RESUMO Nossa intenção é apresentar a filosofia da vida de Renaud Barbaras, reunida em Le désir et le monde, e o lugar que ela nos parece ocupar na fenomenologia. Barbaras divide sua filosofia da vida em três níveis: fenomenológico, cosmológico e metafísico. Sem deixar de contemplar seu projeto total, nosso enfoque será mais fenomenológico, destacando, e discutindo, suas noções de desejo, sentimento e relação com o outro. ABSTRACT Our intent is to present Renaud Barbaras' philosophy of life, assembled in his (...) book 'Le désir et le monde', as well as the place it seems to us it occupies in phenomenology. Barbaras divides his philosophy of life in three levels: the phenomenological, the cosmologic and the metaphysic levels. Though not foregoing his overall project, our focus will be rather a phenomenological one, highlighting and discussing his notions of desire, feeling and relationship with the other. (shrink)

First, we investigate the pertinence of Deleuze-Guattari's criticisms to the philosophy of the flesh, in Merleau-Ponty, particularly this criticism of introducing the image of the transcendent in the immanence of the experience. Finally, we outline the possibility of the affection concept in Deleuze-Guattari be a way of addressing the ontological issue that Merleau-Ponty faced, overcoming the boundaries of the flesh concept, particularly the one of the supposed ambiguity still present in the pair "flesh of the world" and my flesh, according (...) to the criticism of Renaud Barbaras. (shrink)

What forms of consciousness can the subject have of her body in action? This is a recurrent issue in contemporary research on skilled movement and expertise, and according to a widespread view, the body makes itself inconspicuous in performance in favour of the object or goal that the activity is directed to. However, this attitude to consciousness in bodily performance seems unsatisfying for an understanding of skilled action, and the work of several researchers can be seen as responding to this (...) view: Montero, Legrand, Ravn and others in the philosophy of expertise and of dance have developed various notions of consciousness and cognition to account for the mindful processes at play in performance. Two related questions can be distinguished here: 1. Is there an inherent conflict between skilled action and at least more than marginal awareness of that action, or is it possible – and even desirable – to reflect on our own performance without considerably impeding on it? 2. What forms of consciousness pertaining to the body in action must we distinguish in order to answer the first question? This paper gives an overview of this discussion, focusing on the second issue, although the first will come into play in so far as it is linked with the latter question. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of bodily reflection and on dancers’ descriptions, I show that there is, in phenomenological terms, a bodily level of reflection: a fully conscious and exploratory activity that is led by the skilled body, and that is explicitly aimed at by many performers. (shrink)

As Husserl already noticed, artworks themselves have a phenomenological character. This means, however, that to experience artworks as phenomena no “epoché” and no “phenomenological reduction” is necessary. The leading question of my essay is whether, and possibly how, this observation can be methodologically generalized for understanding phenomena. I discuss if, and possibly how, a phenomenological reflection on art allows and even demands a general conception of phenomenology that nevertheless does not confuse artworks with phenomena in general. My intention is to (...) show that and how phenomenality can be clarified with reference to its spatial character. Accordingly, works of architecture that are artworks will play a decisive role in my argument. (shrink)

Cuerpo físico y cuerpo vivido no deben interpretarse como dos realidades separadas, sino que representan dos aspectos distintos de la misma experiencia corporal descrita en términos fenomenológicos. La experiencia de la corporalidad puede seguir dos direcciones: a) la primera es una dirección ascendente, que implica el desarrollo de las posibilidades de movimiento, acción y expresión del cuerpo en toda su plenitud; b) el otro camino o dirección, en contraste con el anterior, toma una senda descendente, y se halla estrechamente relacionado (...) con la experiencia del dolor, de la limitación, de la resistencia corporal que es experimentada como oposición a la propia voluntad: es el cuerpo vulnerable. Aquí reaparece un nuevo dualismo: el cuerpo poético de la expresión frente al cuerpo vulnerable de la enfermedad y el dolor. Mi contribución trata de cuestionar la idea de que el cuerpo poético de la expresión artística y el cuerpo vulnerable de la vejez, de la discapacidad o de la enfermedad, pertenezcan a esferas completamente separadas. Con este propósito, se intenta poner de relieve los múltiples puntos de intersección entre ambas perspectivas, al tiempo que se sostiene que tales intersecciones pueden llegar a ser interesantes puntos de partida de la investigación interdisciplinar. (shrink)

Following Merleau-Ponty´s inspiration, B. Waldenfels deals with embodiment emphasizing its responsive dimension, i.e., modes of bodily behavior and experience that respond to interpellations of the strange. From this view, the article aims to ex­plaining the intertwining of body and nature with the intention of showing that nature, understood as another side of human being, implies an alterity that cannot be reduced to the logic of intentionality nor to the logic of communication. The interpellation that arises from Nature has, on the (...) one hand, the meaning of appeal in the sense of an address to somebody, and, on the other, of pretention as an interpellation to something. Based on these presuppositions, the second part of the article tries to show how, by means of painting, a responsive action is set in motion. The features of singularity, unavoidable­ness, subsequence, asymmetry, and innovation that characterize the logic of the answer guiding this action. (shrink)

This paper responds to the issues raised by D. Chalmers by offering a research direction which is quite radical because of the way in which methodological principles are linked to scientific studies of consciousness. Neuro-phenomenology is the name I use here to designate a quest to marry modern cognitive science and a disciplined approach to human experience, thereby placing myself in the lineage of the continental tradition of Phenomenology. My claim is that the so-called hard problem that animates these Special (...) Issues can only be addressed productively by gathering a research community armed with new pragmatic tools for the development of a science of consciousness. I will claim that no piecemeal empirical correlates, nor purely theoretical principles, will really help us at this stage. We need to turn to a systematic exploration of the only link between mind and consciousness that seems both obvious and natural: the structure of human experience itself. In what follows I motivate my choice by briefly examining the current debate about consciousness at the light of Chalmer’s hard problem. Next, I outline the phenomenological strategy. Finally I conclude by discussing some of the main difficulties and consequences of this strategy. (shrink)

