Place and World: On Jeff Malpas’ Second Edition of Place and Experience

ABSTRACT

Jeff Malpas’ book Experience and Place has become a significant landmark in philosophy. I take the publication of the revised and extended second edition of the book in 2018 as an opportunity to reflect on some key issues in Malpas’ thought. After briefly outlining Malpas’ commitment to topophilia and topoanalysis, I address, in the first part of my essay, the relation of place to subjectivity and normativity, pointing out certain shortcomings or ambiguities in Malpas’ account. I also critically discuss the omission of an account of migration, or, rather, immigration, which seems called for, especially if we realize that the inhabited place always comes with its limit or border, which implies that there is also a view from outside, and that we have moral obligations to the stranger and/or immigrant coming into our place from outside. In the second part of my essay, I engage Malpas’ argument according to which Heidegger ‘derived’ space from time. By an analysis of relevant texts in Heidegger, I show that this argument does not hold.     

THE THOUGHT SPACE OF GOD: THE HAUNTING BELOW THE I‐THOU RELATION

This essay attempts a phenomenological analysis of Descartes' statement, ‘my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself,’ and Buber's claim that God ‘is also the mystery of the self‐evident, nearer to me than my I.’ I radicalize the implications of Descartes' and Buber's claims by drawing on the thought of Husserl and Levinas, and couching the analysis in terms of Merleau‐Ponty's experiential notions of haunting and reversibility. This forces us to interrogate the subjective space in which we think God qua recognize the other, and shows us a kind of necessity that underlies the I‐Thou relation. My conclusion leaves us in a place of powerless subjective inwardness and awe.     

Transsubjectivity: The Space Where Psychoanalysis and Architecture Meet

The use of space as an image for engagement is the framework of the dialogue between architect, Richard Meier, and psychoanalyst, Valerie Tate Angel. The interrelated nature of architecture and psychoanalysis heightens the awareness of experience in the self's relation to intimate spaces.The homogeneity between architecture and psychoanalysis is the bringing together of a sense of openness and a freedom of possibilities in the place where one lives.     

Perspectivity,Intersubjectivity, Normativity: On Malpas’s Place and Experience

ABSTRACT

The publication of the revised edition of Jeff Malpas’s Place and Experience in 2018 gives the opportunity to reconsider this book (originally published in 1999) and the debates that it originally sparked. In this article, I focus on Malpas’s characterization of space as subjective, allocentric, and objective and I approach them in conjunction with other notions and considerations that, I suggest, are useful to expand and complement Malpas’s central theses. I approach the concept of subjective space in conjunction with the notion of coenaesthesis and with Heidegger’s notion of mineness (Jemeinigkeit); the concept of allocentric space by addressing Malpas’s critique of Nagel’s notion of detachment; and the concept of objective space through a discussion of the issue of perspective in light of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Leibniz’s notion of ‘géométral’ (geometrized projection). These analyses pave the way for a discussion of some possible normative implications of the conception of place and subjectivity that emerges from Malpas’s Place and Experience against the background of Heidegger’s thought, and particularly in relation to Heidegger’s notion of dwelling (Wohnen).     

Naturalism and the Space of Reasons in Mind and World

Abstract

This paper aims to show that many criticisms of McDowell’s naturalism of second nature are based on what I call ‘the orthodox interpretation’ of McDowell’s naturalism. The orthodox interpretation is, however, a misinterpretation, which results from the fact that the phrase ‘the space of reasons’ is used equivocally by McDowell in Mind and World. Failing to distinguish two senses of ‘the space of reasons’, I argue that the orthodox interpretation renders McDowell’s naturalism inconsistent with McDowell’s Hegelian thesis that the conceptual is unbounded. My interpretation saves McDowell from being inconsistent. However, the upshot of my interpretation is that what is really at work in McDowell’s diagnosis of the dualism between nature and reason is the Hegelian thesis, not the naturalism of second nature.     

CONFESSIONS OF A PRACTICING NATURALISTIC THEIST: A RESPONSE TO HARDWICK,PEDERSON, AND PETERSON

Abstract. In my response to the comments of Charley Hardwick, Ann Pederson, and Greg Peterson, I continue the narrative, confessional mode of my writing in Dancing with the Sacred. First, I sketch some methodological decisions underlying my naturalistic, evolutionary, practical theology. I then respond to the encouraging suggestions of my commentators by further developing my ideas about naturalism, mystery, creativity as God, the place of ecological responsibility in my thinking, sin, and eschatology. I offer suggestions as to how I might widen the practical applications of my theology beyond environmental and medical ethics to other areas of moral responsibility in relation to the creative process. I do all this with much appreciation for the care and careful critical reflection that my commentators have devoted to my thinking.     

