Engaging with the account of pathic subjectivation developed by Félix Guattari, this article explores the ways in which his thinking about the production of subjectivity takes up and transforms the concept of the pathic dimension of experience that emerges from the rich tradition of existential-phenomenological psychiatry and the thematisation of contact it entails. Explicitly foregrounding the link made within that tradition between aesthetics and existence, this article considers the origins of Guattari’s conception of pathic subjectivation in his (...) work on Proust, the experimental understanding of the semiotic transformations of sensory experience it entails and the practical role it plays in catalysing the creative emergence of new modes of existence. (shrink)

Is there really an atmospheric turn? The concept of “atmosphere” as a qualitative-emotional prius of sensory experience seems today to have encouraged the convergence of many interdisciplinary studies focused on the qualitative aspects of our “surroundings”. Based on the neo-phenomenological theory of atmospheric perception as a first pathivc impression and a felt-bodily communication, this paper explores and synthesises the relationship between atmospheres and expressive qualities. It thus clarifies the key features of a general “pathic” aesthetics. It considers perceivers as (...) beings who are touched by atmospheric feelings in emotional and tactile ways. These are widespread and vary in their modulation of lived space. They are also ontologically rooted in things and quasi-things of the lifeworld. By realising how they (especially in an unintentional way) expose themselves to what happens, perceivers turn out not to be “subjects of something” but rather “subjects to something”: that is, human beings who are only “sovereign” when they are free, at least in their daily experience, from the dogma of rational and methodological autonomy imposed by Western Modernity. (shrink)

Das von Weizsäcker so genannte „Pathische“ bezeichnet eine Haltung zum Leben. Das Leben ist etwas, dessen „Existenz weniger gesetzt als vielmehr erlitten wird“. Eine solche Haltung prägt unser Urteil über andere Menschen wie über uns selbst. Wer sich hier einrichtet, wandelt zwischen Wissen und Nicht-Wissen, klaren Umrissen und bloßen Nuancen, Machen und Geschehenlassen. „Pathische Ethik“ ist ein Bestimmungsversuch dessen, was es heißt, in dieser Vagheit zielsicher zu bleiben. Wo er gelingt, keimt Friede. Das Loslassen der Hand eines Sterbenden ist eine (...) Probe darauf. Im alltäglichen Umgang mit Patienten und Hilfesuchenden dagegen helfen fünf „pathische Kategorien“, dem Urteil eine Wegleitung zu geben. (shrink)

Emerging at the margins of science fiction, the concept of posthuman has become the most potent and pervasive movement of contemporary culture. From science to ethics, from philosophy to art, from politics to communication, posthuman studies transcend analytical-conceptual categories of traditional disciplines. This new anthropology, open to a hetero-referential alterity (bio-techno-IT), requires, on the pathic level, new forms of adaptation and integration. The emancipation of the idea of a presumed human 'essence' brings possibilities as well as risks. This book (...) sets out to show how, beyond epistemological asymmetries and different forms of language, reflection on the posthuman in terms of the complex questions of our time imposes a biotechnopoiesis on multiple levels: from redefining our relationship with the planetary environment to questioning the dimensions of our historical condition. The study thereof revolves around sensorial, perceptual and emotional activity in terms of cognition and neurophysiology. Consciousness is to be regarded not as a workspace demarcated by the brain, but as a unitas multiplex that emerges from co-operation between brain and body. The posthuman defines a new model of existence and leaves an emerging anthropological identity open to dialogue with eteroreferential (otherness) in "bio-techno-informatics." This requires the development of a commensurate adequacy of emotions and affections (the pathic). Man and woman are thus called to 'care' for the posthuman: their passion for the new status of "nomadic subjectivity" will bring with it the ability to engage biotechnopoiesis in multiple ways to the greater good of mankind. [Subject: Psychology, Philosophy]. (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

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)

In this discussion piece, I will comment on the collective volume, edited by Jerold J. Abrams, Shusterman’s Somaesthetics. From Hip Hop Philosophy to Politics and Performance Art (2022). I will articulate my reflections around three main themes, which intersect the theme of several of the essays of the volume: I will first of all consider the concept of transfiguration, commenting upon the difference between Danto’s hermeneuticist perspective and Shusterman’s somaesthetic reinterpretation, with special regard to his performative experiment, the Man in (...) Gold. Secondly, I will turn to a possible consequence entailed by this reinterpretation concerning the relation between aesthetics and art. Finally, I will turn to the controversy between somaesthetics and pathic aesthetics, and comment on a possible way to reconcile some elements of both, starting from the condition of the suffering body. (shrink)

Moving from a phenomenological theory of the lived body, the text outlines its constitutive role in human experience but especially in aesthetic perception. Against every reductionist and introjectionist objectification of the lived experience, every explanatory hypothesis of associationist and projectivist type, a pathic aesthetics ‒ that emphasizes the affective involvement that the perceiver feels unable to critically react to or mitigate the intrusiveness of ‒ is an adequate investigation of the felt body as sounding board of outside atmospheres and (...) Stimmungen. By means of its specific dynamics and lived “isles”, in fact the felt body feels what happens in the surrounding area without drawing on the five senses and the perceptual body schema. Felt-bodily isles turn out exactly to be both a tool for sensing the affective radiation provoked by atmospheres and quasi-things, and “places” that, communicating with each other and with our consciousness, are themselves quasi-things. (shrink)