For many people, laypeople as well as animal scientists and philosophers, animal welfare involves animal feelings. Scientifically, however, animal feelings are problematic. In the concluding remarks of a conference about the welfare of domestic animals in 1994, for example, two questions for further research were proposed: (1) What is the nature of feelings? and (2) Why is it not possible to measure the occurrence of feelings in animals directly? This book intends to give a philosophical and scientific-theoretical answer to both (...) questions. The two questions are transformed into the following: (1) How can we conceptualize animal experiences such as feelings or emotions in a philosophically and theoretically sound way? and (2) Which method is appropriate to gain knowledge of animal experiences?These questions are answered first by examining two ethological animal welfare theories, namely that of Wiepkema and Toates and that of Dawkins. These theories have animal feelings of welfare as their subject matter. My conclusion after examining these welfare theories is that they do not conceptualize and obtain scientific knowledge of animal feelings at all. These theories only study animal behaviour and physical aspects of animals and assume that these aspects refer to animal feelings of welfare. Because they are applications of animal ethology, these theories stick to the natural-scientific method of research. The use of this method leads to two different conceptualizations of animal welfare feelings. The theory developed by Wiepkema and Toates conceives of animal feelings as unobservable, internal causes of animal behaviour. In Dakwins' theory, seen as a logical-behaviouristic theory, "animal feelings" are names for particular forms of law-governed animal behaviour. My comment on both theories is that animal experiences are solely theoretical concepts or designations. These ethologists simply assume rather than demonstrate that particular animal behaviour is caused by or associated with animal experiences.Wiepkema, Toates and Dawkins also acknowledge this. In order to say that animal behaviour refers to subjective animal feelings, they use the argument from analogy that states that because there are similarities between human and vertebrate animal behaviour and (neuro)physiological processes, it is plausible that animals have similar experiences as humans. However, like most animal welfare scientists, they correctly say that this is an unscientific argument. My final conclusion is that it is impossible to infer subjective animal experiences from objectively studied, physical and behavioural phenomena.This conclusion is in line with the main thesis of philosophical hermeneutics. This thesis states that subjects cannot be studied as such in a natural-scientific way because the concept of 'subject' demands a different, non-objectivating method of knowledge. Philosophical hermeneneutics can perhaps answer the question of a proper concept for subjective animal experience, although animals are not the explicit subject matter of this discipline.Two founding fathers of 20th Century hermeneutics, namely Dilthey and Gadamer, are studied concerning the concepts of 'subject' and 'experience'. My conclusion is that the subject-philosophy of these two philosophers is primarily a philosophy for human subjects, thereby more or less excluding the possibility for animal subjectivity. Since Gadamer does not consider animals linguistic beings, he seems to exclude animal experience. However, he opens up the way to a philosophy about animal experiences as bodily experiences. Dilthey, in his later writings, follows the same line of reasoning as Gadamer emphasizing the common, cultural-historical meaning of experiences and their expression and understanding, which is typically human. In his early writings, however, Dilthey underlines the individual, subjective aspects of experiences in humans and higher animals. Although he later does not reject this psychological foundation of experience, he simply fails to ask: what about animal experience? thereby evading the question of how we as cultural and historical humans can understand non-cultural and non-historical animal experience. The line of reasoning these two philosophers have in common is that they say: if animals have experiences, then these experiences must be similar to human experiences. Actually, their subject-philosophy is a philosophy of human subjectivity which can hardly cover animal experiences.Rather than trying to find a philosophical concept of human experience that can cover animal experience, a third possibility between human experience and the absence of experience is looked for. The philosophies of the phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty and Plessner which emphasize the bodily character of human and animal experience offer this possibility.Merleau-Ponty's philosophical phenomenology seems to promise a conceptualization of bodily animal experiences. The conclusion of his analysis of human perceptions is that not the linguistic but the bodily way of human being is the foundation of human perceptions and experiences. He sees the human body as ambiguous: both physical and conscious (i.e., experiencing) and he assumes this philosophical analysis adequate to cover animal relationships with their environment. Inspired by the difference that Merleau-Ponty makes between the bodily comprehension of humans and the hermeneutic understanding of person, I propose the concept of the impersonal meaning of animal experience as an alternative of the personal, cultural and historical character of human experience.Because Merleau-Ponty repeatedly says that all living beings are intertwinings of physical body and consciousness, he seems to say that plants and micro-organisms are also experiencing beings, thereby making no distinction between animals and other non-human organisms.Plessner offers the required specification. He asserts that human as well as animal relationships to their environment are mediated by a self. To him, the human relationship to the environment is mediated by language, personality, culture and history. What Plessner calls a "double human self" - namely a bodily bound self and a reflective "I" - is the foundation of this relationship. He further states that human personality, culture and history give form to bodily experiences. Animals, by contrast, cannot distance themselves from their own body and bodily-bound self. Animals do not have the capacity of reflective, linguistic, personal or cultural-historical experience; they have only bodily and environmentally tied, here-and-now experiences. Thereby, Plessner provides an elaborated, philosophical concept of animal experience that is not similar to the concept of human experience.Buytendijk, who worked as an animal psychologist around the middle of this century, can be seen as applying Plessner's concept of bodily and environmentally tied animal experience to research. He fully adopted