Legal mobilization in the courts and in political discourse has emerged as an increasingly important strategy of social movements that complements other political approaches. This is true also for women’s movements in post-socialist countries, but most research on strategic litigation has focused so far on common law countries and on supranational litigation in Europe. Using the case of Poland as an example, this article asks why references to the law are so attractive in post-socialist contexts and what can be gained (...) by this with respect to actual rights, justice and social change. It focuses thereby on strategic litigation as the most sophisticated strategy that results from other sustained movement activities connected with the law. It draws on field research, interviews with activists and analyses of primary as well as secondary sources. The article explores the reasons for using the law as the ‘master frame’ by analysing the traditions of gender and law in state socialism and during democratic consolidation. Two examples of strategic litigation, the Tysiąc case for reproductive rights and the ‘Biedronka’ cases for employment rights, are analysed and situated in the context of other legal mobilization activities. These cases set the agenda for crucial social problems and resulted in binding decisions by the courts. A broad and predominantly supportive media discourse was conducive to cultivating public opinion. These analyses support the conclusion that legal mobilization tends to directly influence law and legal practices. It has a socializing effect on the population and their legal consciousness. In aiming at both state and society, these legal strategies of the women’s movement are a modest but crucial success for democratic consolidation. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEthische Aspekte von Biobanken-basierter Forschung werden zunehmend kontrovers diskutiert. In diesem Artikel wird die Debatte um ethisch angemessene Formen der Einwilligung in Biobanken-basierte Forschung nachgezeichnet. Nach einer Einführung in etablierte Einwilligungsmodelle skizziert der Beitrag kurz die Entwicklung alternativer Ansätze und diskutiert die damit verbundenen ethischen und regulatorischen Herausforderungen. Dabei wird dargestellt, welche ethischen Prinzipien in diesen Diskussionen eine Rolle spielen. Der Beitrag schließt mit einem Ausblick für Deutschland.

According to current opinion in western psychopathology, depression is regarded as a disorder of mood and affect on the one hand, and as a distortion of cognition on the other. Disturbances of bodily experience and of social relations are regarded as secondary to the primarily 'inner'and individual disorder. However, quite different concepts can be found in cultures whose members do not experience themselves as much as separate individuals but rather as parts of social communities. Disorders of mood or well-being are (...) then conceived less as intra-psychic, but rather as bodily, interpersonal, or atmospheric processes. On this background, the paper describes depression as a disorder of intercorporeality and interaffectivity. After developing these phenomenological concepts, it analyses depression as a 'detunement' of the resonant body that mediates our participation in a shared affective space. Instead of expressing the self, the body is turned into a barrier to all impulses directed to the environment. This impairs particularly the patient's interaction with others, resulting in a general sense of detachment, separation, or even segregation. Moreover, the restriction of the lived body also corresponds to the triggering situations of depression, namely experiences of a disruption of social bonds. Thus, intercorporeality and interaffectivity are presented as crucial dimensions for an ecological and non-reductionist view of depression. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience has been driven by the idea that by reductionist analysis of mechanisms within a solitary brain one can best understand how the human mind is constituted and what its nature is. The brain thus came to appear as the creator of the mind and the experienced world. In contrast, the paper argues for an ecological view of mind and brain as both being embedded in the relation of the living organism and its environment. This approach is crucially dependent (...) on a developmental perspective: the brain is conceived as a plastic system of open loops that are formed in the process of life and closed to full functional cycles in every interaction with the environment. Each time a new disposition of coherent neural activity is formed through repeated experience, structures of the mind are imprinted onto the brain. The brain becomes a mediating organ or a window to the mind, for it is structured by the mind itself. (shrink)

