Phenomenological Questions Research Articles

Urban estates in Astrakhan of the late XVIII – early XX centuries: typological aspect

The subject of this research is the typological groups of urban estates in Astrakhan of the late XVIII – early XX centuries. The object is the peculiarities of urban estates in Russia of that time. The goal lies in studying the urban estates in Astrakhan of the late XVIII – early XX centuries from the perspective of their classification. The article touches upon the question of phenomenology of the Russian estate, the architecture and typology of urban estates in the Russian province, as well as the architecture of urban estates in Astrakhan. The research employs the general scientific method (analysis of the historical and logical), historical-architectural approach, and art history techniques for studying estates in urban environment and photographic evidence. The author also attracts historical references, archival and other documents on the topic. The theoretical framework is comprised of the works of M. B. Mikhaylova and E. I. Kirichenko on the estate construction in Russian cities; T. V. Vavilonskaya and G. G. Nugmanova on the classification of urban estates. The scientific novelty lies in outlining the typological groups of urban estates of Astrakhan from the perspective of their architectural and artistic characteristics, as well as social rank of the lords. It is established that the urban estates of Astrakhan are divided into wealthy estates of the merchants that are an artistic phenomena in the architectural image of the city; prosperous and middle-class of the merchants and officials oriented towards eclectic architecture; wooden estates of modest merchants and philistines that carry certain artistic value. The practical importance of this research consists in contribution to the creation of the holistic picture of the development of Astrakhan architecture.

Coronavirus Crisis and Philosophizing

The mind prepares for questioning during fundamental transformation in the course of human life. The Coronavirus Crisis brought about a fundamental change in human life that had not happened in the world for decades. In order to deal philosophically with this crisis, new questions must be hunted down. In this paper, I enumerate some of these challenges. Some of emerging questions from those challenges is explained. It is shown that their analysis causes philosophical creativity and in the face of them we will find the success of philosophizing. Some of these challenges is discussed in the following field of philosophy: phenomenological questions about Corona, the new challenges in philosophy of science, political challenges, moral philosophy and norms in ethics, philosophy of religion, the growth of existentialistic attitudes to human beings, highlighting the issue of the meaning of life and the need for a philosophical answer, Corona Crisis and globalization.

Announcements

Announcements

The Darker Side of Ageing: Towards an Ethics of Suffering that Emphasises the Primacy of Witnessing

Many older adults succeed in finding meaning in life, even in deep old age. There is, however, a minority of older adults, in particular among the oldest old, who feel that life no longer makes sense: they suffer from the consequences of old age, explicated in feelings of loneliness, social isolation and disconnectedness, and fears for (further) decline and dependency. This article seeks to address this darker side of ageing. It discusses probing questions including: what can we learn from the stories of those who severely struggle with the consequences of old age? And how might these stories guide us in finding ways how we – both as fellow human beings and as a society – can face and respond to suffering in old age? To achieve this, this article first briefly outlines the scholarship on suffering and explores the idea of suffering from life in old age. Secondly, drawing on empirical work, it reflects on the phenomenological question: what is it like to suffer from life in old age? What does it mean to live with a deep sense that life is no longer worth living? Then, thirdly, building on these insights, the aim is to work towards developing an ethics of suffering that emphasises the primacy of witnessing. It is argued that in the confrontation with manifestations of meaninglessness and suffering that cannot be solved or remedied, we need bystanders who are willing to name, to narrate, to give voice and connect to these experiences of suffering.

