scholarly journals A Critical Phenomenology of Walking: Footpaths and Flightways

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Perry Zurn ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Natural Attitude ◽  
Free Flight ◽  
Critical Phenomenology ◽  
The Mind

It is hardly difficult to imagine writing about critical phenomenology and walking. One might pause over the method of critical phenomenology as a meta-odos, a thinking of the path. Or consider the steps critical phenomenology takes and the unique pitch of its gait as it traverses the borderlands between phenomenology and critical theory. One might query how these two have the capacity to walk so well side by side, so much so that they can become as one, barely distinguishable against an open sky. Such an inquiry would no doubt track how it is that phenomenology walks toward things, through things, into things, suspending the eye of the natural attitude and proceeding ever so carefully and yet bluntly in search of what springs toward it. But such an inquiry would also track how that very process is a scripted processual, notwithstanding all the suspensions upon which it steps. Who and what writes and rewrites the script of what appears, when, and how? What inscriptions define appearances in advance and diaeretically cut them clean from one another? And what are the unscripted forces still at work? Ferreting out the work of scripts and inscriptions, such an inquiry would pause over the hidden structures that constrict what might feel like a free flight of the mind, a bit of unfettered rambling in the fields of consciousness. Thinking critical phenomenology as walking, then, means tracking the two moving in tandem. Phenomenology pulls toward the horizon of experience, while critical theory veers toward structural analyses. Together, they tread a uniquely illuminating path.

Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Critique. A Derridean Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-46
Author(s):  
Stella Gaon
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Critical Phenomenology ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility

"Critical phenomenology is gaining currency as a progressive philosophy of emancipation, but there is no consensus on what its “criticality” entails. From a Derridean perspective, critique can be said to involve radical self-interrogation; a philosophy that questions its own conditions of possibility or grounds is one that opens itself to its auto-deconstruction. Deconstruction produces undecidability, however, which means that the philosophy in question can no longer account for its political claims or its normative force. This is the predicament in which critical phenomenology, like any other critical theory, will find itself when it takes its critical injunction to heart. Keywords: Critical theory, Derrida, Gödel, Kant, politics, post-phenomenology, undecidability "

Naivität als Kritik

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-66
Author(s):  
Christian Ferencz-Flatz
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Phenomenological Reduction ◽  
Mutual Relationship ◽  
Natural Attitude ◽  
Life World ◽  
Broad Concept ◽  
The One

"Naiveté as Critique. The present paper addresses the similarities between the concept of “critique” used in phenomenology and the one put forth by critical theory in analyzing their corresponding understanding of “naiveté”. While Husserl develops a broad concept of naiveté in his reflections regarding the phenomenological reduction, where he characterizes the natural attitude as such as “transcendentally naive”, this concept becomes more nuanced when considering the unavoidable naivetés of phenomenology itself, on the one hand, and the complications brought to the mutual relationship between naiveté and critique with his turn towards the life-world. This turn, the paper shows, can be seen as a metacritical reinvestment of naiveté that can also be traced in the works of Adorno. Keywords: Husserl, Adorno, life-world, metacritique, physiognomics. "

Editors' Introduction: Reflections on the First Issue

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Martina Ferrari ◽  
Devin Fitzpatrick ◽  
Sarah McLay ◽  
Shannon Hayes ◽  
Kaja Jenssen Rathe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Housing Unit ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
State Prison ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Phenomenology

We are happy to feature four invited submissions by Lisa Guenther, Kym Maclaren, Bonnie Mann, and Gayle Salamon, all of whom respond to the questions motivating our inaugural issue. Both Salamon and Maclaren offer a response to the question “What is critical phenomenology?” by exploring the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology. Salamon does this by tracing the history of the term critical phenomenology. Maclaren further explores the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology en route to her analysis of intimacy. Focusing on the phenomena of shame and long-term solitary confinement, Mann and Guenther take up that question by performing the work of critical phenomenology. Mann also offers suggestions regarding critical or, as she calls it, feminist phenomenology’s relation to the tradition—both of classical phenomenology and feminist philosophy. Guenther shows how the work of critical phenomenology is already at play in the practices of resistance among prisoners in the Security Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison in California.

