In this article, I clarify the phenomenological concept of lifeworld by drawing on the geographical themes of place, place experience, and place meaning. Most simply, lifeworld refers to a person or group’s day-to-day, taken-for-granted experience that typically goes unnoticed. One aim of phenomenological research is to examine the lifeworld as a means to identify and clarify the tacit, unnoticed aspects of human life so that they can be accounted for theoretically and practically. Here, I discuss some key (...) phenomenological principles and then draw on phenomenological renditions of place as one means to clarify some of the lifeworld’s social, environmental, spatial, and geographical aspects. To concretize my discussion, I draw descriptive evidence from British writer Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb, a 1990s novel describing one outsider’s efforts to come to inhabit a place—a fictitious present-day village in the southwestern British county of Somerset. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show how both Jan Patočka and Jürgen Habermas, starting from a reinterpretation of the idea of «lifeworld», engaged a critique of modern civilisation, aiming (with different outcomes) at a redefinition of the concept of political community. In order to achieve this goal, I firstly focus on Patočka’s understanding of modern rational civilisation and its attempt to fix the fracture between «life» and «world». At this stage, I take also advantage of Hans Blumenberg’s (...) distinction between these two terms, in order to better clarify Patočka’s stance on this problem. Secondly, I analyse Habermas’ ideas of lifeworld and system, and their uncoupling in modern societies, as well as the reemergence of this issue in Habermas’ recent works on the European economic and political crisis. Finally, I focus on the very different ways in which Patočka and Habermas tackled the ideas of conflict and crisis in contemporary world, also in view of a possible path out of this crisis through a re-constitution of Europe. (shrink)

The digital economy has provided opportunities for new forms of economic practice. At their purest, these forms deliver economic benefits as gifts and depend on cooperation without authority. Drawing loosely on Habermas, we may call this a lifeworld economy – an economy that is coordinated by communicative interaction – as opposed to the systems economy of market and state, coordinated by money and power. This formulation, however, faces both theoretical and practical challenges. On the theoretical side, the notion of (...) a lifeworld economy does not sit easily with Habermas’s own formulation of the distinction between lifeworld and systems. On the practical side, the digital lifeworld economy has been steadily colonized by capitalist businesses, which have frequently found ways to incorporate forms of gift and cooperation into profit-oriented business models. This article proposes to reformulate Habermas’s distinction as a reference to different kinds of causal mechanisms, detaching it from his functionalist framework and enabling a more flexible application to empirical cases. It then applies it to a series of iconic cases from the digital economy: Amazon, Wikipedia, and open source software, to demonstrate its continuing relevance to very current issues. (shrink)

This book brings together the work of Wilfrid Sellars with work in 20th century phenomenology and 21st century speculative realism in order to think through one of the most important predicaments of contemporary philosophy. As a result of the disenchantment of nature in late modernity, philosophy has struggled to account for the place of persons, construed as loci of normative authority and responsibility, within a scientifically, naturalistically described world, bereft of values and norms. The book argues that Sellars takes both (...) the framework of persons and science seriously and thinks that this implies the need not just for reconciling the manifest and scientific images but for fusing them into one stereoscopic vision of reality and our place in it. One of the main aims of this book is to address the issue of the form which a non-alienated experience of ourselves-in-the-world would take in the Sellarsian cryptic stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and the scientific image. Through an extended discussion of Sellars’ relevance for contemporary continental philosophy and phenomenology, in which his views on perception, the commonsense ‘lifeworld’, science, normativity, personhood, morality and process metaphysics are presented and extended, the book sketches a novel view about what a stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and the scientific image would amount to at the level of our lifeworld experience. (shrink)

This text aims to establish a connection between the analysis of metaphor from a phenomenological-anthropological perspective in Blumenberg's thought and some theoretical and methodological aspects that are constitutive for the theory of unconceptuality. Without claiming that this construction can reveal a hidden coherence in the author's multifaceted thinking, I propose to defend the idea that Blumenberg himself built bridges and that by establishing connections between some aspects of his extensive work, a horizon for the development of a “political metaphorology” can (...) emerge. I believe that analyzing the concepts of Lifeworld and absolutism of reality on the one hand, and the relationship between myth and metaphor on the other, allows us to point to a fundamental dimension of the relationship that we humans establish with the Other, whether human or non-human. I will attempt to show that metaphors can also function as mechanisms of invisibilization when they serve political purposes that seek to absolutize otherness. In short, this text aims to establish a political metaphorology in the phenomenological-anthropological dimension of Blumenberg's thought. (shrink)

This paper relates the concept of relevance to its biological foundations by combining Alfred Schutz’s social phenomenology and Helmuth Plessner’s theory of organic life and philosophical anthropology. Relevance interlinks human sign use with the human “lifeworld” (Husserl) as a whole. The biological foundations of relevance, in turn, interlink that lifeworld with the “world of life” that includes us among other lifeforms. I analyze human relevance as an interplay of two tendencies, termed “closedness” and “openness,” that underlies our production (...) of “meaning” (Schutz). Relevance in this general sense involves not only the mind, but also the body of homo sapiens. To provide a unified theoretical framework, I reconstruct Plessner’s “philosophical biology.” According to Plessner, organic life consists in a tension between closedness and openness. This tension unfolds through the “levels” of plants, animals, and humans. Plessner’s analysis of humans as “excentric” animals helps explain the two tendencies that drive human relevance and distinguish our experience from that of our closest animal relatives. At the same time, Plessner traces a robust continuity between us and other lifeforms. The human “level” merely makes “explicit” certain elements (including the Cartesian distinction between “mind” and “body”) that all organisms implicitly possess. (shrink)