A Psychotherapist Retires

Abstract

This article reflects on a year of my personal experience as I prepared to retire from my psychotherapy practice of 40 years. While aware that this might be a poignant experience for bothmyself and my clients, my own surprising emotions and dreams demanded that I pay attention to myself. By acknowledging my feelings I was able to direct sensitive attention to the clients' feelings of loss and sadness. Finding the balance between the sadness that filled the therapy room and my own enthusiasm for what awaited me outside that room, was not a simple task     

How to do philosophy of religion: towards a possible speaking about the impossible

Abstract

It is postulated from different philosophical traditions, and explicitly in recent literature, that there is no further need for doing philosophy of religion – it has become an impossible task. I argue, however, that there remains a philosophical space for this practice and that this space determines greatly how philosophy of religion can be done. The starting point of my argument is the current discussion in the SAJP between De Wet and Giddy and the significance of my article is that it puts this debate within the broader international philosophical context by engaging the work of Trakakis and Desmond to resolve some of the apparently intractable issues raised. Trakakis discusses the divide between the analytic and continental philosophical traditions in which De Wet and Giddy’s work is further contextualized and clarified. Desmond’s work is seminal in its search for a metaxology wherein he advocates a new ‘in between’ position for doing philosophy of religion. I take this view of Desmond further by applying it to the current debate in South Africa and also using it to indicate some possibilities of speaking about the impossible.     

Comment on Hans-Peter Krüger’s paper

Abstract

In my Mind and World I appeal to second nature, which, according to Hans-Peter Kru¨ger, plays a central role in Plessner's philosophical anthropology. But I think this convergence is less significant than Kru¨ger suggests.This note differentaties my purpose–to disarm the temptation to think perceptual experience, natural as it is, could not figure in what Sellars called “the space of reasons”–from Plessner's, which is to disarm the temptation to hope for an ahistorical insight into what is properly authoritative over the shape of our lives,     

The Space of Motivations

Abstract

The distinction between the space of reasons and the realm of law captures two familiar ways of making events intelligible, by reference to reasons or to natural laws, respectively. I describe a third way of making events intelligible, by explaining them in terms of an agent’s being motivated to do certain things. Explanations of this sort do not involve appealing to reasons for which the agent acts, nor to natural laws under which the event falls. To explain an event in this way is to place it in the space of motivations. I outline the relation between the space of motivations and the space of reasons, and suggest that the space of motivations may serve as a common ground between the positions defended by McDowell and Dreyfus in their recent debate.     

Counterfactuals: Ambiguities,true premises,and knowledge

In this paper I explore the ambiguity that arises between two readings of the counterfactual construction, then–d and thel–p, analyzed in my bookA Theory of Counterfactuals. I then extend the analysis I offered there to counterfactuals with true antecedents, and offer a more precise formulation of the conception of temporal divergence points used in thel–p interpretation. Finally, I discuss some ramifications of these issues for counterfactual analyses of knowledge.     

On excess,trauma and helplessness: Repetitions and transformations

Freud's work establishes a link between an excessive amount of excitation, the infant's experience of helplessness, and trauma. The idea of excess emphasises a quantitative element, not reducible to the field of representation. In this paper I explore the notions of excess and closure in relation to two clinical examples. A patient who lived through experiences of excess and flooding is contrasted with another patient whose experience of excess is expressed through withdrawal. The complex process of elaboration and working through in their analyses takes place by bringing together affect, representation, sensorial and somatic experiences, dreams, associations and enactments as they are gathered and given meaning après coup through analytic work. Two concepts were central to the understanding of what took place in the analyses: excorporation and figurability. The paper emphasizes the place of temporality in creating a triadic space in an analysis as it relates the here and now with the there and then in the work of après‐coup. The paper also traces the roots of this modern approach that relates the analyst's work of regression, time, and the creation of a triadic space to Freud's metapsychology.     

A Reply to My Critics

Abstract

In this paper, I respond to three commentators on my book Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel Kierkegaard. Anne Margaret Baxley focuses on my treatment of Kant, Dean Moyar on my treatment of Hegel, and William Bristow on my treatment of Kierkegaard. In this reply, I try to show how the critical points that they raise can be addressed.     

Minimal authorship (of sorts)

I propose a minimal account of authorship that specifies the fundamental nature of the author-relation and its minimal domain composition in terms of a three-place causal-intentional relation holding between agents and sort-relative works. I contrast my account with the minimal account tacitly held by most authorship theories, which is a two-place relation holding between agents and works simpliciter. I claim that only my view can ground productive and informative principled distinctions between collective production and collective authorship.     

