This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the (...) world in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

Blumenberg‘s phenomenological anthropology replaces the traditional question: What is the human being? with the following question: How is being human even possible? This question expresses a great mistrust over the ability of copying with human life. According to Blumenberg, man can survive only when he keeps distance from the threatening world in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. As an upright animal, who sees and can be seen, he can experience being hunted but also being the hunter in (...) order to bring himself into safety from what threatens him as well as succeeding in hunting. In a metaphorical sense, man takes distance from the almighty reality through myths, religion, science, technology, art, resp . culture as reliable ways to cope with anxiety and threats in this, for him, dangerous and nameless world. (shrink)

Purpose. The article suggested for consideration is aimed at clarifying the shift in human perception from the spatial turn announced by Michel Foucault, to a performative turn. The performative turn has an anthropological footing. It is based on the all-round investigation of the body’s principal role for cultural existence, as a result of a reverse reaction to artificial conceptual gap between space and body, which basically means ignoring the embodiment theme. An example of such theoretical deformation was Edmund Husserl’s “anthropology (...) phobia” revealed and thoroughly analysed by Hans Blumenberg in his critical works. Originality of the approach applied in this research, first and foremost, demonstrates not an abstract phenomenological conception as a theoretical construct, but a phenomenological activity itself, as well as practical work expressing antepredicative experience and solving the problems arising in this complicated process. Applying the Blumenberg’s analysis also allows to peep in the sideline notes of Edmund Husserl himself, which, for their part, acquire special meaning in relation to such a practical turn. Conclusions show the following state of affairs demonstrated by the anthropological and performative shift towards the body theme: 1) absolutisation of space without mentioning its relation to body experience is unreasonable and groundless, like in Husserl’s “anthropology phobia ”; 2) since the ground itself is a metaphorical anthropology basis, anthropology can reveal the structural conditions of perception due to thematic fronting of embodiment; 3) this gives anthropology some compensational features, to avoid false culture and nature dualism; 4) so, the space and body relationship is expressed by the Vehikel-phenomenon of the body itself, by placing, arranging and depicting, and thus replacing something missing and unavailable for direct contemplation, by revealing the spatial infrastructure for object perception, creating the presence conditions and metaphorically marking the contemplation boundary; 5) the depicting arrangement is at the same time a bodily performance, a play, staging and performing, which gives an aesthetic, poetic and emphatic impact on the use of philosophy language, in our case, on the way a phenomenology philosopher works with the language. (shrink)

This essay compares Sartre's existential psychoanalysis with Freud's psychoanalysis and Binswanger's Daseinsanalysis . On the one hand, Sartre's psychoanalysis, despite the pure phenomenological interpretation of the factical self (in the first part of Being and Nothingness ), is ultimately metaphysically founded on the concept of 'human reality' (in the fourth part of the book), so that this psychoanalysis cannot be identified with the way of interpreting existence in the Daseinsanalyse . On the other hand, Sartre's phenomenological interpretation of (...) the factical self implies that Freud's analysis of psychical phenomena is false, because the self 'is strictly to the degree that it signifies' ( Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions ) and is 'coextensive with consciousness' ( Being and Nothingness ). (shrink)

Purpose. The article suggested for consideration is aimed at clarifying the shift in human perception from the spatial turn announced by Michel Foucault, to a performative turn. The performative turn has an anthropological footing. It is based on the all-round investigation of the body’s principal role for cultural existence, as a result of a reverse reaction to artificial conceptual gap between space and body, which basically means ignoring the embodiment theme. An example of such theoretical deformation was Edmund Husserl’s “anthropology (...) phobia” revealed and thoroughly analysed by Hans Blumenberg in his critical works. Originality of the approach applied in this research, first and foremost, demonstrates not an abstract phenomenological conception as a theoretical construct, but a phenomenological activity itself, as well as practical work expressing antepredicative experience and solving the problems arising in this complicated process. Applying the Blumenberg’s analysis also allows to peep in the sideline notes of Edmund Husserl himself, which, for their part, acquire special meaning in relation to such a practical turn. Conclusions show the following state of affairs demonstrated by the anthropological and performative shift towards the body theme: 1) absolutisation of space without mentioning its relation to body experience is unreasonable and groundless, like in Husserl’s “anthropology phobia ”; 2) since the ground itself is a metaphorical anthropology basis, anthropology can reveal the structural conditions of perception due to thematic fronting of embodiment; 3) this gives anthropology some compensational features, to avoid false culture and nature dualism; 4) so, the space and body relationship is expressed by the Vehikel-phenomenon of the body itself, by placing, arranging and depicting, and thus replacing something missing and unavailable for direct contemplation, by revealing the spatial infrastructure for object perception, creating the presence conditions and metaphorically marking the contemplation boundary; 5) the depicting arrangement is at the same time a bodily performance, a play, staging and performing, which gives an aesthetic, poetic and emphatic impact on the use of philosophy language, in our case, on the way a phenomenology philosopher works with the language. (shrink)

