Attempts to think anew about philosophical questions from the perspective of breath and breathing. As a physiological or biological matter, breath is mostly considered to be mechanical and thoughtless. By expanding on the insights of many religions and therapeutic practices, which emphasize the cultivation of breath, the contributors argue that breath should be understood as fundamentally and comprehensively intertwined with human life and experience. Various dimensions of the respiratory world are referred to as “atmospheres” that encircle and connect human existence, (...) coexistence, and the world. Drawing from a number of traditions of breathing, including from Indian and East Asian religion and philosophy, the book considers breath in relation to ontological, hermeneutical, phenomenological, ethical, and aesthetic concerns in philosophy. The wide-ranging topics include poetry, theater, environmental issues and health, feminism, and media studies. “Atmospheres of Breathing, the first collection of its kind, explores an emerging ‘respiratory philosophy’ of great consequence for philosophy and other fields. Its rich and diverse essays, many written by the pioneers of this radically new direction, show the deep historical and intercultural roots of such a philosophy, ranging from treatments of forerunners like Zhuangzi and Heraclitus to contemporary theorists of breathing such as Abram and Kleinberg-Levin. Presented here is the vision of innovative ways in which philosophy, on its own or inspired by spiritual practices, can bring breathing into the center of its concern. This is a landmark book that scintillates with brilliant and original insights. If taken as seriously as it deserves, this book has the potential to revolutionize contemporary and future thought.” — Edward S. Casey, author of The World at a Glance and The World on Edge “Air, the misunderstood element, finds ways and means of advancing to places where no one reckons with its presence; and, more significantly, it makes space on its own strength for strange places where there were previously none.” — Peter Sloterdijk. (shrink)

The new phenomenological and aesthetic paradigm of atmospheres, conceived as feelings spread out in the external space and not as private moods, is tested here from different points of view and different disciplines in the context of a full valorization of the so-called "affective turn" in Humanities.

There is fast-growing awareness of the role atmospheres play in architecture. Of equal interest to contemporary architectural practice as it is to aesthetic theory, this 'atmospheric turn' owes much to the work of the German philosopher Gernot Böhme. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces brings together Böhme's most seminal writings on the subject, through chapters selected from his classic books and articles, many of which have hitherto only been available in German. This is the only translated version authorised by (...) Böhme himself, and is the first coherent collection deploying a consistent terminology. It is a work which will provide rich references and a theoretical framework for ongoing discussions about atmospheres and their relations to architectural and urban spaces. Combining philosophy with architecture, design, landscape design, scenography, music, art criticism, and visual arts, the essays together provide a key to the concepts that motivate the work of some of the best contemporary architects, artists, and theorists: from Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Juhani Pallasmaa to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. With a foreword by Professor Mark Dorrian and an afterword by Professor David Leatherbarrow,, the volume also includes a general introduction to the topic, including coverage of it history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus. (shrink)

When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, advocates for an international climate policy development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it remains an onerous challenge for policymakers. -/- Atmospheric Justice (...) is the first single-authored work of political theory that addresses this pressing challenge via the conceptual frameworks of justice, equality, and responsibility. Throughout this incisive study, Steve Vanderheiden points toward ways to achieve environmental justice by exploring how climate change raises issues of both international and intergenerational justice. In addition, he considers how the design of a global climate regime might take these aims into account. Engaging with the principles of renowned political philosopher John Rawls, he expands on them by factoring in the needs of future generations. Vanderheiden also demonstrates how political theory can contribute to reaching a better understanding of the proper human response to climate change. By showing how climate policy offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, he illustrates the ways in which applying normative theory to policy allows us to better understand both. -/- Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Atmospheric Justice makes an important step toward providing us with a set of carefully elaborated first principles for achieving environmental justice. (shrink)

The phenomenology of atmospheres is recently gaining attention in debates on situated affectivity. Atmospheres are defined as holistic affective qualities of situations that integrate disparate affective forces into an identifiable and unitary gestalt. They point to a blurred, pathic, relational, and pre-individual form of experience which has been described in terms of ecological affordances. Despite its relevance in diverse areas of research such as architecture, phenomenological psychiatry and aesthetics, a thorough analysis of the phenomena of affective atmospheres from an enactive-ecological (...) perspective is missing in the literature. This article aims at clarifying how and to what extent affective atmospheres can be accommodated into ecological-enactive understandings of the environment in terms of affordances. To do so, I review four perspectives on ecological affordances – the gibsonian account, the relational account, affective affordances, and the Skill Intentionality Framework (SIF) – and contrast them with the ontological and epistemológical principles that ground the phenomenology of atmospheres. I argue that only the field perspective developed in SIF is compatible with the phenomenology of atmospheres. From this perspective, affective atmospheres can be understood as phenomenological counterparts of context sensitivity, that is, as the holistic and pathic background feelings that make certain affordances more salient than others. As a conclusion, the analysis in this article shows the potential of the phenomenology of atmospheres to enrich the ecological-enactive cognition framework. It also highlights the opportunity to construct a situated understanding of affectivity that is informed by phenomenological perspectives. (shrink)

This chapter traces the genealogy of the term atmosphere in the German language, identifies historical semantic shifts, and points to its grammatical specifics. The state of research on atmospheres is briefly summarized and an overview is offered of the various definitions of the term in different disciplines. Drawing on Timothy Morton’s theory of ambient poetics, and on Hermann Schmitz’s “new phenomenology,” four key characteristics of atmospheres are discussed and elaborated: their mereological constitution, their modal structure, their intensification at affective (...) thresholds, and their affective efficacy through suggestions of movement. (shrink)

This book provides a presentation of the concept of “atmosphere” in the realm of aesthetics. An “atmosphere” is meant to be an emotional space. Such idea of “atmosphere” has been more and more subsumed by human and social sciences in the last twenty years, thereby becoming a technical notion. In many fields of the Humanities, affective life has been reassessed as a proper tool to understand the human being, and is now considered crucial. In this context, the (...) link between atmospheres and aesthetics becomes decisive. Nowadays, aesthetics is no longer only a theory of art, but has recovered its original vocation: to be a general theory of perception conceived of as an ordinary experience of pre-logical character. In its four parts, this volume discusses whether atmospheres could take the prominent and paradigmatic position previously held by art in order to make sense of such sensible experience of the world. (shrink)

A growing number of lay Buddhist practitioners have sought out alternative ways to incorporate Buddhist teachings in their daily practices and make positive changes in society by “doing good” for others. Sometimes recognized as part of “humanistic Buddhism,” this approach emphasizes general morality and focuses on people who need help as a way to fulfill Buddhist teachings in this world. Some Chinese Buddhist practitioners who follow the Tibetan Buddhist tradition also carry out similar humanistic engagements but use more subtle space-making (...) processes and often “brand” these as Buddhist practices. Drawing on the ethnographic observations of lay Buddhist practitioners in urban China, this article examines how urban practitioners promote (middle-class) morality and well-being lifestyles through what I call “atmospheric Buddhism.” Ultimately, the article argues that an alternative mode of Buddhist practice is emerging in Chinese urban environments in order to cope with politically constrained environments. (shrink)

Interest in sensory atmospheres and architectural and urban ambiances has been growing for over 30 years. A key figure in this field is acclaimed German philosopher Gernot Böhme whose influential conception of what atmospheres are and how they function has been only partially available to the English-speaking public. This translation of key essays along with an original introduction charts the development of Gernot Böhme's philosophy of atmospheres and how it can be applied in various contexts such as scenography, commodity aesthetics, (...) advertising, architecture, design, and art. The phenomenological analysis of atmospheres has proved very fruitful and its most important, and successful, application has been within aesthetics. The material background of this success may be seen in the ubiquitous aestheticization of our lifeworld, or from another perspective, of the staging of everything, every event and performance. The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus reveals the theatrical, not to say manipulative, character of politics, commerce, of the event-society. But, taken as a positive theory of certain phenomena, it offers new perspectives on architecture, design, and art. It made the spatial and the experience of space and places a central subject and hence rehabilitated the ephemeral in the arts. Taking its numerous impacts in many fields together, it initiated a new humanism: the individual as a living person and his or her perspective are taken seriously, and this fosters the ongoing democratization of culture, in particular the possibility for everybody to participate in art and its works. (shrink)

À partir d’éléments théoriques situés au fondement de sa conception des atmosphères (espace pensé à partir de la présence charnelle vs conception géométrique de l’espace comme topos ou spatium ; notion de Befindlichkeit ou « disposition affective » ; réflexions sur la perception), le présent texte de Gernot Böhme offre une synthèse tout à fait remarquable de ses réflexions tissées entre architecture et atmosphères. Il s’agit dès lors, pour le philosophe allemand, de chercher tout autant à penser la spécificité esthétique (...) de l’architecture que de permettre de situer celle-ci de manière adéquate face aux enjeux du monde contemporain, ou encore d’inciter les architectes à réfléchir leur pratique dans et par le type de rapport à l’espace, au monde et aux hommes qui se manifeste dans la méditation de la notion d’« atmosphères ». (shrink)

Through an atmospherological approach, primarily inspired by the Aisthetik and the New Phenomenology, the paper investigates the relationship between atmosphere and lived space, defines what kind of perception the atmospheric one is and examines the space we experience in the lifeworld and to which plane geometry turns out to be completely blind. Sketching briefly the history of lived space, we assume that atmospheres function as affordances that permeate the lived space, i.e. as ecological invites or meanings that are ontologically (...) rooted in things and quasi-things. (shrink)

Dans cet article ici en traduction inédite, dont la première version allemande date de 2011, Hermann Schmitz s’interroge sur les éléments qui, se déployant dans l’interaction entre les édifices et la vie sensible et affective des habitants, constituent l’atmosphère d’une ville. Dans cette perspective, il met à contribution plusieurs grands concepts de sa philosophie (la « Nouvelle Phénoménologie » développée dès les années 1960), destinée à élucider l’expérience vécue involontaire : dynamique du corps de chair (Leib), suggestions de mouvements, caractères (...) synesthésiques. (shrink)

Unusual atmospheric phenomena (UAPs) were observed in daylight by multiple observers on board two civil aircraft in widely separated locations. We summarise results of an investigation based on radio communications reporting events in real time to Air Traffic Control (ATC), ATC radar and weather radar recordings, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) documents, witness interviews and statements, and other sources. We describe attempts to explain the phenomena with the help of expert specialist advisers and professional resources in the fields of meteorology, atmospheric (...) optics, oceanography and geophysics. We are able to show that widespread media stories describing enormous phenomena up to a mile wide and detected by radar were based on speculation and misunderstandings. Many news reports were grossly exaggerated and inaccurate. However, we are unable to conclusively identify the UAPs observed. It proves possible to eliminate a number of theories with a fairly high level of confidence, leaving us with two types of phenomena—a rare atmospheric-optical effect or an earthquake precursor—both of which have the potential to explain at least some, although not all, features of the reports. We highlight certain features that appear to leave open the possibility of unusual physical processes. Keywords: UAP—atmospheric optics—anomaly—mirage—earthquake lights—EQL. (shrink)

Comment passer de la réflexion esthétique sur les atmosphères à une pratique architecturale des atmosphères? En suivant les Leçons d’esthétique du philosophe allemand Gernot Böhme, nous analysons la façon dont leur esprit est mis en œuvre par l’architecte suisse Peter Zumthor. Comment le sentiment fondamental de la présence est-il principiel dans le projet du plus grand musée d’art de Los Angeles? Composée de propositions concrètes, l’enjeu de l’esthétique envisagée ici tient moins de la détermination de l’œuvre d’art que du sentiment (...) de liberté qu’éprouvent des sujets dans le site qui leur est offert. (shrink)

L’utopie est nominalement un nulle part qui est aussi, comme nous le dit Thomas More, un “bon” endroit. Bien qu’il existe des notions concurrentes, la description grecque occupe une place importante dans la plupart des récits d’utopie. Les détails de cet idéal sont si précis que la littérature utopique consiste en un catalogue (et une critique) de ces caractéristiques. Cet essai attire l’attention sur le parfum attribué aux « Îles des bienheureux » de Lucien, ainsi que sur la description qu’en (...) fait Nietzsche, sur sa sensibilité à l’odorat et sur l’attention portée par Illich à l’« atmosphère » et au nez. On aborde également le scepticisme envers l’utopie et des parallèles sont établis, d’une part, avec les critiques pragmatiques de l’utopie comme étant intrinsèquement totalitaires, d’autre part, avec la « bonne vie » dans la théorie politique et le défaut programmatique de la fantaisie techno-utopique. L’article se termine par une discussion d’Illich sur la pax – c’est-à-dire la respiration. (shrink)

Paintings can exert a strong effect on their viewers by creating atmospheres. But how is it possible for a painting to create an atmosphere? My goal in this paper is to provide a partial answer to this question by focusing on the depiction of light. I argue that paintings can elicit experiences of atmospheres in part because they can depict pictorial space as filled with ambient light that has a distinctive phenomenal character. It is in virtue of this distinctive (...) phenomenal character that the depicted ambient light can make a significant contribution to the overall phenomenal character of the experienced atmosphere. (shrink)

L’atmosphère« Atmosphère » est un terme employé communément par des auteurs dans le domaine de l’esthétique que dans celui de la météorologie. Ils le comprennent pourtant de manière assez différente, chacun prétendant que leur emploi est la plus fondamentale et que l’autre est seulement métaphorique. Pour les esthéticiens, l’atmosphère réelle est une aura qui émane des choses et qui affecte nos humeurs et nos motivations; pour les météorologistes, il s’agit de l’enveloppe gazeuse qui entoure la planète. Je montre que les (...) deux sens excluent l’air ou le réduisent à un éther immatériel. D’une part, pour la science météorologique, tout se passe comme l’air était enfermé à l’intérieur et considéré comme un ensemble d’effets mesurables et calculables. D’autre part,l’esthétique de l’affect a relié l’atmosphère aux formes solides des artéfacts et des paysages. En ramenant le medium aérien, je cherche une signification de l’atmosphère qui transcende l’opposition entre l’affectif et le météorologique. Je le fais en suivant Merleau-Ponty, qui traite l’atmosphère comme un espace d’inspiration et d’expiration. En tant que tel, il correspond étroitement à ce que Merleau-Ponty lui-même appelle la « chair ». Ce concept pourrait aussi être traduit par « meshwork » (réseau/filet/grillage), référant à ces faisceaux de lignes et de chemins par lesquels chaque être humain est cousu à la fabrique du monde. Pour Merleau-Ponty, la portée de la notion de chair réside dans l’affirmation que la perception est fondamentalement réversible. On ne peut être sentant que dans un monde sentant; c’est pourquoi, comme il le soutient, notre perception des choses dans l’environnement répond à la perception par l’environnementde notre soi. Cependant, je soutiens au contraire que ces deux mouvements d’inspiration et d’expiration ne sont pas le contraire exact l’un de l’autre. Comme le mouvement de la brasse en nataion, le premier est un mouvement de rassemblement et le second de propulsion. Nous inhalons l’atmosphère, mais nous exhalons selon les lignes du réseau. Bref, réseau et atmosphère sont deux côtés de la chair, et c’est dans leur alternance rythmique que nous trouvons la relation entre les lignes et le temps météorologique, qui est, comme je le soutiens, fondamental à la vie.L’atmosfera‘Atmosfera’ è una parola usata comunemente tanto da chi scrive di estetica come dai metereologi. Ciononostante, essi intendono con ciò delle cose piuttosto differenti, ognuno ritenendo che il proprio e il senso più fondamentale mentre l’altrui è meramente metaforico. Per chi si occupa di estetica, l’atmosfera reale è un’aura che emana dalle cose e affetta il nostro umore e le nostre motivazioni; per i metereologi è l’involucro gassoso che circonda il pianeta. Mostro come entrambi i sensi trascurano l’aria, o la riducono a un etere immateriale. Da una parte, per la scienza metereologica, è come se l’aria fosse stata portata al chiuso e presentata come una serie di effetti misurabili e calcolati. Dall’altra, l’estetica dell’affetto ha legato l’atmosfera alle forme solide degli artefatti e dei paesaggi.Nel reintrodurre l’ambiente aereo, intendo trovare un significato di atmosfera che trascenda l’opposizione tra i sensi affettivo e meteorologico. Faccio questo, seguendo Merleau-Ponty, trattando l’atmosfera come uno spazio di inalazione e esalazione. Come tale, corrisponde da vicino a ciò che Merleau-Ponty stesso chiama “la carne”. Ma questo concetto potrebbe anche essere tradotto come ‘reticolo’ (meshwork), riferendosi a quei grovigli di linee e percorsi lungo i quali ogni essere vivente è cucito al tessuto del mondo. Per Merleau-Ponty, il significato della carne risiede nella sua affermazione secondo la quale la percezione è fondamentalmente reversibile. Si può essere senzienti soltanto in un mondo senziente; quindi, ritiene il filosofo, la nostra percezione delle cose nell’ambienteè ricambiata dalla percezione che quest’ultimo ha di noi. Io mostro, al contrario, che questi due movimenti, corrispondenti all’inalazione e all’esalazione, non sono l’esatto rovescio l’uno dell’altro. Come nella bracciata a stile libero nel nuoto, il primo è un movimento di raccolta, il secondo un movimento di propulsione. Ovverossia, inaliamo l’atmosfera, ma esaliamo secondo le linee del reticolo. In breve, il reticolo e l’atmosfera sono due facce della carne, e troviamo nella loro alternanza ritmica la relazione tra le linee e il tempo che, come sostengo, è fondamentale alla vita. (shrink)

In Paradoxes of Delusion, Sass aims to use passages from Wittgenstein to characterize the feeling of “mute particularity” that forms a part of delusional atmosphere. I argue that Wittgenstein’s discussion provides no helpful positive account. But his remarks on more everyday cases of the uncanny and the feeling of unreality might seem to promise a better approach via the expressive use of words in secondary sense. I argue that this also is a false hope but that, interestingly, there can (...) be no interesting or substantial explanation of this failure. (shrink)

Whilst individuals deal with divergent sorts of stimuli from the environment, they also tend to display some regularity in the way they respond to related patterns. These consistent responses can be conceptualised as cognitive schemas. A paramount component of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is the notion of cognitive schemas as they are a favoured point of therapeutic intervention. CBT as articulated by Beck in the 1960s owes intellectual acknowledgment to Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger and their notions of “atmosphere” and “clearing” (...) respectively. This essay explores the notion of cognitive schema and atmosphere as applied to emotional pathology. It suggests that the well-known influence that phenomenology had on existential psychology could be extended to empirical clinical psychology, like CBT. The strategy adopted in this paper is to use Dreyfus’ ontological and epistemological distinction in psychopathology and then make a similar distinction, albeit using different terminology, in the CBT tradition. Some empirical findings from the literature are examined which render support to the existence of cognitive schemas and their crucial contributory role in the aetiology and maintenance of emotional disorders. It is noted that some of the features of these cognitive schemas were espoused well before Beck by Merleau-Ponty and the phenomenological-existential tradition. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 4, Edition 1 July 2004. (shrink)

The atmosphere is critical to climate change. It can amplify shifts in the climate system, and also mitigate them. Giving readers an overview of key atmospheric processes, the author of this book looks at how our climate system receives energy from the sun and sheds it by emitting infrared radiation back into space. The atmosphere regulates these radiative energy flows and transports energy through weather systems such as thunderstorms, monsoons, hurricanes, and winter storms. The author explains how these (...) processes work, and also how precipitation, cloud formation, and other phase changes of water strongly influence weather and climate. He discusses how atmospheric feedbacks affect climate change, how the large-scale atmospheric circulation works, how predicting the weather and the climate are fundamentally different challenges, and much more. (shrink)

Atmospheres constitute an ordinary perceptual phenomenon that can become a new experience, as the former are more than the sum of single-sensory perceptual factors. Drawing on the terminological pair ‘subject’ and ‘object’ and its interdependencies, the atmospheric phenomenon can be approached in an essayistic fashion (and by means of applying an aesthetic focus in the broadest sense). In so doing, it becomes clear that the atmosphere serves as a condition for the emergence as well as actualization of special perception. (...) Based on Gernot Böhme’s research and further studies, specific (ontological) determinants are identified and differentiated according to the definitional facets of the ‘and’, the ‘in-between’ and the ‘whereby’ or ‘in what way’. These considerations demonstrate to what extent perception precedes the separation of subject and object in that the atmospheric ‘whereby’ is responsible for creating tuned spaces and situations. Turning to the objects of perception and their concomitant ecstasies as well as to the subject of perception with its reception helps to clarify which components of an atmosphere work in what way. In this context, methods of exploratory involvement and participation (in the Parcours Commenté but even more so in the Aesthetic Fieldwork) gain in importance in order to explore atmospheres from a lifeworld perspective. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review of: Atmosphere of hope: Searching for solutions to the climate crisis, by Tim Flannery, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2015, pp. 245 +ix.

In this article, we use an entry to an international architectural student competition on future care to explore how social norms about older bodies may be challenged by designs that are sensitive to the spatial contexts within which we age. The power of the My Home design by Witham and Wilkins derives from its hand-drawn aesthetic and thus we consider the architects’ insistence on drawing as a challenge to the clear and unambiguous image-making typically associated with digitally aided architectural designs. (...) The hand-drawn images of My Home prompt a focus on care as enacted through the relations between material environments and things, and the atmospheric qualities these relations evoke. Throughout our analysis, we argue for greater attention to the ways in which embodied practices, everyday affects and materialities can be represented within architectural design, and the role of hand drawing as a creative methodology in this process. (shrink)

L’atmosphère« Atmosphère » est un terme employé communément par des auteurs dans le domaine de l’esthétique que dans celui de la météorologie. Ils le comprennent pourtant de manière assez différente, chacun prétendant que leur emploi est la plus fondamentale et que l’autre est seulement métaphorique. Pour les esthéticiens, l’atmosphère réelle est une aura qui émane des choses et qui affecte nos humeurs et nos motivations; pour les météorologistes, il s’agit de l’enveloppe gazeuse qui entoure la planète. Je montre que les (...) deux sens excluent l’air ou le réduisent à un éther immatériel. D’une part, pour la science météorologique, tout se passe comme l’air était enfermé à l’intérieur et considéré comme un ensemble d’effets mesurables et calculables. D’autre part,l’esthétique de l’affect a relié l’atmosphère aux formes solides des artéfacts et des paysages. En ramenant le medium aérien, je cherche une signification de l’atmosphère qui transcende l’opposition entre l’affectif et le météorologique. Je le fais en suivant Merleau-Ponty, qui traite l’atmosphère comme un espace d’inspiration et d’expiration. En tant que tel, il correspond étroitement à ce que Merleau-Ponty lui-même appelle la « chair ». Ce concept pourrait aussi être traduit par « meshwork » (réseau/filet/grillage), référant à ces faisceaux de lignes et de chemins par lesquels chaque être humain est cousu à la fabrique du monde. Pour Merleau-Ponty, la portée de la notion de chair réside dans l’affirmation que la perception est fondamentalement réversible. On ne peut être sentant que dans un monde sentant; c’est pourquoi, comme il le soutient, notre perception des choses dans l’environnement répond à la perception par l’environnementde notre soi. Cependant, je soutiens au contraire que ces deux mouvements d’inspiration et d’expiration ne sont pas le contraire exact l’un de l’autre. Comme le mouvement de la brasse en nataion, le premier est un mouvement de rassemblement et le second de propulsion. Nous inhalons l’atmosphère, mais nous exhalons selon les lignes du réseau. Bref, réseau et atmosphère sont deux côtés de la chair, et c’est dans leur alternance rythmique que nous trouvons la relation entre les lignes et le temps météorologique, qui est, comme je le soutiens, fondamental à la vie.L’atmosfera‘Atmosfera’ è una parola usata comunemente tanto da chi scrive di estetica come dai metereologi. Ciononostante, essi intendono con ciò delle cose piuttosto differenti, ognuno ritenendo che il proprio e il senso più fondamentale mentre l’altrui è meramente metaforico. Per chi si occupa di estetica, l’atmosfera reale è un’aura che emana dalle cose e affetta il nostro umore e le nostre motivazioni; per i metereologi è l’involucro gassoso che circonda il pianeta. Mostro come entrambi i sensi trascurano l’aria, o la riducono a un etere immateriale. Da una parte, per la scienza metereologica, è come se l’aria fosse stata portata al chiuso e presentata come una serie di effetti misurabili e calcolati. Dall’altra, l’estetica dell’affetto ha legato l’atmosfera alle forme solide degli artefatti e dei paesaggi.Nel reintrodurre l’ambiente aereo, intendo trovare un significato di atmosfera che trascenda l’opposizione tra i sensi affettivo e meteorologico. Faccio questo, seguendo Merleau-Ponty, trattando l’atmosfera come uno spazio di inalazione e esalazione. Come tale, corrisponde da vicino a ciò che Merleau-Ponty stesso chiama “la carne”. Ma questo concetto potrebbe anche essere tradotto come ‘reticolo’ (meshwork), riferendosi a quei grovigli di linee e percorsi lungo i quali ogni essere vivente è cucito al tessuto del mondo. Per Merleau-Ponty, il significato della carne risiede nella sua affermazione secondo la quale la percezione è fondamentalmente reversibile. Si può essere senzienti soltanto in un mondo senziente; quindi, ritiene il filosofo, la nostra percezione delle cose nell’ambienteè ricambiata dalla percezione che quest’ultimo ha di noi. Io mostro, al contrario, che questi due movimenti, corrispondenti all’inalazione e all’esalazione, non sono l’esatto rovescio l’uno dell’altro. Come nella bracciata a stile libero nel nuoto, il primo è un movimento di raccolta, il secondo un movimento di propulsione. Ovverossia, inaliamo l’atmosfera, ma esaliamo secondo le linee del reticolo. In breve, il reticolo e l’atmosfera sono due facce della carne, e troviamo nella loro alternanza ritmica la relazione tra le linee e il tempo che, come sostengo, è fondamentale alla vita. (shrink)

Summary When dealing with philosophical questions such as the choice of a world system or the substance of heaven, some sixteenth-century astronomers, including Tycho Brahe and Christophe Rothmann, devised more accurate experimental setups so that they could refine their celestial observations. With this desire to listen to nature arose new questions, in particular that of atmospheric refractions, the understanding and resolution of which became decisive to guarantee the best accuracy. However, to solve such practical problems, it was necessary to consider (...) their philosophical and theological background, as well as the knowledge of optics inherited from the medieval period. We examine this heritage and its transmissions through the works of Peter Ramus's assistants, especially Jean Pena and Friedrich Risner. From this first survey, we try to analyse the lively debate on atmospheric refractions in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by exploring the argumentative structure, the philosophical background, and the epistemological grounds of the discourse of authors such as Tycho Brahe, Christoph Rothmann, and Johannes Kepler. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to initiate a research agenda on mega-urban airs that comprehends their atmospheres as simultaneously meteorological and affective, an agenda which seeks to apprehend megacity air/atmospheres in their vitality, corporeality and expressiveness. This paper attunes to the close and expressive substances that make up immersion in a material-affective ecology of a place, the qualities of the city that seep and imbue its material and biological fabric with affect. There is a growing body of work and literature (...) to aid us from traditions in continental aesthetic theory, French urban sociology and architecture, and an emergent cultural geographic field of atmospheric enquiry. The paper develops such an approach to megacity air in three main ways. First, air tells us about difference. In the testimony of pollutants and choking effluvium, an analysis of air reveals who belongs and who does not, who is deserving and who is not in a constellation of megacity inequality. The atmosphere puts the megacity apart from other urban and political forms. Second, closely related to the issues that circulate around a geopolitics of verticality and the technocratic security concerns of volumetric conceptions of territory, air/atmospheres constitute an environmental ecology of security threats and crisis that thwart megacity life and justify environmental policies as ‘security’. Third, the paper argues how megacities are increasingly productive of secessionary atmospheres, often by removal and exclusion, which are not entirely separate from other atmospheric security concerns. (shrink)

The paper examines the notion of habits from the perspective of a pathic aesthetics based on the neo-phenomenological theory of Leib (felt body) and its ubiquitous communication. By questioning whether experience should be considered as a confirmation or a failure of expectation, it shows the inextricable intertwining of the unexpected and routine in our involuntary life experience and delves into a well known phenomenological crux: is the lived or felt body what is subject to self-affection and proprioception or rather the (...) “absent” body, which is always transcended in its being-for-other (transitivity)? The assumption then that felt-bodily habits are formed through a motor scheme depending on its being a perfect pre-reflective resonance (especially thanks to its more or less stable “felt-bodily islands”) of outside atmospheric feelings and affordances that also becomes a true “style”, is finally examined by showing the points of both contact and discrepancy between a New Phenomenology (Hermann Schmitz) focused above all on the rediscovery (in a critical function) of the archaic dimension of the Leib and a melioristic Somaesthetics (Richard Shusterman) pragmatically interested in a more creative individual self-stylisation. (shrink)

The article compares the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change in terms of natural characteristics of the crisis triggers as well as of socio-political responses.

In 1934, Karl N. Llewellyn published a lively essay trumpeting the dawn of legal realism, "On Philosophy in American Law." The charm of his defective little piece is its style and audacity. A philosopher might be seduced into reading Llewellyn’s essay by its title; but one soon learns that by "philosophy" Llewellyn only meant "atmosphere". His concerns were the "general approaches" taken by practitioners, who may not even be aware of having general approaches. Llewellyn paired an anemic concept of (...) philosophy with a pumped-up conception of law. Llewellyn’s "law" included anything that reflects the "ways of the law guild at large" - judges, legislators, regulators, and enforcers. Llewellyn argued that the legal philosophies implicit in American legal practice had been natural law, positivism and realism, each adopted in response to felt needs of a time. We must reckon with many other implicit "philosophies" to understand the workings of the law guild, not the least of which has been racism. Others, maternalism and paternalism, my foci here, persist in American law, despite women’s progress toward equality. Both maternalism and paternalism were strikingly present in a recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, Gonzales v. Carhart, upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. (shrink)

In past decades, the subject atmosphere and mood has gone beyond the physio-meteorological and psychological scopes and become a new direction of aesthetics which concerns two sides of the same phenomenon. As the primary sensuous reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the perceived object, atmosphere and mood are neither a purely subjective state nor an objective thing. Atmosphere is essentially a quasi-object pervaded by a specific affective quality and a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of (...) our outer life experiences, while mood is a quasi-subject pervaded by specific objective quality and thus a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our inner life experiences. A practical dimension is thereby, from the outset, embedded in the consideration of both concepts. This is mainly characterized by actions and, correspondingly, ethical aspects, which concern the design and creation of atmosphere and thus the triggering of mood through works of art. Here, on the one hand, the process of artistic formation, long neglected in the European tradition, is given prominence as an aesthetic practice, and on the other hand, an interactive dialogue is effectively established between the artist, the work and the viewer. Due to the fact that atmosphere and mood, both as in-between, emphasize the interaction of the perceiver and the perceived from two sides, here the decisive question is: in what kind of environment do we live or participate and in what way do we experience it? The focus of aesthetics is now not on the conventional issue whether the environment is beautiful or gives us a sense of beauty, but on how the environment influences our feeling of being there (Befinden) through our own sensuality. Such an approach would contribute to a critical transformation in aesthetic methodology, namely from the ontological and/or epistemological what to the phenomenological and anthropological how. -/- The tension between atmosphere and mood, as revealed here, opens up a large space for exploring a new understanding of aesthetics. On this basis the special issue pursued to diversify this discussion on an international level. (shrink)

Describes the basic physical processes, including radiative transfer, molecular absorption, and chemical processes, common to all planetary atmospheres as well as the transit, eclipse, and thermal phase variation observations that are unique to exoplanets.

In the wake of corporate ethical scandals that have harmed millions of employees and investors, there has been an increase in the number of works written in the last decade, which aim to answer one apparently simple question: what causes unethical behavior, and what can we do, if anything, to prevent similar transgressions in the future? The extensive research around this question is the best proof of its real complexity as the challenge of disentangling the background of ethical behavior has (...) obvious academic and practical interest. This study aims to take a further step toward that goal. Much research has noted the impact of multiple aspects of organizational contexts on individuals’ ethical behavior. However, studies that analyze the impact of organizational learning capability (OLC) on employees’ ethical behavior are few and far between. This was the first aim of this study. The second centered on gaining a deeper understanding of the relationship between OLC and ethical behavior by analyzing the mediating role of employability and organizational commitment. We tested our hypotheses through a structural equation methodology applied to a sample of 641 workers from 166 Spanish consultancy firms and found a positive, direct relationship between OLC and employability, OLC and organizational commitment, employability and organizational commitment, and organizational commitment and ethical behavior. (shrink)

In forming the international regime on climate change, commodification of the atmosphere has become the primary mechanism around which policy formulation is being organized. This has been an outcome of the dominance of anthropocentric and ethnocentric values in the discourse represented by the negotiations around the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Environmentalism offers an alternative value system from which a critique of the emerging global climate change management regime can be undertaken. This critique makes clear both the inadequacy of (...) economic approaches based on commodification of the atmosphere to protect the global environment and the need to include a variety of actors, values, and approaches in the climate change policy debate. (shrink)

Adaptive optics are techniques used for processing the spatial resolution of astronomical images taken from large ground-based telescopes. In this work, computational results are presented for a modified curvature sensor, the tomographic pupil image wavefront sensor, which measures the turbulence of the atmosphere, expressed in terms of an expansion over Zernike polynomials. Convolutional neural networks are presented as an alternative to the TPI-WFS reconstruction. This technique is a machine learning model of the family of artificial neural networks, which are (...) widely known for its performance as modeling and prediction technique in complex systems. Results obtained from the reconstruction of the networks are compared with the TPI-WFS reconstruction by estimating errors and optical measurements. The reconstructed wavefronts from both techniques are compared for wavefronts of 153 Zernike modes. For this case, a detailed comparison and grid search to find the most suitable neural network is performed, searching between multi-layer perceptron, CNN and recurrent networks topologies. In general, the best network was a CNN trained for TPI-WFS reconstruction, achieving better performance than the reconstruction software from TPI-WFS in most of the turbulent profiles, but the most significant improvements were found for higher turbulent profiles that have the lowest r0 values. (shrink)

As a contemporary form of aesthetics of nature, Eco-aesthetics is dedicated to an aesthetic revision of the split between humans and nature in the process of modernization. Starting from the criticism that the current eco-aesthetic research is usually limited to a taste evaluation of natural beauty and that many studies pay little attention to practically reconstructing a new harmony between humans and nature under contemporary conditions, the article focuses on the following issue: a) To what extent can the approach of (...) Eco-aesthetics be theoretically re-formulated so that the perspective of traditional aesthetics of judgment, predominantly fixed on the experience and reflection of natural beauty, can be avoided? b) How can this reformulation contribute to recultivating and renaturing an environment in a widely urbanized world? Here the concept of ‘atmosphere’ which has been primarily developed by contemporary German philosophers emphasizes the interaction between bodily perception and the qualities of the surrounding environment is of particular significance for solving these issues. It is demonstrated that in atmospheric experiences the body embeds man, together with his multifarious ways of perception and sense experiences, into nature so that man and nature are interrelated with each other and merged into a unified whole. The eco-aesthetic meaning here transcends the framework of the beauty of nature and is characterized by an infinite range of perceptual possibilities towards the integration of the human situation and the environmental conditions. At the same time, the investigation of the conditions and forms of atmospheric creation will contribute to further extending the eco-aesthetic vision to the practical area. And it is not least this practical dimension that distinguishes the Eco-aesthetics from traditional aesthetic approaches to nature. (shrink)

Problems that overwhelm moral agency challenge methods of ethics that prioritize social practices. This essay explains how climate change exceeds moral competencies, criticizes climate ethics for eliding the difficulties, and the attempts to vindicate a practice-based approach by arguing for the possibility of doing ethics from incompetent projects. However, because incompetence easily becomes the excuse of injustice, I illustrate the argument with an indigenous peoples' climate justice project that both exemplifies the creativity my approach needs and bears a strong critique (...) of its method. (shrink)

This book investigates key issues such as relation between atmospheres & moods, how atmospheres define psychopathological conditions such as anxiety & schizophrenia, what role it plays in producing shared aesthetic experiences, & the significance of atmospheres in political events.