Reply to Psarros: Popper and Chemistry

In this article I reply to criticism of my published work by N. Psarros (Journal for the General Philosophy of Science 28: 297–305,1997). I show that I had already answered the first criticism in my published work and not overlooked his supposed refutation. However I offer a plausible argument which he could have used to strengthen his claim. Psarros cites my work on Hopkins in his opening paragraph, but then makes no further reference to it in the text. I indicated to Psarros verbally at Ilkley 1994 (and reiterate the message here) that Hopkins' work on Vitamins is the exemplar of a Popperian historical episode and must require addressing by the opponents of critical rationalism. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Rising Up From Down Under: A Response To Adams-Webber On Cognitive Psychology And Personal Construct Theory

This article is a response to Adams-Webber's (1990) critique of my discussion of the relation between personal construct theory and cognitive psychology (Warren, 7990). Several points of specific disagreement are raised in an effort to clarify my own position. Furthermore, this clarification highlights the need for “integrationist” perspectives to clearly and directly address the problems, as well as the prospects, of relating personal construct theory to other perspectives in psychology.     

Use of narratives and collage in the exploration of the self and the meaning of a career

ABSTRACT

A methodological challenge during my doctoral research led me to use collage to reflect upon my own life and career. The insights it allowed me into the relationship between who we are and what we do led me to conclude that such methods can also illuminate these connections for clients of career counselling. In this paper I argue that such constructivist approaches allow the examination of that psycho-social space within which career is shaped and understood, allowing access to both the conscious and unconscious meaning made of a career and life story. I further argue that in times of increasing complexity such methods will be an important tool for career counsellors to meet the holistic needs of clients.     

Representation,Presentation and the Epistemic Role of Perceptual Experience

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the representational theory of perception, on which the world is represented as being a certain way in perceptual experience, cannot explain how there can be a genuinely epistemic connection between experience and belief. I try to show that we are positively required to deny that perceptual consciousness is contentful if we want to make its fitness for epistemic duties intelligible. (So versions of the representational theory on which experience has a merely causal purchase on belief are not considered.) But my aim is not just negative. I try to defeat representationalism in such a way as to motivate a robustly presentational theory of perception. According to such a theory, perceptions are relations not between a subject and a content but between a subject and an ordinary object (such that if the relation holds at t, an appropriate subject and object must exist at t, and the object must be presented to the subject). I end by sketching an account of perceptual experience that is meant to show that, contrary to a very popular misconception, there is a way to conceive perceptual consciousness as relational and presentational (not intentional and representational) that does not succumb to the celebrated ‘myth of the Given’.     

A Safe Space for Healing: Boundaries,Power and Vulnerability in Pastoral Care

Abstract

This article is a theological reflection on issues of power and vulnerability in relation to pastoral boundaries. It starts with a reflection on my experience in training ordinands and pastoral carers, and an awareness that mandatory training in safeguarding often seems to focus on regulations and procedures, rather than power dynamics and self-awareness. The article goes on to summarize recent literature relating to pastoral boundaries, before exploring the underlying concepts of power and vulnerability, using theologians such as Moltmann and Bonhoeffer on the vulnerability of God, and the feminist writings of Carter Heyward and Mary Grey on mutuality. It concludes by arguing that boundaries provide a safe space for the delicate balancing of vulnerability, risk and power in the pastoral relationship.     

The Intrinsic Value of Sport: A Reply to Culbertson

Leon Culbertson's recent contribution, ‘Does Sport Have Intrinsic Value?’ objects to the account of the value of sport as intrinsic value I had developed in my Sport, Rules and Values; in particular, as this occurs in my argument that the value of some sports resided in the possibility of their functioning as a moral laboratory. He identifies two accounts of intrinsic value; and shows that neither would fit my purposes seamlessly. He urges that my account of the place of normative reasons cannot generate intrinsic value: rather, the person whose reasons they are somehow imports that value. Yet he has misunderstood my particularist conception of values; and the place occupied by my contextualism – these, rather than a residual commitment to essentialism, are what generates an apparent inconsistency he identifies. But they also explain it away. As a result, much of his concern to find some exact account of the term ‘intrinsic’ is misplaced: we need to look contextually. Further, the project of my discussion was limited to showing, first, how the moral laboratory idea might explain the value of some sport (on the assumption that sport had intrinsic value); and, second, how failures of realisation of that intrinsic value might be traced to the distinction between motivating reasons and normative ones.