Episodes
Friday Jul 19, 2019
Tarjej Larsen – Husserl's Circularity Argument for the Epoché
Friday Jul 19, 2019
Friday Jul 19, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Tarjej Larsen is from the University of Stavanger, Norway, and the paper is titled ‘Husserl's Circularity Argument for the Epoché’.
Abstract: “According to Husserl, epistemology is possible only as phenomenology. In my paper, I assess one of his arguments for a crucial part of the considerations he offers in support of this claim.
Husserl takes the central problem of epistemology to be “the problem of transcendence”, or the problem of the possibility of transcendent cognition – very roughly, justified judgements about objects that do not form part of the judging subject’s consciousness. And he argues that any form of cognition by means of which this problem – and, by extension, any other genuine epistemological problem – can be solved must satisfy a number of methodological requirements, which, he maintains, only phenomenological cognition satisfies.
Chief among these is that any attempt to solve the problem of transcendence must involve the performance of an “epistemological epoché”, by which Husserl means a general refraining from making cognitive use of transcendent cognition. He offers different arguments for this requirement, the arguably most important of which is that attempting to solve the problem of the possibility of transcendent cognition by means of transcendent cognition would be viciously circular.
Despite its significance for Husserlian metaepistemology, this argument has not really been assessed by commentators, who, to the extent that they have considered it, have tended merely to reiterate it. Seeking to remedy this, I claim that there is strong reason to believe that the argument fails.
Acknowledging that employing transcendent cognition to solve the problem of transcendence would be circular, I argue that it’s far from clear that it would be viciously so, if account is taken of the fact that, as Husserl insists, the problem at issue is how transcendent cognition is possible, not whether it is possible. I end by briefly considering the consequences that the failure of the circularity argument would hold for Husserl’s conception of epistemology.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday Jun 28, 2019
Rona Cohen – “Taking Flesh” in Heidegger: On Dasein’s Bodying Forth
Friday Jun 28, 2019
Friday Jun 28, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Rona Cohen is from Tel-Aviv University, and the paper is titled ‘“Taking Flesh” in Heidegger: On Dasein’s Bodying Forth’.
Abstract: “In discussing the phenomenology of the body in the Zollikon seminars, Heidegger draws a distinction between the spatiality of Dasein and its body. According to Heidegger, Dasein is not spatial because it is embodied. Rather, “its bodiliness is possible only because Dasein is spatial”. Here, Heidegger puts into service the distinction between spatiality and embodiment to draw a distinction between the ontological and the ontic: the spatiality of Dasein is prior to Dasein’s embodiment, which is to say, Dasein is ontologically spatial and ontically embodied. In another of the Zollikon seminars, Heidegger addresses the phenomenology of the body by invoking Husserl’s distinction between Korper [“the corporeal thing”] and Leib [“the body”]. However, Heidegger gives this distinction a spatial interpretation. He claims that the corporeal thing stops with the skin, nevertheless noting that, “phenomenologically, Dasein always exceeds the corporeal limit […] when pointing with my finger toward the crossbar of the window over there, I [as body] do not end at my fingertips”. According to Heidegger, the bodily phenomenological limit extends beyond the corporeal spatial limit. Owing to this, he explains, the two “limits” do not coincide. How, then, is this argument compatible with Heidegger’s former claim that Dasein’s spatiality is its mode of being and the body is “ontic”? In this lecture, I present this dilemma in Heidegger’s text vis-à-vis Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between body and flesh in The Visible and Invisible. I suggest that Heidegger’s (little-known) notion of bodying forth [Leiben] introduced in this seminar could supply a solution to this dilemma.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday Jun 21, 2019
Friday Jun 21, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Rhoda Ellis’ paper is titled ‘Being, the Gallery and Virtual Reality: An Artist’s Take on Building Immersive Artworks’.
Abstract: “Dreyfus was right when he told computer scientists they were wrong during the first wave of virtual reality (VR). While technology companies continue to turn to cold, hard, objective, neuroscience to ‘trick’ the body into a sense of immersion, the recent resurgence of VR has also seen a wider acknowledgment of the body and the increased prevalence of phenomenology in discussions about VR. We may no longer be dreaming that extropian dream in quite the same way anymore, but we’re making artworks in and for virtual reality with a-whole-new approach.
