Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity
Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity

Author: Sara Heinämaa

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-30

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1000553930

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This volume investigates forms of normativity through the phenomenological methods of description, analysis, and interpretation. It takes a broad approach to norms, covering not only rules and commands but also goals, values, and passive drives and tendencies. Part I "Basic Perspectives" begins with an overview of the phenomena of normativity and then clarifies the constitution of norms by Husserlian and Heideggerian concepts. It offers phenomenological alternatives to the neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian approaches that dominate contemporary debates on the "sources of normativity." Part II "From Perception to Imagination" turns to the normativity of three basic types of experiences. This part first sheds light on the normativity of perception and then illuminates the kind of normativity characteristic of imagination and drive intentionality. Part III "Social Dimensions" analyzes the norms that regulate the formation of practical communities. It takes a broad view of practical norms, discussing social and moral norms as well as the epistemic norms of scientific practices. By clarifying the divergences and interrelations between various types and levels of norms, the volume demonstrates that normativity is not one phenomenon but a complex set of various phenomena with multiple sources. Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on issues of normativity in phenomenology, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy.

Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology
Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology

Author: Matthew Burch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-13

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1351064401

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The aim of this volume is to critically assess the philosophical importance of phenomenology as a method for studying the normativity of meaning and its transcendental conditions. Using the pioneering work of Steven Crowell as a springboard, phenomenologists from all over the world examine the promise of phenomenology for illuminating long-standing problems in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, action theory, the philosophy of religion, and moral psychology. The essays are unique in that they engage with the phenomenological tradition not as a collection of authorities to whom we must defer, or a set of historical artifacts we must preserve, but rather as a community of interlocutors with views that bear on important issues in contemporary philosophy. The book is divided into three thematic sections, each examining different clusters of issues aimed at moving the phenomenological project forward. The first section explores the connection between normativity and meaning, and asks us to rethink the relation between the factual realm and the categories of validity in terms of which things can show up as what they are. The second section examines the nature of the self that is capable of experiencing meaning. It includes essays on intentionality, agency, consciousness, naturalism, and moral normativity. The third section addresses questions of philosophical methodology, examining if and why phenomenology should have priority in the analysis of meaning. Finally, the book concludes with an afterword written by Steven Crowell. Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in the phenomenological tradition, the transcendental tradition from Kant to Davidson, and existentialism. Additionally, its forward-looking focus yields crucial insights into pressing philosophical problems that will appeal to scholars working across all areas of the discipline.

Phenomenology and the Norms of Perception
Phenomenology and the Norms of Perception

Author: Maxime Doyon

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-11

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0198884249

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In the philosophical literature, it is customary to think of perception as being assessable with respect to epistemic norms. E.g., the whole discussion around disjunctivism, which is now often considered to be the dominant, if not the default position in philosophy of perception, is, by and large, framed and motivated by epistemological concerns about truth and falsity. This book argues that perception is normative in another, more fundamental sense. Perception is governed by norms that Doyon calls perceptual, that is, immanent to its own structure. This does not mean that perceptual norms are cut-off from external facts; it rather means that they are constitutive moments of our experience of these facts. Perceptual norms are, in that sense, constitutive or enabling norms in that they establish what perception is. To articulate this view, he draws in the repertoire of the phenomenological tradition, in the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in particular. Like Kant, both phenomenologists were concerned with the question of the unity of experience and sought to identify the conditions of possibility for having a perception, which they conceive not as a mere sensible experience of the outer world, but as a continuous and meaningful experience of reality. Unlike Kant, however, neither phenomenologist immediately identified these conditions with cognition or epistemic criteria. For both phenomenologists, perception has its own standards, its own conditions of possibility. Perception obtains when it unfolds concordantly or coherently; and when the perceptual progression corresponds to or is in harmony with one's goal or interest, perception can also be said to be optimal. From the phenomenological point of view, concordance (Einstimmigkeit) and optimality (Optimalit?t) are the two basic perceptual norms governing over perceptual experience, and much of the book is devoted to clarifying their meaning and to address the philosophical consequences that follow from this insight.

Phenomenology as Critique
Phenomenology as Critique

Author: Andreea Smaranda Aldea

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-29

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1000550672

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Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics. The contributions show that contemporary phenomenological investigations of various forms of oppression and domination develop new critical-analytical tools that complement those of competing theoretical approaches, such as analytics of power, critical theory, and liberal philosophy of justice. More specifically, the chapters pay close attention to the following methodological themes: the conditions for the possibility of phenomenology as critique; critique as radical reflection and free thinking; eidetic analysis and reflection of transcendental facticity and contingency of the self, of others, of the world; phenomenology and immanent critique; the self-reflective dimensions of phenomenology; and phenomenological analysis and self-transfermation and world transformation. All in all, the book explicates the multiple critical resources phenomenology has to offer, precisely in virtue of its distinctive methods and methodological commitments, and thus shows its power in tackling timely issues of social injustice. Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in phenomenology, Continental philosophy, and critical theory.