Plessner's philosophy of animals and humans and in his own animal experiments and in discussions of those performed by others, he adopts the view that animal behaviour is an expression of their experiences which are bound to the present Umwelt and bodily possibilities of the animals involved.When comparing the method that Buytendijk used with the hermeneutical and phenomenological method of understanding human experiences, one can see that:Unlike the meaning of human experiences, the meaning of animal experiences is not personal within a cultural-historical context. This is a vital, impersonal meaning that is bound to momentary bodily perceptions and actions in the present Umwelt.We can understand this meaning within a species-specific context.This species-specific context is not given beforehand as a standard for interpreting animal behaviour. We attain knowledge of this context by interpreting the meaning of expressions of particular animals of a species under various circumstances.Because animals, contrary to humans, are not open to others, we cannot share with them our knowledge of the meaning of their experiences.The conclusion of these comparisons is that our interpretation of the meaning of animal expressions always remains, conceptually and methodically, our human interpretation. Whether our interpretations of the meaning of animal expressions are more or less adequate depends on whether they meet the usual standards of hermeneutical understanding: coherence between interpretations and accordance with biological knowledge of the animals involved.Finally, two contemporary animal welfare debates are discussed. The first (a conference about welfare of domestic animals in 1994) is a philosophical and theoretical debate about the concept of animal welfare and the method for measuring it. The two main issues at that conference were: are feelings a fundamental aspect of animal welfare? and how can we measure animal welfare? The second question turned out to be the most important. Some participants said that feelings, although important, should not belong to the scientific concept of animal welfare because they cannot be measured; physical indicators of welfare are sufficient for speaking of welfare. Other participants held that we can indirectly know feelings by measuring physical and behavioural indicators. However, most of these indicators are the same as those used by animal welfare scientists who claim that they measure only the physical aspects of animal welfare, irrespective of associated animal feelings. Animal welfare scientists who stress feelings of welfare simply add that these observations refer to the animals' feelings of poor welfare. One participant of the conference argued that physical indicators of animal welfare cannot be used as indicators of feelings of welfare too; these feelings have to be demonstrated independently of physical indicators of welfare.In the second debate about welfare of farm mink, the validity of the argument that feelings have to be demonstrated independently has been exemplified. The question in this debate was whether some particular behaviour of farm mink, called "stereotypic behaviour", counted as expressions of poor welfare. All participants in this debate tried to demonstrate or contest this by means of natural-scientific experiments. A critical reading of this debate demonstrates that scientists only agree upon the designs and results of such experiments if they also agree upon the interpretation of the meaning of the animals' behaviour. Almost all the conclusions from experiments regarding mink's welfare can be contested from the point of view of another interpretation of the mink's behaviour. This debate shows the primacy of the interpretation of animal behaviour as an expression of experiences over results of natural- scientific experiments. This primacy requires an explicit method for interpreting animal behaviour in order to reach an agreement about various interpretations. The type of research into welfare of farm mink as used by one of the participants in this debate is considered as containing elements of such an interpretative method. Contrary to her own intention, the researcher does not see the mink's behaviour only as a causal effect of fulfilled or unfulfilled needs, but primarily as meaningful behaviour. By carefully looking at and comparing the form of the behaviour of farm mink and wild mink, she tries to interpret their behaviour. The aim of these interpretations is not to look into the animals' heads in order to see experiences as causes of animal behaviours. I state that the aim is to attain a coherence between the assumed meanings of various animal behaviours. This coherence provides us with a background for natural-scientific explanations of these behaviours, experimental results and other physical data.At the end of this book, the four principles of animal welfare research as an integration of interpretative and natural-scientific research are evaluated:In order to study animal welfare as subjective experience, a view is needed that conceptually and methodically maintains animal welfare as subjective experience. Saying that animal welfare is not only physical but primarily a matter of feelings, requires something other than physical measurements of welfare. The debate about farm mink shows that scientists studying animal welfare from a natural-scientific angle already take this view, albeit implicitly. The method developed above can make the interpretation of animal behaviour a matter on which ethologists and other animal scientists can attain an argumentative consensus.Although the concept of animal welfare is about what matters to the animal, the animal's point of view should be abandoned as the criterion of knowledge of animal experiences of welfare. Animals are not able to agree upon interpretations of their behaviour. Hence, these interpretations always remain human interpretations.The species-specificity of animal behaviour cannot function as the criterion of animal welfare. Whether a particular animal behaviour is species-specific or not depends on one's interpretations of various behaviours of animals of a certain species.Interpretations of animal behaviour as indications of good or poor animal welfare should not be in contradiction with natural-scientific research data that also refer to good or poor welfare. They should be brought into coherence with each other. Natural science studies the physical aspect and interpretative science the expressive aspect. These two types of research are not independent of each other; they both rely upon background knowledge regarding what counts as good or poor animal welfare. In some cases the results of both types of research can contradict and challenge each other. I argue that one cannot say beforehand which of these views is correct; this can only be decided upon by trying to attain a new consensus about interpretative and natural-scientific assessments of the animals' welfare. (shrink)

