenomenology of religion in a religious philosophy that would give up the sacred principle of neutrality. This situation is perhaps behind us thanks to the recent endeavors to renew the field of (...) research. French and American specialists of Husserl’s thought Natalie Depraz and Anthony J. Steinbock try to push back the limits of and to explore new ways in genetic phenomenology by describing religious attitudes by mean of a philosophical-existential methodology especially designed for this task. This paper introduces what might open of a new era of the phenomenology of religion. (shrink)