Phenomenology of Broken Habits
Phenomenology of Broken Habits

Author: Line Ryberg Ingerslev

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-12

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1040094368

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This volume explores the phenomenology of broken habits and their affective, social, and involuntary dimensions. It shows how disruptive experiences impact self-understanding and social embeddedness. The chapters in this volume investigate the epistemic and existential relevance of breakdown of habits and the corresponding kinds of self-understanding available to the agent. The first part focuses on the double-sidedness of habitual life. On the one hand, habits allow us to arrange and navigate in a familiar home world; on the other hand, habits can take hold of us in such a way that we lose our sense of autonomy. The contributors argue that habitual agency is structurally carried by a dynamic that entails both freedom and necessity. As habits enable us to inhabit and thus acquire a world, they also affectively provide a texture and a background for our feeling at home in the world. The chapters in Part 2 focus on the breakdowns of our habitual social and technological life forms and the phenomenology of their affective texture. History and habitual learning are sedimented in our body memory and in our language, and these sedimented layers are partly out of our direct control. Part 3 focuses on the structural openness of habits in relating to one’s past and one’s traumatic experiences. Part 4 reflects on the ways in which we might become aware of and thus transform or appropriate our culturally given habits. Phenomenology of Broken Habits will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychology.

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception
Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception

Author: Peter Antich

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-08-04

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1000923479

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This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop new and promising solutions to contemporary debates about perception. In providing an extension and defense of Merleau-Ponty's account of perceptual content and of the relation between perception and the world, it demonstrates the value of Merleau-Ponty's insights for philosophy of perception today. The author focuses on two main topics: the contents and the nature of perception. In the first half of this book, the author tackles debates about the content of perception, namely, what sorts of properties or features of the world reveal themselves to us in perception and in what modes. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s description of perceptual “sense,” the author argues that perception has a unique kind of content, which cannot be adequately described in terms of sensations or concepts. He then shows how this account of perceptual sense can clarify debates about the richness of perceptual content, including whether we can perceive moral properties. In the second half, he turns to the nature of perception. Here he argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual intentionality makes available a powerful combination of the core insights of two main contemporary approaches to this question: realism and intentionalism. The author shows how this combination can be developed, defends it from objections, and explains how it is equipped to deal with problems posed by the existence of illusions and hallucinations. Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on phenomenology and the philosophy of perception.

Habit and the History of Philosophy
Habit and the History of Philosophy

Author: Jeremy Dunham

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-31

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1351737082

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For Aristotle, habit was a fundamental aspect of human nature; and for William James, it was the "enormous flywheel" of society. In both the history of philosophy and contemporary research, it is acknowledged as a fundamental topic in ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action, and phenomenology. This major volume, written by a team of international contributors, is an outstanding collection that offers a thorough and diverse philosophical exploration of habit from the classical period to the modern day. Carefully edited to reflect the breadth of the subject, its 18 chapters are divided into four clear parts: Habit and Ancient Philosophy Habit and Early Modern Philosophy Habit and Modern Philosophy Contemporary Perspectives on Habit. Key topics, debates, and figures are covered such as the emotions, perception, free will, William James, John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, John McDowell, and Hubert Dreyfus. Habit and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, ethics, phenomenology, philosophy of action, and pragmatism. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as religion, sociology, and history.

Sartre and Analytic Philosophy
Sartre and Analytic Philosophy

Author: Talia Morag

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0429850158

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This book explores the relevance of Sartre’s work for various areas in contemporary philosophy, including the imagination, philosophy of language, skepticism, social ontology, logic, film, practical rationality, emotions, and psychoanalysis. Unlike other collections focused on Sartre, this book is not intended as a book of Sartre scholarship or interpretation. The volume’s contributors, trained in analytic philosophy, engage with Sartre’s work in new refreshing ways, which does not require seeing him as primarily belonging to the continental philosophical traditions of phenomenology or existentialism. Instead, this book aims to make available and fruitfully explore the unheralded insights of Sartre, to creatively re-appropriate or rationally reconstruct certain fruitful ideas or approaches of Sartre and confront them with or make them available to contemporary philosophy in general. Sartre thereby emerges from this book as a versatile philosopher with a stake in a large variety of philosophical concerns. Sartre and Analytic Philosophy will appeal to Sartre scholars who are interested in his relevance to contemporary philosophical debates, as well as philosophers who are interested in exploring new ways of doing philosophy, which are neither stereotypically “analytic” nor “continental.”

The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness
The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness

Author: Adrian J.T. Alsmith

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-11-30

Total Pages: 792

ISBN-13: 1000755983

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Bodily awareness is one of the most interesting and enigmatic forms of experience. Our earliest and most pervasive form of conscious experience, it also arguably remains the most private. Bodily awareness has also long played a central role in the study of the mind and self-consciousness, and is fundamental to much current philosophical and psychological research. The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness is an outstanding reference source to this fascinating subject. Comprising over thirty chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts: Epistemology and Metaphysics Historical Issues Body Representation Sensing the Body Dynamics Pathology Interaction Within these sections specific topics covered include bodily ownership, personal identity, self-consciousness, body modelling in robot design, body illusions, touch, proprioception, phantom limb syndrome, pain, eating disorders, out-of-body experiences and virtual reality. The handbook features specially commissioned contributions from researchers in a wide array of disciplines, whilst being accessible to readers with any disciplinary background. It also includes an interdisciplinary introduction, written by the editors, tying together the central themes with particular attention to the interaction between conceptual, technological and empirical issues. The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness will be of great interest to those in a wide variety of philosophical subdisciplines as well as those in psychology, cognitive science, sociology and related subjects.