In this paper we offer an appreciation and critique of patient-led care as expressed in current policy and practice. We argue that current patient-led approaches hinder a focus on a deeper understanding of what patient-led care could be. Our critique focuses on how the consumerist/citizenship emphasis in current patient-led care obscures attention from a more fundamental challenge to conceptualise an alternative philosophically informed framework from where care can be led. We thus present an alternative interpretation of patient-led care that we (...) call ‘lifeworld-led care’, and argue that such lifeworld-led care is more than the general understanding of patient-led care. Although the philosophical roots of our alternative conceptualisation are not new, we believe that it is timely to re-consider some of the implications of these perspectives within current discourses of patient-centred policies and practice. The conceptualisation of lifeworld-led care that we develop includes an articulation of three dimensions: a philosophy of the person, a view of well-being and not just illness, and a philosophy of care that is consistent with this. We conclude that the existential view of well-being that we offer is pivotal to lifeworld-led care in that it provides a direction for care and practice that is intrinsically and positively health focused in its broadest and most substantial sense. (shrink)

Michael Jackson’s _Lifeworlds_ is a masterful collection of essays, the culmination of a career aimed at understanding the relationship between anthropology and philosophy. Seeking the truths that are found in the interstices between examiner and examined, world and word, and body and mind, and taking inspiration from James, Dewey, Arendt, Husserl, Sartre, Camus, and, especially, Merleau-Ponty, Jackson creates in these chapters a distinctive anthropological pursuit of existential inquiry. More important, he buttresses this philosophical approach with committed empirical research. Traveling from (...) the Kuranko in Sierra Leone to the Maori in New Zealand to the Warlpiri in Australia, Jackson argues that anthropological subjects continually negotiate—imaginatively, practically, and politically—their relations with the forces surrounding them and the resources they find in themselves or in solidarity with significant others. At the same time that they mirror facets of the larger world, they also help shape it. Stitching the themes, peoples, and locales of these essays into a sustained argument for a philosophical anthropology that focuses on the places between, Jackson offers a pragmatic understanding of how people act to make their lives more viable, to grasp the elusive, to counteract external powers, and to turn abstract possibilities into embodied truths. (shrink)

Learning about ‘nature’ has particular significance for education because the idea of nature is an important source of inspiring meaning‐rich experience and creation. In order to have meaningful experiences in learning and living, this paper argues for a personal subject‐related lifeworld approach to the learning of ‘nature’. Many authors claim that the lifeworld‐led learning approach helps to enrich educational experience. However, there can be various interpretations of the lifeworld approach, as the concept of lifeworld is diversely (...) understood. This paper proposes a personal, subject‐related lifeworld approach from a Husserlian‐Merleau‐Pontian perspective. I suggest that it holds great potential for improving our current curriculum which suffers from meaning‐impoverishment. This paper comprises the following parts: the elucidation of the lifeworld approach to learning, a demonstration of the flaws of current curricula by discussing and analysing the Taiwanese curriculum guidelines, and an exposition of the contribution of the Husserlian‐Merleau‐Pontian lifeworld approach towards improving our current curriculum. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a systematic account of the core features of Jürgen Habermas’s revised approach to truth that comprises both realist and epistemic components. While agents in the lifeworld are pragmatic realists and work on the basic assumption that their beliefs about the world are true, beliefs that have become problematic can be scrutinized only in the form of validity-claims in rational discourses. Thus Habermas introduces a discursive truth predicate that involves a procedural idealization of the conditions (...) of discourse in terms of ‘justified acceptability under conditions that are currently ideal’. He argues that this truth predicate has to be understood in connection with agents’ pragmatic realism to give a comprehensive account of truth. This paper is concerned with the tension between truth-in-the-lifeworld and discursive truth. I argue that Habermas’s account is troubled by two problems: firstly an unclear conception of the role of the truth predicate; and secondly, the suggestion that agents in discourse temporarily abandon their lifeworldly realism. While the first problem can be remedied by exploring the distinction between a truth predicate and a truth criterion, the second difficulty requires a modification of Habermas’s account. I show that the consistency of his approach depends on the acceptance of the principle of bivalence throughout, and hence on the subscription to a certain kind of realism that extends beyond the lifeworld. Key Words: bivalence • discourse • Habermas • lifeworld • pragmatism • realism • truth. (shrink)

The carer of the person with dementia is enjoined to maintain respect, and to reinforce this a bill of rights has been established. Of course, talk of rights does not guarantee respectful behaviour. In this paper it is argued that the discovery that the sufferer continues to be a person, with a unique lifeworld, can assist the carer to conform willingly to the demand that they act respectfully.The current research project makes central the idiographic description of the individual case.

Lifeworlds of Islam shows that Islam has typically operated not in the form of standard dogmas, but more often as a compass for practical individual orientations or lifeworlds. Mohammed Bamyeh develops a sociology of Islam that maps out how Muslims have employed the faith to foster global networks, public philosophies, and engaged civic lives both historically and in the present.