The paper takes into consideration the relationship between philosophical anthropology and phenomenology from the point of view provided by Eugen Fink’s philosophical path. Starting with phenomenological researches into the structure of constitution and reduction, after the Second World War Fink puts forth an anthropological theory based on the notion of play. This paper identifies the self-reflective and practical structure of Selbstbesinnung as a constant element of Fink’s analysis of the phenomenological method, of consciousness, and of the anthropological dimension (...) of play, thus suggesting a profound continuity in his philosophical thought. (shrink)

This volume explores what phenomenology adds to the enterprise of anthropology, drawing on and contributing to a burgeoning field of social science research inspired by the phenomenological tradition in philosophy. Essays by leading scholars ground their discussions of theory and method in richly detailed ethnographic case studies. The contributors broaden the application of phenomenology in anthropology beyond the areas in which it has been most influential—studies of sensory perception, emotion, bodiliness, and intersubjectivity—into new areas of inquiry such as martial (...) arts, sports, dance, music, and political discourse. (shrink)

This article has two objectives. In the first part, I present a critical overview of the extensive anthropological literature that may be deemed “phenomenological.” Following this critique, which is built up around a classification into four different varieties of phenomenological anthropology, I discuss the relationship between phenomenological anthropology and the ontological turn (OT). Contrary to received wisdom within the anthropological discipline, I suggest that OT has several things in common with the phenomenological project. For the same (...) reason, I argue, it is not accurate to posit OT and phenomenology as opposing or antagonistic projects, as they are often depicted among critics and advocates of OT alike. On the contrary, I go as far as suggesting, OT may be understood as one of the most concerted attempts anthropology has produced to realize a distinctly anthropological version of Husserl’s method of phenomenological bracketing, namely what could be called the ontological epoché. (shrink)

The subjective experience of schizophrenia, its cause, and its course have been consistent topics of interest within the phenomenological tradition since its inception. After 80 years of study and the efforts of many investigators, however, phenomenological contributions have so far had only a modest impact on current understandings of this disorder. In this article, the author reviews the methodological and theoretical issues involved in the development of a phenomenological approach to understanding schizophrenia. Drawing examples from his own (...) empirical research, the author illustrates the three steps of description, understanding, and explanation required by an application of the phenomenological method to this empirical domain. He then considers obstacles to the acceptance of insights generated through this method by the mainstream psychiatric community. In conclusion, he suggests that the promise offered by a phenomenological approach will most likely be fulfilled when investigators appeal to the phenomenological conviction in intentionality to provide the guidelines for an empirical science of subjective life. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault's first published piece, “Introduction to Binswanger's Dream and Existence“ in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn't received much critical attention, is of particular interest because, whereas OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of “Man” as an empirico‐transcendental double in particular, IB views “existential anthropology” as a unique opportunity to establish a new (...) and fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object, “Menschsein”, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault, existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault's later view. (shrink)

_Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World_ is an introduction to phenomenological philosophy through an analysis of the phenomenon of the built world as an embodiment of human understanding. It aims to establish the value of phenomenological description in establishing the philosophical importance of architecture.

Despite recent interest in his work, little has been written about Løgstrup’s relation to phenomenology—what he thinks phenomenology is, how it informs his approach to ethics, and what he believes it can accomplish. Here I hope to stimulate further discussion of these matters. In this, consideration of Levinas’s understanding of phenomenology will be useful. While sharing many of Løgstrup’s concerns, Levinas insists on a distinction between phenomenological ontology and “metaphysics,” one that Løgstrup tends to blur in support of his (...) argument that “absolute nihilism is an impossibility.” After showing why this distinction matters, I will argue that Løgstrup’s goal is better achieved if we embrace Heidegger’s transcendental version of phenomenology rather than follow Løgstrup or Levinas, despite much that remains phenomenologically valuable in both. (shrink)

This paper discusses why the work of Eduardo Nicol, still not translated and mostly unknown outside of the Hispanic context, deserves more attention, for two main reasons. First, the novelty of his meditations concerning phenomenology, following the steps of Husserl and Heidegger, but taking a different turn. Furthermore, several scholars have noted how his phenomenological project intertwines with the anthropological question, fostering a new approach to the question concerning “who are we?”. Our aim is to explore how Nicol, while (...) setting foot in the founders of phenomenology, departs from previous interpretations of its method, to advance a new dialectical phenomenology that could contribute to the actual debates on anthropological phenomenology. In order to do so, we will first examine how his vision of the phenomenological task involves an historical interpretation of metaphysics and a critique of two fundamental concepts: the transcendental reduction (Husserl) and the thesis of an “occultation of being” (Heidegger). A careful reading of Nicol’s philosophy would allow us to go a step further and explain how, according to him, phenomenology should become an analysis of the dialectical presence between being/beings. Finally, we will show that the answer to the question “who are we?” is to be found inside this dialectic, in what Nicol identifies as the historical phenomenon of expression, encouraging a new dialogue with other phenomenologies of the body⸺and beyond. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault?s first published piece, Introduction to Binswanger?s?Dream and Existence? in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn?t received much critical attention, is of particular interest because while OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of?Man? as an empirico-transcendental double in particular, IB views?existential anthropology? as a unique opportunity to establish a new and fruitful relation (...) between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object,?Menschsein?, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but as the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault?s later view. (shrink)