In Jan Patočka’s phenomenology of intersubjectivity one can find clear influences of Merleau-Ponty. By both philosophers intersubjectivity is seen as a form of reversibility that has a primacy above personal subjectivity. But Patočka adds to this idea of reversibility the notion of surrender or dedication. In this article it is demonstrated how Patočka’s conception on surrender is developed in his idea of the three movements of human existence. Moreover, the understanding of intersubjectivity through surrender is presented as an important step (...) towards an answer to several points of critique on Merleau-Ponty’s views on intersubjectivity, that were brought to the fore by Claude Lefort. Finally, in this article several aspects of surrender are distinguished in order to give more insight in the functioning and effects of the third movement of human life. (shrink)

In my paper, I develop a phenomenological and pragmatist reflection on the fragility of liberal democracy’s moral foundations in times of war. Following Judith Shklar’s conception of the “liberalism of fear”, the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic order is seen as grounded in experiences of suffering caused by political violence. It is also assumed that the liberalism of fear delivers an adequate conception of the normative foundations of the European project. With the help of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (...) and Michel Henry, the paper ants to philosophically deepen the liberalism of fear by outlining a theory of “pathic evidence” as a normative foundation and the concept of a common “flesh of the political” as a shared moral sensitivity that sets boundaries to political conflict as well as the political imaginary, excluding what I call the production of “monumental meaning”. It then examines the question which political conditions are needed for this evidence to become a shared, communal criteria of ethical thought, and considers inner and outer challenges to the transmission and reproduction of this evidence in time, drawing especially on John Dewey’s ideas of democratic communication and social intelligence. In the current war, the following problem appears as crucial for the “soul” of European democracies which are confronted with the need to respond to Russia’s attack: How can a political morality grounded in pathic evidence be sustained, once it is challenged by an aggressor who, out of cultural and political reasons, shows a higher level of toleration towards violence? Besides aggression from an external foe, there are also temporal dynamics that further the loss of the inhibiting force of pathic evidence from the inside. As it shall be argued, boredom can be such a factor. The paper concludes by drawing conclusions for the current war in Ukraine. (shrink)

The problem of embodiment and that of the constitution of the lived body are central to the Husserlian phenomenology. Husserl’s endeavor to develop a theory of intersubjectivity and his attempt to avoid the solipsistic conundrum depend on his ability to solve the riddle of embodiment. Nevertheless, Husserl struggled until the late thirties to find an adequate account of the constitution of the body, without much success. In this paper I try to show with the help of Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Figal (...) that in order to solve the question of embodiment, one has to transcend the boundaries of traditional Husserlian phenomenology and to go beyond the cartesian mind-body dualism, which Husserl more or less adopts. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to suggest an alternative view to the conventional distinction between ontology and epistemology, thereby reconstituting the relationship between the cognitive self and the real world. More specifically, we will criticize the distinction by shedding light on a peculiar character of the body, which can provide a critical perspective against Cartesian dualism. Furthermore, we will give a sketchy description of the philosophy of touch, and propose the notion of skin-self, or self-manifesting self, as a (...) radical alternative to the modern conception of self. (shrink)

Most of the free will debate operates under the assumption that classic determinism and indeterminism are the only metaphysical options available. Through an analysis of Dennett’s view of free will as gradually evolving this article attempts to point to emergentist, interactivist and temporal metaphysical options, which have been left largely unexplored by contemporary theorists. Whereas, Dennett himself holds that “the kind of free will worth wanting” is compatible with classic determinism, I propose that his models of determinism fit poorly with (...) his evolutionary theory and naturalist commitments. In particular, his so-called “intuition pumps” seem to rely on the assumption that reality will have a compositional bottom layer where appearance and reality coincide. I argue that instead of positing this and other “unexplained explainers” we should allow for the heretical possibility that there might not be any absolute bottom, smallest substances or universal laws, but relational interactions all the way down. Through the details of Dennett’s own account of the importance of horizontal transmission in evolution and the causal efficacy of epistemically limited but complex layered “selves,” it is argued that our autonomy is linked to the ability to affect reality by controlling appearances. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that one’s participation in the experience of pregnancy is an essential part of the constitution of selves. Taking the radical notion of concrete essence as my point of departure in the first part of my paper, as well as the fundamental continuity between essences and facts proposed by Husserl, I will briefly map out my proposal within the contemporary feminist debate. In particular, I will argue for re-framing the role of pregnancy, rejecting the idea (...) of birth as an unattainable limit for human selfhood, and defending two complementary theses: the experience of pregnancy essentially shape the self/other distinction; the continuity between our “pre” and “post” natal lives is primarily expressed through the embodied nature of the self. The core of my argument is this: everyone has taken part in the experience of pregnancy and, in doing so, their self-constitution and development have been shaped during this deeply transformative process. The implication is that the self has an essentially embodied origin which is closely connected to another self ; relationality, intersubjectivity, and affectivity turn out to be the grounding features in defining the self. Even though arguments about embodied aspect of the self have been widely discussed from several philosophical perspectives, there is a significant lack of phenomenological attention in this regard for the issue of pregnancy as the constitutive experience for self’s constitution. Conversely, the literature focused on maternal-fetal encounters, and on the process of pregnancy, tends to address unilaterally the experience of the maternal subject, and then to neglect the proper view of the fetus as pre-infant. When attention has been paid to the fetal perspective, the issues tackled are mostly bioethical. In this context, I offer an account of the complexity and non-linearity of fetal-maternal bodily encounters on a phenomenological level, putting forward a third alternative. In particular, I aim to show the intertwining of fetal and maternal perspectives, and to analyse and articulate philosophically the empirical fact that everyone has been a pre-infant. In the second part of my paper, I will take into account some essential structures that shape and constitute the process of pregnancy, as well as the actors involved – that is to say, the maternal subject and the fetal self. All in all, I aim, as a theoretical outcome of the paper, to build a phenomenology of pregnancy that contributes towards a rethinking of embodied selfhood from their origin. In this context, I offer a proposal of accounting for the complexity and non-linearity of fetal-maternal bodily encounters on a phenomenological level: my aim is to show the intertwining between fetal and maternal perspectives, as well as to eviscerate and articulate philosophically the empirical fact that everyone has been a pre-infant. In doing so, the theoretical outcome is to build a phenomenology of pregnancy that may actively contribute to the general movement of rethinking the embodied aspect of the self.In the second part of my paper, I will take into account some essential structures that shape and inform the experience of pregnancy, and also the actors involved, that is to say the maternal subject and the fetal self. (shrink)

