BSP Podcast

Season 9 continues with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.
 
This episode features a presentation from Abel Franco
 
Abstract:

We both perceive and evaluate aesthetically spaces with our body, in particular by (experiencing ourselves) occupying and moving in them. Unlike simply being in a space, the experience of occupying is the experience of actively filling the space with our bodily presence and mobility. Where exactly we place our body in a space, how we place it (posture, orientation), and with which motion (activity) alters our perception of that space and our aesthetic evaluation. And vice versa: our unique perception of a space also affects how we feel our body. Saying that a space is oppressive or expansive, or warm or cold, or cozy or desolate, seems to express this. Perceiving a space shows strong similarities with the experience of touch: we touch a space with our body and our body is touched by that space. This is quite different from saying that the haptic features of our physical environment (natural or built) are relevant in our perception of spaces (J. Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 1996). All sensible features can be said to be, not just add-ons, but integral part of that perception (cf., e.g., G. Böhme., Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces, 2017): the light and colors (vision), the temperature and the textures of materials (touch), the sounds that are altered by, and fill, that space (hearing), the smells that also fill it (smell/taste). Our aesthetic evaluations of spaces not only take this—i.e. our perception of a space--into account but bring into them (a) the uniquely personal meaning we perceive in the sensible features (coziness, warmth, expansiveness) and (b) the evaluation of two types of possibilities we see in the space: (b.1) possibilities to do what is significant for us and, among these, (b.2) possibilities that can be qualitatively enhanced (i.e. in their felt quality) by that space (“it feels better to read in the balcony”). We, thus, evaluate spaces aesthetically, not only by touching them with our body—or being touched by them--but also projecting on them (touching them with?) our ideal of life. Our ideal of life explains our perception of significance and meaningfulness in the (embodied) activities and ways of filling the space (occupying). Reading by the fire while it rains and reading under the sun in the park are experiences of reading altered in different ways by the very experience of occupying that particular space, in a particular way, and at this moment of our life. Our (changing) ideal of life makes our aesthetic choices deeply personal and dependent on the very present moment of our life. And, thus, an aesthetically preferable space reveals itself as the appropriate fit of activity, moment-in-our-life and (perceived) space. It is a space where, not only our body but our life fits well--or fits better. 

Biography:

Abel B. Franco holds a M.A. in History (1998) from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY); a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Salamanca (1999) and a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science (2006) from the University of Pittsburgh (EE.UU). He has taught in different CUNY campuses, at the University of Pittsburgh and, since 2006, at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) where he is currently a Professor in the Philosophy Department. He has written, given talks and published, mainly on the History of Natural Philosophy (especially Middle Ages and 17th century), on the History of Philosophy (especially the 17th century and, in particular, Descartes), on the History and Philosophy of Mind (especially emotions), and on Aesthetics (especially the relation between emotions and art, in the Baroque and in contemporary debates on philosophy of architecture and philosophy of fiction). His most recent articles are “Our Everyday Aesthetic Evaluations of Architecture” (_British Journal of Aesthetics_, 2019) and "The Aesthetic Value of Film" (_Journal of Aesthetic Education_, forthcoming). 

Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.
 
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
 
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
 
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 9 continues with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.
 
This episode features a presentation from Michal Lipták
 
Abstract:
Adorno always maintained that "new music"—his term for mostly atonal, avant-garde music—was not just yet another musical school within the history of music which would gradually settle down and develop its own idioms, but that it was unique in the history of music and that it introduces a certain rift—"an abrupt, qualitative leap"—due to which it would never settle down. He developed this understanding of avant-garde music in writings that, at the same time, combine a philosophy of music, a sociology of music, and an engaged music criticism addressing contemporary works, whereby this criticism was never value neutral. In this paper, I demonstrate that phenomenology—despite Adorno's explicit but misplaced distaste for it—is well disposed to ground this understanding; in doing so, I use notions developed in general phenomenology and in "classic" texts of phenomenological aesthetics, such as notion of Typik in Husserl, notions of schemata and historical a priori in Dufrenne, or conception of a schematic work in Ingarden. Interpreting Adorno phenomenologically allows us to confirm the profound rift between atonal avant-garde music and the rest of music that Adorno identified, and to disclose it more precisely, describing phenomenologically how such music places unnatural demands on us, while it simultaneously stimulates us. In return, phenomenology of music itself benefits from phenomenological absorption of Adorno's philosophy of music, too. Such absorption helps phenomenology to engage critically with contemporary musical works and thereby test the thesis of the profound rift on the current atonal avant-garde works; this approach also helps to develop criteria to evaluate the avant-garde works. Finally, this rift can be interpreted as a defining feature of avant-garde music, and therefore contribute to discussions about definition of avant-garde music, which are still unsettled in musicological literature. 