In European philosophies of history, the linear paradigm that has prevailed for centuries as a derivative of Christian salvation history (Heilsgeschichte), ultimately lost its monopoly with the arrival of the “post-age.” The result of this has been that ideas that have survived on the margins, even the cyclical interpretation of time attached to religious traditions, now seem capable of outliving the short-lived belief in continuous progress. According to the cyclical view of history, those who came last will leave first, with (...) those who came first leaving as the last adherents of the driving force of Western rationalization. Thus, within a century, beginning with World War 2, a major turning point has been crossed: Socialism was the first to disappear, and it looks like Secular Liberalism will be the next; then Protestantism, followed by Islam, and so forth. As seductive as these images may appear, they only mirror an auto-destructive thread at the very center of Europe’s troubled Geist. But can anything be done to save the most important European values, and specifically, the ethical drive to say “no” to power, which is perhaps the most important legacy of monotheism? Either as a self-limitation from within powerful institutions or as a mode of resistance on the margins of powerful developments—there is a strong adherence to the good (often named God) that helps people and communities survive their diasporic state. I will present this kernel of ethical monotheism by two relatively unknown twentieth-century examples of “diasporic knowledge”: Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), in which she recorded her observations of the devastating effects of empires on Yugoslavia, and two poems by Rosario Castellanos, who decades before the debate on postcolonialism voiced the concerns of displaced indigenous cultures in her Mexican homeland. I suggest that, paradoxically, attention to diasporic voices is one way of realizing the spirit of European self-limitation that is so much needed today to prevent further damage to our societies and environment wrought by the excessive drive for progress fostered by an unethical monorationalism. (shrink)

Over the past few years, even before the Brexit campaign and the outcome of the 2016 referendum in the United Kingdom, Europe has been haunted by the spectre of an impending split and disintegration of the Union. Self-appointed “kings” and “philosophers” of greater Europe seem to have been competing for the “unity award,” with more and more of them failing dramatically. One indicator of the public alarm at the prospect of the Union’s split is the exaggerated use of the word (...) “unity” and its cognates. But can the rhetoric of unity act as a cure for the disease? This essay suggests that, ironically, the constant use of organic metaphors and invocations of European unity seems to be paving the way for—rather than preventing—the rise of neo-authoritarian forces. (shrink)

From an embodied and enactive point of view, the mind–body problem has been reformulated as the relation between the lived or subject body on the one hand and the physiological or object body on the other (“body–body problem”). The aim of the paper is to explore the concept of circularity as a means of explaining the relation between the phenomenology of lived experience and the dynamics of organism–environment interactions. This concept of circularity also seems suitable for connecting enactive accounts with (...) ecological psychology. It will be developed in a threefold way: (1) As the circular structure of embodiment, which manifests itself (a) in the homeostatic cycles between the brain and body and (b) in the sensorimotor cycles between the brain, body, and environment. This includes the interdependence of an organism’s dispositions of sense-making and the affordances of the environment. (2) As the circular causality, which characterizes the relation between parts and whole within the living organism as well as within the organism–environment system. (3) As the circularity of process and structure in development and learning. Here, it will be argued that subjective experience constitutes a process of sense-making that implies (neuro-)physiological processes so as to form modified neuronal structures, which in turn enable altered future interactions. On this basis, embodied experience may ultimately be conceived as the integration of brain–body and body–environment interactions, which has a top-down, formative, or ordering effect on physiological processes. This will serve as an approach to a solution of the body–body problem. (shrink)

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) create an increasing similarity between the performance of AI systems or AI-based robots and human communication. They raise the questions: whether it is possible to communicate with, understand, and even empathically perceive artificial agents; whether we should ascribe actual subjectivity and thus quasi-personal status to them beyond a certain level of simulation; what will be the impact of an increasing dissolution of the distinction between simulated and real encounters. (1) To answer these questions, the paper (...) argues that the precondition for actually understanding others consists in the implicit assumption of the subjectivity of our counterpart, which makes shared feelings and a „we-intentionality” possible. This assumption is ultimately based on the presupposition of a shared form of life, conceived here as „conviviality.” (2) The possibility that future artificial agents could meet these preconditions is refuted on the basis of embodied and enactive cognition, which links subjectivity and consciousness to the aliveness of an organism. (3) Even if subjectivity is in principle impossible for artificial agents, the distinction between simulated and real subjectivity might nevertheless become increasingly blurred. Here, possible consequences are discussed, especially using the example of virtual psychotherapy. Finally, the paper makes case for a mindful appproach to the language we use to talk about artificial systems and pleads for preventing a systematic pretense of subjectivity. (shrink)

‘The only remedy for bad public debate is more good public debate’, this advice, originally stated by Éric Weil and quoted by Patrice Canivez in the present collection, could stand as the motto of...

