Lasha Matiashvili

This paper aims to explore an experiential structure of embodiment and spatiality in relation to blind football. It derives from the phenomenological qualitative study of the pre-reflective bodily experience of Georgian national blind footballers. Drawing on the data generated by a phenomenologically grounded qualitative research (PGQR), the paper argues that there are intricate connections among pre-reflective bodily awareness, embodied skill acquisition and habit formation. Habits formed by pre-reflective embodied awareness are not merely a product of mechanically repeating patterns of movement; rather they are situated and contextualized within the built environment, such as the specially designed infrastructure of an adjusted pitch. Therefore, embodied habits during the game are closely related to auditory and tactile modalities of spatial awareness, as well as acquisition of a repertoire of skillful performances. The paper highlights embodiment and spatiality as invariant structures or existential frameworks, and fleshes out their pre-reflective and habitual modes as they unfold in the skillful performance of blind footballers.

This paper aims to explore an experiential structure of embodiment and spatiality in relation to blind football. It derives from the phenomenological qualitative study of the pre-reflective bodily experience of Georgian national blind footballers. Drawing on the data generated by a phenomenologically grounded qualitative research (PGQR), the paper argues that there are intricate connections among pre-reflective bodily awareness, embodied skill acquisition and habit formation. Habits formed by pre-reflective embodied awareness are not merely a product of mechanically repeating patterns of movement; rather they are situated and con-textualized within the built environment, such as the specially designed infrastructure of an adjusted pitch. Therefore, embodied habits during the game are closely related to auditory and tactile modalities of spatial awareness, as well as acquisition of a repertoire of skillful performances. The paper highlights embodiment and spatiality as invariant structures or existential frameworks, and fleshes out their pre-reflective and habitual modes as they unfold in the skillful performance of blind footballers.

This article critically re-examines the concept of belonging, which is central to understanding individual and collective forms of solidarity. Contrary to the claim that belonging to the different groups and communities should necessarily precede, and thus provide the possibility for collective solidarity, I propose revising this paradigm by highlighting the role of asymmetricity, affectivity, and seriality in the constitution of an alternative account of collective solidarity. Additionally, despite separately analyzing and delineating contours of these alternative components of collective solidarity, my argument is that asymmetricity and affectivity are integral parts of serial collective solidarity. If belonging and reciprocity characterize social and civil forms of solidarity, and are embedded in the structure of group identification, a political solidarity presupposes asymmetricity and affective network of dissimilar subjects, which subsequently results in emergence of serial collective solidarity. The purpose of this conceptual clarification is to better understand the nature and structure of solidarity. The article argues that solidarizing, either individually or collectively, does not necessarily require symmetric esteem and group belongingness.

This article is an attempt to scrutinize the phenomenological social ontology of Dietrich von Hildebrand and Karol Wojtyla by drawing on the particular role and nature of interpersonal relatedness and second‐person engagement in the constitution of first‐person‐plural perspective. Both Hildebrand and Wojtyla endorse the unique value of the person and personality as the foundational principle for different dimensions of community, including the face‐to‐face “I‐thou” way of being together and more complex, even anonymous, we communities. Both philosophers deny the constitutive primacy of first‐person plural over first‐person singular, the only exception being the mystical body of Christ when “I” is conditioned and formed by “we.” Moreover, what they have in common is the critical reappraisal of one stream in the phenomenological movement, first and foremost associated with Max Scheler's conception of the possibility of a “collective person.” Drawing on Hildebrand's and Wojtyla's accounts, the article endorses the view regarding the relational character of “I,” “thou,” and “we,” claiming that “we” hinges on an experiential dimension of “I.”

In this paper, I seek to challenge some contemporary accounts of collective affective intentionality by arguing for irreducibility of ontological autonomy of individual affective experiences. By elaborating on several requirements for reciprocal affective responses, I propose that instead of endorsing tendency of experiential unification, phenomenal fusion and token identity accounts and conceiving of single body of collectivity in terms of extended self, as the ontological bearer of affective intentionality, one has to maintain at least minimal asymmetry of self and other. Moreover, I discuss the role of embodied interaffectivity and mutual incorporation accounts for collective affective experiences.