Bsp Podcast

We continue season four of the British Society for Phenomenology Podcast with a keynote presentation from Babette Babich (Fordham University and University of Winchester). This recording comes from the ‘JBSP 50th Anniversary Conference: On the History of Being – After the Black Notebooks’ (2019) which was held in celebration of fifty years of the ‘Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology’.   ABSTRACT: One of the outcomes of the publication of the Black Notebooks has been to invite scholars to rethink their understanding of Heidegger’s thinking, including what is named Heidegger’s ‘world-historical anti-Semitism’, his relation to war and politics, via Schmitt and Jünger, as well as Heidegger’s thinking on machination/motorisation/calculation. Other possibilities include the university (education) in addition to Heidegger’s anxieties regarding the reception of Being and Time in the framework of the history of Beyng/Seyn. Echoing Heidegger’s lecture courses, we read that Nietzsche adumbrates “the end o

Welcome back to the British Society for Phenomenology Podcast. We kick off season four with recordings from the ‘JBSP 50th Anniversary Conference: On the History of Being – After the Black Notebooks’ (2019). This conference was held in celebration of fifty years of the ‘Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology’. To begin, here is the opening paper from Ullrich Haase, who was editor of the journal from 2005 to 2019, standing down in the wake of this conference and the publication hitting its landmark year.   ABSTRACT: This talk will introduce a broad array of questions arising from Heidegger’s turn towards the question for the history of being. While also introducing some of the strands of questioning that will arise in the other contributions to the conference, it will take its lead from the claim in the Call for Papers, namely that the works bound together by the title of the question for the history of being belong to the most promising that philosophy has to offer itself and that the shape of thi

Here is the last of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Zeigam Azizov’s paper is titled ‘Without Origins: Husserl’s “temporal objects” in the light of nonessentialist thinking’.   Abstract: “I will talk about Husserl’s initial search for the ‘essence’ in his earlier work and his realising the persistence of culture as a non-determinate entity towards the  latest period of his philosophical activities. In his lecture given at the Vienna Kulturbund in May 1935 Husserl spoke of “the crisis as a pathological sickness of which the dominant characteristic is a fall into passivity (Passivitat)”. In both cases Husserl wanted to find an answer to the question of the lost contact of people with the sense of their activities, of their mode of knowledge.    By taking Husserl’s initial understanding of ‘a temporal object’ and his later critique of ‘passivity’   I would like to reactivate this question for the world of full of ob

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Tingwen Li is from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, and the paper is titled ‘What If We Exclude Ready-mades from the Artworld?’   Abstract: “Ready-mades had formed a significant challenge to the tradition of art. While analytic aestheticians have been devoted to solving the problem of ready-mades, phenomenological aesthetics had paid little attention to this issue before the 1990s. John Barnett Brough, an American Husserlian philosopher, is among the earliest phenomenologists who were to combat the question of ready-mades. In his early discussion, unlike most of the phenomenological aestheticians who attend to art through aesthetic experience, Brough’s concern is more with the “classificatory” sense of art by interpreting Dickie’s and Danto’s institutional formulations from the perspective of late Husserl’s “Cultural World,” claiming that “a work of

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Tarjej Larsen is from the University of Stavanger, Norway, and the paper is titled ‘Husserl's Circularity Argument for the Epoché’.   Abstract: “According to Husserl, epistemology is possible only as phenomenology. In my paper, I assess one of his arguments for a crucial part of the considerations he offers in support of this claim.   Husserl takes the central problem of epistemology to be “the problem of transcendence”, or the problem of the possibility of transcendent cognition – very roughly, justified judgements about objects that do not form part of the judging subject’s consciousness. And he argues that any form of cognition by means of which this problem – and, by extension, any other genuine epistemological problem – can be solved must satisfy a number of methodological requirements, which, he maintains, only phenomenological cognition satisfies.    

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Rona Cohen is from Tel-Aviv University, and the paper is titled ‘“Taking Flesh” in Heidegger: On Dasein’s Bodying Forth’.   Abstract: “In discussing the phenomenology of the body in the Zollikon seminars, Heidegger draws a distinction between the spatiality of Dasein and its body. According to Heidegger, Dasein is not spatial because it is embodied. Rather, “its bodiliness is possible only because Dasein is spatial”. Here, Heidegger puts into service the distinction between spatiality and embodiment to draw a distinction between the ontological and the ontic: the spatiality of Dasein is prior to Dasein’s embodiment, which is to say, Dasein is ontologically spatial and ontically embodied. In another of the Zollikon seminars, Heidegger addresses the phenomenology of the body by invoking Husserl’s distinction between Korper [“the corporeal thing”] and Leib [“the b

