This article critically examines the positions taken by Stephen E. Toulmin, Robert C. Coburn, and and Gordon D. Kaufman on existential experience and limiting questions and answers.

Induced abortion is as common in religious as secular cultures, but interpretations and ways to handle abortion differ. This study focuses on existential aspects of abortion, in relation to a secularized context, through in-depth interviews with 24 Swedish women. Existential questions belonging to four areas were found: Life and Death, Meaning of Life, Morality, and Self-Image. Furthermore, four different existential strategies were found: Detaching Strategies, Meaning-Making Strategies, Social Strategies, and Symbolic Strategies. Existential questions and strategies did (...) not imply that the woman regretted her abortion. However, while some women easily processed existential questions, others seemed to be more at a loss. In a secularized country, where many people are unaccustomed to dealing with existential issues, greater existential competence among abortion personnel might thus be needed. (shrink)

Harper appeals to philosophy, literature, psychiatry and theology from Augustine to R. D. Laing to present what he calls a coherent picture of the major existential themes found in interior experience. This is not a book in existential philosophy in the usual sense. Indeed Harper argues that academic philosophers have failed to adequately treat interior experience. Interior experience, he says, is largely emotional and does not yield easily to analysis and conceptualization. Harper’s style is exploratory and suggestive, even (...) lyrical at points, as he interprets human experience in accordance with the themes: existence, insecurity, the void, self-isolation and presence. Human existence is, according to Harper, what I make it to be. Yet it is also characterized by insecurity or anxiousness, a sense of estrangement rather than fulfillment and reconciliation. The experience of contemporary man is characterized not only by insecurity but also by a sense of emotional and spiritual disability. God is absent and man experiences reality as indifferent and himself as alone and isolated in a void. Man is not, however, without hope for there is in existentialism and in personal experience the parallel theme of presence, being open to reality as grace, which gives hope of acceptance and love, satisfying the whole man. Harper’s study is scattered with references to Augustine, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Camus, Sartre and others. But these references are controlled from Harper’s own perspective, the result of his meditations on his own and other reports of interior experience. In the Afterword, Harper makes this perspective and his view of the nature of philosophy more clear.—E. T. L. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues. Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 (...) physicians (including three women), aged 33–66 years, residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner. Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position. Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues.Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 physicians (...) , aged 33–66 years, residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner.Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position.Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

The paper argues that dreams consist partly in an awareness or experience of the conceptual fabric of our existence. Since what we mean by reality is intimately tied to the concepts given in our experience, dreams are therefore also partly an awareness of the fabric of what we mean by being itself and in general, that is, by objective as well as subjective reality. Further, the paper argues that this characteristic of dreams accounts for several other, more specific aspects of (...) dreams and their possible interpretation, and that it allows us to see how these aspects are related to each other. These more specific aspects are the peculiar types of conceptual or logical relations and transitions that occur within dreams, dreams’ distinctive feeling texture, and some dimensions of the grounds and nature of suitable methods of interpreting dreams. (shrink)

In the introduction, the problem of interpreting memory as the basic category of human existential experience was taken up. The history of philosophical analysis of that category was outlined. Having put forward the definitions, the basic types of memory, appearing in philosophical discourse, were presented. The relation taking place between memory and oblivion was adopted as the basic one for the analysis. The problem of symmetry in the memory – oblivion relation was reflected upon. The existential nature of (...) experiencing memory was indicated. The second part of the text was dedicated to the analysis of functioning of memory/oblivion phenomenon. That part included the discussion on the memory – oblivion relation as one of the most fundamental oppositions forming human identity. The meaning of the memory – oblivion relation for philosophy on the example of the phenomenon of writing was presented. In the consecutive part, the measurability of memorizing and forgetting processes was indicated. The text was completed by comments on axiology of memorizing and forgetting processes. (shrink)