Biography:
Michal Lipták is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of Slovak Academy of Sciences. He defended and published his dissertation on aesthetics of Husserl and Ingarden, and his current research involves Husserlian phenomenology, phenomenology of art (and music in particular), structuralism and post-structuralism, political philosophy including critical phenomenology, Hegelianism, Marxism and post-Marxism, philosophy of new media, and philosophy of law. He regularly reviews contemporary classical music for Slovak cultural magazines. In addition to philosophy, he also studied law and works as an attorney. 
 
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.
 
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
 
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
 
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 9 continues with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.
 
This episode features a presentation from Anna Petronella Foultier
 
Abstract:
In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty introduces the notion of “anthropological spatiality” – various spatial levels related to the manner that we project the world, and that are not connected through geometrical space where each part is interchangeable, but rather through a more primordial, existential space where we are anchored as natural subjects. The experience of the dreamer, the schizophrenic or the person under influence from mescaline give examples of anthropological spatialities. Another such spatiality is said to be opened by “aesthetic perception” (1945, 333) – such as that of painting or of dance – and I will accordingly term it aesthetic spatiality. The spatiality of dance is “without goals or directions … the subject and its world are no longer opposed” (1945, 333), in a similar way that a painting is not “at the same place” as the canvas or the cracks on the wall of the cave. Now, the spatiality of a hallucinating or schizophrenic person seems available only to the subject doing the projection, while an aesthetic spatiality must be intersubjectively available: art only makes sense a cultural and shareable phenomenon. How, then, does the dancer, for example, constitute a form of spatiality that is valid for others? To resolve this problem, I will first appeal to Merleau-Ponty’s idea that the body is “the first cultural object” (1945, 401) and thus already in itself intersubjectively given with cultural meanings. Our body has, moreover, an “emblematic value”, so that our bodily positions, emotions and desires have a symbolic relation to one another (1945, 329). Finally, the characterisation of the spatiality of dance will be amended, and described, not as being “without goals or directions”, but with often unpredictable direction and as its own goal: one of the tasks of dance is to understand the very dynamics of bodily movement itself.    

Biography:
Anna Petronella Foultier is a Senior Lecturer in philosophy at Umeå University. Her present research is focused on the dancer’s experience and aesthetic know-how. She has published in journals such as Hypatia, JSBP, Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, Chiasmi international and Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, and coedited the anthology Material of Movement and Thought: Reflections on the Dancer’s Practice and Corporeality, with Cecilia Roos (2013). Foultier also works as a translator of philosophy and fiction, and has translated Beauvoir, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Kundera, Merleau-Ponty, Nora and many others into Swedish. 
 
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.
 
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
 
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
 
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 9 continues with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.
 
This episode features a presentation from Jodie Russell
 
Abstract:
In this talk, I will explore the implications that our interpretive capacities have for experiences of mental disorder. The traditional view, as I call it, describes mental disorder as a dysfunction of the individual, whether that be in the brain, or in body-world interactions (de Haan 2020). By looking at the interaction between our folk-psychological tools for social understanding and the self, we see that mental disorders have an importantly intrapersonal (as well as interpersonal) dimension which should be brought forth front and centre. My thesis develops from an understanding of what it means for human beings to be ‘self-interpreting animals’ (Taylor 1985), drawn from the mind-shaping literature (Andrews 2015a, 2015b; McGreer 2007, 2015; Mameli 2001; Zawidzki 2008, 2016). Under this view, “What determines one’s being human is the image one adopts.” (Heschel 1965, p.8). Our folk-psychological concepts are inherently normative under the mind-shaping view and when applied to the self, we shape our behaviour in norm-conforming ways so we can be understandable to others. I argue that, while the ‘self-understanding as self-shaping’ thesis from Zawidzki (2016) and Andrews (2015b) is compelling as it explains the consistency and inconsistency of the self, the mechanisms at play create significant problems for individuals with mental disorders. Namely, it entails that these individuals may be overburdened to be understandable to others and themselves, feeling compelled to make sense of the inconsistent and incoherent self-experiences. This is troubling when individuals lack folk-psychological tools to make sense of experiences such as in cases of hermeneutical injustice (Ritunnano, 2022). This suggest to me new tactics in alleviating the suffering of individuals with distressing pathological experiences. 