Editors' Introduction: Reflections on the First Issue

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Martina Ferrari ◽  
Devin Fitzpatrick ◽  
Sarah McLay ◽  
Shannon Hayes ◽  
Kaja Jenssen Rathe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Housing Unit ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
State Prison ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Phenomenology

We are happy to feature four invited submissions by Lisa Guenther, Kym Maclaren, Bonnie Mann, and Gayle Salamon, all of whom respond to the questions motivating our inaugural issue. Both Salamon and Maclaren offer a response to the question “What is critical phenomenology?” by exploring the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology. Salamon does this by tracing the history of the term critical phenomenology. Maclaren further explores the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology en route to her analysis of intimacy. Focusing on the phenomena of shame and long-term solitary confinement, Mann and Guenther take up that question by performing the work of critical phenomenology. Mann also offers suggestions regarding critical or, as she calls it, feminist phenomenology’s relation to the tradition—both of classical phenomenology and feminist philosophy. Guenther shows how the work of critical phenomenology is already at play in the practices of resistance among prisoners in the Security Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison in California.

scholarly journals "'if buizy Love intrenches': Adorno and Rochester on Pleasure and Love

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lacey Ann Conley
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Abstract Theory ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Ideal Approach ◽  
Active Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Discrete Moments ◽  
Selection Of

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester presents in his poetry an enigmatic and seemingly contradictory worldview that is a common topic of discussion amongst his critics. Marianne Thormählen talks about a “fundamental paradox that confronts a student of Rochester’s stances and values as expressed in his verse” which is that “the mind pursues satisfaction through the body;” but “minds are particularly unreliable guides and bodies are lamentably fallible” (27). Paul Hammond further argues, “His poetry often disturbs […] continuity through the fragmentation of experience into discrete moments which may be severed from any possible narrative” (49). It makes sense then that a body of work lacking narrative continuity can best be analyzed through the application of a theory that shares the same fragmented construction. Hammond’s description of Rochester’s poetry sounds a great deal like Devra Lee Davis’ assertion about Theodor Adorno that “His [thought] models are not duplicable, system-bound expressions: they are moments, expressions, and sketches,” and are arguably “mood betraying.” She goes on to describe his writing as an “orchestrated cacophony of outrage” (396), as if the author’s mood itself were the center of the interpretation, which is then “orchestrated” around it. From these critical observations it can be concluded that Rochester and Adorno are both notable for an intense authorial presence in their writing, revealing inconsistencies that can only come from the changeability of an active, individual mind that is not content with constructions of abstract theory, but also insists on the importance of individual experience. For Adorno, critical theory is only valuable when it considers specificity and difference, which makes his theory an ideal approach to consider the writing of the Earl of Rochester. Using Adorno’s Minima Moralia alongside a selection of Rochester’s poems, this study examines the interesting intersections in the observations and beliefs of Adorno and Rochester, specifically as they are expressed in ideas about sex, pleasure, and love, and explores the implications of these shared viewpoints as they manifest themselves in Rochester’s life and work.

scholarly journals On the Sources of Critique in Heidegger and Derrida

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-88
Author(s):  
Matthias Fritsch ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Critical Ontology ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Phenomenology ◽  
Western Marxism

According to Lisa Guenther’s concise account, critical phenomenology seeks to expose not only the transcendental conditions of seeing and making the world (such as subjectivity, embodiment, and temporality), but the “quasi-transcendental” ones we find in contingent historical and social structures, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity (2020, 12). This excellent formulation raises the question of its central distinction: from what position would the critical phenomenologist be able to distinguish transcendental from quasi-transcendental conditions, or universal from contingent structures? This question recalls post-Heideggerian treatments of transcendental historicity (Crowell & Malpas 2007) and the possibilities of critical theorizing, e.g., the Habermas-Gadamer debate on lifeworld and critique (How 1995). These issues also remind us of earlier attempts to forge alliances between (post-)phenomenology and critical theory by scholars shuttling between Freiburg (or Paris) and Frankfurt. At times, these went under the label “critical ontology” and often sought to develop a coherent vision out of Western Marxism and phenomenology, with a special focus, it seems, on Adorno and Heidegger (Dallmayr 1991; Guzzoni 1990; Mörchen 1981; Macdonald & Ziarek 2008).