In the current world of education, politics and public opinion, musical experience is increasingly threatened. It is designated ever more as an expendable luxury. This kind of general trend has hardly left the thinking in the field of music and music education untouched. Inspiration comes from the technical rationality of our time. This rationality affects an oblivion of ontology. In this article we discuss this trend related to Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the human existence in the world, artworks and notions (...) like “being” (Sein) and “oblivion-of-being” (Seinsvergessenheit). We think that it is possible to see this “oblivion-of-being” in relation to the trend in cultural and educational politics as well as in music educational thinking to focus on the instrumental usefulness of learning music. (shrink)

In the current world of education, politics and public opinion, musical experience is increasingly threatened. It is designated ever more as an expendable luxury. This kind of general trend has hardly left the thinking in the field of music and music education untouched. Inspiration comes from the technical rationality of our time. This rationality affects an oblivion of ontology. In this article we discuss this trend related to Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the human existence in the world, artworks and notions (...) like “being” (Sein) and “oblivion-of-being” (Seinsvergessenheit). We think that it is possible to see this “oblivion-of-being” in relation to the trend in cultural and educational politics as well as in music educational thinking to focus on the instrumental usefulness of learning music. (shrink)

Problems and questions originally raised by Robert Nozick in his famous thought experiment ‘The Experience Machine’ are frequently invoked in the current discourse concerning virtual worlds. Having conceptualized his Gedankenexperiment in the early seventies, Nozick could not fully anticipate the numerous and profound ways in which the diffusion of computer simulations and video games came to affect the Western world. -/- This article does not articulate whether or not the virtual worlds of video games, digital simulations, and virtual technologies currently (...) actualize (or will actualize) Nozick’s thought experiment. Instead, it proposes a philosophical reflection that focuses on human experiences in the upcoming age of their ‘technical reproducibility’. -/- In pursuing that objective, this article integrates and supplements some of the interrogatives proposed in Robert Nozick’s thought experiment. More specifically, through the lenses of existentialism and philosophy of technology, this article tackles the technical and cultural heritage of virtual reality, and unpacks its potential to function as a tool for self-discovery and self-construction. Ultimately, it provides an interpretation of virtual technologies as novel existential domains. Virtual worlds will not be understood as the contexts where human beings can find completion and satisfaction, but rather as instruments that enable us to embrace ourselves and negotiate with various aspects of our (individual as well as collective) existence in previously-unexperienced guises. (shrink)

In the existing philosophical interpretations of mystical experience (constructivism, essentialism, etc.), its essence is usually seen in the features of "mystical knowledge". At the same time, the value-semantic foundations of mystical experience and its existential aspect remain in the shadows. In this article, the mystical experience is analyzed from the standpoint of the theories of the subject's objective activity - the theory of activity (developed in Russian psychology), enactivism, and the concept of the "life world". It is shown that (...) the essence of mystical experience is manifested not in cognitive, but in value-semantic, existential attitude to the world, which is represented by two groups of value-semantic viewpoints. In the first, the dependence of the subject on the sacred object of mystical experience is expressed, in the second - the volitional focus of the subject on overcoming such dependence, "mastering", "acquiring" the sacred object. These attitudes reflect the duality of the need-motivational sphere of consciousness, which gives the activity of the subject, on the one hand, activity, energy, and on the other, meaning. In mystical experience, the subject of active "development", "acquisition" (which can be both real and virtual) is an imaginative "otherworldly reality". The analysis allows us to conclude that mystical experience is one of the forms of motivational states of consciousness. Its peculiarity is that it is aimed at realizing the need for the harmonization of the subject's relations with the natural and social environment, the subject's finding the meaning of the "existence of his self" in an always open to the future, incomplete life world. It is the motivational basis that gives the mystical experience an improvisational character, as well as a creative, renewing potential (within the boundaries of the sensory-emotional experience of the world by the subject). The article also analyzes the concept of semantic reality. It is shown that the semantic foundations of mystical experience reflect the individually unique aspects of human life, are the result of the interactions of many factors of socio-cultural, individual-personal nature (psychological, medical, pharmacological, gender, psychiatric, etc.). (shrink)