Through practice-led research into the making, and recreating, of sculptural artworks, I have found it more meaningful to draw on the aesthetic tradition and art theory – from Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Benjamin, up to contemporary thinkers like Noë and Paterson. As a sculptor I work in 3D space, rather than as a 2D image maker, and have found aesthetics that relies too heavily on the visual has left me questioning. Here I focus on two of my artworks that were made with movement, touch and atmosphere very much in mind. Both were designed to be experienced in an art gallery setting, within all the traditions that entails, by interacting via the HTC Vive headset and moving within the artwork at life-scale. The mixed reality piece Being-in-the-Gallery explored embodiment of the immersive experience and the aura of the virtual art object – with the viewer-participant invited to touch an original sculpture while seeing it veiled in a virtual copy. In Virtual Halls I was commissioned to remake an artwork by the late video artist David Hall in VR, leading to questions of authenticity in the methodology, preservation and experience. The line of my argument shows the passage of my engagement with a number of philosophers and how they continue to influence my practise.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/about/
Friday Jun 14, 2019
Friday Jun 14, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Philip Tovey is from Canterbury Christ Church University, and the paper is titled ‘Temporal range, future mandate and strategic shaping; the existential and cognitive phenomenological ethics of preventative policing’.
Abstract: “Since the inception of modern policing, its founding strategic instruction was to ‘prevent crime’. Historically, policing strategy approached prevention through a geospatial predisposition in order to deter criminality. However recent years have seen a shift away from this area-based effect to an individual-centric model of tactical prioritisation, of which one's vulnerability to a given threat forms a transcendentally subjective centre of gravity. This paper will propose two fundamental challenges for UK policing operating a threat-based, preventative and individual-centric strategy; (1) prevention requires accurate prediction of and morally justifiable ingress into the subjective future and (2) there is no conceptual definition of what constitutes legitimate future reach in order to prevent crime. By firstly grounding strategy in an existential framing of 'the threat of meaninglessness', a cognitive phenomenological analysis of 'future-states' is conducted to expose issues of future mandate, temporal range and strategic shaping; providing a contemporary insight into, and an empirical reading of some of phenomenologies most challenging concepts such as time and more specifically, future-consciousness. Through the examination of some of policing's more divisive operational developments, such as para-militarization, early infant intervention programmes and advanced predictive analytics, the issue of futures and their disputably distinctive qualitative character, surfaces underlying strategic fallibilities in preventative, individual-centric approaches to policing within a paradigm of vulnerability”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 31, 2019
Peter Wilson – Phenomenology and causal entities in psychiatry
Friday May 31, 2019
Friday May 31, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Rajan Nathan and Peter Wilson are from CWP NHS Foundation Trust & Universities of Liverpool and Chester, and the paper – presented by Wilson – is titled ‘Phenomenology and causal entities in psychiatry’.
Abstract: “Psychiatric training emphasises the need to make sense of the patient’s experience at the symptom and diagnostic level of abstraction. In so far as attention is given to obtaining a representation of mental phenomena, this is a means to satisfy rules that define symptoms and diagnoses. In view of the questionable historical and empirical provenance of these rules, it is not surprising that underlying causal entities have proved elusive.
The authors will draw on their clinical practice and the relevant academic literature to make the case for phenomenological analysis, not only to elucidate psychiatric experiences (in line with the tradition of Jaspers), but also as a process to generate data to explain these disturbances (i.e. extending beyond the limits of Jaspers’ notion of ‘static’ understanding).
In this paper, the authors will demonstrate that neurobiological and phenomenological disciplines can complement each other in explaining troubling psychic events. However, using solely the language of brain structure, chemistry and circuits does not allow description of either what is troubling or psychic. Therefore, a neurobiological account in itself will never be sufficient for understanding.
Additionally, the authors will make the case for identifying causal entities through phenomenological inquiry. The advantage of phenomenology over the traditional symptom enquiry approach will be illustrated by case examples of different types of psychopathology. The authors propose a two-step process comprising (i) phenomenological inquiry to produce a representation of the patient’s experiences without interference from preconceptions, and (ii) an analysis of this representation to identify an explanatory entity using principles emerging from the empirical literature in relation to mental mechanisms. Unlike the common use of existing psychological models in clinical practice, in the second step the psychiatrist must refrain from applying mechanisms that are generally associated with certain experiences and confine his/herself to the data elicited in that case.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 24, 2019
Marcel Dubovec – The Inner Structure of Heidegger’s Concept of Freedom
Friday May 24, 2019
Friday May 24, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Marcel Dubovec’s paper is titled ‘The Inner Structure of Heidegger’s Concept of Freedom’.