Through an approach primarily inspired by the Aisthetik (Gernot Böhme) and the Neue Phänomenologie (Hermann Schmitz) I define the atmospheric perception as the first pathic impression and investigate the relationship between this kind of perception (possibly initially immersive, then reflective) and the expressive qualities of our lifeworld. Pathic aesthetics therefore ceases to be just a theory of works of art. It considers the perceiver as a being first of all emotionally and felt-bodily touched by atmospheric feelings widespread in (...) her (lived) space but these atmospheric feelings are also affordances, ontologically rooted in things and quasi-things of her lifeworld. By exploring how she unintentionally exposes herself to what happens in this lifeworld, man turns out to be not a “subject of something” but rather a “subject to something”: a human being who is “sovereign” to the extent she is free from the claim of rational autonomy imposed by the western Modernity. (shrink)

In this essay, I will examine Henri Maldiney’s phenomenological aesthetics, focusing on his claim that “art is the truth of the sensible.” This claim is presented by Maldiney in the context of a two-fold critique of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective attempts to phenomenologically elucidate the experience of artworks. According to Maldiney, both Husserl and Heidegger fail to recognize what he, following Erwin Straus, terms the “pathic” moment of sense experience, which is also the key moment of the aesthetic reception (...) of art. Drawing on this concept of the pathic and its way of engaging what Maldiney calls the “transpassibility” of receptivity, I argue that his phenomenology of art can be viewed as an attempt to bring together the two senses of the aesthetic in the Kantian sense, namely as an aesthetics of sense experience and as an aesthetics of art, from within the domain of sensibility itself. I develop this idea by turning to Maldiney’s notion of rhythm and examining how he thinks that it can be applied to the visual arts. Ultimately, I suggest that Maldiney’s aesthetics imbues art with ontological significance, since he takes the rhythmic presence of artworks to be a sensuous manifestation of the rhythmic ground of the world’s constitution. The truth of art, in this sense, is a revelation of the ontological functioning of rhythm. (shrink)

In this essay, I will examine Henri Maldiney’s phenomenological aesthetics, focusing on his claim that “art is the truth of the sensible.” This claim is presented by Maldiney in the context of a two-fold critique of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective attempts to phenomenologically elucidate the experience of artworks. According to Maldiney, both Husserl and Heidegger fail to recognize what he, following Erwin Straus, terms the “pathic” moment of sense experience, which is also the key moment of the aesthetic reception (...) of art. Drawing on this concept of the pathic and its way of engaging what Maldiney calls the “transpassibility” of receptivity, I argue that his phenomenology of art can be viewed as an attempt to bring together the two senses of the aesthetic in the Kantian sense, namely as an aesthetics of sense experience and as an aesthetics of art, from within the domain of sensibility itself. I develop this idea by turning to Maldiney’s notion of rhythm and examining how he thinks that it can be applied to the visual arts. Ultimately, I suggest that Maldiney’s aesthetics imbues art with ontological significance, since he takes the rhythmic presence of artworks to be a sensuous manifestation of the rhythmic ground of the world’s constitution. The truth of art, in this sense, is a revelation of the ontological functioning of rhythm. (shrink)

Following Erika Fischer-Lichte’s notion of emergence as an unexpected phenome-non that questions the notion of agency, our aim is to investigate how dance emerges through movements that are spontaneous and yet learnt while not being reducible to a motor expertise. Through Hermann Schmitz’ theory of the felt body, and notions such as “kinaesthetic attention”, grace and “pure” presence, we will show how dance movements emerge from the mutual “affective” influence be-tween dancers and the surroundings thanks to dancers’ “pathic” state (...) between awareness and unconsciousness, laîcher prise and restraint. (shrink)

The existential, experiential, ethical, pathic and pre-pathic dimensions of education are essential for the creative composition of subjectivities in institutional spaces, yet educational research and policy tend increasingly to privilege technical discourses and prescriptive approaches both when evaluating ‘what is effective in education’ and when determining educational policy. This essay explores those aspects of the educational experience and educational institutions that are often felt and sensed pre-cognitively by students, parents and teachers, but are seldom given further elaboration or (...) articulation in educational research. We will reflect on what is meant by the experience of education and experience in education, including the struggles to make sense of or understand something, the surprises that strike pre-reflectively, and the ways in which such moments are noticed, pursued, and explored rather than reflexively ‘evaluated’. We then explore the idea of experimentation in institutions, in particular in relation to the range of concepts that Jean Oury introduces in order to move our attention and awareness to questions of experience, existence, atmosphere, and the pathic—the way in which we undergo, sense and participate in the world prior to cognition and the desire for mastery and control of our encounters. Finally, we address the question of the ethics of institutions. (shrink)

This paper considers whether and how ‘vitalism’ might be considered relevant as a concept today; whether its relevance should be expressed in terms of disciplinary demarcations between the life sciences and the natural sciences; and whether there is a fundamental incompatibility between a ‘vitalism of process’ and a ‘vitalism as pathos’. I argue that the relevance of vitalism as an epistemological and ontological problem concerning the categorical distinction between living and non-living beings must be contextualized historically, and referred exclusively to (...) the epistemic horizon defined by classical physics. In contrast to this, drawing on the philosophies of Canguilhem, Whitehead, and Atlan, I propose an appreciation of the contemporary relevance of vitalism premised on the pathic and indeterminate character of nature as a whole. From this perspective vitalism expresses a politically significant ethos concerning the relationship between life, knowledge, problems and their solutions. (shrink)

