D’Angelo and Tamburrini invited readers to consider doping in sport as a health issue and dopers as potential addicts who need therapy rather than offenders who need punishing. The issue of addiction in sport is important and very much under researched. In this essay I explore the extent to which addiction can be justifiably used as an excuse for offending behaviour. The favoured argument is that addicts experience a craving or compulsion to use over which they have no control. I (...) argue that there is insufficient evidence that addicts experience such compulsion. Although it seems science is unravelling some of the mysteries of addiction, it has not provided sufficient evidence that addictive consumption amounts to compulsive use. Nevertheless, it is clear that addicts do have difficulty with controlling their use and such difficulties ought to be considered in any judgements about moral responsibility. This does not mean that rules or laws including anti-doping legislation should be altered because not all.. (shrink)

The following text is the first ever translation into English of a writing by German phenomenologist Hermann Schmitz (*1928). In it, Schmitz outlines and defends a non-mentalistic view of emotions as phenomena in interpersonal space in conjunction with a theory of the felt body’s constitutive involvement in human experience. In the first part of the text, Schmitz gives an overview covering some central pieces of his theory as developed, for the most part, in his massive System of Philosophy, published in (...) German in a series of volumes between 1964 and 1980. Schmitz’s System is centred on the claim that the contemporary view of the human subject is the result of a consequential historical process: A reductionist and ‘introjectionist’ objectification of lived experience culminating in the ‘invention’ of the mind (or ‘soul’) as a private, inner realm of subjective experience and in a corresponding ‘grinding down’ of the world of lived experienced to a meagre, value-neutral ‘objective reality’. To counter this intellectualist trend, Schmitz puts to use his approach to phenomenology with the aim of regaining a sensibility for the nuanced realities of lived experience—hoping to make up for what was lost during the development of Western intellectual culture. Since both this text and the overall style of Schmitz’s philosophising are in several ways unusual for a contemporary readership, a brief introduction is provided by philosophers Jan Slaby and Rudolf Owen Müllan, the latter of whom translated Schmitz’s text into English. The introduction emphasises aspects of Schmitz’s philosophy that are likely to be of relevance to contemporary scholars of phenomenological philosophy and to its potential applications in science and society. (shrink)

This text addresses a problem that is not sufficiently dealt with in most of the recent literature on emotion and feeling. The problem is a general underestimation of the extent to which affective intentionality is essentially bodily. Affective intentionality is the sui generis type of world-directedness that most affective states – most clearly the emotions – display. Many theorists of emotion overlook the extent to which intentional feelings are essentially bodily feelings. The important but quite often overlooked fact is that (...) the bodily feelings in question are not the regularly treated, non-intentional bodily sensations (known from Jamesian accounts of emotion), but rather crucial carriers of world-directed intentionality. Consequently, most theories of human emotions and feelings recently advocated are deficient in terms of phenomenological adequacy. This text tries to make up for this deficit and develops a catalogue of five central features of intentional bodily feelings. In addition, Jesse Prinz’s embodied appraisal theory is criticized as an exemplary case of the misconstrual of the bodily nature of affective experience in naturalistic philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Schmitz zieht in diesem Buch die Bilanz eines mehr als fünfzigjährigen Fortschreitens im Dienst der Aufgabe, den Menschen ihr wirkliches Leben begreiflich zu machen. Er stellt zu diesem Zweck vier Säulen seines Werkes vor - unter den Titeln: Subjektivität, Mannigfaltigkeit, Leib und Gefühl, Welt - und bringt grundlegende Fragestellungen der Neuen Phänomenologie zur Sprache: Der Leib war seit der...