Abstract: “The purpose of this paper is to present Heidegger's concept of freedom between 1927 and 1930. It puts emphasis on the difference between the fundamental-ontological and the transcendental concept of freedom. The elaboration of this difference is founded on the transformation of the ontological difference in its three forms: the difference of the being of beings (existential approach), the difference of the being and beings (transcendental/metontological) and the cosmological difference as a difference between the thing and the world (phenomenological metaphysics). The central manifestation of the difference is the possibility of a deeper understanding of freedom beyond its existential structures (Being and time) that focus on authenticity. The transcendental concept of freedom is the essence of the ground in the context of transcendence and the world and as such it is also the ground for existentially conceived freedom. In order to show this hierarchy in particular, Heidegger's debate on Kant's concept of freedom as spontaneity will be explained. Spontaneity is a specific form of causality and as such it is also grounded in transcendental freedom. The limits of a hierarchical way of thinking illustrate themselves in the significance of freedom for the essence of truth. This refers to the inner transformation of Heidegger's philosophy into the thinking of being from itself. In this context, the importance of a possibility to evolve the concept of freedom in its metontological turn is emphasised. On this metontological way of Heidegger's thinking, Hungarian philosopher László Tengelyi follows with his concept of phenomenological metaphysics that is placed beyond the onto-theological constitution of metaphysics. Tengelyi's concept of freedom as a partial causality is of particular significance to this subject.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 17, 2019
Friday May 17, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Lorenzo Girardi is from Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, and the paper is titled ‘The Constitution of the One World: Faith in Husserl’s Philosophy’.
Abstract: “Edmund Husserl’s philosophy is characterized by an eminently rationalist outlook. It contains some of the key features of the Enlightenment-project: a focus on the spirit of reason, a rational teleology, and universalism. It is perhaps the most critical version imaginable of this project, allowing for no justification that cannot be found in intuitive experience. This paper will point out a tension between this methodological limitation of Husserl’s phenomenology and the scope of his philosophy as a whole. It will do so by looking into the way Husserl conceives of the possibility of the constitution of one world for all of humankind.
While Husserl can experientially justify the process of universalization based on the horizonal nature of experience, he cannot justify the outcome of this process. That is, he cannot provide experiential justification for the idea that this process of universalization necessarily culminates in the same world for everyone who engages in this process. The possibility of a single rational world for all is more of a deeply entrenched assumption than a possibility that is properly justified.
After showing that recourse to experience is insufficient to justify the possibility of such a world, it will be shown that in the end Husserl backs up this speculative possibility through an act of faith. Showing the role of faith in Husserl’s account of the constitution of the one world puts the explicit references to faith in the Crisis in a new light. They might be more than rhetorical devices, revealing something about the nature of the crisis and Husserl’s solution to it, as well as providing a useful heuristic to distinguish Husserl’s thought from that of later phenomenologists. In doing so, the deep practical or even existential concern that forms the backbone of Husserl’s thinking, but that is not always acknowledged, is highlighted.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 10, 2019
Friday May 10, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Julio Andrade is from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and the paper is titled ‘Normative provisionality as a means to navigate Levinasian infinite responsibility’.
Abstract: “The core of Emmanuel Levinas’s (1969) argument in Totality and Infinity is that because the other cannot be faithfully represented without reducing his/her alterity, I cannot discharge my responsibilities to him/her. As such, my responsibility to the other is infinite. Infinite responsibility is at the centre of Levinasian ethics, however, it is also the most problematic. If I am infinitely responsible for the other, what of my, and all the other others, needs and desires? Levinas responds by positing a third party to the face-to face encounter with the other. Levinas argues that justice (or the political) is “an incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity” (1998; 158 emphasis added), i.e. justice or politics must constantly efface the alterity of the other in order to render the other representable, and thus comparable with the third.
However, what such a politics entails in practice is not something that Levinas develops in any depth. He remarks that “[m]y task does not consist in constructing ethics; I only try to find its meaning” (1985; 90). However, his follow-up to this remark hints at an endorsement of just such an enterprise: “one can without doubt construct an ethics in function of what I have just said, but this is not my own theme” (ibid).
It is by expanding on the above ‘incessant correction’ of justice that I hope to offer a way to ‘operationalise’ Levinasian ethics. In order to achieve this, I enlist Woermann and Cilliers’ (2012) ‘provisional imperative’. Pared to its essence, the provisional imperative reads as follows: “When acting, always remain cognisant of other ways of acting” (ibid; 451).I reinscribe this into Levinasian terms – ‘when representing the other, always be cognisant of other ways of representing the other.’ Then, by understanding responsibility as an ability to respond to the demands of the other, a response-ability, I argue that the other as infinity (Levinas takes the idea of infinity as the model for the other), should be understood as the other representing itself in an infinite number of ways, rather than a representation of itself as infinity.