Desde la separación estricta de ética y derecho, la Rechtslehre kantiana sostiene que es la ética la que exige al sujeto que haga suya la máxima de actuar conforme al derecho. En la misma línea defiende J. F. Kervégan que los sujetos habríamos de reconocer como un deber ético el respeto a las normas jurídicas, sin que esto quiera decir que el derecho dependa de la ética, pues en estricto derecho no podría tenerse a la intención de conciencia como móvil (...) de la acción justa. Lo que el derecho regula y juzga son las acciones exteriores, y también el móvil tiene que es el poder coercitivo, que el derecho, a diferencia de la ética, tiene la facultad de imponer a la sociedad a fin de que cada miembro de ella en su acción externa evite por su propio interés perjudicar la libertad de cualquier otro. Por esta unicidad del móvil sostiene Kant que derecho y facultad de coaccionar significan una y la misma cosa. El formalismo de su planteamiento impide a Kant entrar en la complejidad del entramado de derechos y deberes, de bienes y cargas, que hace de la justicia distributiva el verdadero objeto del arte jurídico. Y por su externalización estricta del derecho reduce al jurista a la observancia de los textos, ignora el procedimiento de la controversia judicial, excluye la equidad como ajena al derecho, y convierte al derecho en el gendarme de la moral . En cuanto a la intención interior, una cosa es que las leyes no puedan motivar el albedrío por la conciencia de la obligación, y otra que si derecho y coacción significaran lo mismo no habría diferencia entre cumplir la ley para evitar el castigo o eludir el castigo burlando la ley -opción ésta que a muchos resultaría más provechosa, dado que el poder del Estado es incapaz de vigilar en cada momento a cada sujeto, y que los vigilantes mismos necesitan ser vigilados, ad infinitum. Tras una breve alusión a los conocidos argumentos de Platón, Hobbes y Montesquieu sobre la obediencia voluntaria como el otro móvil del derecho, no menos necesario que la coerción, se recuerda que también el profesor Kervégan ha defendido en otro contexto que un orden jurídico cualquiera tiene dos componentes irreductibles entre sí: el sistema de normas que define lo que debe ser y la decisión que conforma el ser al deber-ser. Finalmente, en el derecho interestatal no puede Kant invocar la facultad de coaccionar, que deja de significar lo mismo que "derecho" porque, al no haber ninguna fuerza superior a la soberanía de los Estados, el pacto durará hasta que alguno de ellos lo incumpla por su libre y soberana decisión. From a firm distinction between ethics and right, the Kantian Rechtslehre holds that the demand to adopt the maxim to act according to the right is an ethical demand. Also J.F. Kervégan defends that individuals should recognize the ethical obligation to respect juridical rules, but this does not mean that right depends on ethics, because, in strict right, internal disposition or intention could not be considered as motive for the rightful action. Law regulates and judges the external actions and also the motive has to be external as it is external the coercion that right -but not ethics- can impose on society so that each member of it, for his own interest, does not damage in his external agency any other member's freedom. Because of this only one motive, Kant declares that right and coercion's capacity signify the same thing. His formalist position stops him to go into the complex network of rights and duties, of advantages and burdens, which makes distributive justice the true subject of juridical art. Moreover, because of the strict externals of the law Kant is unaware of the juridical controversy, reduces the jurist to the observance of texts, ejects the equity as not right's own, and risks to transform the right in the gendarme of morals . With regard to intention, one thing is that in strict law the internal disposition can not be deemed as the motive, and other thing is that if law and coercion's capacity signify the same thing, there is no difference between obeing the law to avoide the punishment, or avoiding the punishment in breaking the law; then, the last option would be profitable for too many people, since the coercion power is not able to survey in every moment each individual, and the watchmen themselves need to be watched over and so on. After a short mention of the well known Plato, Hobbes and Montesquieu's arguments about the voluntary obedience as the other motive of the strict right, not less necessary than coercion, we remember that J. F. Kervégan also defended in another context that any juridical order has two irreducible le système des normes générales qui définissent ce qui doit être, et la décision qui conforme l'être au devoir-être. Finally, in the interstates right, Kant can not maintain that right and capacity of coercion mean the same thing, because there is not any force over the sovereignty of the States, and therefore the contract will last till one of them breaks it by its free and sovereign decision. (shrink)

The study focuses on a dimension concerning the status of the image as a diaphanous structure. It involves both a hermeneutical and a phenomenological approach which aims to set the guidelines to a poetics of the image by inquiring the function of the image in the foundation of the original significance. Does it open a horizon of the presence in the occurrence of an infra-textual phenomenon? In other words: that what pre-signifies, as absolute origin, does it give itself for comprehension (...) in “the flesh” of an image, in a speaking configuration? How could we intercept, beyond the poetical body, but through its signifying language, the unimaginable image of the poetal flesh, in the uncertain place where something appears in the perspective opened by a new point of view? In this case, the white comprehension implies an apophatic experience or a phenomenology of the unapparent. It should retrieve the way between what affirms and what covers, the body of an intermediate image between what is proposed for the speaking and the apparition of the significance itself: an oblique itinerary which intercepts the eternal initiation of the poetal saying. (shrink)

Minkälaista ontologista ajattelua Merleau-Ponty kehitteli myöhäisfilosofiassaan? Tarkastelen seuraavassa Merleau-Pontyn ontologian hahmotelmaa ennen kaikkea keskeneräiseksi jääneen ja postuumisti julkaistun teoksen Le visible et l’invisible muotoilujen pohjalta. Selkeytän Merleau-Pontyn teksteissä tulkinnanvaraiseksi jäänyttä lihan ontologista ulottuvuutta kahden hänen myöhäisfilosofiassaan keskeisen käsitteen, kaksoiskosketuksen ja käännettävyyden, avulla. Lihan rakenteen kuvauksessa käytän apuna Merleau-Pontyn esille nostamia taide-esimerkkejä. Esitykseni mukaan Merleau-Pontyn myöhäisfilosofian muotoilut viittaavat olemisen ajatteluun dynaamisena, aina vasta muotoutumassa olevana kudelmana, joka kykenee ylläpitämään sekä yhteyttä ja samuutta että erottumista. Merleau-Pontyn fenomenologiassa lihan ontologinen ulottuvuus mahdollistaa elettyjen (...) kokemustemme moniselitteisyyden ja keskeneräisyyden. (shrink)

