TIll Grohmann

This paper deals with the concept of ‘mark’ (or character, in German Merkmal) in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. It examines the question of what marks are for Kant: Are they marks of things or of our thinking? Are they ontic object marks or conceptual marks? Are marks ontological or logical in nature? We will see that in Kant’s philosophy, as well as in the thought of his rationalist predecessors, the concept of the mark is embedded in a peculiar ambiguity in that it stands for both objective qualities and conceptual representations. – In a first step we will trace the ambiguity of the mark in Kant’s predecessors and contemporaries (especially in Meier, Wolff and Leibniz). In a second step, we will show that Kant retains the aforementioned ambiguity in terms of wording but overcomes it in terms of content.

Despite important methodological differences, French neo-structuralist thinkers, such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, have two points in common: they offer a systematic interpretation of the philosophical concept of representation, and they elaborate a sub-representational philosophical thinking beyond the validity of self-identical terms. This paper will investigate the relationship between both of these aspects of their philosophies. The aim is to understand how, under the umbrella term of “representation”, French thinkers put into question very basic epistemic assumptions, such as identity, simplicity, unity, subjectivity, objectivity, etc. This paper seeks to understand to which extent the critique of representation leads to a fundamental investigation of the epistemological assumptions of Western thought.

Le livre offre une investigation phénoménologique des traits caractéristiques des troubles du spectre de l'autisme et de la schizophrénie. Son matériel de base sont des écrits autobiographiques ainsi que des descriptions de patients en première personne. L’objectif principal de cette investigation est double: premièrement, de systématiquement élaborer la corrélation fondamentale entre le corps et le monde; deuxièmement, de comprendre autisme et schizophrénie comme des transformations typiques de cette corrélation. L’auteur interroge schizophrénie et autisme comme des transformations comparables, mais néanmoins fondamentalement distinctes, de la structure ambivalente du corps propre. Il combine une lecture de philosophie phénoménologique avec des approches provenant de la psychiatrie et de la psychopathologie. L’analyse phénoménologique de la corporéité amène l’auteur à analyser une double structure expérientielle, faite de vécus subjectifs et objectifs du corps. En référence à ce paradigme, autisme et schizophrénie apparaissent comme des possibles destins de la structure ambivalente du corps. Un rôle majeur est ici attribué à la spatialisation, c’est-à-dire aux différents modes de vivre et de représenter l’espace.

In recent decades, the focus in autism research progressively expanded. It presently offers extensive material on sensorimotor disturbances as well as on perceptive-cognitive preferences of people with autism. The present article proposes not only a critical interpretation of the common theoretical framework in autism research but also focuses on certain experiences common to some people with autism and which can be appropriately understood by phenomenology. What I will call “hypnotic experiences” in autism are moments in which some individuals withdraw into intense sensorial and perceptive experiences. Following their examples, I use the term “hypnosis” primarily to describe a trance state in which the individuals become highly alert to and awake for an experience of a totally new kind. Through a close analysis of autobiographical writings from people with autism I defend the idea that the particularity of hypnotic experiences in autism consists in a certain qualitative shift within experience itself: what changes, in the hypnotic moments, is the way a person with autism relates to his/her own bodily experiences. If this qualitative shift is indeed difficult to account for within a reifying and intellectualist research perspective, phenomenology offers a large conceptual framework for understanding it. Phenomenology, and precisely, phenomenological psychopathology, will thus emerge as a major device in accounting for such “hypnotic experiences”. The argument mainly draws on the twofold structure of experience which is traditionally used in phenomenological research: it claims that in hypnotic experience people with autism are inclined to focus on non-reified “sensings”, “perceivings” and “movings”, and thus leave aside the object itself and any intentional reification of it. Finally, I will claim that this restriction to mere non-reified sensings might lead to a completely new conception of self and world. In the hypnotic experiences of autism, neither the subject nor the object come to a full-blown and independent existence. A thorough phenomenological analysis of hypnotic experience in autism therefore also has to face the question of a corresponding ontology of these experiences.