scholarly journals Critical phenomenology and psychiatry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi ◽  
Sophie Loidolt
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Phenomenology ◽  
Phenomenological Psychiatry

AbstractWhereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the recent upsurge of what has become known as critical phenomenology has attempted to show that phenomenological concepts and methods can be used in critical analyses of social and political issues. A recent landmark publication, 50 Concepts for Critical Phenomenology, contains no reference to psychiatry and psychopathology, however. This is an unfortunate omission, since the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry—as we will demonstrate in the present article by surveying and discussing the contribution of Jaspers, Minkowski, Laing, Basaglia, and Fanon—from the outset has practiced critical thinking, be it at the theoretical, interpersonal, institutional, or political level. Fanon is today a recognized figure in critical phenomenology, even if his role in psychiatry might not yet have been appreciated as thoroughly as his anticolonial and antiracist contributions. But as we show, he is part of a long history of critical approaches in psychopathology and psychiatry, which has firm roots in the phenomenological tradition, and which keeps up its critical work today.

Critical Phenomenology and Phenomenological Critique

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Delia Popa ◽  
Iaan Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Genetic Phenomenology ◽  
Human Community ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Critical Phenomenology ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Material Formation

"Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory. Keywords: critical phenomenology, critical theory, genetic phenomenology, community, normativity "

scholarly journals Levinas, Adorno, and the Light of Redemption: Notes on a Critical Eschatology

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Dylan Shaul ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Face ◽  
Critical Phenomenology ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Political Economic

It seems natural to suppose that the burgeoning field of critical phenomenology would come to bear at least some affinities or resemblances (whether implicitly or explicitly) to critical theory, insofar as both are deeply concerned with directing a rigorous critical eye towards the most pressing political, economic, cultural, and social issues of our time. Yet critical theory has also had its share of critics of phenomenology itself, not least of which was the foremost member of the first-generation Frankfurt School critical theorists, Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno’s critique of phenomenology was, for historical reasons, confined to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and might be concisely put as follows: for Adorno, classical phenomenology is insufficiently critical towards contemporary realities of oppression and domination (an insufficiency variously attributed to an alleged pernicious idealism, solipsism, methodological individualism, descriptivism, or ahistoricism in classical phenomenology). On this count, critical phenomenologists today may very well agree—at least to the point of affirming that phenomenology’s critical potential remained largely “untapped” in its classical formulations. However, in a twist of historical fate, Adorno failed to engage with a contemporaneous phenomenologist with whom he perhaps had more in common than anyone else: Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas himself was also notably critical of Husserl and Heidegger (while of course also being enormously indebted to them), for reasons not altogether dissimilar to Adorno’s. For Levinas, phenomenology had hitherto neglected the fundamental ethical or moral dimensions of experience—in particular our ethical responsibility towards the Other in the face of the manifold evils and injustices of the world. What might Adorno have thought of Levinas’s work, and Levinas of Adorno’s? What might they have learned from one another? And how might this exchange have affected the trajectories of critical theory, phenomenology, or critical phenomenology?

How Homo economicus lost her mind and how we can revive her

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter DeScioli
Keyword(s):  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Target Article ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Behavior

AbstractThe target article by Boyer & Petersen (B&P) contributes a vital message: that people have folk economic theories that shape their thoughts and behavior in the marketplace. This message is all the more important because, in the history of economic thought, Homo economicus was increasingly stripped of mental capacities. Intuitive theories can help restore the mind of Homo economicus.

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