[164] As is well known, over the last decade some of the younger generation of German philosophers have been gravitating with ever increasing speed toward philosophical anthropology. Currently Wilhelm Dilthey's philosophy of life, a new form of anthropology, exercises a great deal of influence. But even the so-called "phenomenological movement" has got caught up in this new trend, which alleges that the true foundation of philosophy lies in human being alone, and more specifically in a doctrine of the essence (...) of human being's concrete worldly Dasein. Some view this as a necessary reform of the original constitutive phenomenology, one that for the very first time would supposedly permit phenomenology to attain the level of authentic philosophy. All of this constitutes a complete reversal of phenomenology's fundamental standpoint. Original phenomenology, which has matured into transcendental phenomenology, denies to any science of human being, whatever its form, a share in laying the foundations for philosophy, and opposes all related attempts at foundation-laying as being anthropologism or psychologism. Nowadays, however, the exact opposite is supposed to hold. Phenomenological philosophy is supposedly now to be constructed entirely anew from out of human Dasein. (shrink)

In the 1950s, long before his ascent to international renown, Michel Foucault published a scant few works. His early writings on psychology, psychopathology, and anthropology have been dismissed as immature. However, recently discovered manuscripts from the mid-1950s, when Foucault was a lecturer at the University of Lille, testify to the significance of the work that the philosopher produced in the years leading up to the “archaeological” project he launched with History of Madness. Elisabetta Basso offers a groundbreaking and in-depth analysis (...) of Foucault’s Lille manuscripts that sheds new light on the origins of his philosophical project. She considers the epistemological style and methodology of these writings as well as their philosophical context and the scholarly networks in which Foucault was active, foregrounding his relationship to existential psychiatry. Young Foucault blurs the boundaries between biography and theory, exploring the transformations—and, at times, contradictions—that characterize the intellectual trajectory of a philosopher who, as Foucault himself put it, “turned to psychology, and from psychology to history.” Retracing the first steps of the philosopher’s intellectual journey, Basso shows how Foucault’s early writings provide key insights into his archaeological work of the 1960s. Assembling a vast array of archival sources—including manuscripts, reading notes, notes for lectures and conferences, and correspondence—this book develops a new and deeper understanding of Foucault’s body of work. (shrink)

Being Human is the fruit of many years teaching Philosophical Anthropology, conducting Phenomenological Workshops, and reading classic texts in the light of a reflective awareness of the field of experience. Being Human is intended to look to what is typically assumed but not examined in much of current philosophical literature.

The paper is a critical analysis of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of work as it is formulated in a number of essays from the 1950s and 60s. It begins with a reconstruction of the central theses advanced in ‘Travail et parole’ (1953) and related texts, where Ricoeur sought to outline a philosophical anthropology in which work is given its due. To give work its due, from an anthropological standpoint, is to see it as limited by counter-concept of language, according to Ricoeur. (...) The paper then argues that this way of understanding the anthropological significance of work is not only internally problematic, but at odds with phenomenological insights to be found elsewhere in Ricoeur’s oeuvre, particularly Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (1950). The final section of the paper makes some suggestions for how the phenomenological and anthropological poles of a philosophy of work might be better integrated, and the ‘nexus between speech and work’ better described. (shrink)

One of the effects of the so-called ontological turn has been to take the other so seriously that radical difference has been conceptualized ontologically. This stance has given rise, in some authors, as Descola, to a typological classification. However, we would suggest the possibility of a non-onto-typological anthropology based on Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. With the phenomenology of givenness, from which phenomena are given to a gifted – and therefore secondary – subject, this new understanding of subject allows us to (...) think of phenomena as significations much more than as representations and to replace the discontinuity of ontological categories with the continuity of hermeneutics. (shrink)

Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer The materials translated in the body of this volume date from 1927 through 1931. The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article and the Amsterdam Lectures were written by Edmund Hussed (with a short contribution by Martin Heideg ger) between September 1927 and April 1928, and Hussed's marginal notes to Sein und Zeit and Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik were made between 1927 and 1929. The appendices to this volume contain texts from both Hussed and Heidegger, and (...) date from 1929 through 1931. As a whole these materials not only document Hussed's thinking as he approached retirement and emeri tus status (March 31, 1928) but also shed light on the philosophical chasm that was widening at that time between Hussed and his then colleague and protege, Martin Heidegger. 1. The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article Between September and early December 1927, Hussed, under contract, composed an introduction to phenomenology that was to be published in the fourteenth edition ofthe Encyclopaedia Britannica (1929). Hussed's text went through four versions (which we call Drafts A, B, C, and D) and two editorial condensations by other hands (which we call Drafts E and F). Throughout this volume those five texts as a whole are referred to as "the EB Article" or simply "the Article. " Hussed's own final version of the Article, Draft D, was never published of it appeared only in 1962. (shrink)

The paper is a critical analysis of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of work as it is formulated in a number of essays from the 1950s and 60s. It begins with a reconstruction of the central theses advanced in ‘Travail et parole’ (1953) and related texts, where Ricoeur sought to outline a philosophical anthropology in which work is given its due. To give work its due, from an anthropological standpoint, is to see it as limited by counter-concept of language, according to Ricoeur. (...) The paper then argues that this way of understanding the anthropological significance of work is not only internally problematic, but at odds with phenomenological insights to be found elsewhere in Ricoeur’s oeuvre, particularly Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (1950). The final section of the paper makes some suggestions for how the phenomenological and anthropological poles of a philosophy of work might be better integrated, and the ‘nexus between speech and work’ better described. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experiences of MortalityPhenomenology and AnthropologyAlphonso LingisMartin Heidegger set out to elucidate our experience of being mortal, beneath the interpretations that he would take as metaphysical. He dismissed the dying that Socrates had taken to be liberation, a transfiguration, a passage to a higher kind of existence. Yet Socrates had argued that this liberation is an experience, anticipated in the asceticism of the body that is the very practice of (...) philosophy.Anxiety and NothingnessHeidegger finds my experience of my mortality in anxiety, which, he says, anticipates my experience of dying. He interprets anxiety to reveal that my dying is passage from existence to nothingness, annihilation; it is annihilation, for me, of the world about me. Heidegger confronts humans with their mortality in the most radical sense, forcing us each to see that our death is pure nothingness, that we are destined to be nothing. Humans are, through and through and in their most essential definition, "the mortals."Anxiety can be fled or covered over. But when acknowledged and accepted, it converts, Heidegger says, into resoluteness. Feeling myself adrift in the void, nothing supporting me, nothing to hold on to, I am thrown back upon the powers that still subsist in me, the powers that are my own. No longer counting on the support of the world or of others, taking up the powers that are my own, I now resolutely act on my own, exist on my own. Thus Heidegger sees the most negative experience, the experience of nothingness itself, converting into the most positive experience, the experience that posits my existence on its own.But does anxiety really identify death to be nothingness? What is distinctive of anxiety, as contrasted with fear, is that anxiety has no identifiable object. [End Page 69] It is a foreboding concerning what is indeterminate. What I am anxious about is the unknown—not something that I know to be nothingness.We could compare the situation that arouses anxiety with our edginess in the night. What makes the night disquieting is not a perception of something dangerous but the fact that possible dangers are not localizable in things. We no longer perceive things; their contours are dissolved by the night. But this no-thingness is not nothingness; there is left the darkness of night, which fills space, and invades, is within as much as without. The dissolution of contours and boundaries makes whatever dangers the night harbors be possibly anywhere, everywhere.The deep uneasiness before the unknown that afflicts me does not turn into a recognition that I exist on my own and can, must, act on my own. I would instead overcome, or at least endure, anxiety by seeking support in what is known, even though it is now out of reach.The fact that death is not evidently nothingness, that anxiety is not experienced as manifestly a sinking into nothingness but rather as a foreboding regarding what is unknown, ungraspable, motivates the efforts, in so many cultures, to know what the state of death is.Anxiety, Heidegger observes, can be fled or covered over, and it is so concealed in everyday preoccupations. But when we see that death is unmistakably imminent, our existence would be nothing but the dull pounding of anxiety, driving the resolute plunge into nothingness. Yet anthropological research in many cultures, including our own, has shown that many people sink calmly and peaceably into death, and many cultures have elaborated practices that help people to die without anxiety. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an example.We have had a premonition of this calm. When we go to the forests and the meadows, to mountains and glaciers, when we descend into the coral reefs of the oceans, when we contemplate the movements of the clouds, we find ourselves not in the Heideggerian "world" of implements and objectives, pathways and obstacles, but in nature. A nature that we are not surveying with a circumspection governed by our interests; our gaze drifts among beings, seeing them as they are, as they exist on their own. There is a dissolution of any governing and integrating force in our consciousness, and the systole and diastole of our consciousness disconnect... (shrink)