The task of this article is to outline foundations of a Marxist-humanist approach to communication justice, media justice, and digital justice. A dialectical approach to justice is outlined that di...

In this volume, Fr. Fuchs has brought together 12 exceptionally important essays which consider various aspects of the relationship between Christian morality ...

The articles in this volume offer a fresh perspective on the important role of the concept of law (lex) in the moral and political philosophy of the 'School of Salamanca'.

Selon Schiller, jouer, c’est agir en étant dégagé de toute contrainte et de toute obligation, et donc tirer grand plaisir de sa liberté par rapport aux nécessités. C’est ce sentiment de liberté rattachant le jeu au phénomčne esthétique de beauté qui fait sa grande valeur éducationnelle. La qualité que nous appelons beauté procure le męme plaisir que le jeu. Dans une belle śuvre d’art, la matičre n’est pas dominée par la forme ou vice-versa. Une śuvre d’art est un jeu libre (...) entre forme et substance, entre beauté et contrainte, et représente de ce fait le summum de l’activité ludique. Les jeux sont des pas sur la voie de la beauté, car ils éduquent ceux qui jouent au plaisir de la liberté de création. Contrairement ŕ la position de Schiller, Maria Montessori rejette le jeu comme moyen d’éducation. Elle pense que les enfants doivent travailler pour trouver leur voie ŕ travers les difficultés de la réalité. Or, l’analyse de ses méthodes révčle la présence de nombreux éléments de la liberté que Schiller attribue au jeu. Les enfants peuvent choisir les choses avec lesquelles ils « travaillent ». Ils ne sont pas obligés de les utiliser exactement de la maničre que l’éducateur leur montre. Et, ce qui est le plus important, les enfants prennent un grand plaisir ŕ exécuter leur « travail ». Dans cet article, l’auteur interprčte d’abord les réflexions de Schiller sur l’éducation ŕ travers le jeu, oů l’accent est mis sur l’imagination. Dans la seconde partie, l’auteur discute la question de savoir s’il est justifié de prétendre que Maria Montessori rejette l’imagination comme moyen d’éducation. (shrink)

The target article “Bounded Justice, Inclusion and the Hyper/Invisibility of Race in Precision Medicine” (Ferryman 2023) raises critical questions about the development of genuinely inclusive, fair...

Hass wird in der Arbeit als eine anhaltende affektive Gesinnung verstanden, die auf eine erlebte Kränkung oder Ungerechtigkeit zurückgeht und auf Rache an ihrem Urheber, in extre­men Fällen auf die Vernichtung des Feindes gerichtet ist. Die Dynamik und Radikalität insbesondere des malignen Hasses resultiert, so die These des Autors, aus einer Affektretention, die durch die selbst empfundene Schwäche oder Ohnmacht des Hassenden bedingt ist. Durch diesen Rückstau wird der Hass demnach in der Latenzphase immer weiter genährt, bis er schließlich in (...) akute destruktive Handlungen umschlagen kann. Als charakteristische Struktur des Hasses wird dabei eine Dialektik von Selbststeigerung und Selbstdestruktivität mit fortschreitender Entleerung des Selbst herausgearbeitet. Diese indivi­duelle Dynamik findet sich in oft potenzierter Form im Hass von Gruppen wieder. Der Autor untersucht die Phänomenologie des Hasses und die daraus resultierende Form von Destruktivität anhand literarischer Beispiele, psychischer Störungen und gesellschaftlicher Phänomene. (shrink)

“We can look back on what we have achieved and, without exaggerating, call it a ‘miracle’.” This quote is Angela Merkel’s second famous remark on Israel (the most famous being that Israel’s securit...