"Mobile Lifeworlds illustrates how the imaginaries and ideals of Western travellers, especially those of untouched nature and spiritual enlightenment, are consistent with media representations of the Himalayan region, romanticism and modernity at large. Blending tourism and pilgrimage, travel across Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and Northern India is often inspired and oriented by a search for authenticity, adventure and Otherness. Such valued ideals are shown, however, to be contested by the very forces and configurations that enable global mobility. The role ubiquitous media (...) and mobile technologies now play in framing travel experiences are explored, revealing a situation in which actors are neither here nor there, but increasingly are 'inter-placed' across planetary landscapes. Beyond institutionalised religious contexts and the visiting of sacred sites, the author shows how a secular religiosity manifests in practical, bodily encounters with foreign environments. This book is unique in that it draws on a dynamic and innovative set of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, especially phenomenology, the mobilities paradigm and philosophical anthropology. The volume breaks fresh ground in pilgrimage, tourism and travel studies by unfolding the complex relationships between the virtual, imaginary and corporeal dynamics of contemporary mobile lifeworlds"--From publisher's website. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the value and philosophy of lifeworld-led care. Our purpose is to give a philosophically coherent foundation for lifeworld-led care and its core value as a humanising force that moderates technological progress. We begin by indicating the timeliness of these concerns within the current context of citizen-oriented, participative approaches to healthcare. We believe that this context is in need of a deepening philosophy if it is not to succumb to the discourses of mere consumerism. (...) We thus revisit the potential of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld and how lifeworld-led care could provide important ideas and values that are central to the humanisation of healthcare practice. This framework provides a synthesis of the main arguments of the paper and is finally expressed in a model of lifeworld-led care that includes its core value, core perspectives, relevant indicative methodologies and main benefits. The model is offered as a potentially broad-based approach for integrating many existing practices and trends. In the spirit of Husserl’s interest in both commonality and variation, we highlight the central, less contestable foundations of lifeworld-led care, without constraining the possible varieties of confluent practices. (shrink)

If we think of cognition and experience from the enactivist idea of a structural coupling between organism and environment, we see that this environment is first and foremost a semiotic environment, crowded with objects, norms, habits, institutions, and artefacts that shape our minds and represent the background of our perception of the world. This semiotic environment, which goes far beyond the opposition between nature and culture, (See Paolucci 2021. Cognitive semiotics: Integrating signs, minds, meaning, and cognition. Berlin: Springer: ch. 1.) (...) is a semiotic lifeworld that is important to compare with the classic idea of lifeworld coming from phenomenology. In this paper, (i) we will first start with a comparison of the semiotic Lebenswelt and the phenomenological Lebenswelt; (ii) we will follow the construction of the semiotic lifeworld coming from Peirce’s Anti-Cartesian essays; (iii) we will make a deep comparison between the phenomenology coming from Peirce (phaneroscopy) and the phenomenology coming from Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty; (iv) we will show how these very same principles also ground structuralism; (v) we will show how this new semiotic lifeworld grounded on phaneroscopy is neither pre-logical nor pre-categorial. Rather, it is founded on the primacy of “telling” over “showing,” and on the primacy of discourse over perception. (shrink)

This article intervenes in the debate over the noetic structure of empirical beliefs required for epistemic justification, focusing on the choice between internalist foundationalism and coherentism. Analysing the link between noetic structure and the introspective accessibility of essential justifiers, I argue that coherentism has greater doxastic plausibility than foundationalism. To deepen my account, I constructively develop ideas from the late-period Edmund Husserl to propose a first-order epistemological theory that I term ‘Lifeworld Coherentism’. I argue that, especially through the idea (...) of the epistemic agent’s ‘doxic horizon’, this theory can overcome some of the worries surrounding the introspective awareness of belief coherence. Finally, in order to extend the second-order dimension of the debate, I introduce ‘Tradition-Based Perspectivalism’, a meta-epistemological theory that Erik Baldwin uses to address concerns about the social grounding of epistemic theorising. Though supportive of Baldwin’s reading of Alasdair MacIntyre on this point, I argue that Tradition-Based Perspectivalism is a better fit to Lifeworld Coherentism as a first-order theory than to his own preferred Proper Functionalism. (shrink)

Questions on what it means to live and die well are raised and discussed in the hospice movement. A phenomenological lifeworld perspective may help professionals to be aware of meaningful and important dimensions in the lives of persons close to death. Lifeworld is not an abstract philosophical term, but rather the opposite. Lifeworld is about everyday, common life in all its aspects. In the writings of Cicely Saunders, known as the founder of the modern hospice movement, facets (...) of lifeworld are presented as important elements in caring for dying patients. Palliative care and palliative medicine today are, in many ways, replacing hospices. This represents not only a change in name, but also in the main focus. Hospice care was originally very much about providing support and comfort for, and interactions with the patients. Improved medical knowledge today means improved symptomatic palliation, but also time and resources spent in other ways than before. Observations from a Nordic hospice ward indicate that seriously ill and dying persons spend much time on their own. Different aspects of lifeworld and intersubjectivity in the dying persons’ room is presented and discussed. (shrink)

This article aims to develop a comparison between Alfred Schutz’s and José Ortega y Gasset’s social theories. By examining the annotations found on the copy of Ortega’s Man and People, located in Schutz’s Hand‑Bibliothek at the Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv Konstanz, the paper focuses on the way in which the two authors conceptualized themes such as empathy, lifeworld, and taken‑for‑granted, highlighting elements of continuity and divergence. This comparative analysis reveals the significant role that intersubjectivity plays for both thinkers, through which it (...) is possible to read in filigree their comparison with other eminent voices of the phenomenological landscape, with whom Ortega and Schutz did not confront directly, and to redefine their complex relationship with Husserl’s perspective on the topic. (shrink)