The article follows the mutation suffered by the issue of alterity from Husserl to Heidegger and from Heidegger to Lévinas, envisaging it starting from temporality. We aim at replacing the question “Where is the other?” – that betrays the spatializing presuppositions of description – with “When is the other?” that can be clarified starting from the question “When are we together?”. Rather than deducing from the issue of co-presence, the final postponement of all attempt to conceive intersubjectivity in terms of (...) contemporaneity, we subject it to an analysis that raises again the theme of world-time starting from an attention that testifies to the multiple layers that constitute temporality and the plurality of durations that intertwine in it. (shrink)

The question I intend to answer is whether one can speak of a tacit metaphysics, not expressed conceptually, but nevertheless common. If the answer is positive and providing that it is specific to day-to-day life, such metaphysics may be called everyday metaphysics. To this end, I review the meaning of everyday life and its ambivalent character. Next, I present several milestones in the debate on the subject, from authors who have focused on a kind of usual, common or ‘natural’ metaphysics. (...) Lastly, I formulate the idea under consideration, namely that everyday life implies or underlies a certain metaphysics. I note that it is an implicit metaphysics – not expressed formally – and rather free. Embraced in experience with a certain degree of freedom, it is recognisable by means of certain representations active in our mind, by the manner of speaking or of understanding and by the common forms of expression. Its vibrancy, concrete and relaxed character makes it highly evocative of the mental life of an era. It ensures a truly essential difference in our everyday mode of being. (shrink)

The phenomenon of birth is here to be presented as a crucial one, discreet though, into Merleau-Ponty and Patočka’s philosophy. So it deserves a confrontation of their respective thoughts. Both of them have radicalised Husserl’s phenomenology into a philosophy of birth. This phenomenological achievement includes an ontology of birth, which feeds an anthropology in a brand new way, presented in the following pages.

The purpose of this paper is to lay out the similarities between the philosophical projects of Patočka and Merleau-Ponty, with respect to the question of the “limits of phenomenology”. We suggest that both these authors propose two complementary strategies in their attempt of overcoming the Husserlian phenomenology. The first one consists in extending the field of phenomenology so as for it to be able to encompass phenomena either insufficiently explored or misinterpreted by the conceptuality that Husserl put forth; the second (...) strategy, more ambitious, aims to overpass the very standpoint of phenomenology in favour of an ontological approach. We try to show that what profoundly motivates these attempts is a radical – and hence, ontological – reinterpretation of the Lebenswelt. (shrink)

Built upon the basic postulates of phenomenologic hermeneutics, this approach discusses the distinction between the poetic and the poetal body, investigating the possibility of the latter to reveal itself to the comprehensive awareness before its manifestation to the already interpretative one. An appearance that is captured by the eidetical intuition of the „white” comprehension as a potence of the signifiable which is prior to the proper act of signifying, in its original pure existence, that is in the very meaning in (...) which it is revealed. What is revealed is not the poetic body of a text that is already given in the static of the fact of being, but the self-revelation of the absolute in the poetal body of the fact of appearing, where the term „poetal” designates the dynamic attribute of the matrix poem of offering itself in the significance of self-affecting, its embodiment in the living flesh of the poem. (shrink)

According to Gurwitsch, the body is at least at the margin of consciousness. If all components of the field of consciousness were experienced as equally salient, we would indeed not be able to think and behave appropriately. Though the body may become the focus of our conscious field when we are introspectively aware of it, it remains most of the time only at the background of consciousness. However, we may wonder if bodily states do really need to be conscious, even (...) at the margin, or cannot be simply non-conscious. Action control requires permanent proprioceptive and visual feedback about the state and the position of our body parts. Experimental data show that action monitoring operates at a nonconscious level and we may similarly suggest that we have a continuous unconscious access to bodily information. In this chapter, I thus intend to describe the various levels of body representations with the help of Gurwitsch's distinction. I will investigate the properties and the function of each of these levels. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the issue of the ontological status of qualitative properties. I discuss the prevalent approaches to the problem of qualia in philosophy of mind, in relation to the various attempts at naturalizing the mind and the various theories of perception. I compare these views with Husserl's phenomenology, highlighting the phenomenological distinction between phenomenal contents of mental states and sensory properties of the perceived objects. I present some open issues of this view, in order to show how (...) they can be addressed in the light of some developments of the phenomenological inquiry in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

This thesis wrestles with the normativity of language, its usage and its practices while questioning the signifié-signifiant reality. A structural reading of language designs its translational practices within the source-target framework, thereby essentialising its relationship en passant: everything has meaning as long as we accept the hidden framework of a universal language. Therefore, language outlined as a system of signs is a product of transcendental considerations and consequently it renders practice into a hermeticrealm in which the distinction between eidos and (...) eidolon, right and wrong, familiar and unfamiliar, grammar and gibberish makes perfect sense and in which the translation from A to B is simply a matter of transferring identities. Linguistic power neutralises through its transcendental conditioning ephemera in life and world. We will discover that a phenomenological reading of language is open to layers which questions the dialectic setting of linguistic knowledge production. Phenomenology proposes to study life-world relationships by reducing the power of dialectical denomination to the power of gazing or to the lenses of ambiguity. Theorising language and translational practices within the phenomenological realm follows the concept of being oriented towards body-life-world while laying bare the phenomenon language. This revealing method supersedes empirical considerations since phenomenological methodology questions permanently our very own positioning. Hence, the transfer from A to B will be challenged by possibilities which are temporary: it is about a transfer zone featuring A as A’ to B or A’ in B / C. However, the phenomenological possibility reveals that the price for ephemera is tamed by the condition of its possibilities: indeed, the aporia of linguistic identity in polyvalence requires not only phenomenological brackets but also a transcendental backup. Chapter I and II study the translational practice of language and phenomenology by explaining its analysis via dynamised transcendental conditions. The disillusion of the phenomenological inquiry will be yield by radicalising phenomenological reading of language towards a phenomenographical practice of language. Chapter III goes to the extremes in exposing a language without content. The introduction of the trickster figure Narcissistgrotesque Face will be the anti-metaphor in which the grotesque line up forces us to learn bearing A with B and in which the non-content materiality of linguistic practices resemble le bas matérialisme. Not explanation, understanding and rendering things plausible is the movens for language but it is all about the spur of its enactment, its style and its story telling that renders translational practice visible. Chapter III is a performative practice in which we turn the text into texture. Translation happens then when your are perplex and the translational void enacts you and me. (shrink)