Biography:
I’m a 3rd year, SGSAH-funded philosophy PhD student interested in the intersection of mind and medicine. My research began with a deep dissatisfaction to our current approach and concepts of mental disorder and so I develop my project with the intention of developing a concept of mental disorder that both better captures the experiences of individuals and does better work for us politically and socially by reducing stigma and allowing people more agency in how they treated and understood. As such, I explore and am interested in all aspects of phenomenology of illness, from embodiment to agency, language and emotions. 
 
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.
 
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
 
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
 
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 9 continues with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.
 
This episode features a presentation from Andrew Turk
 
Abstract:
This presentation discusses more than twenty years of transdisciplinary research with geographers, linguists, philosophers and collaborators from other disciplines.  This research into landscape language (ethnophysiography) utilised applied and critical phenomenological methods to investigate practical, embodied, affective and engaged modes of dwelling which have continued for tens of thousands of years.  This included the authors (second) PhD investigation and dissertation: Understanding Modes of Dwelling: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Phenomenology of Landscape (Murdoch University, Western Australia).  A transdisciplinary approach, using engaged phenomenology as the over-arching meta-paradigm, was operationalised via a detailed case study and data analysis methodology, including phenomenography and other hermeneutic methods.  Such collaborative research with indigenous peoples requires comprehensive ethical considerations, negotiations and protocols, involving appropriate engagement with both female and male participants.  The research produced an explanatory model of factors relevant to differences in relationships with landscape, as place, (Ethnophysiography Descriptive Model) and identified language ontologies represented in landscape terms and toponyms (placenames).  Case studies with Australian Indigenous language communities investigated their embodied relationships with landscape, as ‘taskscape’. Some language group members continue traditional practices; ceremonies at sacred sites, hunting, gathering and caring for ‘country’.  The research recognised the central importance of their social/cultural/spiritual holistic system called (T)Jukurrpa in the central and western desert areas and other names in different languages (e.g. Bidarra Law in Yindjibarndi).  This integrates social organisation, ethics and spirituality, intimately linking each specific language group to their ‘country’.  It is inadequately termed ‘The Dreaming’ in English.  This collaborative investigation facilitated interpretation of relationships with landscape in terms of commensurability with Heideggerian concepts of ‘care’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘topology’, while addressing ‘Eurocentrism’.  Two case studies produced a Pictorial Dictionary of Landscape Terms for Yindjibarndi and for Manyjilyjarra Aboriginal languages.  These dictionaries assist in language preservation, community cohesion and practical caring for ‘country’ by indigenous ranger teams.  

Biography:
Andrew Turk has degrees in Surveying, Applied Science (Cartography), Arts (Psychology/Philosophy), PhD [1992 - Melbourne University] and second PhD [2020 - Murdoch University].  In the 1970s and 1980s he worked for the Australian Government producing topographic maps, involving surveying fieldwork in remote areas (including Antarctica) and development of digital-mapping and GIS.   In 1983 he commenced research/teaching at Melbourne University.  From 1993 Andrew taught human factors aspects of Information Systems at Murdoch University and researched Native Title, community development and cultural information with Aboriginal communities. Since 2000 he has conducted transdisciplinary research into cultural/linguistic aspects of landscape (ethnophysiography) using phenomenology methods. 
 
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.
 
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
 
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
 
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 9 continues with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.
 
This episode features a presentation from Janko Nešić
 
Abstract:
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a psychopathological condition characterized by persistent deficits in social interaction, social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests (APA 2013). To build an integrative, ecological-enactive account of autism, I propose we should endorse the skilled intentionality framework (SIF; Rietveld, Denys, & van Westen 2018). SIF connects a number of disciplines - ecological psychology (landscape of affordances), phenomenology (selective openness to and relevance of affordances, optimal grip), emotion psychology (states of action-readiness), and embodied neurodynamics (self-organizing affordance-related states of action-readiness). In SIF, embodied cognition is understood as skilled engagement with affordances (possibilities for action) in sociomaterial environment of the ecological niche by which an individual tends toward the optimal grip. An important part of SIF is an ecological-enactive interpretation of the free energy principle and predictive processing (Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014). Predictive processing accounts point out that in ASD too much precision is assigned to prediction errors (Van de Cruys et al. 2014; Constant et al. 2020; Miller et al. 2022).  Autistics suffer from suboptimal generative models that do not reach high levels of abstraction and generality (they have “overfitted” models). I will show that in SIF`s terms, autistic patterns of action-readiness pick out very specific solicitations in the environment and achieve optimal grip only in well-known situations and specifically constructed niches. They make interventions in the environment with reliable cue-effect relations. Autistic individuals lack the openness (pathological embodiment) needed to be responsive to the relevant affordances, pilling up habits and skills that are rigidly applied without adjustment to the changing environment. I argue that autistic persons favour social environments that increase predictability through ritual behaviour and routines (XXX et al. 2022) and design monotonous landscapes of affordances.  