Phenomenological reflection prepared me to work with the Mizo people to prevent a historical cyclical famine known as Mautam. Further work through the network of connections facilitated the development of the nonprofit, Health Reach Canada, Inc. (HRC). One HRC project resulted in the provision of life-giving water access in Majuwa, Nepal, a leper village. This work led me to be in Tanzania at exactly the right place and moment to save my life, as I had suffered from undiagnosed malaria since (...) the work in Mizoram. That experience not only changed my life but my Lifeworld context as Schütz presented it. (shrink)

I investigate the possibility that ‘lifeworld phenomenology’ after Husserl (in Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger) escapes the critique of the Husserlian lifeworld. It is suggested that this depends on whether lifeworld phenomenology after Husserl can develop a non-instrumentalist account of scientific explanation, which moreover avoids importing manifest-image categories to the scientific image. Yet, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, despite their resolute rejection of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, both fail on this count as they adhere to Husserl’s privileging of ‘intuitive’ lifeworld explanations (...) over ‘non-intuitive’ scientific explanations. In this connection, I also examine contemporary enactivism, considering it as a scientifically updated Merleau-Pontyanism. (shrink)

The ever-increasing prevalence of chronic conditions over the last half century has gradually altered the demographic of patients admitted to acute care settings; environments traditionally associated with episodic care rather than chronic and complex healthcare. In consequence, the lifeworld of the hospital medical doctor often entails healthcare for a complex, multi-morbid, patient cohort. This paper examines the experience of providing complex healthcare in the pressurised and fast-paced acute care setting. Four medical doctors from two metropolitan health services were interviewed (...) and their data were analysed using a combinatorial framework of phenomenology and complexity theory. The horizon of complex care revealed itself as dynamic, expansive, immersive, and relational, entailing a specialised kind of practice that is now common in acute care settings. Yet this practice has made inroads largely without heralding the unique nature and potential of its ground. Herein lies opportunity for complex care clinicians to expand notions of health and illness, and to shape research, practice, and system design, for a future in which care for health complexity is optimised, irrespective of care settings. (shrink)

In the article I discuss Husserl’s conception of the Lifeworld as developed in his Crisis Book, in order to find out whether art can be especially illuminative in order to understand the Lifeworld and one’s own living in it. I draw a parallel between the sciences as discussed by Husserl as abstractions from the Lifeworld that offer a special view of what in the Lifeworld as such remains disclosed. However, scientific and artistic abstraction differs in character. (...) Whereas the sciences establish formal systems and thereby discover the world as to its computability, the arts abstract from the everyday set of meanings and go back to the primordial and original experience of the world in its perceptibility. Thus they are able to draw attention to the essential character of the Lifeworld as such. (shrink)

Part 1. Husserl: the outlines of the transcendental-phenomenological system -- 1. Husserl's phenomenological discovery of the natural attitude -- 2. Husserl's theory of the phenomenological reduction: between lifeworld and Cartesianism -- 3. Some methodological problems arising in Husserl's late reflections on the phenomenological reduction -- 4. Facticity and historicity as constituents of the lifeworld in Husserl's late philosophy -- 5. Husserl's concept of the "transcendental person": another look at the Husserl-Heidegger relationship -- 6. Dialectics of the absolute: the (...) systematics of the phenomenological system in Husserl's last period -- Part 2. Husserl, Kant, and neo-Kantianism: from subjectivity to lifeworld as a world of culture -- 7. From being to givenness and back: some remarks on the meaning of transcendental idealism in Kant and Husserl -- 8. Reconstruction and reduction: Natorp and Husserl on method and the question of subjectivity -- 9. A hermeneutic phenomenology of subjective and objective spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer -- 10. Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms: between reason and relativism: a critical appraisal -- Part 3. Toward a Husserlian hermeneutics -- 11. The subjectivity of effective history and the suppressed husserlian elements in Gadamer's hermeneutics -- 12. Husserl's "hermeneutical phenomenology" as a philosophy of culture. (shrink)

Text in English and Danish. A persistent theme of the 20th century has been a critique of metaphysics. But the limitations of this critique are manifesting themselves more and more clearly. Among them is the fact that both inner and outer nature have form and structure. Philosophy of nature becomes unavoidable. The lifeworld of man cannot be thoroughly understood without metaphysical reflection. The theme of this volume is the metaphysical questions about man and nature and the relationship between them, (...) as these questions emerge in the human lifeworld beyond the critique of metaphysics of the 20th century. The contributions provide a comprehensive elucidation of the theoretical and practical problems of metaphysics. They range from the metaphysics of the ecological crisis and the concept of progress to the nature of man and the foundation of science in the human lifeworld. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas has been credited with rescuing Critical Theory from the brink of nihilism. Although he has adopted Max Weber's interest in rationalization, as is well known, he questions Weber's pessimistic view that modernization will inexorably lead to the imprisonment of individuals in meaningless systems of instrumental rationality. Habermas' optimism, however, is not the result of a belief in the irreducible nature of human freedom. Rather, it derives from the more ambitious claim that the linguistic structures of the lifeworld (...) harbor the emancipatory goal of mutual understanding. This linguistic revision of Critical Theory has met considerable criticism. Habermas' optimistic interest in communication rather than praxis, democratic interaction rather than self-determining labor, has often been dismissed as a self-serving attempt to legitimate the de-radicalization of the intellectual Left and conceal its integration into the academic establishment. (shrink)

