In recent years, phenomenologically informed philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists have attempted to import philosophical notions associated with the self into the empirical study of pathological experience. In particular, so-called ipseity disturbances have been put forward as generative of symptoms of schizophrenia, and several attempts have been made to operationalize and measure kinds and degrees of ipseity disturbances in schizophrenia. However, we find that this work faces challenges caused by the fact that the notion of ipseity is used (...) ambiguously, both in the philosophical and in the empirical discussion, and the methods employed to operationalize ipseity often portray a rather different understanding of the notion from that found in the literature that is cited as providing the philosophical foundation for the studies in question. In particular, according to the definitions found in the philosophical literature, while being phenomenologically available, the self is not represented in ipseity. However, when it comes to the empirical study of ipseity and its disturbances, the object of investigation is often a kind of explicit self-representation. As a result, it is unclear whether different researchers are really talking about the same thing. Future progress in this area will require more careful conceptual distinctions; the present article aims to contribute to this task. (shrink)

Introduction In Autrement qu'etre on au-delh de I'essence, Levinas claims that ipseity depends upon alterity. One of the reasons given is that I, according to Levinas, become a subject exactly by being addressed and accused by the Other .

This paper focuses on Levinas’ concept of ipseity and on its change between the 1960’s and the 1970’s, arguing that this change implies the undoing of the subject. In Totality and Infinity (1961), ipseity is considered as the deep core of the I, whereas, in Otherwise Than Being (1974), it is the other person inside the self. Levinas also theorizes another kind of other-in-the-same, which is illeity, the trace of God inside the human soul. It is shown that (...) illeity is not problematic for the subject, since it does not cause its undoing. Furthermore, it is argued that ipseity, in Otherwise Than Being, is not a mere opening to alterity, but a source of alienation. Finally, it is shown that Levinas starts to change his mind on ipseity in 1968 (“Substitution”), however this modification becomes clear only in 1970 (“No Identity”). (shrink)

This article proposes an evolution of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental epoché by integrating P. R. Sarkar’s Tantra sádhaná, which engages ipseity as both the subject and the object of consciousness. First, it explores some of the recent philosophical and scientific obstacles that confound the transcendental reduction. Following this, an East-West trajectory for Husserl’s first science of consciousness is examined by combining Sarkar’s 3 shuddhis in pratyáhára, effecting an experience of noumenal consciousness. Combining Husserl’s phenomenology with Sarkar’s spiritual praxis reinvigorates the (...) transcendental epoché and emphasizes practice in a field both undermined by logical positivism and dominated by the scholasticism of Husserl’s protégés. Furthermore, the efficacy of an East-West approach is contextualized in view of Husserl’s admiration of Buddhism and Sarkar’s cognitive cosmology. (shrink)

In thinking of Derrida's notion of deconstruction as an attitude in understanding logocentrism, one might find it necessary to pre-empt this discourse by taking into serious consideration three words: center, consciousness, and difference. These words offer the key towards the problem of logocentrism within Derrida's deconstruction and, as far as these words seem to contextualize themselves within Derrida's texts, they also offer an explanation of how meaning becomes possible. Derrida's deconstruction is a form of writing in which the "I-ness" of (...) the self is given emphasis as both the limitation and possibility of appropriation in so far as context is concerned. Reading for him is already considered as an act of writing, the text, being polysemic in its inscription, already implies that the repetition of the syntax of words will always be rendered by the consciousness with a relative amount of impurity. Every instance of reading then is a form of writing, each time an Other tries to read the singularity of the construction of the text, it is already altered as another occurrence within another consciousness. (shrink)

Theoretical models of schizophrenia have traditionally emphasized the biological social, and environmental forces that lead to the dysfunction that characterizes this disorder. However important these aspects may be, an understanding of schizophrenia is incomplete without attention to the first-person perspective of those who continue to struggle to find meaning and security in the midst of this disorder. Encouragingly, an interest has grown steadily in recent years in understanding subjective experience in schizophrenia, and can be found within a range of bodies (...) of research, including.. (shrink)

Despite his wide-ranging and incisive engagement with Heidegger's thought across his career, Derrida seems to have written very little about Heidegger's Ereignis manuscripts, which, according to many commentators, constitute the place where Heidegger's thinking comes closest to Derridean deconstruction. Taking up Derrida's comments in Hospitality 1 on the figure of ‘selfhood’ in Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, this essay argues that this dense but important moment of engagement with the Ereignis manuscripts reveals the extent to which Heidegger's thinking of selfhood, in (...) spite of its fundamentally relational character, remains thoroughly determined by ipseity, the philosopheme that links selfhood, possibility, and sovereignty within the metaphysics of presence. Beginning with a reconstruction of the link between power and selfhood in Derrida's thinking of ipseity and a close-reading of the key passage in Hospitality 1, the essay then turns to Heidegger's engagement with Hölderlin to show both the depth of Heidegger's commitment to a relational thinking of selfhood and the philosophical and rhetorical safeguards by which he ensures that the relations of difference that constitute the self continue to function in the name of the ipseity, understood as the very Ur-form of sovereign power. (shrink)