In der Wissenschaftsgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts steht die deutsche Tradition sprachbasierter Erkenntnistheorie im Schatten der primär rationalistischen Strömungen. Der an Leibniz' Begriff der cognitio symbolica ebenso wie an den englischen Empirismus Bacons und Lockes anknüpfende Ansatz gerät dabei in den Hintergrund, obwohl diese Traditionslinie, die sowohl rationalistische als auch empiristische Elemente vereinbart, bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts fortbesteht. Dies hat weitreichende Konsequenzen sowohl für die Philosophie- und Literaturgeschichte als auch für die literaturwissenschaftliche Detailforschung, da weder Herders Erkenntnistheorie noch die (...) poetologischen Konzeptionen des 'Anti-Klassikers' Jean Paul und des Frühromantikers Novalis ohne Kenntnis der theoretischen Voraussetzungen erklärt werden können. Unter Auswertung empirisch belegbarer Quellen wie handschriftliche Nachlässe, Briefwechsel und Zitate wird die Entwicklung eines semiotischen Wissensbegriffs bis zu seinen Ursprüngen im 17. Jahrhundert zurückverfolgt und schrittweise nachvollzogen: Die theoretische Ausbildung erfolgt um 1760 durch den für die Wissenschaftsgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts höchst bedeutsamen Philosophen und Naturwissenschaftler Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777). Eine systematische und historische Analyse der zentralen Schrift Herders "Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft" aus dem Jahr 1799 ergibt, daß Lamberts Ansatz in Herders Entwurf der Zeichenabhängigkeit allen menschlichen Denkens konsequent rezipiert wird. Schließlich müssen die poetologischen Konzeptionen Jean Pauls in der "Vorschule der Ästhetik" und in Novalis' "Theoretischem Werk" in die genannte Traditionslinie eingebunden werden. Infolgedessen sind besonders die Begriffe des Witzes und der Ironie Jean Pauls sowie der romantische Kritik-Begriff Novalis', der seine Enzyklopädistik stützt, wesentlich schärfer zu fassen als bisher. (shrink)

Dieser Band behandelt umfassend und systematisch die Frage des Patientenwillens: die historischen und philosophischen Grundlagen des Willensbegriffs, die Beziehung von Autonomie und Wille und praktische Fragen der Bioethik und des Biorechts. Die Herausgeber: PD Dr. Marko Fuchs lehrt Philosophie an der Universität Bamberg. Dr. Martin Hähnel lehrt Philosophie an der Universität Bremen und ist Koordinator des BMBF-Verbundvorhabens "Verantwortungsvoller Umgang mit Künstlicher Intelligenz in der Medizin" (VUKIM) Dr. Danaë Simmermacher lehrt Philosophie an der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

Present day neuroscience places the brain at the centre of study. But what if researchers viewed the brain not as the foundation of life, rather as a mediating organ? Ecology of the Brain addresses this very question. It considers the human body as a collective, a living being which uses the brain to mediate interactions.

Theories of personal identity in the tradition of John Locke and Derek Parfit emphasize the importance of psychological continuity and the abilities to think, to remember and to make rational choices as a basic criterion for personhood. As a consequence, persons with severe dementia are threatened to lose the status of persons. Such concepts, however, are situated within a dualistic framework, in which the body is regarded as a mere vehicle of the person, or a carrier of the brain as (...) the organ of mental faculties. Based on the phenomenology of embodiment, this paper elaborates a different approach to personal identity in dementia. In this perspective, selfhood is primarily constituted by pre-reflective self-awareness and the body memory of an individual, which consists in the embodiment and enactment of familiar habits, practices and preferences. After describing the different types of body memory, the paper develops a phenomenology of dementia as a loss of reflexivity and meta-perspective. This is contrasted with the preservation of individual forms of body memory even in the later stages of the illness. The ethical consequences of an embodied approach to dementia are outlined. A final look is given to narrativistic and constructionist concepts of the self in dementia. (shrink)