This study represents an existential-phenomenological investigation of the experience of being accepted in individuals who have undergone psychiatric institutionalization. Written protocols of narrative accounts were collected from nine individuals drawn from a partial hospitalization programme, with the analysis of these narratives revealing seven basic constituents of the focal experience. The paper concludes with a discussion of the clinical implications of these findings for understanding this experience as it relates to psychotherapy with individuals who experience severe mental illness symptoms and/or (...) stigma. (shrink)

Students of culture have been increasingly concerned with the ways in which cultural values are 'inscribed' on the body. These essays go beyond this passive construal of the body to a position in which embodiment is understood as the existential condition of cultural life. From this standpoint embodiment is reducible neither to representations of the body, to the body as an objectification of power, to the body as a physical entity or biological organism, nor to the body as an (...) inalienable centre of individual consciousness. This more sensate and dynamic view is applied by the contributors to a variety of topics, including the expression of emotion, the experience of pain, ritual healing, dietary customs, and political violence. Their purpose is to contribute to a phenomenological theory of culture and self - an anthropology that is not merely about the body, but from the body. (shrink)

There are an abundance of studies regarding the development of sexual identity and sexual orientation that have served as the foundational underpinnings for exploring sexual orientation development. To date, however, findings from these studies have failed to constitute a significant resource for understanding the gay man’s experience of acknowledging to himself that he is attracted to other men. By identifying the essential constituents of this experience, this existential-phenomenological study provides a starting point for further exploration. Written narrative accounts were (...) obtained from seven men who identified sexually as gay and a method of existential-phenomenological analysis was applied to reveal the prereflective constituents of the experience described. The analysis yielded a new perspective on the experience of gay men and their attraction to other men that has the capacity to change the way practising clinicians, educators, counsellors and future researchers treat and understand the Queer community. (shrink)

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This study investigated women’s lived experience of becoming less obsessed with their bodily appearance. Written narrative accounts were collected from seven women co-participants and a phenomenological analysis of these descriptive protocols was then performed in order to reveal the prereflective structure of the focal phenomenon, seven essential constituents of which emerged. A major goal of this research was to contribute to the undernourished area of phenomenological research regarding the experience of body image.

MY programme is as follows: I shall draw a general distinction between morals and moral philosophy in order to show that an ethical theory cannot be neutral and autonomous but must have an empirical foundation. Both ethical naturalists and existentialists agree that an adequate moral theory must be based on anthropological considerations. They however differ on one major issue: ethical naturalists maintain that such a theory must be scientifically grounded, existentialists that it must be grounded on experience phenomenologically described. The (...) weakness of the naturalists’ position becomes apparent when some anthropological notion like the concept of action is clarified, since human behaviour of a morally relevant kind cannot be fully understood from a scientific point of view. (shrink)

This essay compares Freud’s and Heidegger’s concept of Angst. Heidegger’s and Freud’s interpretations are guided by different aims: A) in “Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety” Freud tries to define the concept of anxiety as a main element in neurosis; B) Heidegger’s notion plays a major role in gaining the existential meaning of Dasein. Despite the differences, this essay claims that it is possible to discover a common anthropo-existential interpretation. Anxiety marks the anthropological and existential passage from the non-distinction (...) of the pre-subjective life to the distinction that emerges from the progressive differentiation of the subject from the world. From such a distinction originates the conflict between the tendency to regain non-distinction and the necessity of multiplicity. In Freud, anxiety is the price for the renunciation of indistinction; in Heidegger, anxiety is encountered when this price is recognized as unavoidable. This is the core problem that this study takes into account in order to show the existential and anthropological role of anxiety. I will proceed with an analysis of Freud’s interpretation of anxiety, and then with the Heideggerian notion. The third part points out the affinity between them. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the dis-chronic temporality that characterizes the trauma of birth. In order to show the latter, we compare the temporalities of trauma and aesthetic experience. To perform this temporal analysis, the text adopts a phenomenological viewpoint. (shrink)