Thinking Through Improvisation

As part of a larger research study investigating humour in music therapy with persons with dementia, this article details how music therapists perceive, embody and experience humour in their practice. Three focus groups with music therapists ( N = 9) were organised and resulting data analysed through arts-based reflexive methods.
 Building on Schenstead’s (2012) articulation of arts-based reflexivity, two distinct and overlapping forms of thinking through improvisation are highlighted; self-reflexivity and collaborative-reflexivity. Finlay’s (2011) phenomenological lifeworld-oriented questions are used to explicate dimensions of experiences of humour and frame broad thematic reflections. Particular correspondence between improvisation as a way of being and humour in music therapy are explored performatively through a group improvisation involving the first author.
 The findings from this synthesis offer insight into how music therapists conceive of humour in their work as supportive of relational bonding, and also experience humour as distancing and defensive behaviour. Along with the perceived risks of humour in relational therapeutic work, an intricate balance between playfulness and professionalism surfaced as part of a music therapy identity. Improvisation, while seemingly taken for granted as a part of spontaneous humour, is also problematised through the perceived seriousness of learning how to improvise as a music therapist aligning with a psychodynamic approach. The consequences of these findings are discussed in relation to music therapy pedagogy and practice along with methodological implications of thinking through improvisation.

Review: Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation, by Marissa K. López

Review: <i>Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation</i>, by Marissa K. López

Eastward: On Phenomenology and European Thought

Płotka and Eldridge’s book is an important addition to the literature on phenomenology and phenomenological history, showing that phenomenology had a lively efflorescence in Eastern Europe during its first four decades. Historians have recently shown phenomenology’s intellectual, cultural, and social importance in postwar Eastern Europe, but this volume demonstrates that phenomenology’s independent East European trajectory began long before World War II—indeed from the earliest years of the movement. The review essay also raises the question of phenomenology’s social and political influence beyond academic circles.

Persona Non Grata

This essay tells the story of the authors’ relationship with a rescued marsupial raised from a baby in Aotearoa New Zealand, in sections interspersed with an account of this species’ history in our country. This animal belongs to a species designated a noxious pest here, a population subject to an especially sustained, thorough, and popularly-supported campaign of vilification and destruction, even by the standards that apply in New Zealand, where the dominant environmental ideology is very intensely focussed on eradication of introduced species. So in deciding to take responsibility for this creature, the authors committed to keeping her both hidden and captive. This raises some intractable questions: is it in this animal’s best interests to be enclosed, or should she be allowed to take her chances on the roads and amongst the traps and poison? how can her captors offer her the best life? what relationship should they have with her? The essay also describes the intimate relationship the two authors have developed with this animal, through nightly interaction, and touches on some of the phenomenological questions she presents: what might it be like to be an arboreal, nocturnal, marsupial mammal instead of a terrestrial, diurnal, placental one? What might it be like to have four legs (or perhaps five, if we count the extraordinary prehensile tail) that are simultaneously arms, rather than two arms and two legs? In New Zealand the overwhelming hostility to this species makes it nearly impossible to recognize or consider its members as living sentient beings. Our primary aim in this essay, therefore, is to convey as directly as possible the emotional and physical experience of being in relationship with this particular animal, while succinctly situating that experience within a relevant environmental context. We didn’t want to use this animal’s story merely as a pretext for exploring larger histories or topics in human-animal studies. For this reason we have chosen the genre of creative nonfiction, and refrained from engaging with discussions by human-animal studies scholars that would be required in a research article.

Editorial for the Special Issue “Quantum Fields—From Fundamental Concepts to Phenomenological Questions”

Quantum field theory and Einstein’s theory of general relativity are extremely successful in predicting the outcome of particle physics and gravitational experiments [...]

Introduction to the COVID-19 Second Special Issue

This introduction describes an original collection of articles that advance Existential-Humanistic (EH) psychology in a project of collective meaning-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. From contributions that apply terror management theory to political and ideological division, to those that intricately examine concepts of the self and radical emotional dwelling in psychotherapy, this issue spans a wide range of topics relevant to EH scholars and beyond. This special issue also explores phenomenological questions. The articles within not only reconfigure ways to be that align with humanistic commitments, but challenge readers to examine the social systems that shape these possibilities. For this reason, this introduction connects the applications of EH psychology included in this issue to other disciplines that have intimately analyzed subjectivities related to existential reckoning, injustice, and liberation.

Applying Petitmengin's Explicitation Interview Method to Elicit the Lived Experience of Breathing Upon Waking by an Individual With Cystic Fibrosis.