This paper addresses the remarkable longevity of the idea of vitalism in the biological sciences and beyond. If there is to be a renewed vitalism today, however, we need to ask – on what kind of original conception of life should it be based? This paper argues that recent invocations of a generalized, processual variety of vitalism in the social sciences and humanities above all, however exciting in their scope, miss much of the basic originality – and interest – of (...) the vitalist perspective itself. The paper argues that any renewed spirit of vitalism in the contemporary era would have to base itself on the normativity of the living organism rather than on any generalized conceptions of process or becoming. In the terms of the paper, such a vitalism would have to be concrete and ‘disciplinary’ rather than processual or generalized. Such a vitalism would also need to accommodate, crucially, the pathic aspects of life – pathology, sickness, error; in short everything that makes us, as living beings, potentially weak, without power, at a loss. Sources for such a pathic vitalism might be found above all in the work of Georges Canguilhem – and Friedrich Nietzsche – rather than primarily in Bergson, Whitehead or Deleuze. (shrink)

Throughout his work, Adorno contrasted liberal ideology to the newer and more pernicious form of ideology found in positivism. The paper explores the philosophical basis for Adorno's contrast between liberal and positivist ideology. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno describes all ideology as identity-thinking. However, on his view, liberal ideology represents a more rational form of identity-thinking. Fearing that positivism might obliterate our capacity to distinguish between what is and what ought to be, Adorno sought a more secure foundation for his critique (...) of existing conditions. He found this basis in liberal discourse. In the concept of freedom, for example, Adorno located ideas or ideals that negate and transcend the given. One of the conditions for the possibility of critical thought lies in such ideas; critical thinking consists in wielding the more emphatic content of concepts against the pathic rationality of existing conditions. Far from prescribing mimesis as the antidote to a damaged social, political and economic reality, then, Adorno advocates a more dialectically inflected use of concepts as the basis for social criticism. Key Words: Adorno • Critique • Identity • Ideology • Liberalism • Positivism. (shrink)

While putting forward the proposal of a “philosophy of technology in the nominative case,” grounded on the concept of Neoenvironmentality, this paper intends to argue that the best definition of our current age is not “Anthropocene.” Rather, it is “Technocene,” since technology represents here and now the real “subject of history” and of (a de-natured) nature, i.e. the (neo)environment where man has to live.This proposal culminates in a new definition of man’s humanity and of technology. Switching from natura hominis to (...) conditio humana, the peculiarity of man can be defined on the basis of an anthropic perimeter, the core of which consists of man’s worldhood: man is that being that has a world (Welt), while animal has a mere environment (Umwelt). Both man’s worldhood and animal’s environmentality are derived from a pathic premise, namely the fundamental moods (Grundstimmungen) that refer them to their respective findingness (Befindlichkeit).From this anthropological premise, technology emerges as the oikos of contemporary humanity. Technology becomes the current form of the world – and so gives birth to a Technocene – insofar as it introduces in any human context its ratio operandi and so assimilates man to an animal condition, i.e. an environmental one. Technocene corresponds on the one side to the emergence of technology as (Neo)environment and on the other to the feralization of man. The spirit of Technocene turns out to be the complete redefinition of the anthropic perimeter.While providing a non-ideological characterization of the current age, this paper proposes the strategy of an ‘anthropological conservatism,’ that is to say a pathic desertion understood as a possible (pre)condition for the beginning of an authentic Anthropocene, i.e. the age of an-at-last-entirely-human-man. (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)

Psychologists investigating dreams in non-Western cultures have generally not considered the meanings of dreams within the unique meaning-structure of the person in his or her societal context. The study was concerned with explicating the indigenous system of dream interpretation of the Xhosa-speaking people, as revealed by acknowledged dream experts, and elaborating upon the life-world of the participants. Fifty dreams and their interpretations were collected from participants, who were traditional healers and their clients. A phenomenological methodology was adopted in explicating the (...) data. Themes explicated included : the physiognomy of the dreamer's life-world as revealed by significant dreams, the interpretation of significant dreams as revealed through action, and human bodiliness as revealed in dream interpretations. The participants' approach to dreams is not based upon an explicit theory, but upon an immediate and pathic understanding of the dream phenomenon. The understanding is based upon the interpreter's concrete understanding of the life-world, which includes the possibility of cosmic integration and continuity between personal and trans-personal realms of being. (shrink)

This paper presents a phenomenology of affect and discusses its relevance for organizational life-worlds. With Merleau-Ponty, affects are interpreted as bodily and embodied inter-relational phenomena, which have specific pathic, ecstatic and emotional qualities. Relationally, they will be situated as “inter-affection” that are part of the inter-corporeality of the “Flesh” of wild be(com)ing. Affect and inter-affectivity are then related to organizational life-worlds, through a critical exploration of different phenomena and effects generated by positive, negative and ambiguous dimensions. Finally, the potentials (...) of affects and affection as part of the nexus of an embodied responsive responsibility and sustainability are discussed and critical perspectives on affective becoming outlined. (shrink)