In commenting on Hamm, Buck, and Lysaker’s “Reconciling the Ipseity-Disturbance Model with the Painful Affect in Schizophrenia”, let me first acknowledge the authors’ fine work in delineating this issue. They review very clearly the history of theoretical models of schizophrenia, including biological, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological approaches. They emphasize the need to include accounts of subjective experiences of persons with schizophrenia, and for this they underline the role of phenomenological research. In the latter, they note an emphasis on cognitive and (...) perceptual disturbances, with an apparent neglect of painful affective experience. To demonstrate the neglect, they focus on the work of Louis.. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the tendency of a range of technologies to reduce pedagogical interactions to a series of datafied transactions of information. This is problematic because such transactions are always by definition reducible to finite possibilities. As the ability to gather and analyse data becomes increasingly fine-grained, the threat that these datafied approaches over-determine the pedagogical space increases. Drawing on the work of Hegel, as interpreted by twentieth century French radical philosopher Alexandre Kojève, this paper develops a model (...) of relational pedagogy which highlights three points of incompatibility with a datafied learning environment reduced to finite measures. Firstly: Kojève’s accont of authority in Hegel posits two aspects to the mimetic relation between teacher and student: recognition and realisation, which belong to the ipseity or about-self-ness of the subject, and are incompatible with a general definition of data. Secondly, the Hegelian approach to human historical time, in particular the assertion that time and desire are begun in the future, not the past, renders it incompatible with mathematical time as used in data processing. Finally, from these it is possible to derive a distinctive notion of the work of pedagogy, grounded in Kojève’s realist reading of Hegel, irreducible to information processing. In consequence of this threefold irreducibility, the paper draws attention to a need for relations of human pedagogical work to be inherent in the design of educational technologies and highlights the dangers of presuming a machine intelligence model in the design of learning environments. (shrink)

This is the beginning of an exploration of before as the thesis ‘before’ (temporally) and ‘be-fore’ (spatially) difference. Before denotes the origin and the desired destination. Before (in the double sense of ‘before’ and ‚be-in-the-fore’) opens up a space of pre-difference, of origin and of forgotten memory, as well as a space of desire, objective, illusion of teleology, unity, completion. Applied to the two domains of Human Rights and Sex/Gender, the space of ‘before’ yields two slightly different vistas: in human (...) rights, a premodern, functionally undifferentiated society which had to invent human rights as its safeguards of functional differentiation. In Sex/Gender, ‘before’ brings a self-referential construction: that of ipseity, as the form of identity beyond comparison that does not play with id but with ipsum. Ipseity is inoperable but not useless. It is inoperable because it cannot be observed from anywhere without suffering rupture. It is not useless because it offers a ground for the reconceptualisation of difference, both through awe and desire. (shrink)

Noir -- House -- Train -- Dead -- Ipseity -- Habeas corpus.

A family of recent externalist approaches in philosophy of mind argues that our psychological capacities are synchronically and diachronically “scaffolded” by external resources. I consider how these “scaffolded” approaches might inform debates in phenomenological psychopathology. I first introduce the idea of “affective scaffolding” and make some taxonomic distinctions. Next, I use schizophrenia as a case study to argue—along with others in phenomenological psychopathology—that schizophrenia is fundamentally a self-disturbance. However, I offer a subtle reconfiguration of these approaches. I argue that schizophrenia (...) is not simply a disruption of ipseity or minimal self-consciousness but rather a disruption of the scaffolded self, established and regulated via its ongoing engagement with the world and others. I conclude by considering how this scaffolded framework indicates the need to consider new forms of intervention and treatment. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been much focus on the apparent heterogeneity of schizophrenic symptoms. By contrast, this article proposes a unifying account emphasizing basic abnormalities of consciousness that underlie and also antecede a disparate assortment of signs and symptoms. Schizophrenia, we argue, is fundamentally a self-disorder or ipseity disturbance that is characterized by complementary distortions of the act of awareness: hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection. Hyperreflexivity refers to forms of exaggerated self-consciousness in which aspects of oneself are experienced as (...) akin to external objects. Diminished self-affection or self-presence refers to a weakened sense of existing as a vital and self-coinciding source of awareness and action. This article integrates recent psychiatric research and European phenomenological psychiatry with some current work in cognitive science and phenomenological philosophy. After introducing the phenomenological approach along with a theoretical account of normal consciousness and self-awareness, we turn to a variety of schizophrenic syndromes. We examine positive, then negative, and finally disorganization symptoms—attempting in each case to illuminate shared distortions of consciousness and the sense of self. We conclude by discussing the possible relevance of this approach for identifying early schizophrenic symptoms. (shrink)

S. Geniusas: Although Gadamer’s hermeneutics has suffered attacks from a number of philosophical perspectives, the profusion of criticisms seldom constitutes new challenges and for the most part is a reiteration of two seemingly opposite claims. On the one hand, we often hear that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is merely a disguised brand of the “philosophy of the subject” which under the pretext of openness reduces the Other to the self. On the other hand, it is just as often claimed that Gadamer’s writings (...) fall into the category of the “hermeneutics of the fundamental questions” and therefore they cannot account for the selfhood of the self. Taking as its focus the theme of the oneness of the hermeneutical horizon(s), this paper argues that this theme carries no hegemonic or essentialist connotations. Rather, a careful analysis, which accentuates the negative and the dialectical elements of the oneness of horizons and the fact that this theme is for Gadamer both a presupposition and an achievement, reveals the shortcomings of both critiques. In the final analysis, the oneness of the horizon(s) is the dialogue that we ourselves are. Special attention is granted to Richard Kearney’s critique of Gadamer, to Gadamer’s critique of the incommensurabilist stance, and to the relevance of Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the context of today’s socio-political concerns. G. B. Madison: This essay is a companion piece to S. Geniusas’ “On the Oneness of the Hermeneutical Horizon(s)” and seeks to correct some of the serious misunderstandings of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer that one often encounters in the literature. It seeks above all to show how Gadamer’s commitment to philosophical universalism is ideally suited to enabling philosophy to confront the ethical challenges posed by the phenomenon of globalization. (shrink)

