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 X (Bernet, 1985; Brough, 1972), or on his latest writings on time, found in the unpublished notes called the “C-manuscripts” (Held, 1966).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 elaborates a relational phenomenology of violence. Firstly, it explores the constitution of all sense in its intrinsic relation with our embodiment and intercorporality. Secondly, it shows how this relational conception of sense and constitution paves the path for an integrative understanding of the bodily and symbolic constituents of violence. Thirdly, the author addresses the overall consequences of these reflections, thereby identifying the main characteristics of a relational phenomenology of violence. In the final part, the paper provides an exemplification (...) of the outlined conception with regard to a concrete phenomenon of violence, i.e., slapping, and a concluding reflection upon its overall significance for research on violence. (shrink)

Abstract Not much scholarly work is needed in order to stumble across many passages where Edmund Husserl seems to advocate an anti-realist attitude towards the natural sciences. This tendency, however, is not well-received within the secondary literature. While some commentators criticize Husserl for his alleged scientific anti-realism, others argue that Husserl's position is much more realist than the first impression indicates. It is against this background that I want to argue for the following theses: a) The basic outlook of Husserl's (...) epistemology as well as his more substantial comments regarding the natural sciences indeed result in a (sophisticated version of) scientific anti-realism which bears certain resemblances to Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism; b) This scientific anti-realism can be defended against the two most common objections raised in the secondary literature; c) It is only by means of this sophisticated version of scientific anti-realism that phenomenology can circumvent the problem of ?scientific objectivism? (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)

In 1999, Dan Zahavi’s Self Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation initiated a critique of the standard interpretation of the distinction between the second and third levels of Husserl’s analysis of time-constituting consciousness. At stake was the possibility of a coherent account of self-awareness (Zahavi’s concern), but also the possibility of prereflectively distinguishing the acts of consciousness (Brough and Sokolowski’s rebuttal of Zahavi’s critique). Using insights gained from Husserl’s Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis rather than the work on time-consciousness, this paper (...) provides a new, more precise vocabulary in which to carry on the debate, in the hopes of bringing it to a mutually satisfactory resolution. After briefly laying out the terms of the Zahavi–Brough/Sokolowski debate (Sect. 2), I then elaborate a three-fold distinction in consciousness from the Analyses (Sect. 3) and relate that back to the issue of objectivity in the debate (Sect. 4). I end by suggesting how this three-fold model from the Analyses helps us preserve the essentially tripartite structure (as Brough and Sokolowski insist we do) while not making one of these levels the object of another (in keeping with Zahavi’s critique) (Sect. 5). (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)

The anticipation of the typical under the assumption of the non-occurrence of the atypical is the experiential schema governing the individuation of ordinary enduring objects and their properties. Against this background, a primitive form of “if-and-only-if” consciousness is implicit in our everyday perceptual intentions. The thematization of the fact that perception operates under this proto-tentative structure occurs at the level of reflection and is expressed by defeasible judgments of the form “if p, then q, unless r,” or “if p, then (...) q provided that not-r”. Here I will argue that what is made thematic by judgments containing such restrictive clauses is the structure of unpredictability inherent in what Husserl calls the horizon of latency and, indirectly, the world as background of normality. (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)

Excellent performance in sport involves specialized and refined skills within very narrow applications. Choking throws a wrench in the works of finely tuned performances. Functionally, and reduced to its simplest expression, choking is severe underperformance when engaging already mastered skills. Choking is a complex phenomenon with many intersecting facets: its dysfunctions result from the multifaceted interaction of cognitive and psychological processes, neurophysiological mechanisms, and phenomenological dynamics. This article develops a phenomenological model that, complementing empirical and theoretical research, helps understand and (...) redress choking. It aims at describing the experience of choking as experience, and to discuss strategies to palliate or prevent its onset at the pragmatic level at which athletes engage the phenomenon experientially. An overview of current empirical research and theoretical models highlights key ideas and points out contentious issues. The model describes the common structure of the choking experience. It identifies four core constitutive elements: A) disruptive proprioceptive and kinesthetic dynamics, B) a malfunctioning background or Jamesian fringe of consciousness, C) dislocated time dynamics, and D) emotional disturbances. The novelty of the remedy is that it is designed to cross disciplinary boundaries between phenomenology, historiography, and hermeneutics, and moreover connects theory to praxis as it looks at Japanese dō, practices of self-cultivation. It focuses on actual do-or-die situations, not putative ones such as important business deals or competing for a medal. To this effect, it examines medieval Japanese swordsmanship and training manuals and also engages risk sports, where death is indeed a real possibility. The manuals, which arise in the context of choke-inducing life or death duels, and risk sports, afford keen phenomenological observations and practical advice that prove invaluable for today’s sports world and beyond. (shrink)