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Rhoda Ellis’ paper is titled ‘Being, the Gallery and Virtual Reality: An Artist’s Take on Building Immersive Artworks’.   Abstract: “Dreyfus was right when he told computer scientists they were wrong during the first wave of virtual reality (VR). While technology companies continue to turn to cold, hard, objective, neuroscience to ‘trick’ the body into a sense of immersion, the recent resurgence of VR has also seen a wider acknowledgment of the body and the increased prevalence of phenomenology in discussions about VR. We may no longer be dreaming that extropian dream in quite the same way anymore, but we’re making artworks in and for virtual reality with a-whole-new approach.   Through practice-led research into the making, and recreating, of sculptural artworks, I have found it more meaningful to draw on the aesthetic tradition and art theory – from Heidegg

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Philip Tovey is from Canterbury Christ Church University, and the paper is titled ‘Temporal range, future mandate and strategic shaping; the existential and cognitive phenomenological ethics of preventative policing’.   Abstract: “Since the inception of modern policing, its founding strategic instruction was to ‘prevent crime’. Historically, policing strategy approached prevention through a geospatial predisposition in order to deter criminality. However recent years have seen a shift away from this area-based effect to an individual-centric model of tactical prioritisation, of which one's vulnerability to a given threat forms a transcendentally subjective centre of gravity. This paper will propose two fundamental challenges for UK policing operating a threat-based, preventative and individual-centric strategy; (1) prevention requires accurate prediction of and

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Rajan Nathan and Peter Wilson are from CWP NHS Foundation Trust & Universities of Liverpool and Chester, and the paper – presented by Wilson – is titled ‘Phenomenology and causal entities in psychiatry’.   Abstract: “Psychiatric training emphasises the need to make sense of the patient’s experience at the symptom and diagnostic level of abstraction. In so far as attention is given to obtaining a representation of mental phenomena, this is a means to satisfy rules that define symptoms and diagnoses. In view of the questionable historical and empirical provenance of these rules, it is not surprising that underlying causal entities have proved elusive.   The authors will draw on their clinical practice and the relevant academic literature to make the case for phenomenological analysis, not only to elucidate psychiatric experiences (in line with the traditio

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Marcel Dubovec’s paper is titled ‘The Inner Structure of Heidegger’s Concept of Freedom’.   Abstract: “The purpose of this paper is to present Heidegger's concept of freedom between 1927 and 1930. It puts emphasis on the difference between the fundamental-ontological and the transcendental concept of freedom. The elaboration of this difference is founded on the transformation of the ontological difference in its three forms: the difference of the being of beings (existential approach), the difference of the being and beings (transcendental/metontological) and the cosmological difference as a difference between the thing and the world (phenomenological metaphysics). The central manifestation of the difference is the possibility of a deeper understanding of freedom beyond its existential structures (Being and time) that focus on authenticity. The transcendental c

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Lorenzo Girardi is from Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, and the paper is titled ‘The Constitution of the One World: Faith in Husserl’s Philosophy’.   Abstract: “Edmund Husserl’s philosophy is characterized by an eminently rationalist outlook. It contains some of the key features of the Enlightenment-project: a focus on the spirit of reason, a rational teleology, and universalism. It is perhaps the most critical version imaginable of this project, allowing for no justification that cannot be found in intuitive experience. This paper will point out a tension between this methodological limitation of Husserl’s phenomenology and the scope of his philosophy as a whole. It will do so by looking into the way Husserl conceives of the possibility of the constitution of one world for all of humankind.   While Husserl can experientially justify the pro

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Julio Andrade is from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and the paper is titled ‘Normative provisionality as a means to navigate Levinasian infinite responsibility’.   Abstract: “The core of Emmanuel Levinas’s (1969) argument in Totality and Infinity is that because the other cannot be faithfully represented without reducing his/her alterity, I cannot discharge my responsibilities to him/her. As such, my responsibility to the other is infinite. Infinite responsibility is at the centre of Levinasian ethics, however, it is also the most problematic. If I am infinitely responsible for the other, what of my, and all the other others, needs and desires? Levinas responds by positing a third party to the face-to face encounter with the other. Levinas argues that justice (or the political) is “an incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity” (1998; 15

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. James Rakoczi is from King's College London, and the paper is titled ‘Moving without movement: Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” in cases of global paralysis’.   Abstract: “In this paper, I aim to demonstrate how memoirs written by people who live with, or have experienced, global paralysis can illuminate and complicate Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s claim in Phenomenology of Perception that embodied movement is a necessary condition for a transcendental self. I argue that the kinds of movement these texts articulate shares an affinity with the kind of movement instantiated by Merleau-Ponty’s intentional arc: a ceaseless and adaptive movement, or a “therapeutic” movement, which constantly “recovers” from an incapacity to move. In short, Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” emerges ceaselessly from an “I cannot”. I shall make particular reference to two texts. First, I shall consider how any

