Edward S. Casey

The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience was first published in 1953. In the first of four parts, Dufrenne distinguishes the "aesthetic object" from the "work of art." In the second, he elucidates types of works of art, especially music and painting. He devotes his third section to aesthetic perception. In the fourth, he describes a Kantian critique of aesthetic experience. A perennial classic in the SPEP series, the work is rounded out by a detailed "Translator's Foreword" especially helpful to readers in aesthetics interested in the context and circumstances around which the original was published as well as the phenomenological background of the book.

EVER SINCE Plato declared imagining to be mere pseudo- or shadow-knowing—a form of eikasia, the lowest species of mental activity—Western philosophers have striven to put imagination in its place: a strictly subordinate place. With the exception of isolated figures such as Vico, Collingwood, and Bachelard, philosophers have denounced imagining for its digressiveness and excoriated it for its evasiveness, though sometimes surreptitiously admiring it for these very qualities. At the same time, and as part of the same deprecatory tactic, invidious comparisons have been instituted between imagining and supposedly superior psychical activities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, the paradigm was pure thinking, over against which imagining appeared as deceitful and mendacious—as "the mistress of falsehood and error" in Pascal’s classic complaint. Even Kant, for all of his attention to imagination as a source of synthesis, considered the image to be "a mere set of particular qualities, determined by no assignable rule"—in contrast with the determinacy and rule-bound character of pure concepts. Kant, as much as Descartes or Pascal, Malebranche or Mersenne, Spinoza or Leibniz, would agree with Heidegger’s stern verdict that philosophical thinking is "charmless and image-poor."

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, _The Fate of Place_ is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray.

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, _The Fate of Place_ is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray.

In this essay I discuss the idea of deploying workshops in phenomenology -- i.e., teaching the discipline by practising it. I focus on the model proposed by Herbert Spiegelberg, the first person to give systematic attention to this idea and the first to institutionalize it over a period of several years. Drawing on my experience in several of the workshops he led at Washington University, St. Louis, I detail the method he recommended in preparation for a workshop I ten led at the inaugural meeting of To the Things Themselves at the University of New Hampshire.

I BEGIN WITH A PUZZLE of sorts. Time is one; space is two—at least two. Time comes always already unified, one time. Thus we say “What time is it now?” and not “Which time is it now?” We do not ask, “What space is it?” Yet we might ask: “Which space are we in?”. Any supposed symmetry of time and space is skewed from the start. If time is self-consolidating—constantly gathering itself together in coherent units such as years or hours or semesters or seasons— space is self-proliferating. Take, for example, the dimensionality of space. One dimension in space is represented by a point or a line, whose radically reduced format mocks the extensiveness of cosmic space. Two dimensions, as in a plane figure, also falls far short of our sense that space spreads out indefinitely far beyond the perceiving subject. Only with three dimensions do we begin to approach an adequation between the structure and the sense of space. For then the subject is surrounded by something sufficiently roomy in which to live and move. Indeed, as Aristotle, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty all remark, the three-dimensionality of space directly reflects our bodily state, that is, the fact that as upright beings three perpendicular planes implicitly meet and intersect in us. Even here, proliferation abounds: our bilateral symmetry means that each dimension is doubled: one vertical plane bifurcates into “up” and “down,” the other vertical plane into “front” and “back,” and the horizontal plane into “right” and “left.” Thus subject-centered space is triple, only to be redoubled. Further, if we think of spatiality not as body-based but as locatory—as determined by landmarks and other locales in the environment—the proliferation is more striking still. There are the four cardinal directions, which themselves split easily into the thirty two points of a compass. Nor need we be so arithmetically well-rounded. Even apart from fancy mathematical models of n –dimensional space, and recent technological instantiations of virtual space, there is no end to the number or ways in which we can be oriented in space—in accordance with what Deleuze and Guattari call “the variability, the polyvocity of directions” by which we can move in any given spatial scene. Beyond direction, however, is place. Heidegger remarks that “space has been split up into places.” The fact is that we continually find ourselves immersed in a multiplex spatial network whose nodal points are supplied by particular places. If space is infinitely large, place is indefinitely many.