Biography:
I am a junior postdoctoral researcher on The Sciences of the Origin Project (University of Oxford project ‘New Horizons for Science and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe’ and John Templeton Foundation) at the Institute for Philosophy (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade). My research is located at the intersection of Philosophy of Mind, Phenomenology, and Philosophy of Psychiatry. I focus on studying pathologies of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in autism spectrum disorder and building an integrative approach to autistic disturbances that combines phenomenological, enactivist, ecological and neuroscientific (predictive processing /free energy principle) perspectives. 
 
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.
 
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
 
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
 
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 9 begins with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.
 
This episode features a presentation from Natalia Burakowska & Danielle Petherbridge
 
Abstract:
The notions of what constitutes self and personhood are philosophically disputed, with different accounts focusing on narrative construction, others on a pure identity pole, or different phenomenological accounts pointing to a minimal or experiential notion of self in contrast to personhood, which includes habitual, social and culture aspects. In this paper, we problematise these various accounts based on the consequences for persons with neurological illnesses, such as dementia. The paper, however, has a more important aim. We draw on research arising out of engaged phenomenological workshops conducted with carers and persons with dementia to investigate the implications of assumptions about what constitutes the self and personhood in health care settings. In recent years, the ‘person-centred’ approach to dementia, first developed by Tom Kitwood (1997), has gained prominence within healthcare settings. However, we identify ways in which the person-centred approach to dementia is limited and potentially problematic. In many settings, it relies on a narrative construction of personhood, whether prior to memory loss or reconstructed from family members (McGreevy, 2015). We suggest persons with dementia should be considered to maintain personhood even after the onset of memory loss or seeming loss of narrative and linguistic capacities. We reflect on the ways in which our engaged phenomenological workshops have informed new understandings of: i) persons with dementia as dynamic and developing persons capable of expressing themselves in embodied ways; ii) the ramifications of defining what constitutes persons in the context of dementia in terms of narrative selves iii) how such reassessments might inform the practice of carers. This research will demonstrate that a shift away from understanding persons merely as narrative constructions and equipping carers with an embodied understanding of personhood can shift some of the power and dignity back to the patient.     

Biography:
Natalia Burakowska is a PhD student in Philosophy at University College Dublin and an Irish Research Council postgraduate scholar. She works in the areas of phenomenology, philosophy of mind and applied philosophy. Her doctoral work is focused on a phenomenological approach to dementia that conceptualises it as both a cognitive and bodily condition, taking account of the lived experience of dementia, vulnerability and forms of ethical responsiveness and care. 

Danielle Petherbridge is Ass. Professor in Philosophy at University College Dublin. Her primary research interests include phenomenology and social philosophy, medical humanities and ethics. She writes in the area of phenomenology and illness, critical phenomenology, and social philosophy. She is currently working on a research project on phenomenological approaches to dementia, and is PI of an Irish Research Council New Foundations funded project BodyDementia. She is a team member of the EU Funded Horizon 2020 grant Policy, Expertise and Trust (PERITIA) and co-founder of Health, Ethics and Narrative Ireland.    
 
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.
 
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
 
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
 
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 8 concludes with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.

 

This episode features a presentation from Emily Hughes

 

Abstract:

In this paper I interpret the experience of boredom during the Covid 19 pandemic in light of Heidegger’s analysis of profound boredom, wherein time slows down and the world in its entirety becomes boring for one. For Heidegger, the experience of profound boredom is distressing, in that it involves a feeling of not being at home in the world. And yet it is also a revelatory experience, because it is disclosive of the structure of temporality and thereby new futural possibilities. Drawing on long-form questionnaire responses to the experience of social distancing during the pandemic, I will demonstrate that the experience of profound boredom during lockdown in many ways conforms to Heidegger’s account. I will argue, however, that in lockdown the revelatory capacity of profound boredom is constrained by an accelerated, technological conception of chronological time, which is imposed by the constantly shifting timelines for the easing of restrictions, the administration of the vaccine, the opening of borders, etc. As a result, I will argue, the revelatory capacity of profound boredom is undermined in lockdown such that, instead of disclosing new futural possibilities, it has resulted in the proliferation of alienation, despair and disillusionment.

 

Biography:

Dr Emily Hughes is a postdoctoral research associate in philosophy at the University of York, working on the AHRC-funded project ‘Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience.’ She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales. Her research is situated in the intersection between existential phenomenology and the philosophy of psychiatry and psychology, with a particular focus on phenomenological interpretations of affect and the way in which emotions modify temporal experience.