Over the past years, the intersubjective dimension of psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, has gained increasing phenomenological attention. Psychopathologists and philosophers have developed ideas on how the social aspects of psychotic symptoms and experiences could be understood, in particular in their relation to the ipseity disturbance model, namely the idea that schizophrenia is essentially a disorder of the minimal self. Although the exact characteristics of the ipseity disorder hypothesis can differ from author to author, emphasizing certain phenomenological aspects like (...) temporality or embodiment... (shrink)

The paper first introduces the concept of implicit and explicit temporality, referring to time as pre-reflectively lived vs. consciously experienced. Implicit time is based on the constitutive synthesis of inner time consciousness on the one hand, and on the conative–affective dynamics of life on the other hand. Explicit time results from an interruption or negation of implicit time and unfolds itself in the dimensions of present, past and future. It is further shown that temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity are closely connected: (...) While implicit temporality is characterised by tacit bodily functioning and by synchronisation with others, explicit temporality arises with states of desynchronisation, that is, of a retardation or acceleration of inner time in relation to external or social processes. These states often bring the body to awareness as an obstacle as well. On this basis, schizophrenia and melancholic depression are investigated as paradigm cases for a psychopathology of temporality. Major symptoms of schizophrenia such as thought disorder, thought insertion, hallucinations or passivity experiences may be regarded as manifesting a disturbance of the constitutive synthesis of time consciousness, closely connected with a weakening of the underlying pre-reflective self-awareness or ipseity. This results in a fragmentation of the intentional arc, a loss of self-coherence and the appearance of major self-disturbances. Depression, on the other hand, is mostly triggered by a desynchronisation from the social environment and further develops into an inhibition of the conative–affective dynamics of life. As will be shown, both mental illnesses bear witness of the close connection of temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Contemporary phenomenological psychopathology has raised questions concerning selfhood and its possible alterations in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Although the notion of the self is central to several accounts of anomalies, it remains a question how exactly the radically minimal experiential features of selfhood can be altered. Indeed, the risk is to reduce the notion of selfhood so drastically, that it can no longer account for alterations of experience. Here we propose to give thickness to the minimal self. To do this we (...) first discuss Sartre’s phenomenological definition of coenesthesia as the translucent matter of consciousness articulating it with the notion of existential feelings. We then draw on the historical research on coenesthesia to dig deeper in this translucent materiality identified as the element of the body. We show that selfhood, even in its most minimal level, must be conceived of with a specific elemental thickness, corresponding to a phenomenological materiality of embodiment. We argue that a phenomenological reading of coenesthesia as the bodily element of ipseity can shed a new light on the anomalies of self-experience. (shrink)

This article presents an introductory overview of the interpretations of schizophrenia offered by three phenomenological psychiatrists: Eugene Minkowski (1885-1972), Wolfgang Blankenburg (b. 1928), and Kimura Bin (b. 1931). Minkowski views schizophrenia as characterized by a diminished sense of dynamic and vital connection to the world ("loss of vital contact"), often accompanied by a hypertrophy of intellectual and static tendencies ("morbid rationalism," "morbid geometrism"). Blankenburg emphasizes the patient's loss of the normal sense of obviousness or "natural self-evidence"—a loss of the usual (...) common-sense background that enables normal persons to cope easily with the social and practical world. Kimura focuses on certain distortions of self-experience: a distinctive splitting of the subjective self, alienated awareness of one's own ongoing consciousness, and profound uncertainty about the "I-ness" of the self. In addition to a summary, this article offers a comparison and critique of these three approaches. The three approaches are also considered in light of a more recent, phenomenological formulation of schizophrenia as a disorder of self-experience (an ipseity disturbance) involving hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection (i.e., heightened awareness of aspects of experience that would normally remain tacit or presupposed and decline in the feeling of existing as a subject of awareness). (shrink)

A close examina t ion of Sartre's discussion of the limits of the self in Being and Nothingness may shed light on his ideas on the nature of Metaphysics, O ntology and Phenomenology. Some implicatio ns of his discussion are presented, centered on his de f e nse of the irre ducibility of the phe nome non of being to the being of the phenomenon when dealing with the passage from phenomenology to ontology, which culminates in his phe nomenological ontology (...) the telos of Being and Nothingness. T he passage to me t a p hy s ics can be fruitfully cont rasted with Bergson's enterprise, because for Sartre metaphysics has a regulative rather than a constitutive function. (shrink)

In “On what matters: Personal identity as a phenomenological problem” (2020), Steven Crowell engages a number of contemporary interpretations of Husserl’s account of the person and personal identity by noting that they lack a phenomenological elucidation of the self as commitment. In this article, in response to Crowell, I aim to show that such an account of the self as commitment can be drawn from Husserl’s work by looking more closely at his descriptions from the time of Ideas and after (...) of the self as ego or I and egoic experience as attentive experience. I specifically aim to sketch the beginning of a response to three questions I take Crowell to be posing to a Husserlian account of the person and personal identity: (1) What more than pre-reflective self-awareness can be attributed to the self on phenomenological grounds so that we can understand, phenomenologically speaking, how selves become persons? (2) How can what characterizes the self in addition to pre-reflective self-awareness be discerned in both our commitment to truth and our feeling bound by love and other emotive commitments that cannot be fully rationally justified, which Husserl acknowledges are both sources of personal self-constitution? And (3), do all selves become persons? In the paper I elaborate how my answers to the first two questions turn on the self not just being self-aware but active in a particular sense. And to begin to address the third question, I suggest that while any form of wakeful conscious experience is both self-aware and active, this activity of the self makes a difference for those who are socio-historically embedded in the way we are. Specifically, on the proposed Husserlian account, selves that are socio-historically embedded become persons in and through their active relating to what they attentively experience. In concluding, I indicate how this Husserlian account might compare to Crowell’s claim that “self-identity (ipseity) is not mere logical identity (A=A) but a normative achievement […] which makes a ‘personal’ kind of identity possible” (2020). (shrink)