Phenomenological psychology has typically avoided the "importation" of such concepts as social class from sociology.Within the epoche, such terminology is bracketed on the grounds that it brings with it excess theoretical baggage and threatens the return to experience in itself. Yet, in uncovering the lifeworld of university students who—in what in Britain is still predominantly a preserve of the privileged—come from relatively economically disadvantaged homes, "class" or some cognate concept is found to be necessary to capture the range of (...) modes of alienation and disjunction experienced. Following Casey's discussion of the way in which Bourdieu's notion of habitus relates to Merleau-Ponty's description of the interpenetration of the natural and the cultural in the lived body, social class is shown to bring together students' accounts of their multi-faceted sense that "University is not for the likes of us"—encompassing issues of identity, sociality, and spatio-temporal dislocation. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate Husserl’s central notion of the ‘life-world’ and its complex relations with science. I attempt to show four things: 1) Husserl’s life-world amounts to a sophisticated description of Sellars’ manifest image of man-in- the-world, which however absolutizes the latter’s categorial structure and mislocates the role of science within it. 2) A dialectical understanding of the relation between life-world and science could succeed in escaping the above kinds of problems, albeit only at the cost of blurring the (...) boundaries between phenomenology and non-phenomenological philosophical standpoints. 3) Lifeworld phenomenology after Husserl does not offer a convincing response to our criticism of the Husserlian life-world. I argue that it could give such a response only if Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger could develop a non-instrumentalist account of scientific explanation. Yet, I attempt to show that both Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, despite their resolute rejection of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, both steadfastly adhere to Husserl’s instrumentalist conception of science and scientific explanation. 4) Finally, I provide a rough sketch of a non-phenomenological and non-representationalist conception of life-world and science, as I consider it a more promising way of making sense of their structure and relations. (shrink)

The areas of interest of the scholar of religious studies, Karl E. Grozinger, are diverse. His research is concentrated on the religious and cultural history of Judaism throughout the ages: Israel in antiquity, the era of rabbinical traditional literature, philosophy of religion during the Middle Ages, the kabbalistic tradition, as well as Jewish thinkers and devout movements in contemporary times. On the occasion of Professor Grozinger's seventieth birthday, numerous scholars present the first fruits of their current research as a first (...) look into the tendencies of future research in Jewish studies. In accordance with this scholar's broad interests, the volume Jewish Lifeworlds and Jewish Thought, edited by Nathanael Riemer, is comprised of contributions to a wide variety of topics of Jewish cultural history.With contributions by Hermann Lichtenberger, Hanna Liss, Ronit Meroz, Yoav Elstein, Susanne Talabardon, Nathanael Riemer, Giuseppe Veltri, Dirk Westerkamp, Thomas Meyer, Daniel Jutte, Frederek Musall, Robert Jutte, J. Friedrich Battenberg, Admiel Kosman, Rella Kushelevsky, Elvira Grozinger, Simon Bronner, Avidov Lipsker, Jascha Nemtsov, Rebekka Denz, Micha Brumlik, Micha? Galas, Manja Herrmann, Hans-Michael Haussig, Anat Feinberg, Adam Lipszyc, Vivian Liska, Julius H. Schoeps, Edward D'browa, Ewa Geller, Manfred Voigts, Mordechai Lewy and Stanislaw Krajewski. (shrink)

Michael Jackson has spent much of his career elaborating his rich conception of lifeworlds, mining his ethnographic and personal experience for insights into how our subjective and social lives are mutually constituted. In How Lifeworlds Work, Jackson draws on years of ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa to highlight the dynamic quality of human relationships and reinvigorate the study of kinship and ritual. How, he asks, do we manage the perpetual process of accommodation between social norms and personal emotions, impulses, and (...) desires? How are these two dimensions of lived reality joined, and how are the dual imperatives of individual expression and collective viability managed? Drawing on the pragmatist tradition, psychology, and phenomenology, Jackson offers an unforgettable, beautifully written account of how we make, unmake, and remake, our lifeworlds. (shrink)

Husserl's phenomenological reduction is aimed at disclosing, the potentialities of a transcendental ego as absolute ground of any possible knowledge. This absolute ground is impossible to attain in the natural attitude of the naive, non-reduced lifeworld. But the reduction is exposed to a difficulty of principle, since the language of the transcendental ego cannot be other than ordinary language. However, instead of dismissing the validity of the reduction, this problem reveals how much the transcendental ego's alienation in the natural (...) world is part of its transcendental meaning. (shrink)

Current distance education practices can be susceptible to the types of content-heavy, top-down instruction often seen in physical classrooms. These practices are similar to the activities of corporations, which use recommendation systems and game theory to mold the public sphere and fragment it. We propose that free knowledge creation through open, multichannel communication needs to be used in distance education to permit both individual and collective agency for students to process knowledge and develop higher order reflectivity. Such frameworks would help (...) students of distance education and instructors to use critical thinking to discuss concepts as equal stakeholders and develop varied ideological outcomes that could contribute to creating social change. This conceptual paper places current distance education practices within Habermasian theory, discusses ways in which the Internet and its educative potential has come to be viewed thus far, and suggests platforms that could open distance learning to new possibilities. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, the concepts of “lifeworld” and “everyday life” have been part of the discourse of social pedagogy and social and educational work in general. Xavier Úcar's objective in this article is to generate and communicate socio-pedagogical knowledge that helps social pedagogues to build socio-educational relationships that are more effective, more sustainable, more satisfactory, and ultimately richer in terms of both experiences and learning for participants. A conceptually oriented, nonsystematic analysis procedure was used to conduct this research. The (...) procedure involved an in-depth investigation of documents that focus on the two target areas of this study: (1) social pedagogy, and (2) lifeworld and everyday life. The results describe the theoretical background of lifeworld and everyday life, discuss the development of the perspective of “lifeworld orientation” within the framework of social pedagogy in Germany, and analyze how everyday life is understood through actions undertaken by social pedagogues. These results provide ideas for mapping the essential dimensions of everyday life from the perspective of social pedagogy. (shrink)

