This is one of the papers from our 2017 Annual Conference, the Future of Phenomenology. Information and the full conference booklet can be found at www.britishphenomenology.org.uk
In a 1988 interview Levinas describes deformalisation of the notion of time as the essential theme of his research. Commentators have usually interpreted this central Levinasian idea as a provision of a concrete experience in which the formal structure of time is realised. Although correct, this accepted definition is too general. As I will demonstrate in my paper, for Levinas, different concrete experiences not only realise time differently, but, more importantly, are able to impact on the formal structure of time-consciousness itself. In order to defend this thesis, I will argue that Levinas understands the form of time-consciousness as governed by a three-aspect internal tendency or ‘conatus’: a striving for the present; a horizontal synchronisation of the past, present, and future experiences; and a self-projection into the infinite future. I will then examine the deformalisation of time in the phenomena of responsibility, fecundity, and death, in order to show the three distinct ways in which these phenomena modify, or put into question, the conatus characteristic of the form of time-consciousness. I will claim that a) responsibility for another human being interrupts the striving for the present, b) fecundity, and the time of the child it promises, refuses horizontal synchronisation, and c) death renders impossible the futural self-projection. I will conclude by suggesting that it is responsibility which occupies a privileged position with regards to the other concrete experiences which allow for the deformalisation of the notion of time.
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Rhoda Ellis – Being, the Gallery and Virtual Reality: An Artist’s Take on Building
Philip Tovey – Temporal range, future mandate and strategic shaping; the existential and cognitive phenomenological ethics of preventative policing
Peter Wilson – Phenomenology and causal entities in psychiatry
Marcel Dubovec – The Inner Structure of Heidegger’s Concept of Freedom
Lorenzo Girardi – The Constitution of the One World: Faith in Husserl’s Philosophy
Julio Andrade – Normative provisionality as a means to navigate Levinasian infinite responsibility
James Rakoczi – Moving without movement: Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” in cases of global paralysis
Jack Price – Adorno and Scheler on Action and Experience
Erin Plunkett – Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology
Bhaswar Malick – Paradise on Earth: Tomb of Akbar at Sikandrabad
Arthur Rose – Reorienting Breathlessness: A Case against Symptom Discordance
Aoife McInerney – Phenomenology of Solidarity
James Forrest – The World from the Enactive Approach: Degrees of Transcendentalism
Niall Keane – Metaphysics and Nihilism
Luna Dolezal – Phenomenology and Intercorporeality in the Case of Commercial Surrogacy
Moujan Mirdamadi – Death-conscious culture and experiences of depression in Iran
Ullrich Haase – Understanding the Historical Body
Patrick O’Connor – Knausgaard, Bodies and The Terrible Beauty of Brain Surgery
Christopher Eagle – Brain Stories: On the Limits of Neuro-Fiction
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