Context: Varela’s neurophenomenology was conceived from the outset as a criticism and dissolution of the “hard problem” of the physical origin of consciousness. Indeed, the standard (….

Resumen: El objetivo del siguiente trabajo es explicar cómo la elaboración de una ontología de la naturaleza por parte de Merleau-Ponty se circunscribe en el intento de elaborar un pensamiento del ser que no haga de éste un elemento del pensamiento abstracto, sino que dé cuenta de la experiencia concreta del ser en el mundo. En este sentido, son fundamentales los conceptos de intercorporalidad, negatividad y dialéctica.: The aim of the following work is to explain how the elaboration of an (...) ontology of nature by Merleau-Ponty belongs to an attempt of developing a thought of being which does not reduce it to an element of the abstract thought, but takes into account the concrete experience of being in the world. In this respect, the concepts of intercorporeality, negativity, and dialectics are fundamental. (shrink)

This text is the introduction of the special issue “Rhythm in social interaction” edited by Chiara Bassetti and Emanuele Bottazzi in Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, vol. 8, n. 3, December 2015. We thank Chiara Bassetti, Emanuele Bottazzi and the journal Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa for the permission to republish it. But, friend, when you grasp the number and nature of the intervals of sound, from high to low, and the boundaries of those intervals, and how many scales arise from them, (...) - Anthropologie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

In common language, education is mostly understood as teaching. In this article, I would like to employ the hermeneutical philosophy of Merleau-Ponty to draw attention on that other etymological background of education: educere. Education as educere is about liberating or displacing our view instead of achieving a liberated view. In this sense, education does not refer to an immaterial relation of knowing or mastering , but to a relation of being . I hope to demonstrate Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the body (...) can make us attentive to the importance of this hermeneutical and praxical character of education. After all, his thinking very aptly describes our relation to the world in terms of a corporeal being rather than in terms of a cognitive or abstract knowing. His conception of corporeality and of our being to the world deconstructs a mere formal and all too immaterial account of education. (shrink)

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the (...) view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, I explain both cognitive and social agency under the single explanatory framework provided by Dynamic Systems Theory. Drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, "embodied, "extended", "embedded", "enactive", and "ecological" approaches to cognition, as well as the conceptual resources of Dynamic Systems Theory, I construct a theory of agency that sees cognitive and social agents as far-from-equilibrium, open, recursively self-maintenant dynamic systems. Depending on the specifics of concrete circumstances, such systems, which I call "Dynamic Embodied Agents", may develop and possess emergent capacities for error-detection, flexible learning, normative behavior, representation, self-reflection, various modes of pattern-recognition, a temporal sense of self, and even moral responsibility. Some such systems are also sensitive to perceived social influences ; while reciprocally constituting and causally affecting them. (shrink)

This was originally written and presented at the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers on Folk Psychology vs. Mental Simulation: How Minds Understand Minds, run by Robert Gordon at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, June-July 1999. It has been only lightly revised since, and should be considered a rough draft. Needless to say, the ideas herein owe a lot to what I learned at the seminar from Robert Gordon and the other participants, particularly Jim (...) Garson. However, any errors are my responsibility alone. (shrink)

[In French]Both Patočka and Merleau-Ponty conceive the world not just as an Object, but rather as a field of an irreducible phenomenal and ontological depth. Patočka’s concept of movement and Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh are two concrete figures of this depth, and as such they are understood by the respective authors as that what stands at the origin of every singular being so far as it detaches itself on the ground of the world as an open totality. Nevertheless, the position (...) of the two concepts seems to be quite different in relation to the traditional categories of the metaphysics. We argue that Patočka’s concept of movement is profoundly rooted in, and dependent on, the classical oppositions, whereas Merleau-Ponty’s flesh makes it possible to understand them rather as abstractions produced by segregation from the original field of presence. In order to establish these points, we propose an interpretation of Patočka’s and Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the concepts of horizon and world, and of course of those of movement and flesh. [In French.]. (shrink)

resumo Neste artigo, pre t e ndemos mostrar como a concepção de Merleau- Po nty acerca das relações ent re sujeito perceptivo e mu ndo muda no decorrer de sua obra. Em seu livro Fenomenologia da Percepção, public a do em 1945, Merleau- Ponty atribui a tal sujeito a capacida de de assimilar ade q ua da mente o ser do mu ndo. No ent a nto, no início dos ano s cinqüenta, seu estudo da obra do psicólogo Kurt Koffka (...) explicita alguns resultados incompatíveis com a atribuição de tal capacida de ao sujeito. Por fim, em O Visível e o Invisível , Merleau-Ponty reconhece que as capacidades de assimilação perceptiva do ser do mundo possuem limitações. palavras-chave percepção; mundo percebido; mundo geográfico; fé perceptiva; ser. (shrink)

