In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Freedom to BreatheJan Söffner (bio)It almost goes without saying: During the current pandemic, breathing lost its mere subliminal existence as an automated subsystem of our conscious existence and gained an oppressive presence. It did so in medical terms, in the spread of a virus attacking the respiratory system. It did so in terms of the lockdowns that virtualized much of our physical existence, cutting breath off from being (...) part of the communal atmosphere we dwell in. It did so in terms of the fear of taking in the contaminated breath of others, or of letting others inhale our own viruses. It did so by forcing us to wear face masks that simultaneously protected and obstructed our breath, and made us constantly smell our own bad breath. It did so by means of a fear, and regulation-induced deformation of our embodied interaction–which forced us to avoid each other rather than share our embodied lives. Breathing emerged into consciousness in a way that problematized the permeability of our breathing bodies, promoting instead an increasingly monadic existence reducing that permeability–an existence allowing only for an extremely mediated partaking in the world and interacting with others, as if (or indeed) talking to images on a computer screen.This change to our everyday breathing activity, as I will argue, profoundly altered the "metaphor we live by" that breathing is: If the emotional and enacted feeling of being a breathing body is altered, and if the habits of breathing change, then the ways we organize and understand our lives using breathing as a metaphor will lead to different meanings. And these meanings can be centered around a new feel of longing for freedom–a feel by means of which the concept of freedom is changed as well.A bitter example is the now worldwide awareness, and, as I will argue, altered understanding of the rallying cry, "I can't breathe." Originating from the 2014 police murder of Eric Garner, these had also been George Floyd's last words, uttered while being suffocated by police officers in 2020. The agony condensed in these words provided for an even more powerful metaphor to be adapted by the Black American community and beyond: people who had not literally been suffocated, but for whom the phrase spoke on their systemic historical oppression. [End Page 145] "I can't breathe" became a metaphor upon which a continuing legacy of repressions was projected.Yet, the term "metaphor," as precise as it is, can be misleading, because it seems to suggest this act of generalizing the lack of breath to be an act of mere comparison: People who are suppressed and metaphorically lack the air to breathe would then simply compare their lives to the suffocation of George Floyd; the similarity between their suppression and his would then be brought down to an "as if," wherein Black communities would simply feel as if they were suffocated (while what their 'suffocation' really means would remain an open point). However, things are not that simple: Adopting the words "I can't breathe" as a "metaphor we live by" does not only turn George Floyd's last words into an iconic comparison; it also evokes and suggests suffocation as a "feeling of being," as an experiencing of one's own existence. "Metaphors we live by" (Lakoff and Johnson) reside on subliminal bodily re-enaction and embodied empathy, enabling us to experience a feeling of suffocation which–as a feeling–is as real as the coldness of anxiety (as Louise Bourgeois would have it [see Klemm et al. 321]) or the warmth of social inclusion. This experience of felt suffocation, in turn, helps us talk and think about the state of subaltern existence, by replacing the question of whether the subaltern can speak (per Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak [1988]) with the question of whether they can breathe. Doing so aids in expressing indignation, and provides conceptual and iconic clarity. The clarity and precision of such metaphors is not about concepts, but about existential feelings. And in order to provide for this particular precision, these metaphors do not only rely on acts of comparison; much more than this, they rely on acts... (shrink)

Fritz Breithaupt’s “Three-Person Model of Empathy” (2012) offers a brilliant approach to relate empathy to side-taking. By thereby grounding empathy in subjective observation though, it becomes difficult to focus on how empathy interferes with phenomena of shared and embedded activity. This comment therefore raises the question of how Breithaupt’s theory of empathy can be related to phenomena of participatory sense-making and second-person interaction.

This paper traces the shift from the age of realism to the age of virtualism we are currently witnessing. To do so, I draw on older theories announcing this advent (mostly Baudrillard in Simulacra and simulation. Transl. Sheila Glaser. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1994 [1981]; Serres in Atlas. Édition Julliard, Paris, 1994; Virilio in The vision machine. Transl. Rose J. Indiana UP, Bloomington, 1994). I will describe how AI destabilizes fundamental distinctions upon which reality is built—such as the difference (...) between truth and fiction, between existence and simulation, between the actual and the potential, between game and everyday life, between person and avatar. Against the backdrop of a broader notion of the virtual (drawing on Deleuze in The actual and the virtual. Transl. Eliot Ross Albert in Parnet C Dialogues. Bloomsbury, London, pp 148–152, 2006 [1996]), I will read current realist theories (Chalmers in Reality plus—virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy. Allen Lane, London in 2022; Gabriel in Why the world does not exist. Transl. Gregory S. Moss. Polity, Cambridge, 2015; Ferraris in Positive realism. Zero Books, Arlesford, 2015; Meillassoux in After finitude—an essay on the necessity of contingency. Transl. Brassler R. Bloomsbury, London, 2008) as symptoms of the ongoing shift (rather than countermeasures against it), because they result in an inability to do justice to the epistemic and existential changes resulting from the erosion of the foundations of reality. The consequences of this shift are hard to predict and can only partially be outlined in this paper, which will end in a cautious attempt to do so (chapters 5 and 6). Starting off with a brief overview on this topic (chapter 1), I will trace the reasons for my diagnosis focusing first on what I call the “age of reality” currently coming to an end (chapter 2), then on why virtuality cannot be subsumed under reality (chapter 3), then how virtuality is currently replacing reality (chapter 4). (shrink)