 

Further Information:

This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.

 

The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.

 

About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.

 

This episode features a presentation from Alessandro Anzà

 

Abstract:

Before becoming a subject in philosophical and political studies, transgenerationality is a genetic or generative approach that reflects upon the ‘process of becoming’ of phenomena and their constitutive systems, and conceives this as a process that occurs over the generations. This term refers to transgenerational inheritance of epigenetic markers from one organism to the next or the psychological term, which asserts that behaviours of trauma can be transferred in between generations. Questioning generative phenomenology in the contemporary scenario means embracing the legacy of the concept of ‘generation’ in the history of philosophy and also exploring its potential for different fields of knowledge, such as politics, ethics, education. The first meaningful occurrence of the concept is in Aristotle’s Περ γενσεως κα φϑορς (On Generation and Corruption), wherein γνεσις means that things come into being from not being through causes, or that everything is generated purely through alteration. In 1924, Heidegger claimed that in research into history we find unclarified phenomena, such as that of generations, of the connection between generations. As he wrote, the historicity of Dasein grounded in the possibility according to which any specific present understands how to be futural (GA 64). In the Heideggerian philosophy of time and in the Arendtian phenomenology, we find a connection between the project of education and the revolutionary power of the future (Hodge, 2015; Loidolt, 2018, Parekh, 2008). In recent years transgenerational approaches contributed to philosophy by providing ethical frameworks based on the analysis of the contemporary world as well as on the prediction about the future of the Earth and the fate of globalised humanity (Andina, 2020; Nixon, 2020). The aim of this paper is to present transgenerationality as the obligations to future generations, but also the call of present-day humanity has an historical challenge to education.

 

Biography:

Alessandro Anzà (1992) earned a BA and MA in Philosophy with distinction from the University of Palermo. He is an Alumnus of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies in Naples, with a scholarship in Political Philosophy (2019), and an Alumnus of the Harvard Kennedy School, Executive Education in Social Sciences (2020). His field of specialisation is phenomenology, 4 hermeneutics, political theory, and interdisciplinary studies on education and social inequality. He is publishing his thesis on time and education in Heidegger’s work. Waiting for a PhD, his research is about fundamentals concepts, such as humanity, education, and freedom, in Heidegger and Arendt’s philosophical legacy.

 

Further Information:

This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.

 

The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.

 

About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.

 

This episode features a presentation from Ileana Bortun

 

Abstract:

I approach the theme of the future as a present concern from an ethico-political perspective, through an existential reading of Arendt’s account of judgment. From this perspective, “witnessing the future” is the human ability to envisage a possibility not yet fulfilled which, albeit rooted in the past, does not follow necessarily from it. There is an interplay between reproductive and productive imagination which opens up the space of freedom necessary for reflecting on future possibilities and choosing among them. I begin by showing why Arendt’s conception of political judgment is relevant for relating to the future beyond the passive expectation of the not-yet to happen. To assume the future as a present concern is to assume the responsibility for the future – not only for our personal future, but also for that of others and of the common world we share with them. Ontologically speaking, it is a responsibility that we always already have; ontically speaking, however, we can assume it or not. I argue that judging or what Arendt calls “representative thinking” is a way in which we can assume this responsibility: by looking at a particular situation or a possible course of action from the viewpoints of all involved in it or potentially affected by it, we can discriminate between right and wrong and thus choose how to act, taking as a reference point the potential agreement of others. Nevertheless, the ability of judging to guide future action is undermined by a widespread thesis that Arendt’s work would contain two different, even contradictory, models of judgment: one practical and future-oriented (involving the agent), one contemplative and past-oriented (involving “the spectator”). By connecting Arendt’s conception of judging to Heidegger’s interpretation of temporality, I argue that this separation is artificial, because the past and the future cannot be separated.

 

Biography:

Dr Ileana Bortun received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bucharest (in 2014), with the thesis “Shaping an Existential Ethics by Identifying the Connections between Metaphysics and Totalitarianism”, arguing for the possibility of developing an ethics starting from Heidegger’s 6 existential analytic, by taking the kinship between metaphysics (in Heidegger’s interpretation) and totalitarianism (in Arendt’s interpretation) as a negative reference point. In a post-doctoral project (2018-2020), she developed further this existential ethics through a phenomenological approach to political judgment (in Arendt’s conception). She is currently involved in the project “I was there. Laying the Foundations for a Comprehensive Phenomenology of Testimony”.

 

Further Information:

This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.

 

The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.

 

About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/