One of the leading cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) proposes such experiences result from a disturbance in the process by which inner speech is attributed to the self. Research in this area has, however, proceeded in the absence of thorough cognitive and phenomenological investigations of the nature of inner speech, against which AVHs are implicitly or explicitly defined. In this paper we begin by introducing philosophical phenomenology and highlighting its relevance to AVHs, before briefly examining the evolving literature (...) on the relation between inner experiences and AVHs. We then argue for the need for philosophical phenomenology (Phenomenology) and the traditional empirical methods of psychology for studying inner experience (phenomenology) to mutually inform each other to provide a richer and more nuanced picture of both inner experience and AVHs than either could on its own. A critical examination is undertaken of the leading model of AVHs derived from phenomenological philosophy, the ipseity disturbance model. From this we suggest issues that future work in this vein will need to consider, and examine how interdisciplinary methodologies may contribute to advances in our understanding of AVHs. Detailed suggestions are made for the direction and methodology of future work into AVHs, which we suggest should be undertaken in a context where phenomenology and physiology are both necessary, but neither sufficient. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Sartre’s account of the “circuit of ipseity” as an integral theory of the experiential, agentive and normative aspects of self-consciousness. At the core of this theory is a conception of human (self-)consciousness as lacking, and the correlation between lacking and ideal. In Section 1, I show how this theory manages to satisfy the apparently incompatible requirements generated by the idea of a pre-reflective cogito. Section 2 discusses practical self-consciousness, in particular the agent’s consciousness of herself as (...) self-determined in the projection and pursuit of ends, and how this is accounted for in Sartre’s theory by the correlation of lack and ideal. Section 3 first clarifies the Sartrean conception of the ideal by comparing it with Korsgaard’s, and then reconstructs Sartre’s account of practical normativity by showing how it can be read as emerging from a critical engagement with Heidegger. (shrink)

It is well established by psychopathological research that disorders of self-experience are among the main features of schizophrenic prodromes in a pathogenetic sense. Disorders of the phenomenal self, as "lack of ipseity" (the vanishing of the feeling of being embedded in oneself and of distinctiveness between the self and the outer world) and "hyper-reflexivity" (the monitoring of one's own life entailing the tendency to objectify parts of one's own self in an outer space) are considered key phenomena of schizophrenic (...) vulnerability. In this paper, I argue that the analyses of the disorders of phenomenal self catch only some dimensions of schizophrenic vulnerability, since they mainly focus on the pathological changes in subjective experience of an isolated self and disregard the fact that the self is not purely personal. Because our existence is fundamentally tied to a social existence, the feeling of one's own self and the sense of "reality" of an experience are products of intersubjectivity and not only a private process based on introspection or reflexivity in which one is engaged in an idiosyncratic way. Building on, and extending, contributions of the phenomenological tradition, I attempt to demonstrate that intuitive attunement is the basic prerequisite for establishing one's sense of "reality" (feeling familiarly related to one's environment) and for establishing one's sense of "ipseity" (the sense of existing as a subject of awareness). In the last part of the paper, I show the importance of the concepts "lack of attunement" and "antagonomia" (the rejection of conventional knowledge and intuitive attunement, experienced as dangerous sources of loss of individuality) to establish a comprehensive theory of schizophrenic vulnerability. I finally discuss the implications of this view for empirical research and clinical management of schizophrenic vulnerability. (shrink)

The article reflects, 1) by way of introduction, on the ontological dimension of event, starting from a phenomenology of birth, as a key to a methodological widening of the exercising of reason and to a broadening of its subject-matter. With this aim, and as a whole, this article moves mainly through the thought of Claude Romano, also picking up precise commentaries of Paul Ricoeur's and Romano Guardini's. Then, it deals with the difference and the relation between "fact" and "event", briefly (...) analyzing the theme's anticipation in decisive instances of philosophical tradition, in which reason's competence is acclaimed . 3) Inasmuch as being born from and for event, concerns appropriately only the self [as I], an inquiry about the rigorous and non transferable conceptual meaning corresponding to the word "self"[as I] is carried out, starting from the experience of self: transcendental and existential. Event, inherent to the complete human dynamics, opens finitude up from top to bottom, and is, as such, transgression of the totality of existence in finitude ; this derives into the correlation of event, transfiguration of the world and exceptionality of the self as upcoming. 5) The mutual implication among ontology of birth, broadening of reason and expansion of freedom finally leads to reflect upon the enigma of ipseity, which is impossible starting from sameness and only eventual from alterity/otherness. The bond between alterity and birth raises the issue of the relation, as regards the [subject] arrived-at-the-world, between the history and his/her history. Being born and existing in the ontological dimension of event is to exceed every power of appropriation, self- as much as others'. In reference to the alterity of the immemorial and non appropriable past, birth opens the upcoming self up to a prospect further than any project, and in doing so, takes the base off future-to-come, to which no limit can be set for it belongs to the regime of event.El artículo reflexiona, 1) a modo de introducción, sobre la dimensión ontológica del acontecimiento, desde una fenomenología del nacimiento, como clave para una ampliación metodológica y temática del ejercicio de la razón. El conjunto de este artículo transita, para ello, principalmente a través del pensamiento Claude Romano, retomando también puntuales acotaciones de Paul Ricoeur y Romano Guardini. 2) Trata luego la diferencia y la relación entre "hecho" y "acontecimiento", analizando brevemente la anticipación del tema en instancias decisivas de la tradición filosófica, donde la competencia de la razón es exaltada . 3) Puesto que nacer desde y para el acontecimiento concierne propiamente sólo al yo, se indaga sobre el significado conceptual riguroso e intransferible correspondiente a la palabra "yo", a partir de la experiencia de sí: trascendental y existencial. 4) El acontecimiento, inherente a toda la dinámica humana, abre de punta a punta la finitud y, como tal, es transgresión de la totalización de la existencia en la finitud ; esto deriva en la correlación entre acontecimiento, transfiguración del mundo y excepcionalidad del yo, como adveniente. 5) La mutua implicación entre ontología del nacimiento, ampliación de la razón y expansión de la libertad conduce, finalmente, a reflexionar sobre el enigma de la ipseidad imposible desde la mismidad y sólo eventual desde la alteridad. El vínculo entre alteridad y nacimiento plantea la relación, en el venido-al-mundo, entre la historia y su historia. Nacer y existir en la dimensión ontológica del acontecimiento es exceder todo poder de apropiación, propia y de otros. Referido a la alteridad del pasado inmemorial e inapropiable, el nacimiento abre el adveniente a un porvenir más adelante que todo proyecto y, así, desfonda también el porvenir, al que no se puede poner límite porque está en régimen de acontecimiento. (shrink)

The animation-effect of the movement-image constitutes not only a form of life but also a machinic analogue for Husserl's and Kant's accounts of temporality, engendering what Bernard Stiegler calls ‘a cinematography of consciousness’. If autonomous movement is the hallmark of the living being as well as the inanimate mechanism, the movement-image likewise subtends scenes of human and artificial intelligence. Pairing a cybernetic reading of Lacan's mirror stage essay with reflections on the self-recognition dance of Machina Speculatrix (an early example of (...) a biomimetic robot), this essay considers how exosomatic feedback loops enable a kind of ipseity for machinic life as well as the human being as technical being. Despite adopting Derrida's ideas of originary prostheticity and automaticity, rendering living beings as always-already machinic life, Stiegler sets arche-cinema against arche-writing. (shrink)

In the wake of Derrida’s disappearance, this essay asks the question of how to take responsibility, now, for the world one is left to bear. It retraces the path Derrida followed in thinking the event of a coming world and isolates a number of concepts that assumed prominence in his late work: sovereignty, unconditionality, possibility, ipseity. Drawing on the essay “The Reason of the Strongest” in Rogues, it discerns an important distinction made between sovereignty and unconditionality, and situates Derrida’s (...) work as an explicit rethinking of the concept of possibility. It argues that this work offers significant leverage, conceptually and practically, on the legacy of sovereignty as the right of the strongest. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Levinas versus Levinas:Hebrew, Greek, and Linguistic JusticeOona EisenstadtI argue in this paper that Levinas's philosophical writings and his Jewish writings are not easily read as compatible. But I do not make the argument on what might seem to be the obvious grounds, namely, that the philosophical writings represent what Levinas calls the "Greek" while the Jewish writings represent what he calls the "Hebrew." On the contrary, my claim is (...) almost precisely the opposite. As Levinas uses the terms "Greek" and "Hebrew," each refers to a "sub-textual... way of thinking and speaking" (Richard Kearney, quoted in Cohen 1986, 18–19). The "Greek" is the ontological mode that seeks to describe the whole—this is essentially the mode I believe Levinas works the reader toward in the Jewish writings. The "Hebrew" is the dialogical mode that is never complete and preserves dissent—this is the mode he works the reader toward in the philosophical works. The first half of this paper contains a general discussion of the meaning of the two terms, the way in which Jacques Derrida brings out what is at stake in their use with the introduction of the more critically clarified terms "Jewgreek" and "Greekjew," and, finally, the beginning of my argument that Levinas is at odds with himself. The second half illustrates the argument with brief examinations of text: we look first at the "Hebrew" or "Jewgreekish" Levinas of the final chapter of Otherwise than Being, a Levinas in many ways comparable to Plato's dialogical Socrates; and second, at the "Greek" or "Greekjewish" Levinas of the Talmudic reading "The Pact," a Levinas who praises universality, universal translatability, mutuality, and reciprocality.As is well known, the juxtaposition Greek/Hebrew, as Levinas uses it, does the same work as several other juxtapositions he employs, including same/other, politics/ethics, said/saying, and totality/infinity. In each of these formulations, the first term refers to a way of thinking that pulls things [End Page 145] together into a larger order, and the second term to a rupture that operates as thought's origin and at the same time thought's challenge. On a first reading of Levinas, the reader has the impression that the juxtaposed elements stand in opposition to one another, but as one reads more one sees that this is only part of how he intends the juxtapositions to be understood; in particular, one sees that justice of any kind requires both elements. The reasons for this can be variously described. There are, for instance, the concrete organizational requirements of justice: a just society must, on the one hand, treat people as parts of ordered wholes (as citizens, as members of family groups or income groups, and so forth) and, on the other hand, allow those designations to be called into question by the rupturing ipseity of individuals. And there are, to introduce an example more pertinent to this paper, the concrete linguistic requirements of justice. A just discourse, or a good book, places its elements into a coherent order; this can be described by saying that it assumes or imposes a certain sameness by addressing its readers as a group, or that it stands as a said, but is most simply described by saying that the book speaks in Greek. However, it must also remain open to rupture by readers and writers who came before its having been written and readers and writers yet to come; this can be described as an other-in-the-same or a saying-in-the-said, but is most simply described, in Levinas's shorthand, as the incorporation or preservation of the Hebrew in the Greek.At the end of his first essay addressed to Levinas, "Violence and Metaphysics," Derrida plays, in a serious way, with the Greek/Hebrew distinction, and especially with the fact that the two sides depend on one another. This mutual dependence rests not only on the requirements of justice, but also, and first, on what seems to be a contradiction in Levinas's thinking. Levinas says (repeatedly, in almost all of his works) that it is the experience of rupture that calls us, in the first place, to totalize, which... (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 ‘ (...) class='Hi'>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)