Background: As frail older people might have difficulties in expressing themselves, their needs are often interpreted by others, for example, by significant others, whose information health care staff often have to rely on. This, in turn, can put health care staff in ethically difficult situations, where they have to choose between alternative courses of action. One aspect that might be especially difficult to express is that of existential loneliness. We have only sparse knowledge about whether, and in what way, (...) the views of frail older persons and their significant others concerning existential loneliness are in concordance. Objective: To contrast frail older persons’ experiences with their significant others’ perceptions of existential loneliness. Methods: A case study design was chosen for this study. Individual interviews with frail older persons and interviews with their significant others, as well as field notes, served as a basis for the study. A thematic analysis was used to interpret data. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the principles of research ethics. Findings: The findings showed three themes: Meaningless waiting in contrast to lack of activities, Longing for a deeper connectedness in contrast to not participating in a social environment and Restricted freedom in contrast to given up on life. Discussion: Knowledge about the tensions between older persons’ and their significant others’ views of existential loneliness could be of use as a basis for ethical reflections on the care of older people and in the encounter with their significant others. Conclusion: It is of importance that health care professionals listen to both the frail older person and their significant other and be aware of whose voice that the care given is based on, in order to provide care that is beneficial and not to the detriment of the older person. (shrink)

Current health policy, high‐profile failures and increased media scrutiny have led to a significant focus on patient experience in Britain's National Health Service (NHS). Patient experience data is typically gathered through surveys of satisfaction. The study aimed to support a better understanding of the patient experience and patients' expression of it through consideration of the aspects of the patient experience on NHS wards which are by their nature impossible to capture through patient satisfaction surveys. Existential phenomenology was used to (...) develop an in‐depth exploratory narrative, expressed through the voices of the participants. Data collection involved in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews with 12 purposively sampled participants, with analysis by means of hermeneutics. Though the individuality of each experience was apparent and cannot be overemphasised, common factors emerging from the data included uncertainty and unexpectedness, suffering and finitude, the futility of feedback and bureaucracy and absurdity. Overall, participants demonstrated how their individual personalities and expectations affected their response both to illness or injury and to their hospital admissions, highlighting feelings of vulnerability and voicelessness as a response to hospitalisation. The findings of this study provide useful insight into the patient experience on British hospital wards, and the value of an existential–phenomenological approach is demonstrated. (shrink)

Some recent work by philosophers of mathematics has been aimed at showing that our knowledge of the existence of at least some mathematical objects and/or sets can be epistemically grounded by appealing to perceptual experience. The sensory capacity that they refer to in doing so is the ability to perceive numbers, mathematical properties and/or sets. The chief defense of this view as it applies to the perception of sets is found in Penelope Maddy’s Realism in Mathematics, but a number of (...) other philosophers have made similar, if more simple, appeals of this sort. For example, Jaegwon Kim (1981, 1982), John Bigelow (1988, 1990), and John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter (1990) have all defended such views. The main critical issue that will be raised here concerns the coherence of the notions of set perception and mathematical perception, and whether appeals to such perceptual faculties can really provide any justification for or explanation of belief in the existence of sets, mathematical properties and/or numbers. (shrink)

Although in the past qualitative research in the field of management did not achieve much acknowledgement, mainly due to the impossibility of synthesising subjective experiences into generally valid statements, there is now a recognition of the significant importance of it. This is due to dynamic changes in society and global challenges that place high demands on managers and put pressure on the need to come up with new creative solutions to problems. The qualitative approach allows understanding the value orientation (...) and the very ways of being of a manager, which is an important prerequisite for their self-development and learning. This paper highlights the intersections between the existential themes found in the research perspectives of existential hermeneutic phenomenology and Zen practice and proposes the development of a cross-cultural research framework that provides an interpretation of the lived experience of managers. The core existential insights that help to understand the lived experience of managers are the positive meaning of existential disruptions and dilemmas, authenticity of experience, and dialogical learning. (shrink)