There is a conspicuous tendency of humans to experience empathy and sympathy preferentially towards members of their own group, whereas empathetic feelings towards outgroup members or strangers are often reduced or even missing. This may culminate in a “dissociation of empathy”: a historical example are the cases of Nazi perpetrators who behaved as compassionate family men on the one hand, yet committed crimes of utter cruelty against Jews on the other. The paper aims at explaining such phenomena and at determining (...) the limits of empathy. To this purpose, it first distinguishes between two levels of empathy, namely primary or intercorporeal and extended or higher-level empathy. It then investigates the mutual interconnection of empathy and recognition, which may be regarded as a principle of extending empathy to others regardless of whether they belong to one’s own group or not. However, this principle is in conflict with ingroup conformism and outgroup biases that hamper the universal extension of empathy. Thus, a denial of recognition and exclusion of others from one’s ingroup usually results in a withdrawal or lack of extended empathy which then influences primary empathy as well. On this basis, and using the historical example of mass executions during the Holocaust, the paper investigates the mechanisms of exclusion which may lead to a withdrawal of recognition and finally to a dissociation of empathy. (shrink)

It is shown that the Magidor forcing to collapse the cofinality of a measurable cardinal that carries a length \ sequence of normal ultrafilters, increasing in the Mitchell order, to \, is subcomplete.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE BEGINNING Phenomenology begins in the work of Edmund Husserl; the first of his phenomenological publications ...

The year 2019 witnessed the 20th Jubileum of the Växjö conference series on quantum foundations and probability in physics. This has been the longest running series of conferences on the subject in history. Many old and new friendships were forged at Linnaeus University and the beautiful surrounding lakes of Småland, where once yearly everyone gathers to renew the debate and report their latest progress. 2019 also represents the Porcelain Anniversary—18 years—of the point of view on quantum theory known as QBism. (...) In this regard, the 2001 meeting in the series was pivotal in more ways than one. Not only did it instigate Fuchs’s break [1] from the earlier (Jaynes style) “objective Bayesianism” and neo-Copenhagen thinking of Caves et al. [2], but it was the first meeting at an international scale to indicate that the quantum information revolution might have something genuine to contribute to quantum foundational thought. That meeting set the pace far beyond Växjö by the participation of a number of luminaries of quantum information: The late Asher Peres, Daniel Greenberger, David Mermin, Herbert Bernstein, Carlton Caves, Rüdiger Schack, Richard Jozsa, Benjamin Schumacher, and John Smolin. One could almost hear a battle cry echo from the woods, “Quantum foundations from quantum information or die!” The foundations debate had turned so stale by the time, it would surely die without an influx of new thinking. (shrink)

The debate on personal persistence has been characterized by a dichotomy which is due to its still Cartesian framwork: On the one side we find proponents of psychological continuity who connect, in Locke’s tradition, the persistence of the person with the constancy of the first-person perspective in retrospection. On the other side, proponents of a biological approach take diachronic identity to consist in the continuity of the organism as the carrier of personal existence from a third-person-perspective. Thus, what accounts for (...) someone’s persistence over time, is the continuity of his mind on the one hand, and the continuity of his body on the other. In contrast to those views, the paper intends to show that bodily existence represents the basis of selfhood across time, both as the continuity of the experiential self and as the continuity of the autopoietic organism. On the one hand, the lived body conveys a continuity of the self from a first-person perspective, namely a pre-reflective feeling of sameness or a felt constancy of subjectivity. Moreover, an analysis of awakening and sleep shows that there is a continuous transition from full wakefulness to periods of deep sleep which may thus not be regarded as a complete interruption of subjective experience. On the other hand, this constancy converges with the continuity of the organismic life process as conceived from a third-person perspective. Thus, the experiential self of bodily subjectivity and the autopoietic self of the living organism should be regarded as two aspects of one and the same life process. Finally, the lived body also exhibits a specific form of memory that results from the continual embodiment of existence: it consists of all the affinities, capacities and experiences, which a person has acquired throughout his life. Thus, it provides a continuity of self that must not be actively produced through remembering, but rather integrates the person’s entire past in his present being and potentiality. (shrink)

