Susi Ferrarello

The vulnerability of the human world is an edited book that collects papers reflecting on the problem of well-being, health, and vulnerability in our current society. The ‘human world’ to which we refer points to the anthropological, environmental, and ecological issues in relation to health and well-being that we propose to discuss. It addresses the need for a critical anthropological concept that overcomes the biases of modern anthropocentrism while addressing the specific responsibility of humans in contemporary world crisis. We do not try to give a final definition for what vulnerability is, but we problematize the notion of well-being as a standard of non-vulnerability that is often imposed on human beings; often well-being becomes a measure within which human beings should fit to not be vulnerable. Consequently, well-being has been implicitly defined as the opposite of vulnerability – especially when vulnerability is conceived as a risk or a threat to oneself or the community, rather than a potential source of growth and transformation. For this reason, we believe that well-being is more the title of a problem rather than its solution. This paradigm initiates, indeed, a “positive” conception of health that aims to push the boundaries of human finitude such as suffering, illness and the recognition of mortality. Usually, we assume that well-being is the final goal of our choices and the gist of a decent life, but we spend more time striving for well-being than asking ourselves what being well means for us, as individuals and societies. This paradox may generate emotional frustration which often worsens our condition rather than helps it reach its optimum. Moreover, it may generate and increase inequalities between people and countries who may suffer from the discrepancies in their access to healthcare or vaccination. Therefore, it also raises questions about collective justice and interdependence. Indeed, the concept of well-being seems to block a critical and epistemological appraisal of the concept of “health,” conflating thereby the impression of being “well,” which is normed by sociological, cultural and moral standards with the lived reality of what it means to be healthy – which itself needs to be questioned in light of the scientific paradigms that built human biology and environmental approaches over the past decades.

In this chapter 1 discuss how the ego arises within the lived experiences of the concrete human being by comparing Husserl’s and Peirce’s notions of the constitution of the ‘I’. This chapter consists of a comparative examination of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and Peirce’s category of secondness. It compares Husserl’s notion of awakening of the ego with Peirce’s psychological notion of ego reaction. In contrast to Spiegelberg, Philos Phenomenol Res,17(2):164–185, (1956: 170) claim according to which the “Heraclitean” picture of Peirce’s system is a “major obstacle to a full-scale comparison between the two phenomenologies”, I try to show that it is precisely this Heraclitean image of the soul that makes Peirce and Husserl’s systems, after all, so surprisingly similar.

I am looking at a bird flying above my head and I barely see it; in the meantime I am talking to a friend of mine about my job. All these things: the bird, my friend, my job, even the ground beneath my feet, are outside of me. Yet, while I am living these objects, they are here, in my head. How can one explain this relationship,where something that is completely different from my being becomes a part of me? If something transcends my own nature, how can it be immanent, within my lived experience? How can I relate to something that is completely other than me? How can it ‘in-exist’ in my mind? Is there an original ‘me’ or am I always the result of my social life? Is the world in which I am living objective, or is it just mine? In this paper I would like to answer all these questions, focusing on the theory of intersubjectivity as it has been displayed by Husserl’s phenomenological method. In several instances, this method was defined by Husserl himself as a “‘sociological’ transcendental philosophy” (Husserl, 1968: 539), or even as a “transcendental sociology” (Husserl, 1966: 220), for it looks into the lived experience of the subject as if the subject were a transcendental intersubjective unit. The Husserliana volumes we refer to throughout this work are: the Fifth Cartesian Meditation (Husserl, 1982), which implicitly sends us to volume 8 (First Philosophy, second part & other important additions), and volumes 13 to 15 of the Husserliana (Husserl, 1973), which are dedicated especially to the issue of intersubjectivity. In what follows, I will focus firstly on the notion of intentionality, secondly on the constitution of the otherness and its objectivity, thirdly on the idea of ego and its life-world.

This book represents a unique indispensable reflection on the interconnection between empathy and ethics. To what extent is it right to be empathetic? Can empathy be unethical? Or is there an ethical obligation to be empathetic? Do we educate our citizens and train our professionals to use the right form of empathy? Phenomenological ethics is a relatively new approach to ethics whose emphasis is put on the description of the lived-experience and the ethical phenomenon. The essays offer phenomenological descriptions of the thorny problem pertaining to the interconnection of empathy and ethics essential for professionals and scholars of different fields, such as philosophy, psychiatry, health science, psychology, and sociology. _Contributors: _Michael Agostinelli Jr., Elodie Boublil, Francesca Brencio, Manuel Camassa, Scott D. Churchill, Nicolas de Warren, Craig Derksen, John J. Drummond, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, Jannik M. Hansen, Simon Høffding, Joel Krueger, Carlos Lobo, Esteban Marín-Ávila, Alexander Montes, Dermot Moran, Henning Nörenberg, Tone Roald, Eva Schwarz, Andrea Staiti, Joona Taipale, Stefano Vincini, Maren Wehrle, Dan Zahavi.

This book provides an analysis of values and identity within the context of ancient, modern and contemporary philosophy. This issue is addressed from the viewpoints of intersubjective and individual experience. The contributors to this volume answer the following questions: What are the lived-meanings of "values" and "ethics" from a philosophical, sociological and psychological perspective? How does society constitute its own life-word? What is the meaning of values? What is the role of values in defining self-identity? How does their meaning change within a political context? Do politics and aesthetics affect our moral identity? What is the role of values in the state of nature? How does art accomplish its primary task: raising human consciousness over and against the reified world of commodities?This volume offers an opportunity to reflect on these issues from a philosophical point of view and to explore the dialogue of philosophy with sociology and psychology.

This book contains the most recent papers problematizing the notions of health, vulnerability, and well-being for individuals and their environment. Organized in 5 sections the book takes into consideration the critical and phenomenological history of well-being and health, their technological manipulation, how these notions connect with the body and the specific vulnerability of the human being, and what responsible direction we can take to improve people's relation to themselves, to other living beings and their environment. In order to address the issue of the vulnerability of the human world and how to respond to its specific challenges, the contributions in this book discuss the topic from a broad range of perspectives, including anthropological, psychological, sociological, philosophical, and environmental.