In the debate over the ontological structures of the entity that exists as being-in-the-world, the French philosopher Henri Maldiney focuses his theoretical developments on the unintentional and pre-predicative dimension of experience, where sensing (sentir) takes its origin, and based on which the Existentials of “encounter”, “surprise” and “rhythm”, that are key to understanding the aesthetic-artistic experience, are explained in the horizon of transpassibility and transpossibility. Given that that dimension is the privileged field of encounter with art, this paper will raise (...) the question of the nexus of the articulation between art and image. This question will be developed through the opposition of form and image, of the reality of image and the image of reality, and the aesthetic vision and imaginative vision. In this analysis, we will rely upon the Heideggerian conception of Existence, as well as some of Husserl’s and the neuro-psychiatrist Erwin Straus’s researches into the passive dimension of experience, with the purpose of showing how Maldiney, starting from them, contributed in a singular and significant way to the deepening of that unintentional dimension of existence which he calls “pathic”. (shrink)

Although the term “pre-predicative” (vorprädikativ) is used only two times in Being and Time, it qualifies in an essential way the hermeneutical process in which the existentials of understanding, interpretation and discourse cooperate to structure the phenomenal field into a meaningful horizon. This hermeneutical function represents for Heidegger the precondition for every theoretical-predicative behaviour of Dasein towards being. By means of a conceptual-historical analysis throughout the Twenties, it is possible to point out that Heidegger considers the domain of the pre-predicative (...) identical to the hermeneutical process. Nevertheless, on the basis of some indications that are to be found in Heidegger’s writings, we can trace the contours of a different history of the concept of “pre-predicative”, in which the latter hints at a deeper dimension of the human being – a dimension that can be designated as “pathic” or “prehermeneutical”. To this purpose, it is essential to investigate the concept of “pre-worldly” (vorweltlich), introduced by Heidegger in his first lecture course, his analysis of anxiety in 1929 and, finally, the image of the “great silence” (große Stille) in the later Contributions to Philosophy. (shrink)

The wind is the topic of a desirable pathic aesthetics and neophenomenology of air. More specifically, it is a good example of an atmospheric ephemeral quasi-thing, because, as religions have always recognized, it blows where it wishes. It involves us on the affective and felt-bodily level as an atmospheric feeling poured out into pre-dimensional space: that is, as a very concrete experience, significantly both climatic and affective, physical and felt-bodily. Unlike full-fledged things, the wind is not edged, discrete, cohesive, (...) or solid; it does not possess immanent and regular tendencies; it can appear in a partial form, without doing so through fragments and sides; it is (felt as) more immediate and intrusive than things, generating inhibiting or attracting motor suggestions; it dies down with the same inexplicable immediacy with which it rises; it does not have a threefold causality (cause-action-effect) but a twofold one (cause/action-effect). Given these quasi-thingly wind characteristics, the paper sketches a review of the main types of felt-bodily resonance, within a range whose two extremes are narrowness and vastness, triggered by windy atmospheres (for example sudden gust of wind, breeze, shallow wind, stormy wind and calm). (shrink)

When perception is made the subject of philosophy, it is primarily understood as pre-theoretical sensual knowledge, and the question of its truth content becomes the focus of attention. In contrast, approaches that fall within the philosophy of embodiment quite rightly point out that perception is bodily anchored and closely linked to interests in action. The primacy of knowledge is therefore substituted by a primacy of praxis. This article aims to point out the blind spots that such a hegemony of the (...) practical entails. In a phenomenological way, it is to be shown that beside the aspect of instrumentality, perceptive situations are also experienced as pleasant or unpleasant as such. This points to the importance of the pathical character of perception. However, it is not a call to enthrone the primacy of affect instead of the primacy of practice. The paper concludes with a thought on the philosophy of pedagogy and education. Proceeding from that perceptive position, it is argued that film in particular offers a chance to apply the phenomenology of pathical perception to the field of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This book investigates the ontological state of relations in a unique way. Starting with the notion of system, it shows that the system can be understood as a relational structure, and that relations can be assessed within themselves, with no need to transform relations in elements. “Relations” are understood in contrast to “relational property”: without a relation there is no identity, therefore no existence. What allows us to do that without hypostatizing the relation, and without immediately taking it simply as (...) a causal relation, can be better grasped, possibly, in reference to a few entities that make best display of their systemic nature, for example images, works of art, and virtual bodies. This book shows how virtual bodies are ontological hybrids representing a type of entity that has never appeared in the world before. This entity becomes a phenomenon in interactivity and evades the dichotomy between “external” and “internal”; it is neither a cognitive product of the consciousness, nor an image of the mind. The user is well aware of experiencing anotherreality, also in the sense of a paradoxical reduplication of perceptual synthesis. The virtual body-environment is therefore simultaneously external and internal, with virtual bodies-environments to be seen as artificial windows to an intermediary world. In this intermediary world, the space itself is the result of interactivity; the world takes place in the sense or feeling of immersion experienced by the user; and the body, perceived as “other”, takes upon itself the sense of its reality, of its effectiveness, as an imaginary and pathic incision, as a production of desire and emotion, to the point that the feeling of reality conveyed by a virtual environment will rely significantly on how this environment produces emotions in the users. (shrink)