Although some scholars acknowledge the decisive role of the felt body in the process of perspective taking, the precise role of the felt body remains unclear. In this paper, a theory of affective communication is developed in order to explain and understand the process of perspective taking in human interaction on a corporeal, pre-reflective and thus affective level. The key assumption of the outlined theory is that any process of perspective taking is essentially based on the two dimensions of the (...) felt body, namely attraction and repulsion, dominance and subdominance. The dimension of attraction and repulsion determines whether individuals attractively converge or repulsively diverge in their perspectives. Regarding the dimension of dominance and subdominance, it is assumed that there is always a dominant and a subdominant side in human interaction. In the case of attraction as a necessary condition for finding common ground, the dominant side serves as the perspective giver and the subdominant side serves as the perspective taker. The outlined theory is phenomenologically based on the works of Schmitz and Rappe and marks a contribution to the research program of neophenomenological sociology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA Danish fitness chain recently introduced a new concept called Bubbles & Squat. Here, fitness training is combined with free champagne and music. In this paper, we examine this new way of bringing parties, alcohol and physical culture together by exploring the possible meaning of it through existential philosophical analysis. We draw in particular on Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apolline and the Dionysiac, as well as his account of great health. On this basis, we analyse Bubbles & Squat as a (...) case of Dionysiac intoxication, excess and ecstasy sneaking into contemporary Apolline fitness culture. In the last part of the paper, we raise the question if adding parties and bubbles to fitness training may, perhaps paradoxically, be healthy for the participants in an existential sense because it contributes to existential balance between the Dionysiac and the Apolline. We conclude that the philosophical framework presented in this paper can contribute to a new understanding of a general physical c... (shrink)

The problem of addiction is one of the major challenges and controversies confronting medicine and society. It also poses important and complex philosophical and scientific problems. What is addiction? Why does it occur? And how should we respond to it, as individuals and as a society? The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject. It spans several disciplines and is the first collection of (...) its kind. Organised into three clear parts, forty-five chapters by a team of international contributors examine key areas, including: the meaning of addiction to individuals conceptions of addiction varieties and taxonomies of addiction methods and models of addiction evolution and addiction history, sociology and anthropology population distribution and epidemiology developmental processes vulnerabilities and resilience psychological and neural mechanisms prevention, treatment and spontaneous recovery public health and the ethics of care social justice, law and policy. Essential reading for students and researchers in addiction research and in philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind and psychology and ethics, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction will also be of great interest to those in related fields, such as medicine, mental health, social work, and social policy. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Die Gegenwart.--Bd. 2. T.1. Der Leib. T.2. Der Leib im Spiegel der Kunst.--Bd. 3. Der Raum. T.1. Der liebliche Raum. T.2. Der Gefühlsraum. T.3. Der Rechtsraum. Praktische Philosophie. T.4. Das Göttliche und der Raum. T.5. Die Wahrnehmung.--Bd. 4. Die Person.--Bd. 5. Die Aufhebung der Gegenwart.

The entity in this book is neither soul nor body. It is that which has been forgotten since Greek classicism, that which can be perceived without the help of sight or touch, in shock, in - for example - fear, pain, hunger, thirst, revulsion, lust, rapture, freshness, tiredness, when feelings of affect are awakened, in sensations of movement, in the direction of gaze. Using new concepts dealing with expansion and dynamics, this forgotten entity is brought out of the shadows and (...) examined with the aid of examples. This work examines the role of the "Leib," according to its meaning, in the structure of the individual person, in the feeling of feelings, in art, history, space, time, soul, body. The book ends with a sketch of the different ways in whichthe "Leib"has been addressed, from the ideas of Homer up to the present.". (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die Zahl jener Akteure, die sich in ihrer Freizeit exzessiv und unter Absehen der dadurch ausgelösten psychischen, physischen und sozialen Konsequenzen dem Sport hingeben, ist in den letzten Jahren stark angestiegen. Sportmedizin und Sportpsychologie haben hierfür den Begriff „exercise addiction“ geprägt und eine Vielzahl wichtiger Erkenntnisse hervorgebracht. Im Unterschied zu der in diesen Disziplinen üblichen Vorgehensweise, die psychischen und physischen Aspekte des Themas personalisierend in den Vordergrund zu rücken, um das stoffungebundene Suchtverhalten im Sport zu erklären, wählt der vorliegende (...) Beitrag einen soziologischen Zugang. Die Sportsucht wird folglich als soziales Phänomen behandelt und analytisch auf einer makro-, meso- und mikrogesellschaftlichen Ebene verortet. Die soziokulturellen Bedingungen sportsüchtigen Handelns lassen sich so präzise herausarbeiten. Vor allem wird auch deutlich gemacht, warum immer mehr Menschen gerade den Sport als Suchtfeld nutzen. Damit präsentiert der Text erstmalig den Entwurf einer Soziologie der Sportsucht. (shrink)