Breathing is an act that most people do not consciously evoke unless there is a presence of illness that affects the respiratory system. Adults generally take in 12 to 15 breaths per minute without even a thought about the body’s mechanics that allow for proper oxygenation and ventilation. However, for those with pulmonary compromise, breathing becomes a very conscious, deliberate, and sometimes laborious act. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of the explicitation method by Petitmengin by interviewing a subject to elicit the lived experience of breathing by an individual with end-stage cystic fibrosis (CF). To apply the interview method, the following phenomenological question guided the interviewer’s approach: What is the lived experience of breathing upon waking for an individual with CF? This paper includes a transcription of the interview followed by a self-critique, textual analysis, and discussion of the implications to health care.

Key Stakeholders’ Lived Experiences While Implementing an Aligned Curriculum: A Phenomenological Study

Furthering innovation in English as a foreign language curriculum has been a concern for the Colombian educational system for many years. Nevertheless, the major attempts at the national level continue to fail. Through this phenomenological study of 12 participants at a an urban public school in grades 6-12 I attempted to answer the phenomenological question, “What were the lived experiences of key stakeholders involved in implementing an aligned curriculum at an urban public school in a northern city in Colombia, South America? “The theoretical framework that guides this study included innovation, the theory of policy attribution, and the learner-centered philosophy. The study employed Moustakas’ modification of the Stevick-Colaizzi’s-Keen method of phenomenological analysis and van Manen’s (1990) hermeneutic approach to phenomenology. The researcher collected the data through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and reflective diaries. Seven themes emerged from the data: (a) aligned curriculum and political aims, (b) awareness of the significance of affectiveness, (c) a sense of ownership and lifelong learning, (d) communication as the cornerstone of implementation, (e) ability to face uncertainty and challenges, (f) ability to create transformational leadership, and (g) transcendence toward innovation. The study highlights the feasibility of curriculum innovation at the secondary level with key stakeholders’ commitment and full potential.

Algorithmic Uses of Cybernetic Memory: Google Photos and a Genealogy of Algorithmically Generated “Memory”

When algorithmic media are becoming more independent in their ability to select, organize, and create what and how we remember daily life, this article examines the genealogical pre-condition of algorithmically generated “memory” through a case study of Google Photos. I argue that the algorithmic conceptualization of memory is rooted in the history of cybernetics, which is a contrast to the socially constructed memory. I first investigate older phenomenological questions around “memory” in the science of cybernetics and then examine a genealogy of cybernetic memory. Finally, I illustrate how cybernetic memory is animated in Google Photos. This article historically examines what “memory” is understood to be in algorithmic media and how the science of cybernetics has integrated our current understanding of memory into algorithmic memory practices—the socio-technical imaginary of the past.

Historicity and Religiosity in Heidegger\u2019s Interpretation of the Reality: With an Outlook to Adolf Reinach\u2019s Contribution to Heidegger\u2019s Phenomenological Conception

The question of whether Heidegger’s phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking, is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger’s concept of the history of being in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the ‘turn’; in Heidegger’s thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger’s thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger’s early phenomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological–hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger’s thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger’s theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger’s lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity.

АНТИТЕЗА СЛОВА И РЕЧИ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ НАГОРНОЙ ПРОПОВЕДИ)

The article covers the antithesis of positive and negative knowledge and its projection on the field of language. By the example of the Sermon on the Mount, the thesis of non-discursive nature of word and its contrasting to speech is affirmed. In connection with the antithesis under consideration, such questions of phenomenology are addressed as embodiment of meaning in a word, essential irrelevance of existing institutions and instances of the language. Distinction is made between authentic appeal and institutional methods of identification presented in nominal discourse.

How We Got to CRISPR: The Dilemma of Being Human.