I BEGIN WITH A PUZZLE of sorts. Time is one; space is two—at least two. Time comes always already unified, one time. Thus we say “What time is it now?” and not “Which time is it now?” We do not ask, “What space is it?” Yet we might ask: “Which space are we in?”. Any supposed symmetry of time and space is skewed from the start. If time is self-consolidating—constantly gathering itself together in coherent units such as years or hours or semesters or seasons— space is self-proliferating. Take, for example, the dimensionality of space. One dimension in space is represented by a point or a line, whose radically reduced format mocks the extensiveness of cosmic space. Two dimensions, as in a plane figure, also falls far short of our sense that space spreads out indefinitely far beyond the perceiving subject. Only with three dimensions do we begin to approach an adequation between the structure and the sense of space. For then the subject is surrounded by something sufficiently roomy in which to live and move. Indeed, as Aristotle, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty all remark, the three-dimensionality of space directly reflects our bodily state, that is, the fact that as upright beings three perpendicular planes implicitly meet and intersect in us. Even here, proliferation abounds: our bilateral symmetry means that each dimension is doubled: one vertical plane bifurcates into “up” and “down,” the other vertical plane into “front” and “back,” and the horizontal plane into “right” and “left.” Thus subject-centered space is triple, only to be redoubled. Further, if we think of spatiality not as body-based but as locatory—as determined by landmarks and other locales in the environment—the proliferation is more striking still. There are the four cardinal directions, which themselves split easily into the thirty two points of a compass. Nor need we be so arithmetically well-rounded. Even apart from fancy mathematical models of n –dimensional space, and recent technological instantiations of virtual space, there is no end to the number or ways in which we can be oriented in space—in accordance with what Deleuze and Guattari call “the variability, the polyvocity of directions” by which we can move in any given spatial scene. Beyond direction, however, is place. Heidegger remarks that “space has been split up into places.” The fact is that we continually find ourselves immersed in a multiplex spatial network whose nodal points are supplied by particular places. If space is infinitely large, place is indefinitely many.

"You are here, a map declares, but of course you are not, any more than you truly occupy the vantage point into which a landscape painting puts you. How maps and paintings figure and reconfigure space--as well as our place in it--is the subject of Edward S. Casey's study, an exploration of how we portray the world and its many places. Casey's discussion ranges widely from Northern Sung landscape painting to nineteenth-century American and British landscape painting and photography, from prehistoric petroglyphs and medieval portolan charts to seventeenth-century Dutch cartography and land survey maps of the American frontier. From these culturally and historically diverse forays a theory of representation emerges. Casey proposes that the representation of place in visual works be judged in terms not of resemblance, but of reconnecting with an earth and world that are not the mere content of mind or language--a reconnection that calls for the embodiment and implacement of the human subject." -- Book jacket.

Remembering A Phenomenological Study Second Edition Edward S. Casey A pioneering investigation of the multiple ways of remembering and the difference that memory makes in our daily lives. A Choice Outstanding Academic Book "An excellent book that provides an in-depth phenomenological and philosophical study of memory." —Choice "... a stunning revelation of the pervasiveness of memory in our lives." —Contemporary Psychology "[Remembering] presents a study of remembering that is fondly attentive to its rich diversity, its intricacy of structure and detail, and its wide-ranging efficacy in our everyday, life-world experience.... genuinely pioneering, it ranges far beyond what established traditions in philosophy and psychology have generally taken the functions and especially the limits of memory to be." —The Humanistic Psychologist Edward S. Casey provides a thorough description of the varieties of human memory, including recognizing and reminding, reminiscing and commemorating, body memory and place memory. The preface to the new edition extends the scope of the original text to include issues of collective memory, forgetting, and traumatic memory, and aligns this book with Casey’s newest work on place and space. This ambitious study demonstrates that nothing in our lives is unaffected by remembering. Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, general editor Contents Preface to the Second Edition Introduction Remembering Forgotten: The Amnesia of Anamnesis Part One: Keeping Memory in Mind First Forays Eidetic Features Remembering as Intentional: Act Phase Remembering as Intentional: Object Phase Part Two: Mnemonic Modes Prologue Reminding Reminiscing Recognizing Coda Part Three: Pursuing Memory beyond Mind Prologue Body Memory Place Memory Commemoration Coda Part Four: Remembering Re-membered The Thick Autonomy of Memory Freedom in Remembering