Мета статті – осмислення визначальної тенденції останніх років, а саме – пришвидшена диджиталізація (digitization) людського життя, що призводить до переосмислення самовизначення людини. Також потребує аналізу головна складова нової епохи людства, а саме – а) створення глобальної комунікативної платформи – інтернету і "оцифрованої мережевої структури цінностей", б) цифровий режим обмінів, що призводить до трансформації самої форми людини, яка може бути визначена як дигітальна транслюдина. На думку авторів, також заслуговують на увагу визначення особливостей концептуалізації цієї форми в певній (транс)антропологічній перспективі. Теоретичний базис (...) статті становить суб’єктно-дезорієнтована антропологія, що виходить з трьох топографічних принципів: дезорієнтованість, несамототожність, множинність людської істоти. Наукова новизна. Виходячи з трьох топографічних принципів диджиталізації (Network, Blockchain, Transformer), транслюдина розглядається як дивід чи транс(ін)дивід і визначається його життєвий світ і світогляд. Диджиталізація, швидкий розвиток технологій штучного інтелекту, інтернет, технологія blockchain, ChatGPT тощо суттєво змінили життєвий світ людини. Інтернет впровадив мережевий спосіб соціальної взаємодії. Мережа є ризоматичною множиною, всі складники котрої є взаємозалежними, нестабільними, трансформативними. Технологія blockchain впроваджує децентралізований розподіл даних, є множиною, всі елементи якої взаємозалежні, розподілені й децентровані, взаємозамінні. Трансформер, зокрема ChatGPT, є множиною, всі елементи якої трансдуктивні та генеративні. Отже людина просіюється цифровими технологіями, коли все (родове, спільне, індивідуальне) піддається цифровому розділенню. Саме тому транслюдина вже є дивідом чи транс(ін)дивідом – трансформативною, поділеною в собі, множинною істотою. Дивіда характеризує децентрована суб’єктивність, розщепленість, що втілюється у множині цифрових ідентичностей, які розподіляються в ланцюгах мережевих зв’язків у віртуальних світах. Множинний суб’єкт не є цілісним, він є тренсгресивним і деконструктивним, його кордони розмиті, він трансгресує і деконструюється на межі реального і віртуального, біологічного і технологічного. Досягнення розробок ШІ розподіляють мислення окремих індивідів в мережах, що генерують синтетичні сенси, створені алгоритмами, що не підлягають перевірці на істинність, не розглядаються в категоріях істини. Буття транс(ін)дивіда визначає належність до певної мережі і взаємозалежність елементів, що її складають. Його світогляд можна визначити як технософістичний. Висновки. Суттєвою складовою технософістичного світогляду є те, що він не виходить з принципу істинності, його носії скеровують життя афектами, які викликаються образами, що продукуються мережами і є підґрунтям для нестійких вірувань. Для людини все більш важливими є задачі пошуку об’єктивних знань та створення передумов для загальної суспільної домовленості. (shrink)

"... Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." —Science Books & Films "Don Ihde is a pleasure to read.... The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work... the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradually offered." —John Compton "A sophisticated celebration of cultural diversity and of its enabling technologies.... perhaps the best single (...) volume relating the philosophical tradition to the broad issues raised by contemporary technologies." —Choice "... important and challenging... " —Review of Metaphysics "... a range of rich historical, cultural, philosophical, and psychological insights, woven together in an intriguing and clear exposition... The book is really a pleasure to read, for its style, immense learning and sanity." —Teaching Philosophy The role of tools and instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this thought-provoking book. (shrink)

This study develops a biosemiotic framework for a descriptive phenomenology. We incorporate the set _utterance-genre-lifeworld_ in biosemiotic theory by paralleling it with the Peircean-Uexküllean notions of _sign_, _habit_, and _Umwelt_ (respectively). This framework for empirical semiotic studies aims to complement the concepts of _affordance_ and _scaffold_, as applied in studies on learning. The paper also contributes to bridging Bakhtinian-Hallidayian-Habermasian views on utterance, genre, and lifeworld with biosemiotics. We exploit the possibility that biosemiotics offers to bring together hermeneutic and phenomenological (...) analysis. We relate these views to integrated _levels_ in a systemic framework for communication. Signs are seen as inter-dependent construction elements in utterances. Repeated use of utterances in shifting contexts generates shared recognizable _kinds_ of communication, or genres. ‘Life-genre’ is used in a zoo-communication context, to avoid anthropocentrism. _Life-genre_ serves animals’ life-functions. Genres make up a systemic network of communicational resources, along with the related concepts of event, affordance, and scaffold. Utterance, genre, and lifeworld have five aspects, constituting an integrative approach to communication: form, content, act, time, and space. Semiosis and positioning are _processes_ that connect aspects and levels. Levels, aspects, and processes make up the framework as a system. While biosemiotics supports a phenomenological notion of life-genre, in turn, this notion also contributes to the development of the former, bridging a gap between organisms’ sign experience on a micro-level and organisms’ phenomenal lifeworld/Umwelt. Comparisons of _lifeworld_ and _Umwelt_ reveal that, although not identical, these are sufficiently similar to be perceived as an overall _macro-_level for signs and communication. Starting from a construal of utterance and genre as dynamic, dialogical, and reciprocal, genre is positioned as _meso_-level, mediating between signs in utterances and the lifeworld/Umwelt level. We propose _genres_, understood as semiotic scaffoldings built through affordances, as an analytical concept to capture meso-level phenomena. Scaffolding is determined by both ongoing events and (pre-)available genres. Events are manifestations of these scaffolding processes. Identifying animal and educational communication as two particularly relevant fields for future applications, we compare key socio-semiotic concepts to the notions of sign, habit, and Umwelt. The notions affordance and scaffolding are particularly important to think of learning as continuous with adaptation. An overall aim is to broaden as well as finetune semiotic _phenomenology_ as a platform for empirical analyses of communication. We conclude by exemplifying and summarizing how the framework facilitates this. (shrink)

