Possibility and Consciousness in Husserl’s Thought

Clarifying the nature of possibility is crucial for an evaluation of the phenomenological approach to ontology. From a phenomenological perspective, it is ontological possibility, and not spatiotemporal existence, that has pre-eminent ontological status. Since the sphere of phenomenological being and the sphere of experienceability turn out to be overlapping, this makes room for two perspectives. We can confer foundational priority to the acts of consciousness over possibilities, or to pre-set possibilities over the activity of consciousness. Husserl’s position on this issue seems to change over time. Ultimately, the establishment of a phenomenological perspective must involve a rejection of any hypostatization of pre-set possibilities, but not all implications of this theoretical step seem to be drawn in Husserl’s texts. This paper is devoted to an illustration of how the phenomenological notion of possibility should change when we reject the hypostatization of possibility, that is, when we reject the idea that all acts of consciousness are to be conceived as realizations of pre-set “ideal forms”. We examine this question, first, by trying to clarify the conceptual constellation of “possibility” in Husserl’s texts. This leads to an overall classification of the features of constituted (ontic) possibilities. Then we distinguish such constituted possibilities from their constituting conditions, which outlines a different sense of “possibility”. In the last instance two “possibilizing” dimensions (transcendental motivation and transcendental contingency) are shown to lie at the root of all ontic possibilities. This leads to a final suggestion on the nature of the relation between experience and possibility. Actual experiences create the room for possibility: they are possibilizations (Ermöglichungen). In this sense, experience is to be taken as a generative sphere which goes beyond the customary boundary between epistemic and ontological. From this point of view all experience is to be conceived as emergence .     

Praxis and Agency in Foucault’s Historiography

This paper examines the consequences for agency that Foucault’s historiographical approach constructs. The analysis begins by explaining the difference between ‘legislative history’ and ‘exemplary history,’ drawing parallels to similar theoretical distinctions offered in the works of Max Weber, J.L. Austin, and Zygmunt Bauman. The analysis continues by reading Habermas’s critique of Foucault through the tropological lenses suggested by White [Metahistory. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973]; it argues that Habermas’s critique misrecognizes the tropes of Foucaultian genealogy. The paper draws implications for education by articulating possibilities for praxis and agency in terms of pedagogy specifically related to the distinction between didactics and modeling. The paper concludes by suggesting that genealogy does not ‘play by Hegel’s rules,’ but rather exemplifies agency in ways that are not recognizable from a modernist perspective.     

Praxis and Agency in Foucault’s Historiography

This paper examines the consequences for agency that Foucaults historiographical approach constructs. The analysis begins by explaining the difference between legislative history and exemplary history, drawing parallels to similar theoretical distinctions offered in the works of Max Weber, J.L. Austin, and Zygmunt Bauman. The analysis continues by reading Habermass critique of Foucault through the tropological lenses suggested by White [Metahistory. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973]; it argues that Habermass critique misrecognizes the tropes of Foucaultian genealogy. The paper draws implications for education by articulating possibilities for praxis and agency in terms of pedagogy specifically related to the distinction between didactics and modeling. The paper concludes by suggesting that genealogy does not play by Hegels rules, but rather exemplifies agency in ways that are not recognizable from a modernist perspective.     

Achieving “Narrative Flow”: Pre-Medical Education as an Essential Chapter of a Physician’s Story

This article explores the disconnection between what pre-professional students expect from college and what their undergraduate education might foster, between the focus on "getting into medical school" and the development of humanistic physicians. It reviews the longstanding challenge inherent in helping pre-meds acquire not only sufficient scientific background but also well-developed interpersonal skills to help them understand patients' experience of illness and their own interactions with other members of the health care team. Clinical experiences from the NEH Institute are interpreted from the perspective of a pre-med advisor who also teaches literature; they are also incorporated into an undergraduate course on literature about illness.     

Kant’s Critical Philosophy as Pedagogical Praxis: A Call to Learn to Philosophize

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Believing in one’s equal rights: Self-respect as a predictor of assertiveness

In the present research self-respect is defined as a person’s ability to see the self as someone who has the same basic rights and dignity as others. Self-respect fills a gap in previous theorizing on the self because unlike other self-concepts it can be linked to assertiveness and claim making. Self-respect was empirically distinguished from self-competence and self-confidence (Study 1) as well as from psychological entitlement, self-esteem and self-acceptance (Study 2). Self-respect predicted assertive responses above and beyond these other self-scales in two correlational studies (Studies 1 and 3) and one experiment (Study 2). As predicted, self-respect was not related to aggressive responses, but psychological entitlement was (Studies 2 and 3). Implications for future research are discussed.     

Cognitive Theory and Phenomenology in Arendt’s and Nussbaum’s Work on Narrative

In this essay I compare Nussbaum’s and Arendt’s approach to narrativity. The point of the comparison is to find out which approach is more adequate for practical philosophy: the approach influenced by cognitive theory (Nussbaum) or the one influenced by hermeneutic phenomenology (Arendt). I conclude that Nussbaum’s approach is flawed by methodological solipsism, which is due to her application of cognitive theory.

