•  223
    Social Invisibility and Emotional Blindness
    In Fred Cummins, Anya Daly, James Jardine & Dermot Moran (eds.), Perception and the Inhuman Gaze: Perspectives from Philosophy, Phenomenology and the Sciences., Routledge. pp. 308-323. 2020.
    The unsettling, humiliating, and often threatening experience of feeling oneself ‘invisible’ before the gazes of other people in one’s social world has obvious potential as a theme for collaborative efforts between social theorists and phenomenologists. This chapter proposes one way of approaching such an engagement, drawing in particular upon three authors who offer detailed analyses of social visibility and its potential pathologies: Axel Honneth, Frantz Fanon, and Edmund Husserl. The specific…Read more
  •  29
    This text explores how self-consciousness and self-understanding differ phenomenologically from the experience and comprehension of others, and the extent to which such relations are constitutively interdependent. Jardine argues that Husserl’s analyses of selfhood and intersubjectivity are animated by the question of what's at stake in recognising an agent’s engagement as the situated response of a person, rather than simply as the comportment of an animal or living body. Drawing centrally from …Read more
  •  10
    Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine demonstrate that both classical and existential phenomenology offer analytical concepts that are of crucial pertinence and value to contemporary dehumanization research. They begin by outlining an account of dehumanization that distinguishes this phenomenon both from the general operation of objectification and from the violation of autonomy. What is essential to dehumanizing acts and practices they argue, is not objectification or the violation of autonomy per se…Read more
  •  160
    Edmund Husserl
    In Thomas Szanto & Hilge Landweer (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion, Routledge. pp. 53-62. 2020.
    While Husserl is widely recognised as the founder of the phenomenological movement, and as responsible for important positions on a number of central philosophical topics (such as, for instance, perception, intentionality, self-consciousness, and the tenability of naturalism), he is frequently regarded, even within phenomenological circles, as having a fairly impoverished understanding of the emotions. And indeed, there is some validity to the observation that, while essential roles are accorded…Read more
  •  51
    The diverse essays in this volume speak to the relevance of phenomenological and psychological questioning regarding perceptions of the human. This designation, human, can be used beyond the mere identification of a species to underwrite exclusion, denigration, dehumanization and demonization, and to set up a pervasive opposition in Othering all deemed inhuman, nonhuman, or posthuman. As alerted to by Merleau-Ponty, one crucial key for a deeper understanding of these issues is consideration of t…Read more
  •  13
    Elementary recognition and empathy
    Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy 5 (1): 143-170. 2017.
    This article explores the affinity between Axel Honneth’s conception of elementary recognition and Edmund Husserl’s work on empathy, with the aim of indicating one way in which phenomenological analysis might contribute to critical social theory. I begin by sketching the ‘two-level’ account of recognition developed by Honneth in recent writings, which distinguishes between ‘elementary’ and ‘normatively substantial’ forms of recognition. The remainder of the paper then seeks to offer a deeper acc…Read more
  •  16
    Wahrnehmung und Explikation
    Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 64 (3): 352-374. 2016.
    Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 3 Seiten: 352-374.
  •  520
    Within the phenomenological tradition, one frequently finds the bold claim that interpersonal understanding is rooted in a sui generis form of intentional experience, most commonly labeled empathy (Einfühlung). The following paper explores this claim, emphasizing its distinctive character, and examining the phenomenological considerations offered in its defense by two of its main proponents, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. After offering in section 2 some preliminary indications of how empathy s…Read more
  •  106
    Stein and Honneth on Empathy and Emotional Recognition
    Human Studies 38 (4): 567-589. 2015.
    My aim in this paper is to make use of Edith Stein’s phenomenological analyses of empathy, emotion, and personhood to clarify and critically assess the recent suggestion by Axel Honneth that a basic form of recognition is affective in nature. I will begin by considering Honneth’s own presentation of this claim in his discussion of the role of affect in recognitive gestures, as well as in his notion of ‘elementary recognition,’ arguing that while his account contains much of value it also generat…Read more