In this article I challenge two arguments central to Hugh Baxter's critical interpretation of Habermas in his recent book, Habermas: The Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (2011). Both arguments focus on whether Habermas’ system -lifeworld model of society can successfully make space for democratic politics. Baxter highlights problems with both Habermas’ The Theory of Communicative Action [hereafter cited as TCA] and Habermas’ attempts to fix those problems in Between Facts and Norms [hereafter cited as BFN]. Thus, engaging Baxter (...) on these issues provides an opportunity to think about how to read two of Habermas’ most significant texts in relation to each other. Baxter stresses discontinuities but I draw attention to important continuities. The first discontinuity highlighted by Baxter is between TCA's functionalism and BFN's normative approach. By contrast, in section I my article stresses elements of TCA that have been under-appreciated in general and by Baxter in particular, challenging us to rethink aspects of the standard reading of functionalist versus normative moments in the trajectory of Habermas’ thought. More specifically, in the second discontinuity Baxter identifies in BFN a significant shift in Habermas’ understanding of the nature of a ‘system’. I challenge this interpretation in section II and provide what I think is a superior reconstruction of the model presented in BFN. (shrink)

The crisis of pandemics such as Covid-19 reveals the reality of a crisis-ridden world fraught by devastation of nature and distortion of human life simultaneously. This article tries to bring to light that pandemics actually move from one ‘region’ of human Lifeworld to another. The phenomenological notion of ‘Lifeworld’ can enable one to see ‘natural life’ and ‘civil life’ as two different but related ‘regions of life’ related to each other in the context of an ontological unity. As (...) such, the ‘coming’ of pandemic viruses into human life-sphere is seen as one step in a process which had already begun with the disruptive human interference in the natural environment. These are in fact practical implications of the mastery of the modern ‘ego cogito’ and its use of technological warfare. (shrink)

In phenomenology, the delusion of thought insertion is described and explained in different ways. There is a common idea that the delusion depends either on a lack of sense of agency or on a confusion between self and others. I propose that the delusion is an alienation in regard to what is expressed in some thoughts, that make them unfamiliar. In this perspective, the delusion has to do with the fact that the lifeworld expressed in inserted thought is given (...) in a second-person perspective, is rooted in a different lived-body experience than one’s own. This contrasts with ordinary thoughts which are given in the first-person perspective, with which we have a sense of intimacy. This discussion is an opportunity for putting forth the idea of the second-person perspective: that is, certain experiences of the world are given to me through others, as distinct from those that are given to me directly as a lived body. In inserted thoughts, there is a sense in which some perspectives of reality, different to my own, are disclosed through an alien voice or through inside me. The distinction between the first person and second person perspectives leads to a better understanding of the primal constitution of the self and of others, based on the relation between the body and the world as it is given to us. (shrink)

Hugh Baxter’s book Habermas: A Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy not only carefully recounts Habermas’ political and legal theory, but also raises several insightful criticisms of Habermas. Of particular note is Baxter’s criticism of Habermas’ system–lifeworld model originally presented in Theory of Communicative Action. Baxter argues that Habermas ought to discard the concept of the lifeworld because the distinction between lifeworld and system is no longer tenable in the model of political power presented in Habermas’ later (...) work, Between Facts and Norms, which focuses more explicitly on law as a social system. Baxter contends that the lifeworld, which Habermas describes as those parts of our lives that are structured by communicative action and shared norms, is an unhelpful way of understanding our social world because, in reality, most of our interactions are structured both by communicative norms and by the strategic action typical of ‘the system’. I argue, however, that Habermas must retain the theoretical distinction between system and lifeworld, though in everyday practice they are not so neatly disentangled, because without such an element there would be no source of legitimacy for the law. Without a connection to the communicative action of the lifeworld, law and the political structure would be nothing but strategic action. (shrink)

For all Habermas's remarkable contribution to moral theory, his discourse ethics has left behind some debatable points. In particular, `delinguistified media' such as money and power have been excluded from the domain of moral discourse. The exclusion of money and power from the domain of moral discourse has also motivated Habermas to develop an idea of `colonization of lifeworld by system' by giving us the impression that the delinguistified media are the main culprit of colonizing the lifeworld. In (...) this article, by drawing on Reinhold Niebuhr's theological ethics, I argue that the lifeworld is colonized not by the delinguistified media as such, but, rather, by the people who mismanage money and power. I also develop the argument that in order to `decolonize' the colonized lifeworld, we need the substantive ethical ideals as well as the communicatively established law to guide the moral conduct of these system managers. (shrink)

Husserl proposes a theory of intersubjectivity that begins with transcendental consciousness embedded in the lifeworld alongside others, and in which the community is founded upon a structure of essences. The lifeworld is given and shared by all consciousnesses; it is a condition for empirical and eidetic intuitions, epoché, and eidetic and transcendental reductions. In this world, there are real objects along with other subjects that are recognised through empathy, constituting a community of selves. Even so, how to share (...) their experiences? The experiences can be different, but there is a limit to variations, a limit given by the essences. Thus, the collective constitution of the world and its objects is in permanent progress. It is always possible to give them new meanings, within the limits of their essence. It is the communal constitution of the world. (shrink)

