BSP Podcast

Mary Edwards - The Phenomenological Foundations of Sartre’s ‘Human-World Realism’

This is one of the papers from our 2017 Annual Conference, the Future of Phenomenology. Information and the full conference booklet can be found at www.britishphenomenology.org.uk

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Abstract

Drawing upon the work of John Duncan (2005), Thomas R. Flynn (2014), and upon Frederick A. Olafson’s (1967) classic text, Principles and Persons: An Ethical Interpretation of Existentialism, this paper argues that the development of Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenology is guided by his commitment to providing a robust foundation for philosophical realism. Its aim is to illuminate how, rather than merely enriching our knowledge of experience itself, Sartre’s mature phenomenology seeks to transcend experience toward the concrete realm of worldly being by affirming that human experience provides the basis for a ‘realistic materialism’. This paper proceeds by first discussing how, despite his initial, enthusiastic engagement with the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Sartre departs from Husserl in his efforts to turn his phenomenology outward – towards deepening our understanding of others and things in the world – rather than inward – toward the self – which is how he interprets Husserl’s work. Then, it traces the development of Sartre’s phenomenological thought from Being and Nothingness through to the Critique of Dialectical Reason and argues that Sartre progressed from using the tools of ‘pure’ phenomenology as a means of examining consciousness, to developing a realist phenomenology that is committed to describing human experience as concrete experience of an embodied self, the world, and others. Finally, this paper highlights some idealist tendencies that persist in Sartre’s thought and poses the question of whether his mature phenomenology can support a defence of ‘realism-proper’. It concludes by gesturing towards an answer in the negative, but which defends Sartre’s choice not to isolate metaphysics from politics in his later work.

Matt Barnard - Two Concepts of Anxiety: Heidegger and Sartre on Freedom

This is one of the papers from our 2017 Annual Conference, the Future of Phenomenology. Information and the full conference booklet can be found at www.britishphenomenology.org.uk

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Abstract

In this paper, I wish to argue that the difference between Heidegger and Sartre’s interpretation of the concept of anxiety lead to two different concepts of existential freedom. These differences have their basis in their distinct understanding of the nature of existence and the self, leading Sartre into an absolute negative conception freedom and Heidegger into a limited and difficult to obtain positive conception of freedom. For Sartre, in L'Être et le néant, anxiety reveals the nothingness that stands between me and what I can do. Nothing, not even my own being, is an obstacle to freedom. Indeed, every time I adequately perceive my own being, I negate it, and am condemned to be able to overcome it. Anxiety is an experience of our capacity: the fact of negative freedom.

For Heidegger, in Sein und Zeit, anxiety reveals nothingness as the consequence, not manifestation, of freedom. Rather than an absence of an obstacle in front of us, anxiety reveals the wake of lost opportunities behind us, things we could have and should have done. Anxiety therefore reveals the charge from our authentic self: “Guilty!”. For Heidegger, anxiety expresses our existential responsibility, not to overcome our self, but to make "the choice to choose oneself”. For Sartre, anxiety reveals the potency of the will to negate the self. For Heidegger, it calls us back to our self. This disagreement provides a case study in the different phenomenological priorities of two highly
influential thinkers. In explaining why they are able to disagree so fundamentally about the same phenomenon, I wish to lend weight to Heidegger's claim that phenomenology is not a set of theoretical discoveries, but a practice.

Ashley Woodward - Lesson of Darkness: Phenomenology and Lyotard’s Aesthetics

This is one of the papers from our 2017 Annual Conference, the Future of Phenomenology. Information and the full conference booklet can be found at www.britishphenomenology.org.uk

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Ashley Woodward is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Dundee. He obtained a B.A. (Hons) at LaTrobe University and a PhD in philosophy at the University of Queensland. He is a founding member of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy and is an on-going editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. He is also a member of the Scottish Centre for Continental Philosophy: http://scotcont-phil.org/ He has published three monographs: Lyotard: The Inhuman Condition. Reflections on Nihilism, Information, and Art. ( Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016); Understanding Nietzscheanism (Chesham: Acumen, 2011); Nihilism in Postmodernity: Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo (Aurora, Colorado: The Davies Group, 2009). His most recent publication is an edited collection, Acinemas: Lyotard’s Philosophy of Film, ed. with Graham Jones (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

