The Pandemic Body: A reconceptualised account of the lived body during the Covid-19 pandemic

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Sergio Pérez Gatica of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, France   Abstract: This contribution aims to study the phenomenon of environmental shame and its role in awakening of ecological consciousness. It starts with the problem of asymmetry of human power that marks the current ecological transition. On the one hand, the growing ecological footprint testifies to excess of human power over the environment which leads to the sixth mass extinction and endangers planetary balance. On the other, facing ecological crisis, human, paradoxically, finds himself more powerless than ever. Powerless to slow down and to challenge his daily production and consumption practices by refusing to take their consequences into account. In a word, powerless to suspend his own power. One should ask then how to catalyze this suspension. My argument is to consider shame as such a feeling that turns an excess of human power over the environment into “potential-not-to”. Making use of this ontological concept developed by Agamben in order to think the negativity of human power that shame activates, the paper elaborates a phenomenology of “environmental shame”. Since suspending power requires to challenge its ethical justification by measuring the extent of its destructive consequences for other species, it is nothing but shame where freedom becomes aware of its murderous character that answers the need of self-limitation of human power over the environment. My concept of “environmental shame” develops Levinasian approach that defines shame as a discovery of injustified facticity of power and freedom, but rethinking it from the human relation to other endangered and vulnerable living beings. Shame, I argue, is a revolutionary feeling able to operate a conversion of environmental consciousness and transform our manner of being in the world by actualizing the “potential-not-to”, i.e. the negative potential that allows inoperativity of human power.   Biography: Maria Galkina is a PhD student in Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris working on phenomenology of environmental shame and negative dialectic of human power. Her research interests cover Phenomenology of emotions and affects, Ethics and Metaphysics. Maria holds a B.A. in Creative writing from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute of Moscow and an M.A. in Contemporary Philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, which has focused on the dialectic of negativity and creativity of shame through analysis of works of Levinas, Agamben and Dostoevsky.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/  

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Niklas Noe-Steinmueller of University Hospital Heidelberg, Section for Phenomenology, Germany   Abstract: The concept of suffering is part of a new way of thinking about pain that tries to take patients’ individual perspective seriously instead of reducing their experiences to a biological mechanism (Ballantyne & Sullivan, 2015). I will briefly summarise the preliminary result of a systematic review of operationalisations of suffering (authors anonymised, in prep.), point out a fundamental disagreement within the literature, and then show what phenomenology can contribute to resolve it.   Suffering is usually defined as emotional distress related to a loss of identity and resulting from insufficient coping resources (Cassell, 1982; Chapman & Gavrin, 1999). However, some argue that suffering is a strictly individual experience only understandable from within a life narrative (Frank, 2001; Kleinman, 1988). Defining it is said to be futile and even harmful for the patients because it thrusts a foreign perspective on their illness upon them (Charmaz, 1983; Frank, 2001). To sum up, while most authors believe the concept of suffering to widen the scope of medicine, others warn against the danger of patronizing patients. I propose that phenomenology can solve this problem by analysing suffering in terms of (gradual) presence. In suffering, my lifeworld becomes less present to me, i.e. less forceful, less vivid – with one exception: That, which I suffer from, becomes more present to me. This is a particular form of presence that I call ‘pre-intentional’ (Bernet, 2014).  This analysis contributes to the reconceptualization of pain by offering a working hypothesis about the core of the suffering experience. By focussing on the structure of suffering rather than its content, it avoids patronising the sufferer and acknowledges that suffering is as heterogenous as the lifeworlds of the suffering subjects. I conclude by comparing my analysis to an insightful phenomenological account of suffering as an alienating mood by Frederick Svenaeus (2014).           Biography: PhD student at the Section for Phenomenology, University Hospital Heidelberg - starting in July 2022: Clinical psychologist at the Clinic for General Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg - 2020-2022 MSc Psychology at Heidelberg (thesis about the operationalisation of suffering in pain research, systematic review) - 2015-2020 BSc Psychology at Heidelberg - 2015-2019 MA Philosophy at Heidelberg (thesis about the phenomenology of pain and depression) - 2012-2015 BA Philosophy at Heidelberg and Oxford - born 10 December 1991 in Freiburg, Germany.   Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Kenneth Bruce of Fordham University, United States   Abstract: In philosophical considerations of disgust, one consistent problem has been how to define physical disgust and moral disgust in a way that does justice to their differences while also allowing them to occupy the same category of emotional reaction. Aurel Kolnai (2004) and Sara Heinämaa (2020) each give a phenomenological account of what this connection might be, and in doing so suggest that there is a way that we can pick out some formal object of disgust that we intentionally aim/are aimed at when feeling disgusted, either physically or morally. In this paper, I evaluate these decidedly non-derivative models of physical and moral disgust, specifically with respect to instances of disgust that are based in racial and/or ethnic prejudices. I first raise what I take to be problems with Heinämaa’s adverbial model of moral disgust. I’ll then take up Sara Ahmed’s (2015) writing on disgust as something that “spreads” via acts of reiteration to develop a derivative account of moral disgust that retains Kolnai and Heinämaa’s phenomenological insights even as it demonstrates that objects of disgust need not always share some formal object. I argue that there are good reasons for thinking that some objects of disgust are derived from previous ones, but that we need to be careful in mapping out this derivative relationship. Finally, I use this derivative model of disgust to analyze examples of both physical and moral disgust from the writings of Audre Lord (2007) and Alia Al-Saji (2008), respectively. This will allow us to understand such instances of disgust as 1) real instances of disgust that, nonetheless, do not not entail that the objects of disgust are inherently or essentially disgusting and 2) morally reprehensible and dangerous precisely because they do not involve a “mistake,” but accurately reflect the disgusted subjects' prejudices.   Biography: Ken Bruce is a PhD student at Fordham University in his second year. His main areas of interest are in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and critical phenomenology, especially as it overlaps with critical philosophy of race and feminist philosophy. His current research involves looking at phenomenological accounts of racialization as they occur at the aural register, both in addition to and in distinction from the visual register, and investigating what insights might be gained from centering such a perspective.   Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Denise Kelly of University College Dublin, Ireland   Abstract: According to Mariana Ortega (2016) humans occupy multiple worlds; following Martin Heidegger’s conception of Dasein as beings-in-the-world, she suggests that all of us are beings-in-worlds or beings-between-worlds. However, she suggests that this is especially the case for marginalized groups, who must travel between worlds in which they struggle to perform social norms pre-reflectively, engendering feelings of alienation.   This is analogous to the experience of the agoraphobe when they venture into public space. Despite being embedded in the surrounding culture, they too find themselves in a space where they cannot act pre-reflectively; instead, they are anxious, vigilant, and consumed by the fear of transgressing a social norm. This fear can result in the person abandoning their worlds and becoming housebound, as they seek out the comfort and safety of home against the panic-ensuing world   However, the relationship between the agoraphobe and the home is more complex when further considered. We must leave home to find home (Jacobson, 2011). Thus, it appears that while the agoraphobe is housebound (Davidson, 2000), she is also homeless, her home is always less than home. I suggest that this is because the house for the agoraphobe is more of a foxhole than a home; a place to recede to for temporary cover situated deep in the midst of a danger-zone. This is further suggested by the agoraphobe’s use of “shields” outside the home; objects which serve as a protection from the glare of the Other’s gaze (Davidson, 2000; Davidson, 2003). Surrounded by a battleground, the agoraphobe becomes a being-on-the-outskirts, with the uncanniness of the external world penetrating the walls of her fortress. Paralyzed by fear, she becomes snagged in the “imaginary” of a home (Ortega, 2016).   Biography: Denise Kelly is a doctoral student under the supervision of Dr. Danielle Petherbridge in Philosophy at University College Dublin, where she is researching the phenomenology of mental illness. Her Ph.D. research looks specifically at agoraphobia and social phobia, examining these disorders in relation to the themes of intersubjectivity, embodiment, and affectivity. Her interdisciplinary research draws not only from traditional and contemporary phenomenological work and methods, but also from sociological understandings of illness and clinical data.       Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Kathryn Body of University of Bristol, UK   Abstract: Co-authors: Havi Carel; Jamila Rodrigues   The Covid-19 pandemic has had far-reaching and life-changing consequences for many people, including the loss of loved ones, livelihoods, and life milestones. The risks associated with a potentially life-threatening virus such as Covid-19 have been widely discussed from an epidemiological or otherwise scientific perspective. Whilst this is vitally important for understanding how the virus transmits and behaves once inside the body, it cannot tell us how the pandemic has changed people’s lived experience of the world and of their bodies. In this paper, we use theoretical frameworks from social anthropology (Douglas 1966, 1970, 1992) and phenomenological philosophy (Carel, 2016, 2018) to analyse qualitative data drawn out of a large-scale anonymous survey focusing on adult populations in the UK, Japan, and Mexico. This study asks: How has the Covid-19 pandemic changed people’s experience of their bodies and the world? We unpack this further by asking the following sub-questions: What effect has the lockdown and other countermeasures against the virus had on the way people perceive their bodies and other people’s bodies? What cultural and symbolic meanings are attached to the body and if so, how did they change? To what extent do the risks associated with the Covid-19 virus threaten people’s sense of bodily security and safety? To address these issues, we present a conceptualisation of a pandemic body captured into five main themes, these are: Fear and Danger, Bodily Doubt and Hypervigilance, Risk and Trust, Adapting and Enduring, Changes in Perspective. These themes emerged from qualitative survey data and show how different aspects of the pandemic experience have been embodied through people’s narratives. Through a detailed analysis of these issues, we conclude that the pandemic has forced people to rethink their relationship with their bodies, other bodies, and the world around them.   Biography: Kathryn Body is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Bristol. She received her MA in Medical Ethics and Law from King’s College London, where she researched epistemic injustices toward people with disabilities through the lens of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Her current research project combines theoretical frameworks from phenomenological philosophy and embodiment theory in anthropology to analyse qualitative survey data on people’s lived experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic. This research will help inform perspectives on how protective strategies, including national lockdowns and physical distancing, have affected people from different cultures and social groups.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/  

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Rachel Elliott of Brandon University, Canada   Abstract: This paper offers reflections about the possibilities and limits of online intercorporeality and empathy. During the Covid-19 pandemic I participated in two online community choirs: the Toronto Sacred Harp Singing Group and the Transnational Vocal Exploration Choir lead by Chris Tonelli of the University of Groningen. To my surprise, both choirs functioned successfully using standard-issue video conferencing software despite their need for substantive embodied reciprocity among vocalists, and between vocalists and the conductor(s). Using the phenomenological interview to supplement my own phenomenological descriptions, I collected data on the lived experiences of participants regarding intercorporeality and empathy during online choral gatherings. This paper will present my findings that suggest intercorporeality and empathy are, with caveats, genuinely enabled in musical interactions using simple online video interfaces.  With this finding I aim to enrich and re-direct trends in the human sciences that tend to regard online intersubjectivity as purely symbolic or representational. If these trends were to be correct, contra my assertions, then only extended or high-level empathy would be possible in such spaces: low-level or primary empathy - which relies on intercorporeality - would be incompatible. Marshalling evidence to the contrary, that intercorporeality can be enabled online (at lease while musicking interactively) will, I hope, spark new philosophical reflections on the nature of online collaboration and shared digital agency, as well as contribute to thinking about the social affordances engendered by community musick-making in particular.     Biography: Dr. Rachel Elliott works on social ontology at the level of intercorporeality and affect, particularly regarding improvised collective agency in art and politics. She has published on topics such as the transformation of the habit body in music, and the exclusionary tendencies of synchronization, in journals such as: the Journal for International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, and Punta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Intercorporeality Online. Dr. Elliott received her PhD in 2019 from the University of Guelph, and is currently Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada.       Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Lucy Osler of University of Copenhagen, Denmark   Abstract: Online forms of social encounter are typically evaluated based on how well they might (or might not) act as a replacement for our face-to-face encounters (e.g., Dreyfus 2009; Turkle 2015, 2017; Chalmers 2022). I highlight three reasons why we should reject the false dichotomy presented by discussions of “offline vs. online” and move beyond considering the role of online forms of sociality within the framework of ‘replacement’. First, we should be wary of buying into the replacement dichotomy considering how each side of the debate is typically framed. On the side of the techno-optimists is a promise of technology yet to be developed, as such any argument for the success of ‘full digital replacement’ remains wishful and hypothetical. On the techno-pessimist side, critiques of digital communication tend to present an overly reified view of fully embodied offline sociality, seemingly forgetting that not all face-to-face encounters are smooth, positive, valuable, successful, or even respectful. Second, when comparing offline and online sociality, there is tendency to suppose that the participants are ‘neutral’ universal subjects and that face-to-face embodied social encounters are superior to mediated embodied social encounters. What this ignores is that there are many cases where an individual may experience supposedly ‘diminished’ or ‘altered’ embodiment as preferable, e.g., when online platforms provide a safe or less sensorially overwhelming social space. There is, then, a normative assumption baked into discussions of offline vs. online sociality. Third, by assessing online sociality in terms of its suitability as a substitute for physically co-present encounters, we both lose sight of, as well as impede, creative ways for us to encounter others online. Rejecting the notion of replacement allows us to conceive of online sociality beyond substitution; pushing us to demand and design digital tools that do not merely simulate offline forms of interaction but support novel ways of encountering each other.   Biography: Lucy Osler is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. She is interested in phenomenological approaches to intersubjectivity, online sociality, embodiment, perception, emotions, and psychopathology. She is currently writing on social inclusion and exclusion in the online world, online grief, feelings of belonging and community online, as well as the role social technologies play in mental health, well-being, and therapy.   Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Jeffrey Wasch of West Chester University of Pennsylvania, United States   Abstract: In a 2011 paper Merold Westphal argues that Gadamer and Ricoeur’s respective hermeneutical projects expose us to a dialectic between distanciation and belonging. Ricoeur shows us our distanciation by pointing out that when an author publishes a book, their text is open to interpretation by anyone who can read. Therefore, the text is distanced from its author. However, Gadamer says that both the reader and the author “belong” to the world of the text through “absorbtion”. Nonetheless, Westphal goes on to argue that we should not think of Ricoeur and Gadamer as “opposite poles” of hermeneutic thought, but that we should think of them as exposing us to an uncomfortable dialectic that the hermeneutical tradition exposes. In this paper, I will argue that there are at least two ways in which one's social media profile shows us this dialectical relationship in action. In the first case, the profile belongs to them since they are in control of what gets posted. But, on the opposite end of the dialectic there is a distanciation that occurs from the poster when they make a post. That is, in the same way the author of a novel puts something out in the world to be interpreted, so too does the poster when making a post. The second way this dialectic gets put on display is that a person belongs to their profile in the sense that it is a sort-of virtual representation of the self. The subject and their profile are inseparable, both belonging to each other. Yet, the profile is also distanciated because there is a distance between the subject and their profile. Put bluntly, the social media profile becomes a distanciated self.   Biography: Jeff Wasch graduated with an MA in philosophy from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His interest are in phenomenology, epistemology and philosophy of mind, existentialism, and hermeneutics.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Mark Ornelas of University of Cincinnati, United States   Abstract: Husserlian phenomenology attempts to develop a theory of mind that suspends the major metaphysical questions about human experience. As a result, Husserl focuses on the world as given. Typically, the nature and essence of morality is metaethical question; in other words, determining the essence of morality, or the good, is a metaphysical question. The result is a strange position where the phenomenological method is somewhat unavailable to ask how the essence does of the good relate to experience. Essentially, Husserlian phenomenologists would be required to adopt an antirealist position. Metaethical antirealist could use the phenomenological method because they hold that the essential nature of moral facts are not objective, true, or universal facts or properties but are rather ones that are non-objective, conventional, and particularist judgements or states of affairs. Yet Husserl and other phenomeologist that follow such as Stein and Merleau-Ponty, are careful not to endorse such a position. Husserl clarifies his opposition to antirealism in his ethical lectures,  claiming that there is a ’unconditional objectivity of validity in ethics’ (Husserl, Husserliana XXXVII, 147). However, he wants to preserve the notion that affective states indicate moral facts, but cannot be the basis of them, a neo-sentimentalist position. The goal of this paper is to investigate this problem and propose a solution where objective moral facts are investigable in a Husserlian phenomenology. To do so, I will draw on Stein’s understanding of the primordial given. The primordial given, according to Stein is what is naturally given in the world as a part of the essence of the world. I will argue that morality is part of the primordially given resulting a naturalist moral reaslist position.   Biography: I am a current graduate student at the University of Cincinnati of Hispanic descent. My research focuses on morality and moral experience using interdisciplinary methods. My current project is using philosophical and psychological methods to develop a new method to study moral behavior. In addition, I am interested in understanding the nature of moral perception and moral action as it relates agent’s social experience and behavioral history.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/  

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Alessio Ruggiero of University of Verona, Italy   Abstract: Recently there has been a spate of interest in Max Scheler’s social phenomenology (Schloßberger, 2016; Szanto & Moran, 2016; Cusinato, 2018). In this paper I aim to show that his philosophical contribution on sociality has its focal point on the concepts of eccentricity (Exzentrizität), both on the individual level and on the collective-social one. The socio-philosophical discussion about these two different levels, according to Scheler, often generates a dangerous dualism between individuation process and emotional relationality (Scheler, 1923). My main hypothesis is that Scheler escapes from this dualism through the theorization of the idea of Exzentrizität (Scheler, 1928): an anthropo-phenomenological reading of eccentricity reveals a creative interpenetration (Ausgleich) between the ideas of freedom, uniqueness and individuality (eccentricity in the individual sense) and the ideas of alterity, open-mindedness and World-openness (Weltoffenheit) (eccentricity in the relational sense) (Scheler, 1923; Scheler, 1928). My idea is that, for Scheler, the essential condition of any attitude towards personal changes (Umkehr) have its center in the idea of personal co-execution (Mitvollzug) for the maturation and the growth of personal singularity (Personbildung) (Scheler, 1925; Scheler, 1927; Scheler, 1928). And this means the formation and the expression, in the eccentric perspective mentioned above, of one's own ethical singularity (An-sich-Gutes für mich) and of one's own vocations. The idea of eccentricity declined in terms of vocation is therefore strictly interdependent on the idea of Otherness-exemplar (Vorbild) and personal witnessing (Scheler, 1921). The latter, as a paradigm of existential improvement, feeding on diversity and inspiration (Cusinato, 2018). On this point, many studies have suggested that Scheler’s reflection on exemplariness is solely grounded on the moral level, and therefore on the emulation of the virtues of others (Russo, 2019). This carries the risk of homologation, rigidity, and fixity. In addition, the risk is to produce a qualitative levelling of individual, value, and cultural differences. A close examination of the ideas of vocation and witnessing reveals instead that they are founded on the exaltation of talents, plasticity, peculiarities, and specificities of the person (Bellini, 2021; Ruggiero, 2018; Ruggiero, 2020). The presence of Otherness-exemplars (in personal, social, cultural, and religious terms) can provide individual with a guide or mentor for his or her peculiar process of axiological growth and personal happiness. While existing studies have clearly demonstrated the centrality of the idea of eccentricity for Scheler’s phenomenology and personalism, they have not addressed the connection between sociality, solidarity, eccentricity and exemplarist theory of Bildung and Vorbildsmodelle all the way.   Biography: Alessio Ruggiero is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Verona. He obtained his master’s degree at the University of Salerno, where he has conducted for many years research on the thought of the German phenomenologist Max Scheler as a student and honorary fellow. He is currently working on the analysis of the ethical, pedagogical, and metaphysical-religious elements of personal exemplarity. He is an editor for national and international scientific journals ("New Journal of Philosophy of Religion"; “Philosophical News. Official Publication of the European Society for Moral Philosophy"; "Thaumàzein. Rivista di filosofia"). He collaborates with the Italian Association of Philosophy of Religion (AIFR), and with the European Society for Philosophy of Religion (ESPR) and with the European Academy of Religion (EuARe).     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/