Comparo o poeta Charles Baudelaire e o filósofo Maurice Merleau-Ponty como críticos sociais da modernidade a partir do interior da sociedade moderna. Exploro a influência não reconhecida de Baudelaire sobre Merleau-Ponty como uma forma de reler a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty. Também examino a poesia de Baudelaire assim como seu ensaio “O pintor da vida moderna”. Embora o ensaio afirme ser uma análise da importância do pintor C. Guys, sustento que pode ser lido como autobiográfico - revelando uma consciência do poeta (...) enquanto crítico social da modernidade. Da mesma maneira, as caracterizações de artistas feitas por Merleau-Ponty revelam muito sobre a sua visão do papel do filósofo como crítico social. Pode-se ler a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty como uma arte em vez de como uma ciência das ciências. Finalmente, exploro as implicações políticas dessa fenomenologia baseada na estética. Sustento que há uma profundidade histórica revelada por essa arte fenomenológica do julgamento político que seria negligenciada por qualquer ciência política.I compare poet Charles Baudelaire and philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty as social critics of modernity from within modern society. I explore Baudelaire’s unacknowledged influence upon Merleau-Ponty as a means of re-reading Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. I examine Baudelaire’s poetry as well as his essay, The Painter of Modern Life. Though the essay claims to be an analysis of the significance of the painter C. Guys, I argue that it can be read as autobiographical - revealing a sense of the poet as social critic of modernity. Likewise, Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of artists reveal a great deal about his own view of the role of the philosopher as social critic. One can read Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as an art rather than as a science of sciences. Finally, I explore the political implications of this aesthetic-based phenomenology. I argue that there is an historical depth revealed by this phenomenological art of political judgment that would be neglected by any political science. (shrink)

En este artículo investigamos las aproximaciones teórico-prácticas entre integración cerebral y corporal que la filosofía fenomenológica anticipaba desde los comienzos del siglo veinte. A partir de nuestro trabajo práctico en la educación y la terapia psicomotriz, hemos encontrado en la virtualidad creadora de Bergson y en la perspectiva corporal de Merleau-Ponty, un inicio de reflexión teórica sobre la vertiente holística del saber que la neurociencia ha ido refrendando paulatinamente con sus descubrimientos.

Resumen: Siguiendo la inspiración de Merleau-Ponty, B. Waldenfels se ocupa de la corporalidad y pone énfasis en su dimensión responsiva, es decir, en modos de comportamiento y experiencia corporales que responden a interpelaciones de lo extraño. Desde esta perspectiva, este trabajo aspira a elucidar el entrelazamiento cuerpo-Naturaleza con la intención de mostrar que la Naturaleza entendida como otro aspecto del hombre implica una alteridad que no se reduce ni a la lógica de la intencionalidad ni a la lógica de la (...) comunicación. La interpelación que proviene de la Naturaleza tiene, por una parte, el significado de una apelación, comprendida como alocución a alguien, y, por otra, el de una pretensión, en el sentido de una interpelación a algo. Con base en estos presupuestos, la segunda parte de la exposición apunta a ilustrar la manera como a través de la pintura se pone en marcha un actuar responsivo, que se orienta por los caracteres singularidad, ineludibilidad, posterioridad, asimetría e innovación que caracterizan a la lógica de la respuesta.: Following Merleau-Ponty´s inspiration, B. Waldenfels deals with embodiment emphasizing its responsive dimension, i.e., modes of bodily behavior and experience that respond to interpellations of the strange. From this view, the article aims to explaining the intertwining of body and nature with the intention of showing that nature, understood as another side of human being, implies an alterity that cannot be reduced to the logic of intentionality nor to the logic of communication. The interpellation that arises from Nature has, on the one hand, the meaning of appeal in the sense of an address to somebody, and, on the other, of pretention as an interpellation to something. Based on these presuppositions, the second part of the article tries to show how, by means of painting, a responsive action is set in motion. The features of singularity, unavoidableness, subsequence, asymmetry, and innovation that characterize the logic of the answer guiding this action. (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo se propone examinar algunos límites de la célebre descripción merleau-pontiana del cuerpo vivido en términos de “esquema corporal” y “cuerpo habitual”, teniendo en cuenta referencias alternativas del corpus textual del filósofo a ciertas dimensiones de la experiencia corporal que desbordan tal marco. Tras analizar en primer término estas primeras definiciones que esbozan el perfil de un cuerpo hábil y competente correlativo de un entorno pragmático, consideramos seguidamente instancias de comportamientos no teleológicos ni funcionales y espacialidades no objetivas (...) ni instrumentales para concluir mostrando la relación de estos análisis con la tematización merleau-pontiana más amplia de los horizontes naturales de la experiencia. En un segundo plano evaluamos las críticas de exégetas tales como A. Lingis y J. Butler a ciertos déficits de las tesis merleau-pontianas, y relacionamos estas últimas con desarrollos filosóficos que manifiestan ciertas afinidades específicas, tales como los de E. Levinas y R. Caillois.: This paper intends to examine some of the limitations of the well-known MerleauPontian account of the lived body in terms of "body schema" and "habitual body", by taking into account some alternative references of the philosopher’s textual corpus to certain dimensions of corporeal experience that exceed such frames. After analyzing these former definitions that outline the profile of a skillful and competent body correlative of a pragmatic environment, we consider cases of non-teleological and non-functional behaviors and non-objective and non-instrumental spatialities to end up by showing the relationship between these analyses and the wider Merleau-Pontian account of the natural horizons of experience. Secondarily, we evaluate critiques such as A. Lingis’ and J. Butler’s aiming to certain deficits of Merleau-Pontian theses, and we identify certain relations that these theses hold with philosophical developments showing certain specific affinities, such as E. Levinas’ and R. Caillois’. (shrink)