Predictive genetic testing may confront those affected with difficult life situations that they have not experienced before. These life situations may be interpreted as ‘absurd’. In this paper we present a case study of a predictive test situation, showing the perspective of a woman going through the process of deciding for or against taking the test, and struggling with feelings of alienation. To interpret her experiences, we refer to the concept of absurdity, developed by the French Philosopher Albert Camus. (...) Camus' writings on absurdity appear to resonate with patients' stories when they talk about their body and experiences of illness. In this paper we draw on Camus' philosophical essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, and compare the absurd experiences of Sisyphus with the interviewee's story. This comparison opens up a field of ethical reflection. We demonstrate that Camus' concept of absurdity offers a new and promising approach to understanding the fragility of patients' situations, especially in the field of predictive testing. We show that people affected might find new meaning through narratives that help them to reconstruct the absurd without totally overcoming it. In conclusion, we will draw out some normative consequences of our narrative approach. (shrink)

This book offers cutting edge research on the modifications and disruptions of bodily experience in the context of anxiety, depression, trauma, chronic illness, pain, and aging. It presents original contributions in applied phenomenology, biomedical ethics, and the use of medical technologies.

In The Decline of the West Spengler puts forward a type of philosophical anthropology, an account of the structures of human experiential consciousness and a method of “physiognomic” analysis, which I argue has dimensions that can be understood as akin to existential phenomenology. Humanity, for Spengler, is witness to the creative flux of “Becoming” and constructs a world of phenomena bounded by death, underpinned by the two prime feelings of dread and longing and structured by the two forms of (...) Destiny (Time) and Direction (Space). Human existence, Spengler argues, is future-directed and open in the sense that there is a certain degree of freedom in the ways in which humanity can actualize its existential possibilities. In the course of elaborating the existential implications of this future-orientation, Spengler introduces the concept of care (Sorge), the fundamental experiential structure. (shrink)

As early as 1905, Husserl made clear that, when it comes to aesthetic consideration, our “interest” is not directed toward the existence of the object as such, but rather toward the object’s way of appearance. Husserl’s famous letter to Hofmannsthal (1907) goes as far as to suggest that any existential concerns are potentially even a menace to the purity of aesthetic experience. This position clearly echoes Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment presented in the third Critique, notably as regards the (...) notion of disinterestedness. However, this is not tantamount to claiming that aesthetic attitude implies the suspension of all interest: this paper aims to show that it would be more appropriate to discuss it in terms of a change of interest: from an existential interest to an axiological one. (shrink)

Several countries have legalized euthanasia on the basis of medically diagnosable suffering over the last decennial; the criteria to which they adhere differ. The topic of this article is euthanasia on the basis of existential suffering. This article presents a recent proposal to legalize euthanasia for people who experience such suffering and then discusses the issue of what the value of life may be, and whether the standard that life is normally something positive should be accepted. This provides the (...) foundation to answer the question of whether euthanasia on the basis of existential suffering should be allowed. (shrink)

The experience of illness raises profound issues concerning the sense or non-sense of human existence as a whole: does life have meaning when it is marked by suffering? And what meaning would it bear, in this case? These questions are asked by both caregivers and recipients of care when they come into contact with limits, pain, and death. In this regard, the existential condition of homo patiens is ambiguous: it can lead either to nihilism and despair or to a (...) higher level of awareness and responsibility. Studies on resilience, post-traumatic growth, and meaning-making processes seem to suggest that in difficult situations the search for meaning comes most clearly to the fore, so that the possibility of finding meaning in life can be a protective factor and a key therapeutic resource, while meaninglessness increases weakness and vulnerability. But what is meant by “meaning” in the illness experience and how may it be integrated into one’s personal life story? This question is answered here in terms of narrative methods that can enhance healthcare practitioners’ capacity to approach their patients with sensitivity and deep understanding and guide them to find meaning in their lives, despite all. (shrink)