In exploring the nature of excess relative to a phenomenology of the limit, Testing the Limit claims that phenomenology itself is an exploration of excess. What does it mean that "the self" is "given"? Should we see it as originary; or rather, in what way is the self engendered from textual practices that transgress—or hover around and therefore within—the threshold of phenomenologial discourse? This is the first book to include Michel Henry in a triangulation with Derrida and Levinas and the (...) first to critique Levinas on the basis of his interpolation of philosophy and religion. Sebbah claims that the textual origins of phenomenology determine, in their temporal rhythms, the nature of the subjectivation on which they focus. He situates these considerations within the broader picture of the state of contemporary French phenomenology (chiefly the legacy of Merleau-Ponty), in order to show that these three thinkers share a certain "family resemblance," the identification of which reveals something about the traces of other phenomenological families. It is by testing the limit within the context of traditional phenomenological concerns about the appearance of subjectivity and ipseity that Derrida, Henry, and Levinas radically reconsider phenomenology and that French phenomenology assumes its present form. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionSchelling and the EnvironmentChelsea C. Harry (bio)Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is anthropogenic, caused by our greenhouse gas emissions.1 Given the evidence that exists, we should be able to convince ourselves to change the everyday behaviors resulting in these emissions. If we hope to save ourselves, other animals, plants, and the environment from a devastating future, then why would we continue to use fossil fuels?The answer here is (...) not an easy one. And yet, the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, provides us with a possible cause. In his most famous work on ethics,2 Aristotle argued that being weak-willed, suffering from what he called, “akrasia,” is the reason we do things that we know we shouldn’t do. It is a condition that results when desire wins over reason. For example, I eat a chocolate bar when I know I should eat a salad because my desire for chocolate wins over what I have reasoned to be best for my health. Simply put, reason might be what distinguishes us from other animals and plants, but it is not always our most powerful faculty. It stands both to experience and to reason, then, that rational decision might not be what is going to get us out of this climate crisis. Then, what is?In this special issue, we hear from five contemporary scholars of the 18th–19th century German philosopher, F.W.J. Schelling, an oft-called “protean thinker” whose prolific, sometimes creative, and diverse works spanned over seventy years. A onetime roommate of Hegel and Hölderlin, Schelling’s works are lesser-known outside specialist circles, and yet one finds that his prescient insights continue to have much to offer. This is especially true vis-à-vis the climate crisis, as Schelling was the first post-Kantian philosopher to take nature seriously. He eschewed the modern, Kantian, and post-Kantian trend to focus on [End Page 1] ipseity, the self, and on what we as humans can rationally know. Instead, he returned to metaphysics and argued for a wholistic conception and experience of life—all life. For Schelling, humans are rational as an expression of nature, rather than as an exception to nature. As John Sallis put it so well as he argued for the Platonic influence in Schelling: “For what Schelling rewrites within the text of modern philosophy is a discourse on nature.”3 Sallis then reminds us that in Schelling’s 1809 text, Philosophical Investigations of the Essence of Human Freedom (“Die Freiheitschrift”), he openly criticizes post-Cartesian philosophy generally for its exclusion of nature; “All modern European philosophy since it began with Descartes has this common defect, that nature does not exist for it and that it lacks a living ground.”4 Schelling’s intention was to resolve the defect, and because of his efforts in this regard, his work has something to say to us about our relationship to the environment.The idea to think about what Schelling can offer us in our current climate crisis is hardly new. In 2014, the North American Schelling Society (NASS), hosted by Bruce Matthews and Bard College, thematized its third international conference on “Schelling in the Anthropocene,” asking scholars to think beyond modern philosophy’s legacy of the human/nature divide and to discuss Schelling’s contribution to the anthropogenic environmental crisis we currently face. Since then, published work on this topic includes: Bruce Matthews’s, “Schelling in the Anthropocene,”5 Christopher Lauer’s, “Confronting the Anthropocene,” 6 and Vincent Lee’s, “Schelling and the Sixth Extinction.”7 Other journals have published special issues on related topics, including McGrath et al. Schelling After Theory special issue of Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, McGrath et al. The Many Faces of F.W.J. Schelling special issue of Analecta Hermeneutica, Tritten et al. Nature, Speculation, and the Return to Schelling special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, and Bahoh, et al. Philosophies of Nature special issue of Comparative and Continental Philosophy. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, other contemporary thinkers who have been part of this conversation include: Kyla Bruff, Charlotte Alderwick, Manfred Frank, Markus Gabriel, Iain Grant,8 Lore... (shrink)

This paper aims to unravel a tension between the act of naming and ‘differential relationality’. Derrida has taught us that ‘naming’ is an essentialising, and thus metaphysical gesture that works to define and circumscribe a field of work (for instance, ‘Eco-Deconstruction’), the human, and ecology. ‘Naming’ entails the beginning of the institutionalisation and sedimentation of a field, despite a ‘field’s’ claim to the opposite. The danger of such sedimentation is that it perpetuates what Derrida calls ipseity that in the (...) history of western philosophy and metaphysics has worked in contradistinction to the nonhuman (animals, environment, ecology). (shrink)