The provisional imperative, I conclude, drives this incessant, and infinite revision of the representation of the other, and concomitantly my responsibility to the other. The provisional imperative operationalises Levinasian ethics such that infinite responsibility to the other is not rendered quixotic even as it is confirmed as the limit of our responsibility.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Friday May 03, 2019
Friday May 03, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. James Rakoczi is from King's College London, and the paper is titled ‘Moving without movement: Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” in cases of global paralysis’.
Abstract: “In this paper, I aim to demonstrate how memoirs written by people who live with, or have experienced, global paralysis can illuminate and complicate Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s claim in Phenomenology of Perception that embodied movement is a necessary condition for a transcendental self. I argue that the kinds of movement these texts articulate shares an affinity with the kind of movement instantiated by Merleau-Ponty’s intentional arc: a ceaseless and adaptive movement, or a “therapeutic” movement, which constantly “recovers” from an incapacity to move. In short, Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” emerges ceaselessly from an “I cannot”. I shall make particular reference to two texts. First, I shall consider how any philosophy attempting to centre the importance of bodies-in-movement might align with the claims made in Kate Allatt’s memoir Running Free (2011), a text in which Allatt attributes an interior ‘running psyche’ as imperative to her miraculous recovery from locked-in syndrome. Second, I will read Jean-Dominique Bauby’s locked-in syndrome memoir The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon, 1997) through the lens of Merleau-Ponty’s account of anosognosia, arguing that the text conceals its laborious method of production in the very process of describing that method. I will conclude by reflecting on the influence Merleau-Ponty has had on embodied therapies and textual accounts of lived illness experience, and indicate how understanding the ways in which embodied movement, textuality and therapeutics overlap has significance for our understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s claims.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal:
Sunday Apr 28, 2019
Jack Price – Adorno and Scheler on Action and Experience
Sunday Apr 28, 2019
Sunday Apr 28, 2019
Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Jack Price is from Cardiff University / the University of Exeter, and the paper is titled ‘Adorno and Scheler on Action and Experience’.
Abstract: “T.W Adorno’s work includes sustained critical engagement with phenomenology. While sympathetic to the attempt to engage with the ‘heterogenous’ and with the world of objects, Adorno argues that traditional phenomenology ultimately fails: Husserl relies too much on constitutive subjectivity and is unable to break from idealism. Perhaps as a result, Adorno tends to pass over much of the work of Max Scheler. Despite this, this paper argues that Scheler’s materialist phenomenology could engage with Adorno’s critical theory to mutual benefit.
Adorno’s work speaks to phenomenological attempts to understand experience. Emphasising the limitations of concepts, the primacy of the object and the value of embodied affective experience, Adorno builds a broad social critique emphasising mediation and the need for moving beyond traditional conceptual thought. But Adorno’s methodological negativity means that his account of the role of embodied subjectivity tends to be laconic, working more as a counterblast to transcendental idealism than as an articulated alternative.
Scheler’s model of the human being is drawn from a twofold distinction between ‘life’ and ‘spirit’, in which ‘life’ represents pre-rational and instinctual drives and behaviours and ‘spirit’ the rational and self-reflective element. The human being is thus not a singular entity ruled by reason, but a creature of conflicting drives, passions, and interests of which reason is a late and by no means omnipotent part. This model of the human being, however, is situated at times quite abstractly. Scheler lacks the critical resources needed to thoroughly interrogate the role of subjectivity under contemporary social conditions.
Dialogue between the two could therefore be very productive. While tensions undeniably exist, Max Scheler’s work, when brought together with Adorno’s critique of constitutive subjectivity and contemporary society, could present a plausible and phenomenologically-minded account of human action and experience under the current social order.”
The British Society for Phenomenology’s Annual Conference took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK during July, 2018. It gathered together philosophers, literary scholars, phenomenologists, and practitioners exploring phenomenological theory and its practical application. It covered a broad range of areas and issues including the arts, ethics, medical humanities, mental health, education, technology, feminism, politics and political governance, with contributions throwing a new light on both traditional phenomenological thinkers and the themes associated with classical phenomenology. More information about the conference can be found at:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference-2018/
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, conferences and other events, and its podcast. You can support the society by becoming a member, for which you will receive a subscription to our journal: