This article develops an ecological framework for understanding collective action. This is contrasted with approaches familiar from the collective intentionality debate, which treat individuals as fundamental units of collective action. Instead, we turn to social ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory and argue that they provide a promising framework for understanding collectives as the central unit in collective action. However, we submit that these approaches do not yet appreciate enough the relevance of social identities for collective action. To analyze this (...) aspect, we build on key insights from social identity theory and synthesize it with embodied and ecological accounts of perception and action. This results in the proposal of two new types of affordances. For an individual who enacts her "embodied social identity" of being a member of a particular collective, there can be what we call embodied social identity affordances. Moreover, when several individuals dynamically interact with each other against the background of their embodied social identities, this might lead to the emergence of a collective, which we understand as a dynamically constituted and ecologically situated perception-action system consisting of several individuals enacting relevant embodied social identity affordances. Building on previous work in social ecological psychology, we suggest that there can be genuine collective affordances, that is, affordances whose subject is not an individual, but a collective. (shrink)

According to individualism about feelings, only individuals can experience feelings, because only individuals live under the condition of embodiment. Assuming a necessary link between emotions and feelings thus seems to justify doubt about the possibility of shared emotions. I challenge this line of argumentation by showing that feelings are best understood as enactments of a feeling body, which is a psycho-physically neutral expressive unity. Based on the body’s embeddedness into a world and connectedness with others, feelings are perceivable and shareable. (...) Accordingly, dynamics of mutual incorporation and interaffectivity are shown to be the ground for shared feelings. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 31-42, January 2022. This paper distinguishes collective emotions from other phenomena pertaining to the social and interactive nature of emotion and proposes a taxonomy of different types of collective emotion. First, it emphasizes the distinction between collective emotions as affective experiences and underpinning mechanisms. Second, it elaborates on other types of affective experience, namely the social sharing of emotion, group-based emotions, and joint emotions. Then, it proposes a working definition of collective emotion via (...) a minimal threshold and four structural features. Finally, it develops a taxonomy of five types of collective emotion: emotional sharing, emotional contagion, emotional matching, emotional segregation, and emotional fusion. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the notion of shared emotion. After contextualizing this notion within the broader research landscape on collective affective intentionality, I suggest that we reserve the term shared emotion to an affective experience that is phenomenologically and functionally ours: we experience it together as our emotion, and it is also constitutively not mine and yours, but ours. I focus on the three approaches that have dominated the philosophical discussion on shared emotions: cognitivist accounts, concern-based (...) accounts, and phenomenological fusion accounts. After identifying strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and summarizing the elements that a multifaceted theory of shared emotions requires, I turn to the work of the early phenomenologist Edith Stein to further advance an approach to shared emotions that combines the main strengths of Helm and Salmela’s concern-based accounts and Schmid’s phenomenological fusion account. According to this proposal, the sharedness of a shared emotion cannot be located in one element, but rather consists in a complex of interrelated features. (shrink)

die vorliegende Arbeit bietet die erste historisch-philologisch fundierte und philosophisch-systematisch orientierte Gesamtdarstellung von Martin Heideggers Rezeption von Søren Kierkegaard. Sie kontextualisiert diese innerhalb der Tendenzen der deutschsprachigen Rezeptions- und Übersetzungsgeschichte Kierkegaards von ihren Anfängen bis ins erste Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts und bringt dadurch die Besonderheiten von Heideggers Kierkegaard-Rezeption zur Abhebung. Unter Einbeziehung sämtlicher mittlerweile zur Verfügung stehenden Quellen wird Heideggers Verhältnis zu Kierkegaard in den Wandlungen seines Denkwegs verfolgt. Es zeigt sich dabei, dass Heideggers Verhältnis zu Kierkegaard kein einheitliches (...) ist, sondern eine fragmentarische Abfolge von Verhältnissen. Entsprechend werden fünf Phasen von Heideggers Kierkegaard-Rezeption unterschieden. Aufgrund ihres umfassenden Quellenstudiums und der umsichtigen Interpretation ist diese Arbeit ein unerlässliches Referenzwerk für zukünftige Arbeiten zum Verhältnis von Heidegger und Kierkegaard. Der rezeptionshistorische erste Teil hat darüber hinaus Bedeutung für alle, die sich mit der Kierkegaard-Rezeption Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts beschäftigen möchten. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe negative aim of this paper is to identify shortcomings in received theories. First, we criticize approaching audiences, and large gatherings more general, in categories revolving around the notion of the crowd. Second, we show how leading paradigms in emotion research restrict research on the social-relational dynamics of emotions by reducing them to physiological processes like emotional contagion or to cognitive processes like social appraisal. Our positive aim is to offer an alternative proposal for conceptualizing emotional dynamics in audiences. First, (...) we offer a notion of emotional sharing for studying the social-relational dynamics of emotions. Second, we propose a working concept of audience as a dynamic and dispersed social collective. Finally, we bring these elements together in the description of two scenes of jubilation. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 31-42, January 2022. This paper distinguishes collective emotions from other phenomena pertaining to the social and interactive nature of emotion and proposes a taxonomy of different types of collective emotion. First, it emphasizes the distinction between collective emotions as affective experiences and underpinning mechanisms. Second, it elaborates on other types of affective experience, namely the social sharing of emotion, group-based emotions, and joint emotions. Then, it proposes a working definition of collective emotion via (...) a minimal threshold and four structural features. Finally, it develops a taxonomy of five types of collective emotion: emotional sharing, emotional contagion, emotional matching, emotional segregation, and emotional fusion. (shrink)

This edited volume offers a new approach to understanding social conventions by way of Martin Heidegger. It connects the philosopher's conceptions of the anyone, everydayness, and authenticity with an analysis and critique of social normativity. Heidegger’s account of the anyone is ambiguous. Some see it as a good description of human sociality, others think of it as an important critique of modern mass society. This volume seeks to understand this ambiguity as reflecting the tension between the constitutive function of conventions (...) for human action and the critical aspects of conformism. It argues that Heidegger’s anyone should neither be reduced to its pejorative nor its constitutive dimension. Rather, the concept could show how power and norms function. This volume would be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy and the social sciences who wish to investigate the social applications of the works of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

The paper explores emotional abilities from the (neo-)existentialist perspectives of Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Moran. First, it reconstructs Sartre’s understanding of emotions as active comportments achieving a magical transformation of the world. Second, it explores what existentialists mean by first-person authority: Regarding my own emotions, I cannot only explore what I feel, but I also need to ask myself what to feel. The claim is that my emotions depend on me committing to them. Third, I highlight a difference between a (...) neo-existentialist account which focuses on reflective self-constitution, and a vintage existentialist approach which focuses on pre-reflective self-awareness. Forth, I point out that (neo-)existentialism helps to make explicit the normative claim which is implied when speaking of abilities regarding one’s emotions. The claim is that it is up to me to either endorse my emotions or to change who I am to feel differently. Finally, I indicate the limits of such an approach when it comes to social structures of inequality and domination. (shrink)

Ultimate is a competitive team sport that is played, even at the highest level of competition, without external referees. The key to Ultimate as a self-refereed sport is the so-called ‘Spirit of the Game’. As this paper aims to show, the Spirit of the Game closely resembles Habermas’s theory of communicative action. This suggests that Habermas’s theory might be used to spell out the philosophical presuppositions of the Spirit of the Game. Most importantly, the requirements for players to serve as (...) referees of their own game specified in the ‘Rules of Ultimate’ turn out to be reformulation of the four validity claims of communicative action. Moreover, the Spirit of the Game can be interpreted as aiming towards facilitating real-life decision-making procedures that resemble as much as possible Habermas’s concept of an ideal speech situation. On the other hand, Ultimate might serve as a case study for exploring how Habermas’s idea of rational deliberation works in the practice of a competitive sporting environment. Most importantly, it makes manifest that self-refereeing is a trust-based system. This suggests that communicative rationality can only unfold its power—the unforced force of the better argument—within a context in which participants trust that everyone participates in good faith towards the common goal of finding the best decision. Hence, investigating the case of Ultimate allows us to draw broader conclusions about the requirements for rational deliberation to work in practice. (shrink)

The last few years have seen increasing research interest in moods and atmospheres. While this trend has been accompanied by growing interest in the history of the wordStimmungin other disciplines, this has not yet been the case within philosophy. Against this background, this paper offers a conceptual history of the wordStimmung, focusing on the period from Kant to Heidegger, as this period is, presumably, less known to researchers working with notions like mood, attunement or atmosphere today. Thus, considering this period (...) might provide conceptual resources not yet considered in current debate.Stimmunghas the remarkable feature of encompassing the entire semantic field of mood and atmosphere, insofar as both subjects and objects can literally be inStimmung.Stimmungmight refer to the state or condition of being attuned, which is understood as a dispositional state, as well as the process or act of attuning, which includes self-activating and foreign-determined forms of attuning. The word was first used for the tuning of musical instruments, but was quickly transferred to the fields of aesthetics, psychology, and physiology. This paper will focus on the contrast between the psychological canonization ofStimmungas a type of mental state, and the use ofStimmungas an untranslatable, irreducible metaphor with unique semantic force allowing for original theorizing. (shrink)

Der Band versammelt junge Forscherinnen und Forscher, die sich in ihren Arbeiten in affirmativer bis kritischer Weise mit dem Denken Martin Heideggers auseinandersetzen. Der Band leistet damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Frage, ob und in welcher Form sich weiter mit Heidegger denken lasst. Das internationale Spektrum der Beitragenden erlaubt es, den gegenwartigen Stand der Heideggerforschung uber Landes- und Traditionsgrenzen hinweg zu uberblicken und zukunftige Forschungstrends zu antizipieren.

Heidegger’s ontological account of affectivity provides an interesting angle to consider questions of politics. On the one hand, one might take some of what Heidegger wrote on affectivity in the late 1920s and early 1930s—usually couched in the idiom of Stimmungen and Befindlichkeit—as a foreshadowing of his involvement with Nazi politics, culminating in his time as Führer-Rektor of Freiburg University. On the other hand, Heidegger’s views on affectivity might be taken as a starting point for an ontological perspective on the (...) political as such. His perspective on Befindlichkeit as disclosive postures can prepare such a reading, while especially his views on the ontological character of anxiety and boredom lead into the founding dimension of the political as such.This is because these affective orientations reveal the ungroundedness and thus radical contingency of existence. The flip side of this ungroundedness is the inevitability for self-determination—in other words: the need for deciding the undecidable. Although Heidegger’s own politics—at least in the early 1930s—did not explicitly relate to the affectively disclosed ungroundedness of existence, but rather curtailed this openness and indeterminacy in an individualistic and decisionistic closure, we argue that Heidegger’s view yields to a radically political reading. Not least, this is evidenced in much of French political thought since the 1960s which heavily draws on Heidegger’s ontological difference. The political as such does not refer to politics as a sub-system of society, but to the questioning of the foundations of politics, which turn out to be necessarily “contingent foundations”. It is our aim to trace this line of thought back to its origins in Heidegger’s works, in order to assess the potentials and pitfalls of ‘Heidegger on politics’. (shrink)

One of the main elements of Sartre[aut]Sartre, Jean-Paul’s original contribution to social ontologyOntologysocial is his distinction between groups and collectives. Groups and collectives are both gatherings of individuals, but they are very different social entities.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 1 Seiten: 281-304.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 19 Heft: 1 Seiten: 329-356.

The paper critically reconstructs the crowd psychological heritage in phenomenological and social science emotion research. It shows how the founding figures of phenomenology and sociology uncritically adopted Le Bon’s crowd psychological imagery as well as what I suggest calling the disease model of emotion transfer. Against this background, it can be examined how Le Bon’s understanding of emotional contagion as an automatic, involuntary, and uncontrollable mechanism has remained a dominant force in emotion research until today. However, a closer look at (...) phenomenological descriptions and empirical investigations of how emotion’s spread shows that there is little evidence supporting Le Bon’s crowd psychological framework. Thus, I suggest that the disease model should be dismissed in favor of more plausible approaches to interpersonal emotion dynamics. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 67 Heft: 1 Seiten: 151-156.

This chapter addresses the question whether the notion of ownedness or authenticity in Being and Time can serve as a model for social change. To answer this question, I build on the late Dreyfus’s understanding of owned Dasein as a “world transformer”, Butler’s understanding of contingent foundations, and Kyle Stroh’s conception of owned Dasein in the plural, in order to develop a notion of social ownedness. In my reading, ownedness concerns primarily the transparency of ontological structures on the part of (...) the owned self, including a proper understanding of the role of the anyone. The owned self realizes that the anyone remains the foundation of intelligibility, but understands it as a contingent foundation and thereby contests its absolutization and the tendency of conformism. After an interpretation of Heidegger’s remarks on “nullity” and “abyss of ground “ in relation to Butler’s theory of post-foundationalism, and a discussion of “historicality” in relation to Butler’s notion of performativity as iterability, I offer a reinterpretation of the figure of the “world transformer” and end with a proposal on how to understand social ownedness. (shrink)