Despite exerting considerable influence on other academic disciplines and mainstream environmental thought, object-oriented ontology has attracted little critical engagement from academic philosoph...

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)

Western metaphysics has long privileged solidity, presence, fixity, and substance, over the fluid, moving, intangible, and diffuse, that is, over water.1 Emmanuel Levinas noted that Western philosophy seems so incapable of thinking the liquid, moving, and dispersed, that even when we try, we only reduce the elemental to a multiplicity of solids.2 The problem, he concludes, is that water and other elements are "content without form," denying our metaphysical preferences for solidity and fixed shape, even as they are not mere (...) absence or nothingness.3 And still the elemental is our home, our condition of being.Luce Irigaray further notes a "historical lag in... (shrink)

In this essay I address the question, “What is the subject matter of phenomenological research?” I argue that in spite of the increasing popularity of phenomenology, the answers to this question have been brief and cursory. As a result, contemporary phenomenologists lack a clear framework within which to articulate the aims and results of their research, and cannot easily engage each other in constructive and critical discourse. Examining the literature on phenomenology’s identity, I show how the question of phenomenology’s subject (...) matter has been systematically neglected. It has been overshadowed by an unending concern with phenomenology’s methodological identity. However, an examination of recent contributions to this literature reveals that a concern with articulating phenomenology’s subject matter has gradually increased, although such articulations remain preliminary. In light of this, I delineate, define, and illustrate three layers of phenomenological research, which I term “existentials,” “modes,” and “prejudices.” While the delineation of these layers is drawn primarily from classical phenomenological texts, they are defined and illustrated through the use of more contemporary literature. Following the articulation of this subject matter, I briefly consider some of the debates—both foundational and applied—that can be facilitated by the adoption of this framework. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo plantea la tesis de que la filosofía fenomenológica de la percepción de Merleau-Ponty, en la medida en que es crítica tanto del empirismo como del idealismo, apunta hacia una forma de realismo. Para argumentar en favor de esta idea y mostrar la vigencia del pensador francés, se contrastan los planteamientos de éste con posturas del “realismo especulativo” de Meillassoux, del “nuevo realismo” de Gabriel y del “realismo plural” de Taylor y Dreyfus. Se propone el concepto de “realismo (...) ontológico” para apuntalar la postura de Merleau-Ponty y a los planteamientos de este ensayo.This essay claims that the thesis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, insofar that it criticizes both empirism and idealism, points towards a form of realism. To argue this, and to show the validity of the work of the French thinker, I contrast his thoughts with the approaches of “speculative realism” of Meillassoux, of the “new realism” of Gabriel and of “plural realism” of Taylor and Dreyfus. I propose the concept of “ontological realism” in order to support the posture of Merleau-Ponty and the arguments of this essay. (shrink)

A common commitment amongst speculative realists holds that phenomenology is irredeemably hostile to nonhuman alterity because phenomenology is correlationist. Since phenomenologists deny unmediated access to the modality of the in-itself, their correlationism purportedly consists in subsuming the more-than-human world into one’s own (narrowly anthropocentric) intentional horizon, a move that promises correspondingly disastrous environmental implications. Merleau-Pontian phenomenology appears to be especially guilty in this regard since Merleau-Ponty argues that taking our situated embodiment sufficiently seriously entails that any other entity encountered must (...) always take the form of an “in-itself-for-us.” In this paper, I argue that the charge of correlationism against Merleau-Pontian phenomenology can be disarmed because it is either false or insubstantial. In either case, I argue, if we are to remain sufficiently open to more-than-human alterity to evade the dangerous sort of anthropocentrism that anticorrelationists rightly speak against, we would do well to retain the very subject-object ambiguity that motivates the correlationist charge against Merleau-Pontian phenomenology in the first place. (shrink)

_Phénoménologie de la perception _es, sin duda, una de las obras más potentes del pensamiento francés del siglo XX. Allí se plantea una pregunta antigua y novedosa al mismo tiempo, en el cruce de la filosofía fenomenológico-existencial con diversas disciplinas que se ocupan del viviente humano: ¿quién es el sujeto de percepción? Merleau-Ponty responderá en esta obra ya clásica: el cuerpo vivido. Éste será, a su vez, caracterizado como un tipo particular de movimiento, que, en el camino de la fenomenología (...) existencial, adquiere la forma de un _movimiento intencional_, de una trascendencia y, finalmente, de un movimiento de temporalización que es, en términos husserlianos, la propia subjetividad. Tomando como punto de partida estos análisis, buscaremos desarrollar en este trabajo la tesis según la cual el cuerpo vivido debe comprenderse, en _Phénoménologie de la perception_, como un _movimiento subjetivo transpersonal_. Para desarrollar esta idea, partiré de un panorama general sobre el problema de la relación entre cuerpo, movimiento y vida frente al cual _Phénoménologie de la perception _se presenta como una continuidad y como una ruptura. En segundo lugar, presentaré los conceptos fundamentales que conducen a la concepción merleau-pontyana del cuerpo vivido como movimiento subjetivo para, en tercer lugar, centrar mi lectura en las posibilidades abiertas por este análisis de la experiencia corporal que denomino _transpersonal_. (shrink)