A new framework for phenomenological psychology is proposed based on Husserl’s static and genetic methods. Static phenomenology holds a eidetic psychology centred on the processes of noetic-noematic constitution and elaborates typologies and general notions about human beings in connection with the world. Genetic analysis is research into facticity, it focus on the personal history of a subject, which is constantly in the process of becoming. When the temporal dimension of consciousness is considered, the phenomenological method becomes ‘static’, as it excludes (...) the factitious dimension of self, its personal and individual history, sedimented in layers of meaning, which are in part pre-reflective, non-thematic and anonymous to the self, but which nevertheless continue to influence the experience of itself with the other and with the world. This paper aims to present some of the fundamental principals of genetic phenomenology and it’s application to existential-phenomenological psychotherapy. There are three main aspects underlying genetic-phenomenological analysis as it is being proposed: inner time-consciousness theory, the experiential self and the theory of passive geneses. (shrink)

The concept of the ‘well-being of the child’ (like the ‘child’s welfare’ and ‘best interests of the child’) has remained underdetermined in legal and ethical texts on the needs and rights of children. As a hypothetical construct that draws attention to the child’s long-term welfare, the well-being of the child is a broader concept than autonomy and happiness. This paper clarifies some conceptual issues of the well-being of the child from a philosophical point of view. The main question is how (...) well-being could in practice acquire a concrete meaning and content for a particular issue or situation. A phenomenological-hermeneutic research perspective will be outlined that allows the child’s well-being to be elucidated and specified as an anthropological and ethical idea. It is based on a contextual understanding of generative relationships, a combination of the theory and practice of making sense, here described as ‘generative insight’, which could provide ethical guidance for decision making in families, legal practice, medicine or biomedical research. (shrink)

Although sexual difference is widely regarded as the concept that lies at the center of Luce Irigaray's thought, its meaning and significance is highly contested. This dissensus, however, attests to more than merely the existence of a recalcitrant conceptual ambiguity. That is, Irigaray's discussion of sexual difference remains fraught not because she leaves this concept undefined but because the centrality of sexual difference in fact marks a complex and unstable nexus of phenomena that shift throughout her work. Consequently, if Irigaray (...) is indeed the preeminent thinker of sexual difference, this is not in virtue of her recurrent appeal to a monolithic, readily digestible concept but rather somehow despite the absence of precisely this gesture. In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference in Irigaray's work by identifying her persistent, though largely unexamined, commitment to transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, I attempt to show that the complex of phenomena of sexual difference emerges in L'oubli de l'air and The Way of Love as a modulation of Heidegger's own revision of transcendental phenomenology. In this sense, the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference does not mark the centrality of a concept but Irigaray's amplification of this Heideggerian gesture. (shrink)

The paper investigates phenomenology’s possibilities to describe, reflect and critically analyse political and legal orders. It presents a “toolbox” of methodological reflections, tools and topics, by relating to the classics of the tradition and to the emerging movement of “critical phenomenology,” as well as by touching upon current issues such as experiences of rightlessness, experiences in the digital lifeworld, and experiences of the public sphere. It is argued that phenomenology provides us with a dynamic methodological framework that emphasizes correlational, co-constitutional, (...) and interrelational structures, and thus pays attention to modes of givenness, the making and unmaking of “world,” and, thereby, the inter/subjective, affective, and bodily constitution of meaning. In the case of political and legal orders, questions of power, exclusion, and normativity are central issues. By looking at “best practice” models such as Hannah Arendt’s analyses, the paper points out an analytical tool and flexible framework of “spaces of meaning” that phenomenologists can use and modify as they go along. In the current debates on political and legal issues, the author sees the main task of phenomenology to reclaim experience as world-building and world-opening, also in a normative sense, and to demonstrate how structures and orders are lived while they condition and form spaces of meaning. If we want to understand, criticize, act, or change something, this subjective and intersubjective perspective will remain indispensable. (shrink)