Healing Men and Community: Predictors of Outcome in a Men’s Initiatory and Support Organization

Men have poorer health and declining social outcomes when compared to women, and research suggests that behaviors related to restrictive and traditional male gender roles contribute to this disparity. This study is an examination of The ManKind Project International (MKPI), a community-based organization that provides alternative male gender norms and a community support system to help reinforce them. The MKPI runs an intensive, experiential “Training Adventure Weekend” (TAW), followed by voluntary, on-going peer-led support and integration groups (I-Groups). One hundred men completed a pre-TAW questionnaire, an interview, and a long-term follow-up (>18 mo.) questionnaire. The study examined if there was change on the primary study variables at follow-up, and the relationship of background characteristics (age, self-help group experience) and factors related to participation (MKPI beliefs, social support, I-Group participation) to the criterion variables (depression symptoms, gender role conflict, and life satisfaction) at follow-up. Results indicated significant change in the expected directions on the primary study variables, suggesting that for these men, participation has a positive impact. Most importantly, changes in MKPI-related beliefs and social support significantly predicted positive outcomes. Also, more positive outcomes were found among men 30–44 years of age, but not among those with more prior self-help experience or I-Group participation. Possible explanations for these findings and directions for further research are discussed.     

Between womanhood as ideal and womanhood as a social practice: women’s experiences in the Church organisation in Poland

Using the conceptual framework proposed by Susan Sered and institutional gender theories, this article analyses the relationship between the symbolic and idealised image of femininity with which Catholic women working in the organisations of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland identify themselves and practices of femininity in the structures of Church institutions. I locate the difficulties experienced by women in the Church in realising this symbolic image of femininity. At the same time, I identify the strategies taken by women as ways of dealing with the difficulties and as practices of achieving normative femininity in unfavourable circumstances. I analyse three types of strategies: sacralising difficulties and experienced barriers, familiarising relationships in the Church, and affirming femininity. The article examines the content of interviews conducted between 2012 and 2015 with 31 laywomen working in Church organisations in 15 dioceses in Poland and in the Episcopal Conference, who held three types of positions: office workers/secretaries, professionals, and directors.     

AJCP as a Vehicle for Improving Community Life: An Historic–Analytic Review of the Journal’s Contents

The current article is an analysis of the research represented in American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP) from 1993 to 1998, including a comparison to two previously published analytic reviews by Lounsbury et al. (J. W. Lounsbury, D. S. Leader, E. P. Meares, & M. P. Cook, 1980) and Speer et al. (P. Speer, A. Dey, P. Griggs, C. Gibson, B. Lubin, & J. Hughey, 1992), respectively. Observed trends are examined with references to major epistemological frameworks and methods used to define community psychology. Four guiding principles were examined to determine the representation of the epistemological frameworks of the articles published in the journal. The frameworks include social action, human diversity and cultural relativity, person–environmental fit, and methodological procedures. The results document the transition of community psychology from its early beginnings to an independent field conducting research consistent with the values articulated at the Swampscott Conference. This paper also comments on how well, after three decades of publication, the journal has served as a vehicle for improving community life.     

Peirce’s ‘Prescision’ as a Transcendental Method

Abstract

In this Paper I interpret Charles S. Peirce’s method of prescision as a transcendental method. In order to do so, I argue that Peirce’s pragmatism can be interpreted in a transcendental light only if we use a non‐justificatory understanding of transcendental philosophy. I show how Peirce’s prescision is similar to some abstracting procedure that Immanuel Kant used in his Critique of Pure Reason. Prescision abstracts from experience and thought in general those elements without which such experience and thought would be unaccountable. Similarly, in the Aesthetics, Kant isolated the a priori forms of intuition by showing how they could be abstracted from experience in general, while experience in general cannot be thought without them. However, if Peirce’s and Kant’s methods are similar in this respect, they reached very different conclusions.     

Gerald Edelman’s Project: How Gerald Edelman’s Theory of Consciousness Completes Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Provides a Basis for a Brain-Based Psychoanalytic Perspective

In this article we consider Nobel Prize Winner Gerald Edelman’s remarkable contribution to the understanding of human evolution, and our own application of Edelman’s theory to a brain-based psychoanalytic perspective we have devised. Edelman’s paradigm setting out his theory of the evolution of mind, brain, and consciousness concerns not only mankind’s evolution over all of time, but also the evolution of each and every individual over and within his single lifetime. Edelman contends that human beings, as individuals, and not only as the taxonomic category from which they sprang, have a separate and distinct evolutionary history of their own, and it is especially from within Edelman’s theoretical assumptions about the evolution of the individual per se that our own psychoanalytic understanding of theory and practice derives.     

Educating Our Nerves in Unnerving Times: Cinematic Innervation as a Collectivising Experience in Tyson Lewis’s Walter Benjamin’s Antifascist Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Narrative Technologies: A Philosophical Investigation of the Narrative Capacities of Technologies by Using Ricoeur’s Narrative Theory

Contemporary philosophy of technology, in particular mediation theory, has largely neglected language and has paid little attention to the social-linguistic environment in which technologies are used. In order to reintroduce and strengthen these two missing aspects we turn towards Ricoeur’s narrative theory. We argue that technologies have a narrative capacity: not only do humans make sense of technologies by means of narratives but technologies themselves co-constitute narratives and our understanding of these narratives by configuring characters and events in a meaningful temporal whole. We propose a hermeneutic framework that enables us to categorise and interpret technologies according to two hermeneutic distinctions. Firstly, we consider the extent to which technologies close in on the paradigm of the written text by assessing their capacity to actively configure characters and events into a meaningful whole; thereby introducing a linguistic aspect in the theory of technological mediation. Secondly, we consider the extent to which technologies have the capacity to abstract from the public narrative time of actual characters and events by constructing quasi-characters and quasi-events, thereby introducing the social in our conception of technological mediation. This leads us to the outlines of a theory of narrative technologies that revolves around four hermeneutic categories. In order to show the merits of this theory, we discuss the categories by analysing paradigmatic examples of narrative technologies: the bridge, the hydroelectric power plant, video games, and electronic money.