Remembering A Phenomenological Study Second Edition Edward S. Casey A pioneering investigation of the multiple ways of remembering and the difference that memory makes in our daily lives. A Choice Outstanding Academic Book "An excellent book that provides an in-depth phenomenological and philosophical study of memory." —Choice "... a stunning revelation of the pervasiveness of memory in our lives." —Contemporary Psychology "[Remembering] presents a study of remembering that is fondly attentive to its rich diversity, its intricacy of structure and detail, and its wide-ranging efficacy in our everyday, life-world experience.... genuinely pioneering, it ranges far beyond what established traditions in philosophy and psychology have generally taken the functions and especially the limits of memory to be." —The Humanistic Psychologist Edward S. Casey provides a thorough description of the varieties of human memory, including recognizing and reminding, reminiscing and commemorating, body memory and place memory. The preface to the new edition extends the scope of the original text to include issues of collective memory, forgetting, and traumatic memory, and aligns this book with Casey’s newest work on place and space. This ambitious study demonstrates that nothing in our lives is unaffected by remembering. Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, general editor Contents Preface to the Second Edition Introduction Remembering Forgotten: The Amnesia of Anamnesis Part One: Keeping Memory in Mind First Forays Eidetic Features Remembering as Intentional: Act Phase Remembering as Intentional: Object Phase Part Two: Mnemonic Modes Prologue Reminding Reminiscing Recognizing Coda Part Three: Pursuing Memory beyond Mind Prologue Body Memory Place Memory Commemoration Coda Part Four: Remembering Re-membered The Thick Autonomy of Memory Freedom in Remembering

Psychology without genuinely thoughtful philosophy winds up as self-help gimmicks; philosophy without the insights & feeling of psychology remains an arcane academic game out of touch with life. By re-joining spirit & soul, this book is a major work of both philosophy & psychology. Casey asks puzzling questions & gives lasting answers. In a clear & vivid manner, one of America's best professional thinkers takes up one of the great themes of imagination, fantasy, hallucination, remembering & perceiving. Film & architecture provide surprising material for his brilliant & useful account of basic philosophical problems which are also major mysteries of the soul.

Although cultures far away and with other languages and customs are felt to be exotic by many in one s own culture, all cultures recognize the importance of a consistent bodily praxis as a basis for ethical behavior. I show that thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, Dewey, James, Peirce, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty all acknowledge this habitual-bodily basis as well as its deeply social character. So does Confucius, even if he emphasizes ceremonial aspects more than Aristotle, the American pragmatists, and phenomenologists. Linking these thinkers is a common emphasis on the performative dimension of reliably repetitive bodily actions that engender effective social actions and interactions.

THE FATES of perceiving and remembering have been inextricably intertwined in Western philosophy and psychology. It has been asserted from Plato’s Theaetetus onwards that there can be no remembering without perceiving and, though much less frequently, no perceiving without remembering of some sort. Just how either of these forms of interdependency occurs, however, has given rise to continual controversy. Little discernible progress has been made since Plato first proposed, in the Theaetetus, a model of the mind as an aviary in which individual memories wait like captive birds to be plucked from the cage of recollection in order to aid in the identification of present perceptions. The elaborate and ingenious character of this memory machine—elaborate and ingenious in comparison with the simpler model of the wax tablet also proposed in the Theaetetus—was to prove prophetic, since later treatments of perception often invoke memory as a deus ex machina brought in to resolve ambiguities and perplexities of perceptual experience.

Philosophers and geographers have converged on the topic of public space, fascinated and in many ways alarmed by fundamental changes in the way post-industrial societies produce space for public use, and in the way citizens of these same societies perceive and constitute themselves as a public. This volume advances this inquiry, making extensive use of political and social theory, while drawing intimate connections between political principles, social processes, and the commonplaces of our everyday environments