Resumen Numerosas derivas de la fenomenología contemporánea, especialmente francesa, tematizaron fenómenos con excedencia que desafían la estructura husserliana de correlación intencional e impronta epistémica del polo subjetivo. La filosofía heideggeriana se pregunta sobre la facticidad y sus fundamentos, arribando al terreno en que el fenómeno se sustrae y resulta, por ello, inaparente, pero a la vez fundante de todo el ámbito del aparecer. En el presente trabajo estudiaremos en primer lugar el marco en que la filosofía de Heidegger tematiza la (...) excedencia en el Seminario de Zähringen, consideraremos la tensión con la posición husserliana y analizaremos el planteo de la noción de “fenomenología de lo inaparente” para trazar algunas proyecciones de esta idea que habilitan la inclusión de las temáticas ligadas con la excedencia dentro de la economía propiamente fenomenológica.Many lines of contemporary phenomenology, especially in its French sides, have studied phenomena that exceed the limits and defy the original Husserlian structure and its commitment with intentional correlation and the epistemic aspects of the subjective pole. The direction of Heideggerian philosophy and its treatment about facticity and its foundations was a defining issue. In this context it is studied the phenomenon that subtracts itself and is, therefore, inapparent, but at the same time it is the founder of the whole field of appearance. The present work mil study the framework in which Heidegger's philosophy thematizes excess in the Seminar of Zähringen. It mil be considered the tension with the Husserlian position and the propos al of the notion of'phenomenology of the inapparent". On this basis it mil be possible to draw some projections of this idea that enable the inclusion of the issues linkedmth exceedance within the phenomenological sphere. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz is, without a doubt, one of the phenomenologists that contributed the most to the reflection on how to apply insights from phenomenological philosophy to the, empirical and theoretical, human and social sciences. However, his work tends to be neglected by many of the current advocates of phenomenology within these disciplines. In the present paper, I intend to remedy this situation. In order to do so, I will systematically revisit his mundane and social-scientifically oriented account of phenomenology, which, as (...) I shall show, emerges from a theoretical confrontation with the Husserlian distinction between transcendental phenomenology and phenomenological psychology. (shrink)

Resumen Las distintas dimensiones de la investigación fenomenológica y su vínculo intrínseco con las cuestiones de método llevan a prestar atención a la esfera de lo inaparente, y especialmente a la cuestión del acceso al plano trascendental. El inicio de la discusión se remonta al planteo sobre el abandono -o no- del cartesianismo en Husserl, tema que devino un tercer problema asociado con las vías de acceso a la reducción. En este trabajo estudiaremos este decurso con objeto de sugerir que (...) los desarrollos sobre generatividad y filosofía de lo inaparente invitan a redefinir el problema en términos más generales, explorando qué accesos a lo trascendental se despliegan en las diversas dimensiones de investigación fenomenológica. En este sentido, seguiremos la deriva de las dos primeras discusiones para bosquejar finalmente las direcciones que surgirían en una labor de desarrollo de la tercera.The different dimensions of phenomenological research and its intrinsic link to methodology lead to pay attention to this area and, within it, especially to the ways to transcendental dimension. The beginning of this discussion goes back to the abandonment -or absence of abandonment- of Cartesianism in Husserl, an issue that became a third problem in the issue of the ways to reduction. In this paper we study these problems in order to suggest that developments on generativity and phenomenology of the inapparent redefine the problem in more general terms, exploring the ways leading into the transcendental realm that unfold in the various dimensions of phenomenological research. In this regard, we will continue the first two discussions and finally point out the directions that arise in the development of the third question. (shrink)

In this thesis the appropriate aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes is explored. The overarching research question for this thesis is: What is an appropriate appreciation of a designed landscape as a designed landscape? This overarching research question is split into sub-questions. The first sub-question is: What is the current theoretical basis for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes and does it provide appropriate arguments for aesthetic evaluations? Two important points about the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes were found in the (...) existing literature on environmental aesthetics and in critical evaluations of designed landscapes. Modern environmental aesthetics is focussed on natural environments as it has been shaped in response to early 20th century aesthetics, which was dominated by questions on art. The designed landscape phenomenologically related more to environments, but is ontologically closely related to artworks. Designed landscapes thus fall between two fields. The designed landscape has gone largely unacknowledged by philosophers and geographers. The lack of a specific theory for the appropriate appreciation of designed landscapes has made it easier for landscape architects and critics to miss out on the current insights of environmental aesthetics, leading to the inconsistent belief among landscape architects and landscape architecture critics that landscapes are scenic entities. Actual design criticism as offered in the Landscape Architecture Europe books is shown to be based on the inconsistent belief that aesthetic experiences of works of landscape architecture are mostly visual. To explore what an appropriate appreciation should be based in, first the ontology and phenomenology of one example, the post-war design for the landscape of Walcheren, is described and discussed. To explore its ontology, a literature research has revealed the design process and decisions. To explore the phenomenology, the descriptions of two walks on the island made by the author were analysed. The descriptions of ontology and phenomenology of Walcheren offer insights into the relevance for the aesthetic evaluation of this landscape of being designed and of the sensorial richness of this designed landscape. In both fields of ontology and phenomenology insights into aesthetic value go beyond the visible. The second and third part of the research answers the sub-questions about appropriate appreciation regarding respectively ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in general. The literature on topics adjacent to the field of landscape architecture, such as design and architecture aesthetics, was surveyed for aspects that might also be relevant for the aesthetic evaluation of landscape architecture. These aspects were then weighed according to a philosophical method of reasoning from first principles. Starting from a principle of appropriate appreciation, different cues were tested to see whether or not they have to be considered in such an appropriate appreciation. Following descriptions of the True Appreciation Principle (TAP) as provided by Lopes, cues were tested against the Appropriate Appreciation Principle for Designed Landscapes (AAP-DL): An appreciation of landscape L as a designed landscape is appropriate only as far as it does not depend counterfactually on any belief that is inconsistent with the truth about the nature of designed landscapes. Examples are provided where cues can influence one’s evaluation, and evaluation thus depends counterfactually on those taking those cues into account. If something might influence one’s evaluation one should consider it. The exploration has provided important cues for the aesthetic evaluation of designed landscapes. The findings are the base of an evaluative framework that takes into account the ontology and phenomenology of designed landscapes in order to evaluate designed landscapes according the AAP-DL. A discussion is provided on the importance of such an appropriate appreciation for different audiences. (shrink)

The implications of commonalities in the contributions of five key thinkers in twentieth century phenomenology are discussed in relation to both original aims and contemporary projects. It is argued that, contrary to the claims of Husserl, phenomenology can only operate as hermeneutic phenomenology. Hermeneutics arose within German idealism. It began with Friedrich Ast and Heinrich Schleiermacher and was further developed by, among others, Wilhelm Dilthey and Martin Heidegger. Hermeneutics claims that current understanding is created on the basis of the prior (...) understanding taken to any new situation, in that what is initially understood or believed determines the direction and scope for inquiry or action. Subsequent action and conclustions are similarly based on what has been previously understood and believed. As a consequence, however, what may, in some cases, result is the confirmation of prior inaccurate understanding. For these reasons, it is important to be clear about how initial understandings are formed and how they inform a discipline, be it the Husserlian phenomenology of intentionality or any empirical phenomenological approach. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)

Using the 1991 police beating of Rodney King as case study, this paper draws on Husserlian phenomenology to establish a coherentist account of knowledge as situated with respect to its concrete circumstances of production. I take as my point of departure Gail Weiss's phenomenological investigation into the jury's assessment of evidence in the "Rodney King incident," and in particular, her interest in Husserl's conception of the "horizon" as a structure of consciousness that mediates what is present in perceptual awareness. Making (...) use of Anthony Steinbock's work on Husserlian phenomenological method — drawn from his extensive study of Husserl's unpublished manuscripts — I develop an epistemological framework that treats knowledge claims as inextricably bound to the horizons of meaning from which they arise, and provides standards of epistemic responsibility pertaining to an agent's "framing" of evidence. (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)

In this article, I address the question of whether or not the use of instant replay in sports improves the ability of officials to make correct calls. I pay special attention to the use of instant reply in American gridiron football. I first explain the method of static phenomenology, by recourse to Edmund Husserl's work and apply a static phenomenological method to the official's quest for evidence in the analysis of a still frame of video. Second, I expose Husserl's genetic (...) method of phenomenology and apply it to the official's search for evidence and accuracy when assessing a play in a frame-by-frame or super-slow-motion analysis. I then look critically at the intersection of these two methods in instant replay analysis. My conclusion is that in cases calling only for a static analysis, I think that instant replay is beneficial. In other cases, the application of a static, frame-by-frame analysis, abstracted from lived experience, to a context of movement, can disrupt the normality of perception such that it yields problematic evidence. The problems that ensue from employing a static analysis to a situation calling for a genetic analysis cause me to recommend a limited use of instant replay in the types of cases which involve a genetic analysis. Epistemologically, I think that lived-time analysis is the optimal mode of perceiving and judging certain events. Humanistically, my concern is that the use of instant replay can disrupt the life-world of sport. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of historical facticity in the phenomenological tradition. I argue that taking historicity into consideration in its factical constitution means transgressing the realm of the primordial or existential temporality. Following Ricoeur’s discussion of the idea of the “referential status of the past,” the question of the material foundation of historical meaning-formation, i.e., relation between temporality and materiality will be brought into the forefront of phenomenological investigations. It is with this context in mind that I argue (...) that exploring the conditions of historicity with regard to its factical and material determinations should assume a realist position in phenomenology. (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)

Many items of culture which are conveyed from one culture to another may take verbal form, and then constitute what Jakobson called “translation proper.” If such diffusions involve a co-occurrent change of semiotic systems, they are of such a different nature, that we better reserve another term for it: transposition. Whether or not accompanied by transpositions, such as pictures, translational events may play an important part in the encounter between cultures, not only in the negative sense of deformations as postulated (...) by the Tartu school. Particularly, when such transpositions make up a massive occurrence, as was the assimilation of the Greek-Muslim heritage in Middle Age Europe, or the more extended process by means of which Europe took on of the experience of the so-called New World several centuries later, such processes may actually enrich the homeculture. In this paper, we will study the latter process, zeroing in on a single, if protracted, event, the creation of the work ascribed to Bernardino de Sahagún, which really involved the collaboration of many scholars, many of them bearers of Aztec culture, exclusively or in combination with Western culture. This case interests us in particular, also because it involved the transposition of pictures, not, in the sense, of Western pictures being substitued for single pre-Hispanic picture, but rather as a kind of semiotic means contributing in different ways to the process of constitution. (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 seiner Fünften Cartesianischen Meditation entwickelt Husserl eine transzendentale Theorie der Fremderfahrung, der sogenannten ,,Einfühlung . Diese Theorie charakterisiert er in dieser Schrift als ,,statische Analyse . Genau besehen werden darin jedoch mehrere genetische Momente der Fremderfahrung in Betracht gezogen. In diesem Aufsatz versucht der Verfasser, zuerst aufgrund einiger nachgelassener Texte Husserls die wesentlichen Charaktere der statischen und der genetischen Methode und auch den Zusammenhang der beiden festzustellen, um dann aus der Analyse der Fünften Meditation die statischen und die genetischen (...) Momente konkret herauszuarbeiten. Aus dieser Untersuchung wird deutlich, dass die Theorie der Fremderfahrung in der Fünften Meditation als statische Analyse angesehen werden kann, insofern sie die ,,Fundierungsstruktur der Fremderfahrung klärt. Es ergibt sich aber auch, dass sie bereits in die genetische Sphäre eingetreten ist, sofern sie durch den ,,Abbau der höheren Sinnesschicht der Fremderfahrung die primordiale Eigenheitssphäre als Unterschicht freilegt, und wenn sie dann versucht, von dieser Eigenheitssphäre her die höhere Konstitution des fremden Leibes und des alter ego durch die ,,paarende Assoziation als ,,passive Genesis aufzuklären. Dieser halb-genetischen Theorie fehlt jedoch ein weiteres notwendiges Verfahren der genetischen Methode (das der Rückfrage nach der ,,Urstiftung ), das überprüfen soll, ob und wie alle zur primordialen Sphäre gehörigen Sinne (,,mein Leib , ,,mein Menschen-Ich usw.) wirklich ohne konstitutive Leistungen der auf fremde Subjektivität bezogenen Intentionalität urgestiftet werden können. Einige Stellen der Fünften Meditation weisen darauf hin, dass eine solche Urstiftung unmöglich wäre. In der Tat hat der späte Husserl seine ehemalige Konzeption, die die statische Fundierungsabfolge zugleich als notwendiges genetisches Nacheinander auffasste, revidiert. (shrink)

El artículo explora las nociones de afectividad, movimiento corporal y mundo de la vida en el pensamiento filosófico de Ludwig Landgrebe. El objetivo es mostrar cómo la unidad del proyecto fenomenológico de Landgrebe descansa en el entrelazamiento de las diferentes dimensiones de la afectividad corporal con el origen de la intencio-nalidad y la formación del sentido del mundo de la vida. Después de mostrar la unidad entre el carácter proyectivo de la vida afectiva y el movimiento corporal, así como su (...) relación con el devenir his-tórico, se destaca la importancia del pensamiento de Landgrebe en las tareas actuales de la investigación fenomenológica.The paper explores the unity of Ludwig Landgrebe´s philosophical thought departing from the intertwining between the notions of affectivity, bodily movement and lifeworld. The aim is to present a unitary vision of Landgrebe´s legacy and his way in phenomenology, taking in consideration his emphasis on the affective dimension of factual singularity. After pointing out the intertwining between the intentional orientation of affective life and bodily movement, in regard to the historical development, the paper ends stressing the systematic articulation importance of Landgrebe´s thought in the current tasks of phenomenological research. (shrink)

The moral presentation: an essay on Merleau-Ponty's notion of time in the Phenomenology of Perception: The purpose of this essay is to investigate the notion of memory in Merleau-Ponty, suggesting a possible interpretation of the time and memory within Merleau-Ponty’s genetic phenomenological analysis. Ultimately, our hypothesis is that Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the problem of representation and perception - particularly the problem of retention - places an ethical ground in perception. We will suggest that the phenomenological approach to memory might pave (...) a different undertaking of morals as constructed in the living-present. Our objective is then to point a moral dimension to the process of presentation-representation that happens in consciousness, and establish that our way into the comprehension of values has both a passive and active dimension that is often underdeveloped in studies of how we establish moral and political convictions. Keywords: Time, Memory, Representation, Perception, Ethics A presentação moral: um ensaio sobre a noção de tempo de Merleau-Ponty na Fenomenologia da Percepção Resumo: O propósito desse ensaio é instigar a ideia de memória em Merleau-Ponty, sugerindo uma possível interpretação de tempo e memória dentro da análise genética-fenomenológica de Merleau-Ponty. Em última medida, nossa hipótese é que o entendimento de Merleau-Ponty sobre o problema da representação e da percepção - particularmente o problema da retenção - coloca um fundamento ético para a percepção. Nós iremos sugerir que a abordagem fenomenológica para a memória pode nos dar um diferente modo de análise da moral enquanto construída no presente-vivido. Nosso objetivo é então apontar para uma dimensão moral para o processo de apresentação-representação que acontece na consciência e estabelecê-lo como um caminho para nossa representação consciente, entendendo que nosso modo de compreensão tem tanto uma dimensão intencionalmente ativa quanto passiva que é frequentemente pouco desenvolvida em estudos sobre nossos estabelecimento de convicções morais e políticas. Palavras chaves: Tempo, Memória, Representação, Percepção, Ética La presentación moral: un ensayo sobre la noción de tiempo de Merleau-Ponty en la Fenomenología de la Percepción Resumen: El propósito de este ensayo es instigar la idea de memoria en Merleau-Ponty, sugiriendo una posible interpretación del tiempo y la memoria dentro del análisis genético-fenomenológico de Merleau-Ponty. En última instancia, nuestra hipótesis es que la comprensión de Merleau-Ponty del problema de la representación y la percepción, particularmente el problema de la retención, sienta una base ética para la percepción. Sugeriremos que el enfoque fenomenológico de la memoria puede darnos un modo diferente de análisis moral a medida que se integra en el presente. Nuestro objetivo es, entonces, señalar una dimensión moral al proceso de presentación-representación que tiene lugar en la conciencia y establecerlo como un camino hacia nuestra representación consciente, entendiendo que nuestro modo de comprensión tiene una dimensión intencionalmente activa y pasiva que a menudo se entiende mal. desarrollado en estudios de nuestro establecimiento de creencias morales y políticas. Palavras clave: Tiempo, Memoria, Representación, Percepción, Ética Data de registro: 03/09/2019 Data de aceite: 22/07/2020. (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)

