Season five of our podcast is back after a short break, and continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Joel Krueger, University of Exeter.
ABSTRACT: Despite increased interest in comparative philosophy within the past few decades — including particular interest in the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy — Tetsurō Watsuji has not received the attention he deserves. Watsuji was a broad-ranging and original thinker who developed important insights into culture, ethics, religion, embodiment, and the self. He was also a skilled phenomenologist. His rich analysis of embodiment, space, and intersubjectivity not only predates insights developed by phenomenologists such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty but also deepens and extends their analysis in productive ways. This talk has two objectives: first, to briefly introduce Watsuji’s phenomenology of aidagara (“betweenness”), including its novel analysis of embodiment, space, and intersubjectivity; second, to use aidagara to think through the dynamics of subjectivity and expression within the Internet-enabled “techno-social niches” found in everyday life. I argue that Watsuji develops a prescient analysis of embodiment and expression — centered around core notions of “subjective spatiality” and “spatial extendedness” — anticipating modern technologically-mediated forms of expression, connection, and engagement. More precisely, I show that instead of adopting a traditional phenomenological focus on face-to-face interaction, Watsuji instead argues that communication technologies — which now include Internet-enabled technologies and spaces — are expressive vehicles enabling new forms of emotional expression and co-regulated experiences that would be otherwise inaccessible without these technologies. For Watsuji, these expressive vehicles and spaces aren’t mere add-ons to the self and its capacities. Rather, they are progressively incorporated into the self, understood as “betweenness”. Accordingly, they should be seen as constitutive parts of our “subjective spatiality” — that is, part of the embodied self and the rich pathways of “spatial extendedness” that establish enduring interconnections with others. I consider some of Watsuji’s arguments and indicate how this view might productively impact several debates, including debates over our perceptual access to other minds.
BIO: Joel Krueger is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He works primarily in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of cognitive science — with a particular focus on issues in 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended) cognition, including emotions, social cognition, and psychopathology. He also works in comparative philosophy and philosophy of music.
This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/
You can check out our forthcoming events here:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/
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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/
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
Raymond Tallis - The Embodied Subject and Objects in the Weighty sense
Jack Lovell Price - Max Scheler, Critic of Phenomenology
Marek Pokropski: Practicing Phenomenology in Cognitive Sciences: Toward Theoretical Integration with Mechanism
Mike Martin - The Application of Phenomenology to Explore Pre-Service Teachers Experience of Placement in School
Jeffrey McCurry - The Therapy of Putting Essences Back Into Existence: Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Phenomenology as a Way of Life
Rachel Coventry: Are the sunglasses a metaphor? Some Heideggerian Considerations of the Essence of Sunglasses
Maria Jimena Clavel Vazquez - Naturalizing Heidegger (Against his Will)
Pasi Heikkurinen: Ecophenomenosophy - A Response to the Anthropocene
Aoife McInerney - Practical Thinking
Join Podbean Ads Marketplace and connect with engaged listeners.
Advertise Today
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Positive Thinking Mind
In the Great Khan’s Tent
Visualize Meditations
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast