Analogues of Ourselves: Who Counts as an Other?

What attributions must any actor make to an other in order to engage in face-to-face interaction with that other? Edmund Husserl's use of “analogues” suggests that actors use their own experiences of themselves as a starting pointin making such attributions. Alfred Schutz and Erving Goffman claim that for face-to-face interaction to occur, an other must be recognized as copresent and reciprocity must be established. I assert here that the means for determining that these conditions have been met will vary. I explore a varietyof actors and in particular their differing identifications of interactionally available others and I take as problematicthe establishment of co-presence and reciprocity. Taking others to be “analogues of ourselves” serves as a useful starting point, but worthy of detailed analysis is howand with whom an actor draws the analogy, under what circumstances it comes in for revision, and the interactional consequences of the decisions made.     

Understanding Narratively,Understanding Alterity

Phenomenology's systematic exploration of how a world comes into existence for knowers – knowers who are often conceptualized as individual and ostensibly isolated – requires that it provide some account of the constitution of alterity. In this paper, I address this issue by arguing that we apperceive alterity in terms of the intentionality of behavior. A corollary of this argument is that the apperception of an alter as specifically human is a secondary attribution, following the primary apperception of intention. I further argue that the intentionality of behavior is understood through the projection of a narrative frame, or a “protonarrative,” onto the alter's behavior. I suggest that protonarrativity is the form that experience takes as its ontological condition. Our living is not simply known to us reflectively as protonarrative; rather, experience is lived as protonarrative.This essay is based on a paper presented at the annual conference of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Memphis, Tennessee, October 28–30, 2004.     

康德哲学与广松涉"交互主体的共同主观性"理论

广松涉认为,对近代认识论基础的问题式及其构成机制和局限进行反思,首先需要将着眼点放在康德哲学的问题式及其构成机制上。康德哲学的总的问题式就是在以先验逻辑学为基础的逻辑学、认识论和本体论“三位一体”的哲学构架中,探讨人的认识以及纯粹理性的先天综合判断及其能力何以可能。这一问题式潜含着一个意义非常重大的认识论问题——即“主体际共同主观性”问题．需要我们认真地加以研究。     

The long-lasting now: Disorganization in subjective time in long-standing pain

This paper presents a phenomenological-hermeneutical case study on long-standing pain (LP), a public health problem of great importance. Although there has been intensive research interest in this phenomenon, most studies have been based on traditional medical and cognitive-behavioral approaches. Our thesis is that new frames of reference can provide additional heuristic insights.
The phenomenon of LP shows a strong association with existential factors. Our case study focuses on the meaning-structure of lived temporality , a fundamental existential constituent in the lifeworld of the pain patient. A series of in-depth interviews with four subjects showed that lived temporality is disrupted in pain experience, causing a disorganization of the patient's being in the world. The results generate several hypotheses about implications for time estimation in pain experience.     

Perelman's rhetorical foundation of philosophy

This article is a Gadamer-Perelman's debate. The author points out the limits of the gadamerian's hermeneutic conception of philosophy and criticizes this conception from Perelman's new rhetoric point of view. Instead of speaking of truth as an ontological originary experience, the rhetorical foundation of philosophy allows us to say that in philosophy the important is the contrastation and the confrontation of criteria and that, for that reason, philosophy is above all characterized by discussibility.Philosophical argumentation, like juridical argumentation, constitutes applications, to different domains, of a theory of argumentation which we consider as a new rhetoric.By identifying this theory with the general theory of persuasive speech, which seeks to obtain the intellectual as well as the emotional adherence of an audience, no matter which, we state that all speeches which do not aspire to an impersonal validity proceed from rhetoric. (Ch. Perelman,L'empire rhétorique, p. 177).But, if one does not admit that the philosophical thesis may be founded on evident intuitions, it will be necessary to reccur to argumentative technics to make them prevail. The new rhetoric then becomes the indispensable tool of philosophy. (Ch. Perelman,L'empire rhétorique, p. 21).     

Emmanuel Levinas and the New Science of Judaism

This article addresses Emmanuel Levinas's re‐conceptualization of Jewish identity by examining his response to a question he himself poses: “In which sense do we need a Jewish science?” First, I attend to Levinas's critique of modern science of Judaism, particularly as it was understood in the critical approaches of the nineteenth‐century school of thought, Wissenschaft des Judentums. Next, I detail Levinas's own constructive proposal that would, in his words, “enlarge the science of Judaism.” He retrieved classical textual sources that modern Judaism had neglected, while at the same time he enlarged Judaism's relevance beyond a historical community by turning to phenomenology as a rigorous science. Finally, I conclude with some reflections on the broader implications of this new science of Judaism for Jewish ethics and identity in a post‐war period.     

Beyond Empathy: Vulnerability,Relationality and Dementia

ABSTRACT

This paper brings together a phenomenological and vulnerability-theoretic approach to dementia. The paper challenges the view that subjects with dementia can simply be understood in terms of diminished cognitive capacities or that they have lost all vestiges of personhood or the capacity for meaningful interaction. Instead, drawing on vulnerability theory and the phenomenological work of Kristin Zeiler and Lisa Käll, an alternative view of persons with dementia is offered that is based on intersubjective and intercorporeal relations and accomplishments. A vulnerability approach to dementia is developed that not only provides the basis for empathetic responses to illnesses such as dementia but also points to the intersubjective constitution of subjects more generally. The argument developed is that the notion of vulnerability designates a form of openness to others and that such openness is a precondition for empathy.     

TRANSCENDENTAL GUILT: On an Emotional Condition of Moral Experience

This article considers a central ethically relevant interpersonal emotion, guilt. It is argued that guilt, as an irreducible moral category, has a constitutive role to play in our ways of conceptualizing our relations to other people. Without experiencing guilt, or being able to do so, we would not be capable of employing the moral concepts and judgments we do employ. Elaborating on this argument, the paper deals with what may be described as the “metaphysics of guilt.” More generally, it is suggested, through a case study on the concept of guilt, that a moral theory avoiding naïve emotivism yet emphasizing the role of emotions in morality can and should pay attention to the transcendental status of emotions such as guilt—emotions constitutive of our concept of moral seriousness. Instead of psychologizing moral emotions, the paper employs Raimond Gaita's Wittgenstein‐inspired way of examining the place of the concepts of guilt and remorse in our ethical language‐use. Finally, some methodological remarks on the possibility of transcendental reflection in moral philosophy are presented. While it is not necessary to commit oneself to any specific religious tradition in order to emphasize the constitutive role of guilt in the way suggested in the paper, it turns out that the moral depth of this concept requires that one is at least open to religiously relevant ways of using moral language. In the fundamental metaphysical sense examined in the paper, guilt is a concept whose home language‐game is religious rather than secular ethics.     

How Is an Analytic Approach to Chinese Philosophy Possible? — An Observation from Perspective of Methodology

How to apply an analytic approach to Chinese philosophy has been a controversial issue in the field of the modern Chinese philosophy. The key to such an application is using an analytical approach. Various forms of analysis are used in modern philosophy. The term “analytic approach” refers to both conceptual and semantic analyses by which to analyze meaning and apply philosophical concepts, so as to interpret a different significance of these philosophical concepts. Beginning with the challenge of the analytic approach as applied to Chinese philosophy, it is necessary to address the line of holism and transcendental argument in terms of philosophical methodology. The former provides us with a framework of analysis of particular problems, while the latter helps us clarify the major difference between a philosophical argument and other arguments for knowledge. Chinese philosophy must greatly emphasize the importance of philosophical methodology, so as to reconstruct the framework of Chinese philosophy as it stands today.     

BUDDHISM,COMPARATIVE NEUROPHILOSOPHY,AND HUMAN FLOURISHING

Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain represents an ambitious foray into cross‐cultural neurophilosophy, making a compelling, though not entirely unproblematic, case for naturalizing Buddhist philosophy. While the naturalist account of mental causation challenges certain Buddhist views about the mind, the Buddhist analysis of mind and mental phenomena is far more complex than the book suggests. Flanagan is right to criticize the Buddhist claim that there could be mental states that are not reducible to their neural correlates; however, when the mental states in question reflect the embodied patterns of moral conduct that characterize the Buddhist way of being‐in‐the‐world, an account of their intentional and normative status becomes indispensable. It is precisely this synthesis of normativity and causal explanation that makes Buddhism special, and opens new avenues for enhancing, refining, and expanding the range of arguments and possibilities that comparative neurophilosophy can entertain.