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Jack Price is from Cardiff University / the University of Exeter, and the paper is titled ‘Adorno and Scheler on Action and Experience’.   Abstract: “T.W Adorno’s work includes sustained critical engagement with phenomenology. While sympathetic to the attempt to engage with the ‘heterogenous’ and with the world of objects, Adorno argues that traditional phenomenology ultimately fails: Husserl relies too much on constitutive subjectivity and is unable to break from idealism. Perhaps as a result, Adorno tends to pass over much of the work of Max Scheler. Despite this, this paper argues that Scheler’s materialist phenomenology could engage with Adorno’s critical theory to mutual benefit.   Adorno’s work speaks to phenomenological attempts to understand experience. Emphasising the limitations of concepts, the primacy of the object and the value of embodied affect

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Erin Plunkett is from the University of Chichester, and the paper is titled ‘Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology’.   Abstract: “The return to the ‘object’ or ‘thing’ in contemporary Continental Philosophy is in part a reaction to the past sins of what Husserl calls Cartesian philosophy—a philosophy in which truth hinges on subjective consciousness and in which the res cogitans and res extensa are thought as radically separate. The environmentally disastrous consequences of such a position are hard to deny and are diagnosed by Husserl himself in his Crisis. Yet, today Phenomenology is often lumped together with this tradition (in part because of Husserl’s own emphasis on consciousness) and, so, implicated in these consequences.   Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka, one of Husserl’s last students, was already thinking through the problem of subjectivism in pheno

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Bhaswar Malick is from the University of Cincinnati, and his paper is titled ‘Paradise on Earth: Tomb of Akbar at Sikandrabad’.   Abstract: “Globalization’s dissolution of boundaries parallels a resurgent identity politics, exacerbated by religious invocations. Evidently, the Islamic heritage of India is being repositioned as foreign and incongruent to the nation-state’s cultural legacy. A prime case in point is the recent exclusion of the Taj Mahal from the state government’s tourism booklet– this iconic heritage having been labelled as the architectural flagbearer of Islamic rule in India. But this exclusion is also symptomatic of the primacy of classifications: architecture’s ‘scientific method’ – a work identified by its style and age, its origin and author, and an objectified list of its features. This paper presents an alternative, rooted in the discourse

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Arthur Rose is from Durham University, and his paper is titled ‘Reorienting Breathlessness: A Case against Symptom Discordance’.   Abstract: “In Phenomenology of Illness, Havi Carel identifies a ‘Janus-faced duality’ to breathlessness: ‘it is so real and overwhelming to the person experiencing it and yet so invisible to those around her’ (Carel 2016: 109). The discrepancy between external appearance and internal reality replicates a further discrepancy, known as symptom discordance, between the person’s perception of breathlessness (‘subjective experience’) and the oxygen saturation of their blood (‘objective measurement’). Not only is the breathless person challenged by another’s failure to recognize their experience, their own interoceptive ability may not match what they feel to what medicalised testing shows. Carel usefully relates this mismatch to Merleau-

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Aoife McInerney is from the University of Limerick, and her paper is titled ‘Phenomenology of Solidarity’.   Abstract: “The term plurality is somewhat in vogue of late; yet, arguably its implications were not taken seriously until Hannah Arendt. Arendt displays a genuine engagement with what plurality actually means and what it has to offer. The consequences of this, on the one hand, call for a theoretical reframing of the conditions of political action and interaction. On the other, they force us to rethink the nature of pluralistic co-existence. While plurality may present challenges, such as how does one truly participate at the political level and how does the notion of solidarity fare against the reality of difference and uniqueness contained in everyday communal life and practice, a phenomenological investigation of plurality provides a compelling approac

Here is the latest of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. James Forrest is from the University of Copenhagen, and his paper is titled ‘The World from the Enactive Approach: Degrees of Transcendentalism’.   Abstract: “Enactivism and embodied cognition movements at large are gaining influence in diverse fields ranging from cognitive science to philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, and anthropology (Hutto 2017, p.378). As Francisco Varela’s dream of extending and expanding Merleau-Ponty’s work intertwining empirical research with phenomenological investigations comes further to fruition, it’s pertinent to pause and ask the question: what do different branches of enactivism have to say about the status of the world we inhabit? This paper proposes a conceptual taxonomy of varieties of enactivism with respect to their metaphysical claims of mind-(in)dependence of the physical world. This taxonomy would be orthogo

Here is the second of our recordings from The British Society for Phenomenology’s 2018 Annual Conference ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’. Dr Niall Keane was a keynote speaker at the conference, and his paper is titled ‘Metaphysics and Nihilism’. Niall Keane is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Philosophy at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. He has published widely in the areas of phenomenology and hermeneutics and is the co-author of The Gadamer Dictionary (Continuum 2012) and co-editor of The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics (Wiley-Blackwell 2016). In addition to his publications on Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Michel Henry, and in the field of ancient philosophy, he is Treasurer of the Irish Phenomenological Circle, and cofounder and coordinator of the Irish Centre for Transnational Studies. His current research project focuses on the transformed nature of the self in Heidegger’s thought. Abstract: “This talk will examine the interconnected issues of metap