Soul beliefs are universal among religious folk but vary tremendously from culture to culture, In fact, in tribal societies without formal religious dogmas, soul beliefs can vary from individual to individual. A review of notions regarding the soul (or souls) amongst tribal and post-tribal societies does evidence, nonetheless, a recurring pattern of focus on the soul envisaged as the vital life energy of the body and/or as encapsulating one of more mental faculties. Not surprisingly, theories as to the psychological basis (...) for soul belief vary as well, but a strong case can be advanced that at its core, soul belief is about the essence of the self, which involves the psychological process of ipseity. (shrink)

In exploring the nature of excess relative to a phenomenology of the limit, _Testing the Limit _ claims that phenomenology itself is an exploration of excess. What does it mean that "the self" is "given"? Should we see it as originary; or rather, in what way is the self engendered from textual practices that transgress—or hover around and therefore within—the threshold of phenomenologial discourse? This is the first book to include Michel Henry in a triangulation with Derrida and Levinas and (...) the first to critique Levinas on the basis of his interpolation of philosophy and religion. Sebbah claims that the textual origins of phenomenology determine, in their temporal rhythms, the nature of the subjectivation on which they focus. He situates these considerations within the broader picture of the state of contemporary French phenomenology, in order to show that these three thinkers share a certain "family resemblance," the identification of which reveals something about the traces of other phenomenological families. It is by testing the limit within the context of traditional phenomenological concerns about the appearance of subjectivity and ipseity that Derrida, Henry, and Levinas radically reconsider phenomenology and that French phenomenology assumes its present form. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show how, through Derrida, the concept of unconditional hospitality can be understood through a logic of the parasite. In a supplementary chain that leads to the figure of the parasite, I first knot two main concepts: hospitality and unconditionality. Then I explore the knotting itself through two theoretical articulations discussed by Derrida in many of his text on the work of mourning and the altered constitution of ipseity. Finally, I will arrive at (...) the unpublished seminar Manger l’autre to focus on the “eating trope” of hospitality. Since para-sitos only means eating-with, the parasite is not a priori a negative notion, but rather suggests a trespassing of frontiers. All the above articulations finally lead me to propose a reading of these topics through a notion of incorporation. (shrink)

The ethics of solicitude in Ricoeur combines a detailed articulation of three polarized moments which spring from fertile traditional sources: Aristotelian phrónesis, the Kantian deontological legacy, and the formulation of Hegelian Sittlichkeit. The Ricoeurian over-determination of these models exhibits a careful critical re-appropriation, whose hermeneutical originality takes account of its fertility philosophy to address current ethical demands and their more important oppositions. This overdeterminataion proposes a fine distinction of levels of mediation and stages of fulfillment. Practical wisdom is the result (...) of this interpretation and the narrative genre is the most notable mediating element. The creative merit of this ethics proposal is the interpretation of ipseity, a pole of identity that is at the basis of the original ethical relation between oneself and another. Three exemplary moments in this path are: touch, the promise and conviction.  . (shrink)

In a very late essay on remains, one might say a throw away essay, Derrida doggedly tracks the relation of a certain desire to remains, linking it to sacrificial economy and to a hierarchical ontological order. If our concern is a thinking of desire as it pertains to remains, why should we not turn first, or perhaps exclusively, to Derrida's monumental works on the subject of remains, specifically Glas and Cinders, jettisoning the little-known essay we have not yet named? Certainly (...) Derrida has said much in these well-known works about desire and remains, consumption and excretion, fire and ashes. So, why devote all one's attention, as we will do in this paper, to what might be said to be a morsel of an essay, which has remained largely unread and hence falls outside of Derrida commentary? The essay in question is his 2002 ‘Remains – the Master, or the Supplement of Infinity’, a homage to Charles Malamoud, a French ethnologist and scholar of Indian and Oriental religions whose work, especially his 1989 Cooking the World, was influential on Derrida's thinking concerning the ‘rhetorics of cannibalism’ and ‘eating the other’ and featured prominently in his seminars from 1989–1991 on the aforementioned themes. In ‘Remains – the Master’, a dense and rich essay, Derrida analogically links two vastly different cultures – the Brahmanic of India and the Greco-European – in terms of a ‘law of remainders’, which for both traditions, he claims, is an organizing principle of humans, gods, and the whole of the world. In his essay Derrida returns to or, more accurately, remains with a thinking of ‘the French word “reste”, the remnants [restance] of “reste”’, which, as Derrida notes, is ‘difficult to translate in an exhaustive or transparent manner,’ that is, ‘without remainder’. However, what this paper will follow is the circulation of remainders in the Vedic tradition, as analysed by Derrida and Malamoud. In doing so, we can begin to not only translate the notion of Malamoud's ‘cascade de restes’ from one culture, logic, and idiom to another but understand how for Derrida this ritual downpour of remainders not only institutes a hierarchy of remainders but also produces ipseity. (shrink)

Introduction to S. Gallagher and S. Watson. (2004). _Ipseity and Alterity: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intersubjectivity_ . Rouen: Presses Universitaires. Originally published in 2000 as a special issue of the online journal _Arobase: Journal des lettres et sciences humaines,_ 4 (1-2).