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 his paper, “The Dorsal Stream and the Visual Horizon,” Michael Madary argues that “dorsal stream processing plays a main role in the spatiotemporal limits of visual perception, in what Husserl identified as the visual horizon” (Madary 2011, p. 424). Madary regards himself as thereby providing a theoretical framework “sensitive to basic Husserlian phenomenology” (Madary 2011). In particular, Madary draws connections between perceptual anticipations and the experience of the indeterminate spatial margins, on the one hand, and the Husserlian spatiotemporal visual (...) horizons, on the other. I argue that Madary’s arguments, for a Husserlian view of the two visual systems, are not convincing. When the notion of visual horizon is adequately understood as a constitutive notion, there will be reason to regard the connections between dorsal processing and the Husserlian spatiotemporal horizons as tenuous at best. (shrink)

This article concerns itself with the phenomenon of the cultural defence as it exhibits itself in the US juridical context. Recent socio-legal discussions about this phenomenon reveal three prevalent positions: the illegality of cultural defence on constitutional grounds, the necessity of cultural defence as a matter of discretionary justice, and the intermediary position of working cultural defence into a legal doctrine. By problematizing the operative concept of culture, the author suggests that the idea of cultural defence should be understood in (...) terms of foreignness. This suggestion is supported on the basis of the phenomenological theory of the alien. In order to illustrate the juridical limits of the cultural defence I examine the history of constructing the Native American as a cultural legal subject. Hence the question that primes this examination: is there a possibility of the traditional cultural defence for the American Indians? After a provisional answer that there is no such possibility, I conclude with the discussion of hospitality as a way to an ethically necessary and legally acceptable idea of culture. (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)

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)

This paper explores foreign travel as an affective experience, embodied practice and form of learning. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on tourism and pilgrimage in the Himalayan region, the phenomenological notions of “home world” and “alien world” are employed to discuss how perceptions of strangeness and everyday practices are shaped by enculturation and socialisation processes. It is shown that travellers bring the habitus and doxa acquired in the home world to foreign situations, where these embodied knowledge schemes and abilities for skilful (...) coping can break down. In a home world, cultural patterns offer actors “trustworthy recipes for interpreting the social world” (Schütz, 1944, pp. 501–502) that allow everyday experience to go largely unnoticed and unquestioned. In alien worlds, however, travellers – as strangers – encounter differences and disturbances that disrupt experience and cause things normally overlooked to become “lit up”. Using Husserlian and Heideggerian notions of “light breaks” and Dewey's theory of challenge, the author argues that foreign travel generates a form of embodied learning. This occurs first on the level of the pre-reflexive body that is affected and solicited by the new and unfamiliar demands of an alien world. Ultimately, through continuous adjustment of habits and practices in foreign environments, an embodied cosmopolitanism is generated via accumulated travel experience. This calls attention to the role of the lived body in travel experience, as well as the role of place and environment in shaping human practices, perceptions and modes of dwelling. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine Shaun Gallagher’s project of “naturalizing” phenomenology with the cognitive sciences: front-loaded phenomenology. While we think it is a productive proposal, we argue that Gallagher does not employ genetic phenomenological methods in his execution of FLP. We show that without such methods, FLP’s attempt to locate neurological correlates of conscious experience is not yet adequate. We demonstrate this by analyzing Gallagher’s critique of cognitive neuropsychologist Christopher Frith’s functional explanation of schizophrenic symptoms. In “constraining” Gallagher’s FLP program, (...) we discuss what genetic phenomenological method is and why FLP ought to embrace it. We also indicate what types of structures a genetically modified FLP will consider, and how such an approach would affect the manner in which potential neurological correlates of conscious experience are conceptually understood and experimentally investigated. (shrink)

Using the 1991 police beating of Rodney King as case study, this paper draws on Husserlian phenomenology to establish a coherentist account of knowledge as situated with respect to its concrete circumstances of production (e.g., social, cultural, historical, political). I take as my point of departure Gail Weiss's phenomenological investigation into the jury's assessment of evidence in the "Rodney King incident," and in particular, her interest in Husserl's conception of the "horizon" as a structure of consciousness that mediates what is (...) present in perceptual awareness. Making use of Anthony Steinbock's work on Husserlian phenomenological method — drawn from his extensive study of Husserl's unpublished manuscripts — I develop an epistemological framework that treats knowledge claims as inextricably bound to the horizons of meaning from which they arise, and provides standards of epistemic responsibility pertaining to an agent's "framing" of evidence. (shrink)