This collection of ten original essays was first published in 1977. It engages the 'crisis in sociology' at the most fundamental level of thought and experience. Existential sociology is defined as the study and understanding of all forms of human existence. Without seeking to erect a pristine philosophical sanctuary of its own, Existential Sociology examines and criticizes the underlying philosophical assumptions of previous theories of social science, while elaborating its own approach to human understanding. The contributors are concerned (...) with constructing practical as well as theoretical truths about social life - how we feel, think and act. In contrast to most other sociologies, the emphasis is on the independence and dominance of human feelings over the evaluative and cognitive features of social actions. Students and teachers of sociology and people in related fields interested in the connection between social science and their own subjects will find Existential Sociology useful and absorbing. (shrink)

The oncological disease experience is counted as a wound in the body and mind attributable to a traumatic experience that fragments and disorients the person’s biography. The neoplasia leaves marks and scars in both somatic and existential level. The illness experience suggests to patient to look for meaning that cannot be unheard. The literature associating the concept of liminality in oncological disease to understand the process of meaning making. The definition of new horizons of meaning, generated by crossing the (...) limen, opens up a new self-awareness and worldview. The autopoietic dimension present in oncological disease reveals new scenarios of generativity and existential planning in the direction of self-realization in the cipher of the possible. The contribution presents the story of Anastasia, a 41-years-old nurse. A few months after her new marriage and close to a professional promotion, she receives the diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma: a very aggressive, low-incidence, neoplasia, without specific therapeutic lines and with a negative prognosis. Anastasia’s words, thoughts and emotions, collected in the course of some testimonies in a university classroom, are analyzed and deciphered within the pedagogical paradigm, refering to the perspective of pedagogical problematicism and phenomenological pedagogy. (shrink)

Europe's leading existential thinkers -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus -- all felt that Americans were too self-confident and shallow to accept their philosophy of responsibility, choice, and the absurd. "There is no pessimism in America regarding human nature and social organization," Sartre remarked in 1950, while Beauvoir wrote that Americans had no "feeling for sin and for remorse" and Camus derided American materialism and optimism. Existentialism, however, enjoyed rapid, widespread, and enduring popularity among Americans. No (...) less than their European counterparts, American intellectuals participated in the conversation of existentialism. In Existential America , historian George Cotkin argues that the existential approach to life, marked by vexing despair and dauntless commitment in the face of uncertainty, has deep American roots and helps to define the United States in the twentieth-century in ways that have never been fully realized or appreciated. As Cotkin shows, not only did Americans readily take to existentialism, but they were already heirs to a rich tradition of thinkers -- from Jonathan Edwards and Herman Melville to Emily Dickinson and William James -- who had wrestled with the problems of existence and the contingency of the world long before Sartre and his colleagues. After introducing this concept of an American existential tradition, Cotkin examines how formal existentialism first arrived in America in the 1930s through discussion of Kierkegaard and the early vogue among New York intellectuals for the works of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus. Cotkin then traces the evolution of existentialism in America: its adoption by Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison to help articulate the African-American experience its expression in the works of Norman Mailer and photographer Robert Frank its incorporation into the tenets of the feminist and radical student movements of the 1960s and its lingering presence in contemporary American thought and popular culture, particularly in such films as Crimes and Misdemeanors , Fight Club and American Beauty . The only full-length study of existentialism in America, this highly engaging and original work provides an invaluable guide to the history of American culture since the end of the Second World War. (shrink)

The Matrix raises several familiar philosophical problems in such new ways that students all over the country are assigning it to their philosophy professors. In so doing, they have offered us a great opportunity to illustrate some of the basic insights of existential phenomenology. The Matrix might seem to renew Descartes’s worry that, since all we ever experience are our own inner mental states, we might, for all we could tell, be living in an illusion created by a malicious (...) demon. In that case, most of our beliefs about reality would be false. But there is a way of understanding The Matrix that denies the mediation of mental states and shows those living in the Matrix to be in direct touch with Matrix reality. The Matrix world is public and objective, not a private subjective dream. Still, there is clearly a sense in which the Matrix world, while not merely mental, is not real either. There is after all a demon—the AI intelligences and their computer—that has in some sense fooled all those who accept the reality of the Matrix world. Thus, the film’s account of our situation is even more disturbing than Descartes’s claim that we are each confined to our own mind. The Matrix world is a vivid illustration of Descartes’s additional prescient claim that we could never be in direct touch with the real world because we are all what we would now call brains in vats. (shrink)