In our original piece, we suggested that contemporary phenomenological models of schizophrenia such as the ipseity-disturbance model emphasize perceptual and cognitive elements of self-disturbances, potentially neglecting the presence and central importance of painful affect in the experience of schizophrenia. We concluded that integrating affect within developing phenomenological models would offer not only a theoretical advance but also a possible path to more effective recovery-oriented treatment. In response, Phillips agrees there is incontrovertible evidence of painful affect central to the experience (...) of schizophrenia. He expresses concerns though about a danger in falsely reducing.. (shrink)

No topic has caused more discussion in recent philosophy and political theory than sovereignty. From late Foucault to Agamben, and from Guantanamo Bay to the 'war on terror,' the issue of the extent and the nature of the sovereign has given theoretical debates their currency and urgency. New thinking on sovereignty has always imagined the styles of human selfhood that each regime involves. Each denomination of sovereignty requires a specific mode of subjectivity to explain its meaning and facilitate its operation. (...) The aim of this book is to help outline Jacques Derrida's thinking on sovereignty - a theme which increasingly attracted Derrida towards the end of his career - in its relationship to subjectivity. It investigates the late work Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, as not only Derrida's fullest statement of his thinking on sovereignty, but also as the destination of his career-long interest in questions of politics and self-identity. The book argues that in Derrida's thinking of the relationship between sovereignty and subjectivity - and the related themes of unconditionality and ipseity - we can detect the outline of Bataille's adaptation of Freud. Freud completed his 'metapsychology,' by defining the 'economic' nature of subjectivity. In Bataille's hands, this economic theory became a key to the nature of inter-relationship in general, specifically the complex and shifting relationship between subjectivity and power. In playing with Bataille's legacy, Derrida connects not only with the irrepressibly outrageous thinking of philosophy's most self-consciously transgressive thinker, but with the early twentieth century scientific revolution through which 'energy' became ontology. As with so many of the forebears who influenced him, Derrida echoes and adapts Bataille's thinking while radically de-literalising it. The results are crucial for understanding Derrida's views on power, subjectivity and representation, as well as all of the other key themes in late Derrida: hospitality, justice, otherness and the gift. (shrink)

Contemporary French philosophers such as Levinas, Bataille, and Derrida, along with the existentialists Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have all made use of Franciscan insights in order to safeguard the ipseity that cannot be reduced or totalized.1 In keeping with the taste that concerns me, this paper will examine Derrida’s turn to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and how such a turn may place Derrida within a catholic and Franciscan tradition.

The relational and intersubjective model of subjectivity does not deny the subject, neither does the self-narrating exercise of synthesis of the heterogeneous evade the identity question. It is the role of language to found the meaning of ipseity, to articulate the needs and desires, to organize the dispersion experienced, and to tie action to moral principles of social responsibility. Reflection and self-reflection structure the human experiences of recognition. The correlation between the idea of freedom of individual choice and the (...) idea of collective responsibility is the opportunity for the affirmation of each one and for the establishment of reciprocity between everyone. Within this context, the dialogue between Ricœur, Honneth and Sen proves to be very inspiring.  . (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 ‘ (...) class='Hi'>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)

Riassunto: Tra i disturbi del linguaggio, il deficit di tipo pragmatico viene spesso osservato nelle persone a seguito di trauma cranio-encefalico. Nonostante sia negletta nella pratica clinica, questa componente gioca un ruolo centrale nella qualità di vita di persone con TCE. L’aspetto peculiare del deficit di tipo pragmatico è la sua natura intrinsecamente connessa sia ad altre capacità di tipo cognitivo che relazionali delle persone fin nella storia pre-morbosa. L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è proporre un punto di vista teorico che, (...) beneficiando del dialogo tra neuropsicologia e fenomenologia, possa costituire un paradigma utile per considerare in modo più sistematico il deficit di tipo pragmatico. Piuttosto che frammentarlo e ridurlo solo a una lista di singoli sintomi, esso viene analizzato come conseguenza di un’alterazione non storica dell’ ipseità, mettendolo in relazione con il concetto di “ embodiment ”. Si avanza, in conclusione, una possibile proposta di presa in carico di tale neuropsicopatologia. Parole chiave: Trauma cranio-encefalico; Pragmatica; Comunicazione; Embodiment; Fenomenologia Pragmatic disorder due to TBI: A phenomenological approach to rehabilitation –: People who suffer from traumatic brain injury are frequently affected by pragmatic disorder, among other communicative impairments. While largely neglected in terms of rehabilitation strategies, the skills impaired by PD play a fundamental role in the quality of life of people who suffer from TBI. PD uniquely impacts a person’s cognitive and interpersonal abilities, including those from their pre-morbid history. The aim of this work is to propose a theoretical framework, based on a dialogue between neuropsychology and phenomenology, that may provide a useful paradigm in approaches to rehabilitation in PD. Instead of fragmenting this disorder into a list of symptoms, we address it as a consequence of a non-historical alteration of “ ipseity” in connection with the concept of “ embodiment”. In conclusion, we suggest an intervention for this neuropsychopathology. Keywords: Traumatic Brain Injury; Pragmatics; Communication; Embodiment; Phenomenology. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

After a brief perusal of the various meanings of phenomenology in psychopathology, the contributions to schizophrenia of phenomenological psychology in the European sense are reviewed. The last twenty years are deemed fruitful and productive. Following the central themes and motives of this literature allows us to come to a different and perhaps wider understanding of schizophrenia than that proposed currently by mainstream psychiatry. These diverse investigations converge in seeing as the core of schizophrenia the disorders related to inter-subjectivity and (...) class='Hi'>ipseity , in turn related to what Bleuler had once called Autism. Finally, a critical discussion of the limitations and the strengths of the phenomenological approach is offered. (shrink)