This paper aims at expanding theories of metaphorical reasoning to other tropes. Asking why figurative language tends to fall into a limited number of patterns, it first examines approaches that offer an answer – ranging from antique rhetoric theory, Hans Blumenberg, Harald Weinrich, Donald Davidson, and Roman Jakobson to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. By then turning to Giambattista Vico, it puts forth the argument that a limited set of pre-structured ways of embodied reasoning is hard-wired in and enacted by (...) different aspects of children’s ways of playing – and provides the foundation for structures ofthinking inthe adult life. (shrink)

The article reflects on where AI is headed and the world along with it, considering trust, ethics and safety. Implicit in artificial thinking and doomsday appraisals is the engineered divorce from reality of sublime human embodiment. Jeffrey White, Dietrich Brandt, Jan Soeffner, and Larry Stapleton, four scholars associated with AI & Society, address these issues, and more, in the following exchange.

A myriad of sensations inform and direct us when we engage with the environment. To understand their influence on the development of our habitus it is important to focus on unifying processes in sensing. This approach allows us to include phenomena that elude a rather narrow view that focuses on each of the five discrete senses in isolation. One of the central questions addressed in this volume is whether there is something like a sensual habitus, and if there is, how (...) it can be defined. This is especially done by exploring the formation and habituation of the senses in and by a culturally shaped habitat. Two key concepts, Synaesthesia and Kinaesthetics, are addressed as essential components for an understanding of the interface of habitat and the rich and multisensory experience of a perceiving subject. At a Berlin-based conference Synaesthesia and Kinaesthetics, scholars from various disciplines gathered to discuss these issues. In bringing together the outcome of these discussions, this book gives new insights into the key phenomena of sensory integration and synaesthetic experiences, it enriches the perspectives on sensually embedded interaction and its habituation, and it expands this interdisciplinary inquiry to questions about the cultures of sensory habitus. (shrink)

This article offers a revision of Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” Departing from recent shifts empowered by the digital transformation and AI, we argue that Deleuze’s “dividual” has been replaced by the “user” (reducing the human being to predictable behavior), putting in crisis those institutions that were paramount for the now traditional societies of control in the age of globalization and the end of history (Fukuyama): We witness a crisis of democracies, the legal system, the epistemological system, (...) the civic society, even capitalism itself. (shrink)

Mathematical models are an important tool in the development ofsoftware technology, including programming languages and algorithms.During the last few years, a new class of such models has beendeveloped based on the notion of a mathematical game that isespecially well-suited to address the interactions between thecomponents of a system. This paper gives an introduction to thesegame-semantical models of programming languages, concentrating onmotivating the basic intuitions and putting them into context.

Cancers often express hundreds of genes otherwise specific to germ cells, the germline/cancer (GC) genes. Here, we present and discuss the hypothesis that activation of a “germline program” promotes cancer cell malignancy. We do so by proposing four hallmark processes of the germline: meiosis, epigenetic plasticity, migration, and metabolic plasticity. Together, these hallmarks enable replicative immortality of germ cells as well as cancer cells. Especially meiotic genes are frequently expressed in cancer, implying that genes unique to meiosis may play a (...) role in oncogenesis. Because GC genes are not expressed in healthy somatic tissues, they form an appealing source of specific treatment targets with limited side effects besides infertility. Although it is still unclear why germ cell specific genes are so abundantly expressed in cancer, from our hypothesis it follows that the germline's reproductive program is intrinsic to cancer development. (shrink)

After 1945, Czech philosophy and culture were first introduced to existentialism. First it was the original works of French existentialists (Sartre, Camus, Marcel), later by means of the journal Letters (1947) and Václav Černý (The first book on existentialism, 1948). The acceptance of existentialism in Czech context was not univocal. Besides factual analyses (J. Patočka, V. Navrátil, V. T. Miškovská), existentialism met with criticism and rejection mainly from Marxists and Catholic scholars for its rational weakness, pessimism, helplessness and intellectual decline.

Werner Hamacher, one of the most important and original theorists working in literary criticism and continental philosophy, explores topics at the intersection of philosophy, literary studies and politics.