This article considers the existential and eugenic risks of gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9. It brings forward epistemological and phenomenological questions concerning what CRISPR technology suggests about the limits of being human. By illuminating the paradoxical relationship between our "then self" and "now self," it considers the fragility of our individual and collective future-making endeavors. To do this, the article offers an overview of the existential dilemmas facing modern subjects, a history of eugenics and the ideology of health, a meditation on the limits of human knowledge, and an explication of the cultural work of metaphor. It argues for the benefits of human variation for individuals and communities and concludes by calling for an attitude of humility and restraint to guide the development and implementation of humane technologies rather than genetic manipulation technologies that aim to control future outcomes through present actions.

To the question of the phenomenology of corruption

To the question of the phenomenology of corruption

Presentness

Typically, the structures of consciousness in how we experience time—or the broader phenomenological question of temporality—divide said experience into past, present, and future. These distinctions are not self-evident; rather, they are shaped by politics, institutions, society, economy, and so forth. Indeed, in his expressed engagement with historical materialism, Walter Benjamin claims that history—as one such structuring of temporality—is neither ideal nor causal, discrete nor universal, determined by the past nor exclusive to the future. Rather, it is a living process of present-future-pasts folding in on themselves. And a “real state of emergency”—recall that he wrote Theses on the Philosophy of History in early 1940 in France, where he was living in exile, having escaped Hitler’s Nazi regime—lays bare this fold of history, for its temporality is one that disrupts the anticipatory relation to the future as a type of progress and with it also the normalization of injustice as a necessity in history.&#x0D; The critical temporality Benjamin proposes resists the notion that the past can be understood exclusively in the precise moment in which it is recognized (frozen as an eternal image). In other words, historical moments are often naturalized, petrified as objective elements of our reality, and this reification—or estrangement from the totality—mirrors the logics of commodity fetishism. The task, in turn, is to illuminate how history is not a congealed “thing” and thus release its existence as process so that we may see ourselves in the totality of history rather than merely as its reified products. This critical temporality is an imperative that makes clear our agentive relation in creating the possible. This active sensing of the temporal, as it were, is where I turn my attention. I offer this meditation on presentness as an epistemological horizon, drawing on my work on both the ephemerality of performance and its politicized relationship to the US-Mexico border.

Technology and the End of Western Civilisation: Spengler’s and Heidegger’s Histories of Life/Being

Spengler’s work is typically represented as speculative philosophy of history. There is good reason, however, to consider much of his thought as preoccupied with existential and phenomenological questions about the nature and ends of human existence, rather than with history per se. In this paper, Spengler’s work is considered in comparison with Heidegger’s history of Being and analysis of technological modernity. It is argued that Spengler’s considerable proximity to much of Heidegger’s thought compels us to reconsider the nature and scope of Spengler’s philosophical project.

Symbolic Pregnance, Concrescence, and the Unconscious: E. Cassirer and S. Langer

ABSTRACT This paper questions the apparent silenc of Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms on the unconscious, in its double sense of the psychic structure and of the description of the imperceptible. Although Cassirer is engaged in a very fine phenomenological analysis of our experience of the world, under the prism of a critic of culture, and although he does not believe in the evidence of the self, the absence of the unconscious from his account shows precisely the force of his conceptualization of the symbolic. Why and how does the theme of the unconscious absorb that of the symbolic? The article argues that the question has to be analyzed through “symbolic pregnance” (symbolische Prägnanz) and “concrescence” (Konkreszenz). Nonetheless, here, the concepts of “subject,” “reason,” and “representation” are considerably re-semantized and, therefore, displaced by the key concept of “symbol.” To analyze this problem, the prism of aesthetics will be fundamentally privileged. Symbolic aesthetics crystallizes these questions of perceptive phenomenology with a rare intensity, articulating the personal and the impersonal dimensions in a focusedway. The texts of Langer will help us to explain the field that Cassirer explored only in a discontinuous and fragmentary way. Our hypothesis is the following: when the double dimension (personal and impersonal) of the experience is intensified, not only does symbolic aesthetics go beyond the classical opposition between conscious and unconscious, but it also goes beyond the distinctions between form and affect, form and content, and formalism and expression.