As plagiarism is a notion specific to a particular culture and epoch, and is also understood in a variety of ways by individuals, particular attention must be paid to the putting of the phenomenological question, What is plagiarism in its appearing? Resolution of this issue leads us to locate students' perceptions and opinions within the lifeworld, and to seek an initially idiographic set of descriptions. Of twelve interview analyses, three are presented. A student who took an especially anxious line, (...) his morality having to do with the fear of being shamed were he to be accused of plagiarism in his work. A student who saw academic development as the movement from dependence on respected authors such that the novice's work is near plagiaristic, to autonomy and self-assured originality. A student whose degree involved painting and art history—disciplines with very distinct understandings of plagiarism. To combat plagiarism, then, one must not assume that students have a prior grasp of the unequivocal meaning of the notion, but must accept that a process of acculturation is required. (shrink)

The lifeworld of philosophy students is technologically determined in the digital age. ‎Postphenomenology is a specifc methodology in philosophy of technology after the empirical ‎turn that makes it possible to analyze human-technology relations. It provides analytical tools for ‎specifc relations, especially embodiment, hermeneutics, alterity, and background. ‎Multistabilities of use determine the purpose of technologies. In this article, I lay some ‎groundwork for what technology studies in philosophy class might look like based on ‎postphenomenology. I propose to address the postphenomenological (...) concepts of human-‎technology relation and multistability by four classical examples. These are ancient ‎deforestation, Polynesian navigation, obstetric ultrasound, and hostile design. The concepts ‎learned this way can then be used as tools for analyzing digital technologies in the learners' ‎practical lifeworld. (shrink)

This analysis focuses on the role of appresentational orders in the “building of the lifeworld.” Based in phenomenology and the philosophy of culture, the article contributes to semiotics by further developing some of Göran Sonesson’s ideas on signs. Appresentation means that “absent” data is intended as co-present with a directly perceivable term within the unity of consciousness (Husserl). Alfred Schutz sees “marks,” “indications,” and “signs” as different types of couplings between “present” and “absent” data according to one single cognitive (...) style or “subworld.” These appresentational relations contrast with the more complex “symbols,” which are couplings between different styles or subworlds. For instance, a crucifix may co-present a “Latin cross” given to everyday perception with meanings belonging to the world of religion, making it “symbolically pregnant” (Cassirer). Beyond a mere coupling, appresentation is constituted by appresentational orders, which can reflect high relational complexity. Although Schutz introduced the concept of these orders, he, like Sonesson, misses their full potential for understanding appresentation. Signs and sign-like relations (such as marks and indications), which make possible (life)worldly communication, spatial and temporal orientation, and social organization, can be further differentiated according to the appresentational orders “dominant” in each certain case. In contrast, symbols, which ensure an experience of the lifeworld as a whole (Voegelin), that connect subworlds such as religion, science, dreams, etc., are rather to be characterized by a relevance “annihilation” between appresentational orders. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas seminally criticized Alfred Schutz. This paper traces the disagreement back to a different role of idealization. Schutz’s social theory is based on “types” as idealizations with an inherent dynamics, while Habermas’s social theory is based on ideally stable “rules”. First, a rule model of linguistic communication is assessed against analyses from linguistics and the philosophy and sociology of language. A rule model, it is found, fails to meet its theoretical goal of explaining linguistic communication. Hypothetical rules of language (...) would not explain our intuitive understanding of the minimal propositional contents expressed by utterances. The rules would be both insufficient and unreliable in every single instance of language use. Against this background, the relation between language and “lifeworld” is then re-evaluated. A lifeworld cannot build on a rule model of language as its foundation. Nor can it supplement such a model in order to save it. Unlike a rule model, Schutz’s claim that language and lifeworld are interconnected and structured by “types” can accommodate the flexibility and precision of linguistic communication. While further research is needed, this conclusion indicates that phenomenology has been unduly neglected in social philosophy and should receive as much attention as it has in sociology. (shrink)

The lifeworld is, according to Husserl, the horizon of all our experiences, in the sense that it is the background environment of human being’s competences, practices, and attitudes. The lifeworld is the intersubjective, pre-given in the ontic sense, and immediately perceived world of everyday life. Although Husserl has distinguished the lifeworld from the objective world that natural science describes with mathematical methods, we cannot divide the world on the practical level into the perceived world of ordinary life (...) and the scientific world. The characteristic of human beings is that they live in the environment which they have enormously changed. Modern science has accelerated this tendency: the contemporary world is constructed so deeply scientifically and technologically. Accordingly, as Ulrich Beck pointed out, the risk of the technologically constructed world is often invisible/unperceivable. The disaster at Fukushima nuclear power plants is a terrible testament of this kind of risk. In order for a land to become the lifeworld of meaningful human interactions, the land should be first of all safe and livable for all of us. The risk calculation made by Tokyo Electric Power Company was shown to be sloppy and deceptive. The contemporary techno-science should be democratically governed and watched by all kinds of stakeholders, and never be left it to the specialists of science. For re-establishing the livable and sustainable lifeworld, safety, resilience, and vulnerability should be the fundamental values. And, the autonomy of the local residents, including the most vulnerable people, through the democratization of the techno-science must be the fundamental value to establish and protect such a safe environment. (shrink)