This article explores the spatial dimensions of selfhood and the pathic felt-bodily resonance, emphasizing their role in understanding the connection between health and the environment. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, it provides an overview of the relationship between embodiment, spatiality, and affectivity and their alterations in mental conditions. It highlights the significance of alterations in affective permeability and embodiment, particularly in conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, and addiction, which lead to distortions in lived space and constrictions in the field of (...) available affordances. It suggests the concept of ‘therapeutic atmospheres’ as those that open the corporal and emotional space of the patient and flexibilize the field of affective intensities navigated by them. It highlights the relevance of the therapists’ atmospheric competence and body availability to sustain the therapeutic space. (shrink)

The boom in new theories of resonance is most certainly due to an intellectual atmosphere closely linked to the so-called “affective turn” in the humanities. The paper compares some theories of resonance or responsivity such as Thomas Fuchs’ phenomenological-psychopathological analysis of resonance and Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenology of responsivity with a sociological research on resonance by which Hartmut Rosa aims at contrasting the capitalist dictatorship of the growth-acceleration-innovation triad and the resulting loss of bodily resonance in the modern age, and above (...) all with Hermann Schmitz’s phenomenology idea of felt-bodily communication. My aim is to show that by providing a neophenomenological approach to atmospheric perception – viewed as an affective and pre-reflexive bodily communication triggered by a spatial feeling whose sounding board is our Leib – a pathic aesthetics can assign both a diagnostic and a therapeutic value to the concept of resonance. This furthermore means that a sociology also attentive to the bodily and pre-linguistic dimension and a phenomenology also attentive to situative and historical-collective dimensions, both being able to focus on the pathicity of everyday life, may find an unexpected but promising point of contact. (shrink)

A neo-phenomenological and atmospherological approach, mainly based on a first-person perspective, seems perfectly entitled to consider subjective and collective well-being as the starting point for a philosophical reflection. The question is, however, whether and how well-being, also as an atmosphere, can be really investigated and verified. The paper examines many traditional roblems hindering the research and suggests to analyze well-being from a pathic-atmospheric point of view. It therefore focuses especially on the idea of “flow”, wonders how much our well-being (...) depends on the felt-bodily resonances triggered by atmospheric situations, considers the probable parallels between the aesthetic-phenomenologic notion of “atmosphere” and the sociological one of “climate”, finally, underlines the need of an atmospheric competence that is able to partly immunize against today’s widespread manipulative atmospherization. (shrink)

In E-Co-Affectivity, Marjolein Oele presents a comprehensive philosophical account of pathos. Analyzing distinct, yet interconnected spheres of affectivity, she persuasively argues that pathic phenomena or experiences underlie and enable the emergence, existence, and individuation of living beings as well as the (trans)formation of communal constellations between them. In my commentary, I first raise questions concerning interpretive and argumentative strategies employed by Oele. Subsequently, I comment on some of the political implications and limitations of Oele’s study: in particular, on the (...) underlying assumption that pathos has an equalizing effect on affective communality; and on the resulting relative lack of discussion of unequal degrees and kinds of vulnerability among those who are affected due to differences in social-political status and positionality. (shrink)

In this paper I will present the idea of a phenomenology of the “pathic” by interpreting some passages of Heidegger’s lecture course of 1919, Being and Time and What is Metaphysics? The first part provides a critical discussion of the perspective of AldoMasullo, who denies not only that Heidegger really succeeded in fathoming the pathic sphere, but also that a phenomenology of the pathic in general is possible. In contrast, my purpose is to outline a phenomenology of (...) the pathic in two possible directions of investigation, both inspired by Heidegger. On the one hand, the phenomenology of the “pathic” intends to define the distinctive features of what Heidegger calls experience of the “preworld” (Vorwelt) and to specifically argue for its premeaningful character. On the other hand, this phenomenological approach aims at identifying the transcendental conditions of possibility for experiencing the “prewordly something”: in such a factical experience the hermeneutic capacities of the subject are temporarily suspended, so that the sole Befindlichkeit, understood as the primordial way of access to the phenomenal horizon, is still at work. (shrink)