The article analyzes the experience of climate anxiety. The investigation is phenomenological in the sense that I will attempt to show that contemporary climate anxiety has a distinctive structure and philosophical meaning, which make it different from both psychological anxiety and existential anxiety, as commonly understood. I will also draw out the consequences of my phenomenological analysis for climate politics. My contention is that forms of prefigurative climate politics can respond to the profound disorientation and apathy regarding our future (...) and help us face down the hyperbolic nihilism shadowing us. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the Anatman experience as described by Guatma(6th century BCE). Many Buddhist philosophers consider the absence of self as a foundational experience of Buddhism. This paper elaborates the Buddhist Absence of Self from the View of Existential Phenomenology. The paper articulates the phenomenological difference between the Ontic-Ontological absence of Self in early Buddhism and the Ontic-Ontological presence of Self in Contemporary Existential Phenomenology. Throughout the paper there is an Existential Phenomenological focus on the intertwining (...) of our Sense of Self and our Sense of Being. The sense of self in early Buddhism is being-less, baseless and empty. Empty of What? Empty of Being! There is no presence of Being and no Being of presence. There is no experience of Being. There is no source of Being. There is no source of Being for our mind. The mind is absent of Being. There is no source of Being for us as person. In early Buddhism the absence of self is the absence of Being-ness. (shrink)

The aim of what I propose to call “existential aesthetics” is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues for future research (...) and Section VI presents some concluding thoughts about the potential of existential aesthetics and why philosophers should be encouraged to fulfill this potential. (shrink)

In current philosophy of mind, there is lively debate over whether emotions, moods, and other affects can extend to comprise elements beyond one’s organismic boundaries. At the same time, there has been growing interest in the nature and significance of so-called existential feelings, which, as the term suggests, are feelings of one’s overall being in the world. In this article, I bring these two strands of investigation together to ask: Can the material underpinnings of existential feelings extend beyond (...) one’s skull and skin? To begin, I introduce and adopt a componential-systemic view of extended affectivity. In doing so, I specify the vehicle externalist criteria for extension employed in my analysis. I then define what existential feelings are and pinpoint several key issues in their potential extension. More specifically, I identify sensorimotor ‘know-how’ as a possibly extending component of existential feeling and posit it as the fulcrum of my argument. Finally, I move on to consider the extension of existential feeling via sensory substitution, especially through so-called Tactile Visual Sensory Substitution (TVSS) devices. Informed by both philosophical and empirical studies, I argue that, under certain conditions, (a) the agent’s implicit sensorimotor processing and a TVSS device can become coupled into a new systemic whole, which in turn (b) reconfigures the material underpinnings of the agent’s pre-intentional world-experience. This, I conclude, counts as a cogent case for extended existential feeling. (shrink)

Personal recovery entails the idea of learning to live a good life in the face of mental illness. It takes place in a continuous dynamic between change and acceptance and involves the existential dimension in the broadest sense. With cognitive self-regulation and empowerment as central elements, however, current models of recovery mostly have an individual focus instead of a relational one. Furthermore, there seems to be an emphasis on the component of change. Little attention is payed to the role (...) and integration of dealing with loss in personal recovery. In this paper, the role of loss in mental illness will be elaborated from an existential perspective. This will be done by relating existential changes to possibly disruptive experiences of loss in wider experience. With the help of several perspectives on dealing with loss it will be argued this can be integrated in processes of recovery. Then, it will be elaborated how reexperiencing a state of being surrounded, or being included, being held is a necessary part of recovery. The result consists of a refinement of the view on personal recovery. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to arrive at a better understanding of what existential loss and loss in wider experience in the context of psychopathology entails, and (2) to further develop perspectives on recovery in mental health care. (shrink)