Through advances in production and treatment technologies, transparent glass has become an increasingly versatile material and a global hallmark of modern architecture. In the shape of invisible barriers, it defines spaces while simultaneously shaping their lighting, noise, and climate conditions. Despite these unique architectural qualities, little is known regarding the human experience with glass barriers. Is a material that has been described as being simultaneously there and not there from an architectural perspective, actually there and/or not there from perceptual, behavioral, (...) and social points of view? In this article, we review systematic observations and experimental studies that explore the impact of transparent barriers on human cognition and action. In doing so, the importance of empirical and multidisciplinary approaches to inform the use of glass in contemporary architecture is highlighted and key questions for future inquiry are identified. (shrink)

I investigate the relationships between three hierarchies of reflection principles for a forcing class $\Gamma $ : the hierarchy of bounded forcing axioms, of $\Sigma ^1_1$ -absoluteness, and of Aronszajn tree preservation principles. The latter principle at level $\kappa $ says that whenever T is a tree of height $\omega _1$ and width $\kappa $ that does not have a branch of order type $\omega _1$, and whenever ${\mathord {\mathbb P}}$ is a forcing notion in $\Gamma $, then it is (...) not the case that ${\mathord {\mathbb P}}$ forces that T has such a branch. $\Sigma ^1_1$ -absoluteness serves as an intermediary between these principles and the bounded forcing axioms. A special case of the main result is that for forcing classes that don’t add reals, the three principles at level $2^\omega $ are equivalent. Special attention is paid to certain subclasses of subcomplete forcing, since these are natural forcing classes that don’t add reals. (shrink)

In order to make progress in the welfare debate, we need a way to decide whether certain cases depict changes in well-being or not. I argue that an intuitive idea by Nagel has received insufficient attention in the literature and can be developed into a test to that purpose. I discuss a version of such a test proposed by Brad Hooker, and argue that it is unsuccessful. I then present my own test, which relies on the claim that if compassion (...) is fitting towards a person due to her having (or lacking) certain properties, then we know that having (or lacking) those properties affect the person’s well-being. I show how my test yields results in cases of deception, which have implications for central questions in the literature on well-being, such as whether what you do not experience can affect your well-being (the so-called Experience Requirement). (shrink)