English summary: In looking at the concept of "pathisch," meaning a receptive self, abandoning itself to an artefact or an image of life with an observing, experiencing, suffering attitude, this volume addresses change and uniformity in the theories of perception, the critique of logocentrism and that of the subject up to authors of post-structuralism, in particular Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Paul Virilio. It claims and concludes that over a long period of time, 'pathic aesthetics' have (...) formed one of the most influential counter- discourses to the modern concept of the subject. German description: Das Adjektiv 'pathisch' erwahnen altere Nachschlagewerke noch mit einem Hinweis auf Ludwig Klages. Es meint ein rezeptives Selbst, das ohne eigene Aktivitat schauend, erlebend, 'leidend' an ein Artefakt oder ein Bild der Lebenswelt hingegeben ist. Das 'wirkliche Erlebnis' gehort zu den transitiven Lebensvorgangen und setzt das Selbst von der Subjektstelle an diejenige des Objekts: Die Gemutsbewegung widerfahrt, das Ich fallt dem lebendigen Geschehen anheim. Von dieser vitalistischen Definition ausgehend, fragt das vorliegende Buch nach dem Wandel und der Konstanz in den Theorien der Wahrnehmung, in der Kritik des Logozentrismus und derjenigen des Subjekts bis zu den Autoren des Poststrukturalismus, hier vor allem Jacques Derrida und Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes und Paul Virilio. Die 'Pathische Asthetik' will damit an den Anfang einer 'Urgeschichte der Postmoderne' zuruck verwiesen. Sie geht aus von der Geistkritik der spaten Lebensphilosophie, denn der Terminus ist durch Ludwig Klages vorgegeben. Der Begriff beansprucht demnach, den Zeitraum eines Jahrhunderts abzudecken. Er historisiert den Theorierahmen des Poststrukturalismus und die Epoche der Postmoderne von deren Ende her - und entwickelt darin kritische Bezuge, die selten so gesehen wurden. Pathiker sind demnach nicht Treibende, sondern Getriebene: Gegenfiguren zu allen Tatheroen seit der Antike. Willenlos uberlassen sie sich dem Spiel ihrer Einfalle und trotzen darin den Machern und Handelnden, deren Dasein im Wollen aufzugehen scheint. Der Pathiker steht auf der Seite des Vitalen, Wesensnotwendigen, wahrend der Tatmensch eigenmachtig Akte vollbringt, mit denen er die Wirklichkeit und nach deren Auffassungsgabe die Welt fragmentiert und im Erkennen auf den Begriff bringt. Das ist ein radikaler Dualismus, dem jede Form der Vermittlung und Versohnung fremd bleibt. Uber lange Zeit ist darum die 'Pathische Asthetik' einer der wirkmachtigsten Gegendiskurse zum modernen Subjektverstandnis gewesen. (shrink)

This book aims to develop an account of living together with difference which recognises the tension that we are inescapably with others - both human and non-human - but at the same time are always differing from and with those with whom we find ourselves. A concern for coexistence and questions over how we might live together have been raised and approached from a host of conceptual starting points in recent times, including via calls for a rethinking of communism today, (...) the articulation of forms of 'cosmopolitics' or 'pluralism', the re-figuring of understandings of ecology as dark or feminist, amongst others. This book responds to such questions of coexistence by developing what it calls a 'co-existential analytic'. In doing so, this book introduces a range of post-phenomenological thought which offers means for thinking about such questions of living together with difference. The thought of Emanuel Levinas on the face of the other, Jean-Luc Nancy on being as being-with, Roberto Esposito on the munis, and Michel Henry on pathic auto-affection are introduced and critically reflected upon in terms of what they offer for thinking about such coexistence. Alongside these conceptual starting points, a series of encounters - with cinema, everyday life, politics, and literature - are used to animate and illustration the discussion. Ultimately, the book argues for a 'spacing' of subjectivities with that world and those encountered within it. This book is intended primarily for researchers and postgraduate students interested in questions of identity, difference, and subjectivity. It will be of interest to those in the fields of social and cultural geography, sociology, social theory, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Kenneth Dover proposes an explanation of this joke in which the gist is to be understood in terms of ‘homosexual rape as an expression of dominance’, so that Dicaeopolis is offering himself up for use as a pathic by Lamachus. Dover believes that the joke becomes ‘intelligible if the assumption is that the erastēs handles the penis of the erōmenos during anal copulation’. Others have seen a circumcision joke here. Alan Sommerstein explains how the joke would work either of (...) these ways. (shrink)

The philosophically and semantically multifaceted term ‘understanding’ reveals a considerable complexity upon closer analysis. Thus, an epistemological examination of ‘understanding’ results in methodological approaches, but also in the insight that not only a logical, but also a moral and anthropological dimension becomes visible: the attitude of being honestly and pathically ‘willing to understand’ as engagement with another. This study focuses on understanding and intelligibility or non-understanding and incomprehensibility as applied to medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy, especially in the doctor–patient relationship and (...) in the anthropological justification of actions in liminal situations. (shrink)

The following considerations do not take their point of departure in legal logic, legal pragmatics, or in the critique of law but rather in the genesis of law, its emergence, and its place in actual experience. In particular, I would like to look at law as a special form of order and ordering power. Reference to “the law” can only be provisional, as it concerns a variable term that also changes in its linguistic designations.I will concentrate on the pre-juridical and (...) supra-juridical aspects of legal practice itself. Accordingly, although the law will not hereinafter be the object of an inquiry from an external point of view, I assume that legal thinking, as all thinking that takes place in determinate orders, has its own peculiar outside.Here I follow Foucault’s injunction concerning a penser du dehors. Close scrutiny of the internal/external difference opens up critical perspectives that spring from “the very core of law.” In general, the following pages take their cue from the responsively oriented and ‘pathically’ grounded phenomenology I have developed hitherto. (shrink)

My paper aims to outline the concept of the pathic foundation of political institutions. I depart from the observation of a lack of clarity concerning the resources of institutional stability in the work of Chantal Mouffe and the proponents of agonistic democracy. Drawing from the ideas of Claude Lefort and Carl von Clausewitz, I sketch the idea that the experience of confict itself generates the moral and epistemic groundings that legitimize and stabilize its institutional regulations. It is within the (...) pathic experience of exhaustion in the face of the results of escalating confict that a common ground of legitimacy is reached. The bulk of my paper is dedicated to the phenomenological analysis of the foundational pathic experience, of the pathic disposition of political subjectivity resulting from it, and of its institutional manifestations. (shrink)

