Phenomenology is not phenomenalism. Is there such a thing as phenomenology of sport?

Background: The application of the philosophical mode of investigation called “phenomenology” in the context of sport. Objective: The goal is to show how and why the phenomenological method is very often misused in the sportrelated research. Methods: Interpretation of the key texts, explanation of their meaning. Results: The confrontation of concrete sport-related texts with the original meaning of the key phenomenological notions shows mainly three types of misuse – the confusion of phenomenology with immediacy, with an epistemologically subjectivist stance (phenomenalism), and with empirical research oriented towards objects in the world. Conclusions: Many of the discussed authors try to take over the epistemological validity of phenomenology for their research, which itself is not phenomenological, and it seems that this is because they lack such a methodological foundation. The authors believe that an authentically phenomenological analysis of sport is possible, but it must respect the fundamental distinctions that differentiate phenomenology from other styles of thinking

Sartre's Postcartesian Ontology: On Negation and Existence

This article maintains that Jean-Paul Sartre’s early masterwork, Being and Nothingness, is primarily concerned with developing an original approach to the being of consciousness. Sartre’s ontology resituates the Cartesian cogito in a complete system that provides a new understanding of negation and a dynamic interpretation of human existence. The article examines the role of consciousness, temporality and the relationship between self and others in the light of Sartre’s arguments against “classical” rationalism. The conclusion suggests that Sartre’s departure from modern foundationalism has “postmodern” implications that emerge in the areas of ontology, existential analytics and the ethics of human freedom

Aesthetic Worlds: Rimbaud, Williams and Baroque Form

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of literary text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism

Issues and challenges in the application of Husserlian phenomenology to the Lived Experience of Hate Crime and Its Legal Aftermath

The field of hate crime research addresses the presence, sources and impact of particular types of expressions of prejudice, often perceived as particularly damaging and hurtful forms of interpersonal abuse and violence. Little, if any, credible academic research seeks to vindicate the specific racist, gendered and other vicious prejudices articulated by many perpetrators of hate crime. In turn, this raises the reflexive question of the possibilities of researchers themselves ever being able to adopt a truly "unprejudiced" approach to the presence of such damaging prejudices. Can this goal be realised without a researcher necessarily losing an experientially-grounded understanding of what these meanings, values and purposes have come to mean, and how they are themselves interpretatively re-constituted anew, including within the lived experience of victims, witnesses, police, prosecutors, judges and victim support workers? A possible philosophically-informed approach to the dilemmas posed by this topic is offered by Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl's perpetually unfinished philosophical methodology strives, with concerted if sometimes tragic reflective rigor, to "suspend," "bracket out" and "neutralise" those core presuppositions constitutive of the research field that typically pre-judge precisely whatever demands to be questioned and explored in a radically non-prejudicial manner. This study critically explores the possibilities, reflective stages and theoretical limitations of a sympathetically reconstructed Husserlian approach to hate crime, itself understood as a would-be qualitative "science of consciousness." It argues that despite its manifest tensions, gaps, ambiguities and internal contradictions, aspects of the Husserlian philosophical approach directed towards the different levels of experienced hate crime still retain the potential to both challenge and advance our understanding of this topic. It is the "instructive" part of "instructive failure" that this article highlights

Emotion in the German Lutheran Baroque and the development of subjective time consciousness

This study examines some of the ways in which it was possible to understand emotion in Lutheran church music of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It suggests that emotion related to music more through association and contextual factors than through a fixed relationship, thus explaining the ways in which musical passages and techniques could be taken from a secular context to serve a sacred purpose. With these factors in mind, it is possible to suggest ways in which a listener's likely emotional association with music can be harnessed through particular compositional procedures. Schütz's setting of part of the Song of Songs may well engage with the listener's consciousness over time, stretching it and reinforcing the ‘useful’ emotional associations that the sacred context might bring. The opening aria of Bach's cantata ‘Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen’ achieves something similar over a longer span and with greater emotional intensity. Here there is the added sense of the believer finding, losing and then rediscovering the object of spiritual adoration. The music thus implies the potential alienation of the listener, something both supported and overcome through the very structuring of the music. Its repetitive ritornello process is sometimes hidden but always latent, thus playing on the potential for subconscious recognition. Together, these two examples suggest that music can be used as a powerful demonstration of the historical development of modern forms of consciousness as related to emotional states over time

Overcoming Psychologism. Twardowski on Actions and Products

This paper is about the topic of psychologism in the work of Kazimierz Twardowski and my aim is to revisit this important issue in light of recent publications from, and on Twardowski’s works. I will first examine the genesis of psychologism in the young Twardowski’s work; secondly, I will examine Twardowski’s picture theory of meaning and Husserl’s criticism in Logical Investigations; the third part is about Twardowski’s recognition and criticism of his psychologism in his lectures on the psychology of thinking; the fourth and fifth parts provide an overview of Twardowski’s paper “Actions and Products” while the sixth part addresses the psychologism issue in the last part of this paper through the delineation of psychology and the humanities. I shall conclude this study with a brief assessment of Twardowski’s solution to psychologism

Playing with time: Kate Bush’s temporal strategies and resistant time consciousness

This article focuses on two of Kate Bush’s post-Aerial (2005) albums: Director’s Cut (2011) and 50 Words for Snow (2011). In these albums Bush plays with the temporal qualities of recorded music to create the conditions for self-reflexive internal time consciousness to emerge within the listener. I argue that self-reflexive internal time consciousness is a process that enables a listener to gain some understanding that they are embroiled in an act of perception forged via active engagement with recorded music. Bush creates these conditions in two principle ways: In Director’s Cut she disturbs the memory of previous recorded versions that are re-visited on the album so they can be mobilised as new, interpretative-perceptive acts. In 50 Words for Snow she uses duration as a structure to support the construction of extensive perception. Bush plays with time on these albums because her conceptual music relies upon the uninterrupted unfolding of consciousness as it becomes interlaced with her recordings, understood in the Husserlian sense of temporal objects. Implicit to her temporal strategies is a critique of contemporary listening conditions and how they undermine the very forging of the perceptual ac

How to return to subjectivity? Natorp, Husserl, and Lacan on the limits of reflection

This article discusses the recent call within contemporary phenomenology to return to subjectivity in response to certain limitations of naturalistic explanations of the mind. The meaning and feasibility of this call is elaborated by connecting it to a classical issue within the phenomenological tradition concerning the possibility of investigating the first-person perspective through reflection. We will discuss how this methodological question is respectively treated and reconfigured in the works of Natorp, Husserl, and Lacan. Finally, we will lay out some possible consequences of such a cross-reading for the conception of subjectivity and the concomitant effort to account for this dimension of first-person experience in response and in addition to its omission within the standard third-person perspective of psychological research

Embedded Agency in Institutional Theory: Problem or Paradox

In “Beyond Constraining and Enabling: Toward New Microfoundations in Institutional Theory” Professor Cardinale (2018) seeks to expose and correct “shortcomings” (p.133) in institutional theory’s conceptualization of structure, agency and their relationship. To this end, he theorizes the “different mechanism[s] through which actors are embedded in structure” (p.134). We agree that institutional theory’s microfoundations merit theoretical attention and development. However, we question the premise that the issue of agency in institutional theory is adequately, or even plausibly, formulated as one of “embeddedness”. We also challenge the relevance of Professor Cardinale’s engagement of Husserl to help solve what we argue to be a phantom problem central to his theory