Lesson of Darkness: Phenomenology and Lyotard’s Aesthetics

This paper examines the relationship of Jean-François Lyotard’s aesthetics to phenomenology, especially the works of Mikel Dufrenne and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It argues that Lyotard invents what could be called a postphenomenological aesthetics, which critiques and moves beyond key aspects of phenomenology, but nevertheless continues to be governed by problems of this tradition. Lyotard cites Merleau-Ponty as opening the problem of difference in the aesthetic field, yet believes that the phenomenological approach can never adequately account for it. Lyotard critiques Dufrenne and Merleau-Ponty on what he calls a ‘metaphysics of continuity’ which governs their works: the continuity is between silence and signification, or the dark ground of Being or Nature and the light of linguistic meaning. For both, the continuity is given through the mediation of expression, the immanence of the sensory in the poetic, and is grounded in a unitary ontology. Lyotard argues that these approaches cannot do justice to the radical alterity of aesthetic experience, and seeks to accentuate the differences between the sensory and language, and to locate difference in the transgressive and deconstructive effects between these two heterogenous orders. For Lyotard this is not simply an abstract theoretical matter, but one which concerns the capacity of art to be engaged in critical, political practice. After outlining Lyotard’s critiques of Dufrenne and Merleau-Ponty, the paper will demonstrate how his late aesthetics, which have received little critical attention, can be seen to return to phenomenological themes but in the form of a reversal. The last section will then clarify the notion of a postphenomenological aesthetics by noting the parallel between Lyotard’s work and some recent attempts to develop a Speculative Realist aesthetics: the suggestion that Kant’s third Critique outlines an access to the real beyond conceptual categories imposed by a subject is a path which Lyotard also explored. Lyotard’s ‘lesson of darkness’ is that the secret power of art can never be brought out into the light of phenomenal appearance, or be subordinated to a stratum of meaning continuous with knowledge, but can only be registered negatively as the mark of a deconstitution. Artworks do not testify to the birth of perception, but to its resurrection.

Tanja Staehler – Phenomenology of Childbirth between Theory and Practice

This is one of the papers from our 2017 Annual Conference, the Future of Phenomenology. Information and the full conference booklet can be found at www.britishphenomenology.org.uk

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Tanja Staehler is Professor of European Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Her current research focuses on the bodily experiences and emotions of pregnancy, birth, and being with infants, from a phenomenological perspective. Her research mediates between philosophers (phenomenologists), parents, and healthcare professionals such that the perspectives can be shared as well as differences acknowledged. She has published numerous essays in this area, including articles in the journals Janus Head, Health Care and Philosophy and also in the Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy. Tanja has written books on (2016) Hegel, Husserl, and the Phenomenology of historical worlds. Rowman and Littlefield International (2016); Plato and Levinas: the ambiguous out-side of ethics. Routledge, New York (2009) and (together with Michael Lewis), Phenomenology: An Introduction. Continuum (2010)

Phenomenology of Childbirth between Theory and Practice

In this presentation, I want to reflect on the experience of researching childbirth from a phenomenological perspective. In particular, methodological challenges will be considered that emerge from work at the intersection of theory and practice. My co-designed online learning module for the Royal College of Midwives entitled ‘Communication in Labour’ will serve as an example for the practical aspect. The module attempts to utilise the concepts of emotions, reflection, responsivity and situation which emerge from the theoretical analysis.

Will Large – “Before language there is language”

In the final paper of our Cormac McCarthy workshop, Will Large, of the University of Gloucestershire and former BSP President, gives a critique of Cormac McCarthy’s Kekulé Problem for its reliance on scientific methodology. The chair is Dr David Deamer.

Dan O’Hara – “Some Aesthetic Implications of McCarthy’s Conception of the Role of the Unconscious in the Evolution of Forms”

Dan O’Hara (New College of the Humanities) speaks about the aesthetic implications of Cormac McCarthy’s concept of the unconscious in the Kekulé Problem at our July 2017 workshop. The chair is Katja Laug, another speaker at the conference whose paper is available in a previous podcast episode.

Julius Greve – “‘The Kekulé Problem’ in Cormac McCarthy’s Concept of Nature”

Julius Greve examines the concept of nature at work in Cormac McCarthy’s Kekulé Problem and his literature, most emphatically in comparison with F. W. J. Schelling. The chair is Keith Crome, president of the BSP.

Matt Barnard – “The Silent Call: Heidegger and McCarthy on Talking to Yourself”

Matt Barnard draws comparisons between Cormac McCarthy’s Kekulé Problem and Heidegger’s Being and Time in our July 2017 workshop. The chair is Adonis Frangeskou, member of the BSP executive.

Katja Laug – “Kekulé, or McCarthy’s Physicality of Dreaming”

Katja Laug speaks on physicality and dreaming in the work of Cormac McCarthy at our July 2017 workshop. The chair is Patrick O’Connor, convenor of the workshop and BSP Executive Member.

Chris Thornhill – “Language in Benjamin, Agamben and McCarthy.”

Chris Thornhill discusses Benjamin, Agamben and McCarthy’s Kekulé Problem at our July 2017 Cormac McCarthy workshop. The chair is Will Large, former President of the BSP.