This paper is based on the eco-pedagogical aspiration to live with domesticated animals in accordance with Alphonso Lingis's Community of those who have nothing in common. I draw upon this remarkable text as well as Lingis's animal writings in describing moments and movements of pathic community. Such a community in affective affiliation with one another, where symbiotic relations are possible and bodily kinships are exercised, exemplifies what is possible in more rational human communities where domesticating impulses seek to harness (...) the vital powers of coconstitutive life. Of telling significance are predatory threats, the manner in which they appear, and the protectionist responses they occasion. By recasting these threats and responses in terms of motional affordances, it may well be possible to move with non-human creatures, both literally and figuratively, beyond the anthropocentric confines of domestication. Animals with whom we appear to have nothing specifically, or in species terms, in common can show us how to cultivate more pathic communities of our own kind. (shrink)

The paper addresses the issue of dwelling as a powerful way of cultivating atmospheric feelings without the risk of suffering their disturbing aggressiveness, and deals with inclusiveness or immersivity that true dwelling arouses. To avoid the widespread trend to consider every space a dwelling place, it proposes that only a really “lived” place, in so far it radiates a specific and particularly intense-authoritative atmosphere (in kinetic, synesthetic, felt-bodily sense) affecting the perceivers and finding in their body its precise sounding board, (...) makes dwelling in the proper sense possible. Just as there are different types of atmosphere (prototypical, derivative, spurious), there are therefore different types of dwelling and inclusiveness. However, contrary to the today’s projectivistconstructionist explanation and globalized orientation, for a “pathic aesthetics” only a lifewordly qualitative-emotional experience based on an atmosphere of intimacy-familiarity really turns a house into a home. (shrink)

Responding to the interlocutors, Ricoeur, utilizing Kantian aesthetic theory, addresses the nature of the work of art, its universality and communicability, and explores its temporality — its ‘transhistoricity’ — by utilizing concepts derived from medieval philosophy, including ‘sempiternality’ and ‘monstration’. He expands on hermeneutics, defends it against charges of relativism, expatiates on the danger of aestheticism, and explains the value of mimesis in art. He explores the different art forms, focusing with Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne as a model of the ‘ipseity’ (...) of the artist; and he dwells particularly on the singularity of music and its ‘pathic’ moods. A discussion of literature culminates in an emphasis on the special importance of Holocaust texts. (shrink)

This paper describes two contemporary houses and their respective gardens: the small post-earthquake temporary shelters in Onna, Italy and Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage in Southern England. To dwell, as per the Heideggerian perspective, is an act of cultivation of the soil, the transformation of wilderness into a tilled (architectural) garden: it entails rootedness, permanence, and recurring practices of care. Nevertheless, what these two architectural gardens show is that in our time, while caring for the land can still epitomize the subjugation (...) of chthonic forces, attempting to institute an ecological relation of domination, it may also point in an altogether different direction. In Onna, the gardens appear as an act of resistance against the menacing forces of wilderness; Jarman’s attitude is that of a pathic acceptation of the atmospheric powers pervading the vast marine environment. (shrink)

Inspired by the genetic phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the historical epistemology of Georges Canguilhem, this paper defends a theory of normativity grounded in pathos rather than logos. Proceeding from the double assumption that accounts of the origins of normativity circulated in antiquity and modernity are unsatisfactory, and the determinacy of norms remains a central problem not only for moral theory but also for epistemology, political theory, and even medicine, the author contends that the realm of lived experience can help (...) us furnish determinate though often pre-thetic norms that can underwrite or justify “non-moral normative distinctions,” such as the distinction between the just and the unjust in political theory and the distinction between the normal and the pathological in medicine. With the aid of comparative and hermeneutic analysis, the author establishes that Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception shares with Canguilhem’s The Normal and the Pathological a similar understanding of the norming and normative character of subjective experience and, moreover, that in these works one can find a “pathic” theory of norms that can give us, as the author puts it, “a new foundation for the very possibility of critique” in our post-Enlightenment moment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Attitudes of Play by Gabor CsepregiPaul GaffneyCSEPREGI, Gabor. Attitudes of Play. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. 182 pp. Cloth, $120.00; paper, $32.95This delightful and illuminating book presents a thorough account of playfulness, its various manifestations and associations, and its indispensable role in the good life. Reading through the well-documented chapters, one recognizes how many thoughtful people have commented on the meaning of play, and yet, at the same (...) time, one recognizes the necessity for a full-scale, integrated discussion. The inspiration for the study is partly practical, as stated in the prologue: “I noticed that people who approach their daily tasks or [End Page 713] recreational pursuits with an attitude of play seem to lead a happier and fuller life.” But play as attitude also deserves theoretical study because it integrates, enhances, and to some extent opposes the instrumental character of human endeavor and thus reveals something fundamental about the human condition.A moral context is established early. We are told in chapter 1, “The Concept of Attitude,” that, unlike feelings and ideas, we are responsible for the attitudes that we adopt and, therefore, for the actions and emotions that they characteristically structure. An attitude is an authentic, embodied, and concrete engagement with the world, subject to “continual modifications” and so, presumably, not entirely under our control, but still largely a determination of human agency. In chapter 2, “Play as Attitude,” the author makes an important distinction between play as activity and play as attitude, the latter of which has been comparatively neglected. Play as attitude (playfulness) represents a mode of noninstrumentality— a “momentary holiday from work-related occupations”—that can transform almost any experience, at least temporarily. Playfulness thus represents an immediate engagement, a childlike attentiveness, which is precisely what provides its special value. Chapter 3, “Pathic Attitude,” develops this theme. Playfulness is reciprocal; in fact, we might say it is doubly playful: “In all play there is something with which we play and, in turn, plays with us.” An openness to the world, and a delight in its responsiveness, grounds the playful attitude. The experience is discoverable by young children and some animals as well.The following chapters elaborate on this basic outline. Chapter 4, “Ease,” explains how advanced players often lose themselves and “sink into a role,” a peak experience that is typically the product of training and habit. This enviable state would seem to be somewhat elusive, particularly for performers, which suggests that it is something of a moral achievement. The experience recalls what has been called in the philosophy of sport literature “flow performance,” which is, paradoxically, both more intense and yet effortless. Chapter 5, “Risk,” explores the adventurous nature of play, which inevitably involves uncertainty, luck, and risk. An attitude of play embraces, or at least accepts, the vagaries of good and bad luck; it comes with the risk of failure, embarrassment, and even physical injury. This chapter presents an important discussion about the tension between the spirit of playfulness and the ethos of modern sport, which tends increasingly to emphasize proficiency, rationalization, and commercialization. The modern obsession with preparation, perfection, and control leaves little room for a genuinely playful spirit, which ideally should animate sport. Indeed, the occasional experience of feeling lost, which the author, following Caillois, describes as “vertigo,” is an essential component of a full life. In chapter 6, “Humor,” we are told that although some playful activities are serious and demand concentration, they are often accompanied by a good-natured, lighthearted attitude. Humor seems to be inherently playful, a liberal and often irreverent exercise of the [End Page 714] imagination, which allows it to provide solace, inspiration, and transcendence: “Humor, then, is the capacity to see and apprehend things in their complexity, ambivalence, and paradoxical nature.” Chapter 7, “Gratuité,” underscores a major theme of the book—the importance of the useless or gratuitous in a fully meaningful life (gratuité and utilité are French for “useless” and “useful”). The author insightfully suggests that such moments might present themselves in seemingly disparate activities, such as play and liturgy: “Measured by the strict sense of the word, they are purposeless but still full... (shrink)

This study offers a critical re-reading of Heidegger’s thought from the viewpoint of the relationship between the affective structure of the existence and two other fundamental components of the human being, which are understanding and language. The analysis of such approach to the world, which represents Heidegger’s "Befindlichkeit" – a peculiar and self-sufficient source of experience in relation to the projecting comprehension – leads us to recognize the presence of a fundamental ontological dimension of the existence, here designated as “ (...) class='Hi'>pathic” with reference to the Greek term "paschein". This dimension identifies the most original way of access to the phenomenal horizon and represents the “foundation” – meaning the condition of possibility – of the other main dimension of the existence, the hermeneutic one, constituted by all those structures, such as understanding, interpretation and language, which contribute to the articulation of our reality in a meaningful whole. (shrink)

Despite his major contributions to phenomenology, the writings on suggestion and hypnosis by Erwin Straus (1891–1975) have been underappreciated. In his German language publications of 1925 and 1927, Straus argues that we cannot elucidate the phenomenon of suggestion solely or even primarily through experimental design, a narrow natural scientific viewpoint, or an emphasis on abnormal or special states of dissociation. In contrast, a phenomenological study that begins with everyday experience demonstrates that suggestion is part of normal experience, and its understanding (...) must include the possibility both of acceptance and of rejection. Straus’s arguments in these essays are enhanced by his later books and articles developing the I-Allon relationship, the process of we-formation, and the distinction of pathic and gnostic moments of sensation and perception. By fully situating the phenomenon within theLebenswelt, Straus’s analysis of suggestion is a major contribution to phenomenology. (shrink)

Responding to the interlocutors, Ricoeur, utilizing Kantian aesthetic theory, addresses the nature of the work of art, its universality and communicability, and explores its temporality — its ‘transhistoricity’ — by utilizing concepts derived from medieval philosophy, including ‘sempiternality’ and ‘monstration’. He expands on hermeneutics, defends it against charges of relativism, expatiates on the danger of aestheticism, and explains the value of mimesis in art. He explores the different art forms, focusing with Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne as a model of the ‘ipseity’ (...) of the artist; and he dwells particularly on the singularity of music and its ‘pathic’ moods. A discussion of literature culminates in an emphasis on the special importance of Holocaust texts. (shrink)

The author calls phenomenological intentionality, into question while taking it, nevertheless, as a starting point. From the analysis of the meaning of phenomena he goes back to a pathic dimension which precedes them. What happens to us or affects us and to what we respond in different ways cannot be reduced to previous horizons. Between pathos and response, there is an irreducible cleft which constitutes a special sort of time-lag. What happens to us comes is always too early; our (...) responses always come too late. Our experience is never completely up to date. In order to explore this pre-semantic and pre-pragmatic depth of experience we need a sort of responsive reduction, which guides all meaning toward something we respond to. In conclusion, the author evokes some areas in which such a revision of phenomenology shows its effects, namely the genesis of life in bioethics, the historical elaboration of memory and the experience of the Other. (shrink)