Aus den Debatten der Philosophie des Geistes und der Phänomenologie kaum wegzudenken, hat sich die begriffliche Erforschung des „Selbst“ hier eine Bedeutung erkämpft, deren Spuren in den psychopathologischen Klassifikationssystemen kaum wiederzufinden sind. Erst in jüngster Zeit werden Versuche unternommen, die durch diesen Begriff und seine philosophische Erforschung eröffnete Dimension des Verstehens auf psychiatrische Störungsbilder wie etwa der Schizophrenie anzuwenden, deren Erleben sich einem deskriptiven Zugang immer wieder entzieht. Welche Arten des Selbsterlebens, welche „Selbste“ lassen sich aber konzeptuell und phänomenal unterscheiden? (...) Wie ist es um die psychologischen Korrelata dieser Beschreibungen bestellt und welche Erkenntnisse hinsichtlich der Stabilität dieser Strukturen halten gerade jene Psychopathologien bereit, die teilweise oder gänzlich Selbsterfahrungen beeinträchtigen? Neben grundsätzlichen philosophischen Auseinandersetzungen mit der Thematik von Selbst und Selbststörungen vereint der Sammelband auch psychiatrische Forschungen, die interdisziplinäre Anschlüsse ermöglichen. So bieten gerade Störungen des Selbsterlebens der Philosophie die Möglichkeit, als Prüfsteine für ihre interpretativen Begriffe des Selbst zu fungieren. Mit Beiträgen von Thomas Fuchs, Mads Gram Henriksen/Joseph Parnas, Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Wouter Kusters, Stefano Micali, Philipp Schmidt, Alexander Schnell, László Tengelyi und Zeno Van Duppen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 323-326 [Access article in PDF] The Tacit Dimension Thomas Fuchs Thirty years after its appearance, Blankenburg's "Psychopathology of common sense" has not lost its relevance. In my commentary I will try to illustrate the fruitfulness of his approach by pointing to some connections with the phenomenology of the body as well as with recent memory and infant research.As Blankenburg himself indicates, the (...) notion of common sense developed by a shift of meaning from the classical sensus communis and thus has its original basis in the sensual-bodily experience. By the koinè aísthesis, Aristoteles meant a central sense organ integrating all single modalities of sensation (which he localized in the heart). In German physiology and psychiatry of the nineteenth century, the sensus communis was still translated as "Gemeingefühl" ("common feeling") or "cenesthesia" (Fuchs 1995). This term denoted the inner, proprioceptive bodily sensations, but also an original unity of the senses, which has been rediscovered by recent infant research as intermodal sensory perception. The affection of the body was thus regarded as the common basis of all sensation.Looking on this track for a bodily basis of the common sense, we find it in the habitual structure of the lived-body as analysed by Merleau-Ponty (1945). The body is the primary "matter-of-course," namely, the tacitly functioning medium of our everyday being-in-the-world prior to any subject-object split. The body schema, in Merleau-Ponty's view, is not only a system of familiar units of movement or "kinetic melodies," it also incorporates the surrounding things, tools, and spaces that are familiar to us and that we "inhabit." Thus, the musician "does not only manipulate the instrument like a separate object, but lives in it like a limb and inhabits the expressive musical space it opens" (Behnke 1997). But for Merleau-Ponty, the body schema is also the basis of "intercorporeity," i.e., a prepersonal sphere of reciprocal comportment and understanding prior to any explicit consensus and symbolic communication. In this sphere of elementary contact, the "atmospheric" senses play a major role: The sense of smell (as shown, e.g., by the expression "to scent treason" or in German, "jemand nicht riechen können" [not be able to "smell" or stand someone]) as well as the sense of taste whose ambiguous meaning, mentioned by Blankenburg, points to the bodily basis of the feeling for what is suitable, decent, or aesthetically pleasing. Even the designation of homo sapiens that we give to ourselves is derived from the latin sapere (to taste/to know), and thus shows that the knowledge characteristic for man is not an explicit one, but an intuitive, implicit knowing or "feel" for his surroundings, or as Kant says, an "aesthetic rather than intellectual judgment" (cited by Blankenburg).Polanyi (1967) has analysed this knowledge at the roots of common sense as "tacit knowledge." It is based on processes of Gestalt formation that enable us to grasp unified wholes through their constituting elements without still being aware of the latter. Thus, we understand the facial expression of others immediately but cannot tell from which details. Or we know how [End Page 323] to waltz without knowing the single movements or being able to explain it. Tacit knowledge implies all the taken-for-granted that we have forgotten once it has become our second nature and part of our bodily habits. It is mainly based on the neuronal coupling of single sensori-motor units by repeated perception or action. This unconscious knowing has only recently come to be explored by psychology under the heading of "implicit" or "procedural memory" (Schacter 1987, 1996). It contains familiar styles or "melodies" of moving, perceiving, and being-with-others in which our whole bodily and emotional experience is engaged. There is an atmospheric, "felt" quality about them that cannot be analysed into single elements. Implicit knowledge may, therefore, never be wholly expressed by words—it is only realized in the concrete situation. It may only be circumscribed by expressions such as "how it feels...," "how it is...," e.g., how it is... (shrink)