2010-2013: The Body In-Between. An Interdisciplinary Approach to an Integral Theory of Corporeal Phenomena

ABSTRACT

In this project, we envision an interdisciplinary research of human corporeality as situated within the complex psychological, social, and religious matrix of contemporary Western civilization. The theoretical core of our project relies on an emphatically phenomenological reading of the living body in the wake of major 20th century thinkers, such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Luc Marion. Nevertheless, our goal is to combine such phenomenological perspective with the dissimilar theoretical horizons of hermeneutics, history of philosophy, religious studies, and theology. This project intends to lay the ground for an interdisciplinary theory of the human living body, able to mediate between philosophical (especially phenomenological) and scientific approaches of the body as well as daily-life modes of understanding corporeal phenomena.

In order to accomplish this goal, the research work has to analyze basic groups of corporeal phenomena that are in the centre of human life. Such basic groups concerning the body are sexuality, identity, generation, vulnerability, and mediation. These thematic groups are connected with each other in a twofold way: they concern limit-experiences of human body and let emerge critical situations, and they appear mostly by way of privative phenomena.

Such privative phenomena: sexuality: prostitution and pornography; identity: the tension between solipsism and inter-subjectivity; the problem of alterity; generation as living between birth and death; vulnerability: abortion and euthanasia; mediation: virtual worlds of the mass media.

Secondly, these groups of corporeal (original and privative) phenomena are connected because they participate altogether in the same distinctions of selfness/alterity or private/public – and they overlap with each other, e.g. sexuality belongs to the realm of generation, and vice versa; vulnerability requires also a being who comes into life and is threatened by death; pornography is unthinkable without the ability of creating imaginative, not (yet) realized worlds.

PROJECT INFO

  • Project director: Dr. Cristian CIOCAN
  • Project title: The Body In-Between. An Interdisciplinary Approach to an Integral Theory of Corporeal Phenomena
  • Project code: PN-II-RU-TE-2010-156
  • Program: “Tinere Echipe”
  • Financed by: CNCS-UEFISCDI
  • Period of Time: 2010-2013
  • Keywords: Body, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Limit Situations, Ethics.

RESEARCH TEAM

EVENTS

  • 2013 July: research stay at Archives Husserl, Paris (Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2013 June: De la corp la memorie și înapoi: memorie corporală sau trup mnemic? at the Workshop “Urmă, sediment, memorie corporală”, 24 June 2013, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest (conference Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2013 June: Workshop “Urmă, sediment, memorie corporală”, 24 June 2013, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest (co-organizator Cristian Ciocan);
  • 2013 May: Le problème de la corporeité chez le jeune Levinas, in: Les Etudes Philosophiques (article Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2013 April: “Heidegger’s phenomenology of embodiment in the Zollikon Seminars“, 11th Annual Meeting of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology: The Significance of Phenomenology, 18 – 20 April 2013, University of Copenhagen (conference Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2013 March: “Penser devant les docteurs. Heidegger à Zollikon”, Séminaire: Qu’appelle-t-on la pensée ? Le philosopher heideggérien, 20 martie 2013, Collège International de philosophie, Paris (conference Cristian Ciocan);
  • 2013 February: Întruchipări. Studiu de fenomenologie a corporalității (Humanitas) (book Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2012 December: Possibilities of Embodiment, Studia Phaenomenologica vol. XII/2012 (ISI) (editor Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2012 November: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Bucarest, 28-29 novembre 2012 (International Conference organized by Maria Gyemant, Ion Tanasescu and Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2012 November: International Conference: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest, 27-28 November 2012 (Maria Gyemant, Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Cristian Ciocan);
  • 2012 November: Phénoménologie du corps dans “Autrement qu’être” de Levinas, at the International Conference: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest, 27-28 November 2012 (conference Cristian Ciocan);
  • 2012 November: Phénomènes physiques. Brentano et le partage entre le corps et l’esprit, at the International Conference: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest, 27-28 November 2012 (conference Maria Gyemant);
  • 2012 November: Husserl’s Begriff der Kinästhese, at the International Conference: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest, 27-28 November 2012 (conference Christian Ferencz-Flatz);
  • 2012 August-September: research stay at Institut für Kulturwissenschaft, Humboldt Universität Berlin (Christian Ferencz-Flatz)
  • 2012 June 7-9: NoSP-seminar at the University of Oslo, Norway (Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2012 January: research stay at Archives Husserl, Paris (Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2012: Herder als Hermeneut, in: H. Clairmont, St. Greif, M. Heinz, Herder Handbuch, ed. Wilhelm Fink, München, 2012 (article Gabriel Cercel)
  • 2011 December: research stay at Archives Husserl, Paris (Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2011 October: Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Philadelphia, chair (Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2011 September 19-23: Reason and Life. The Responsibility of Philosophy, Segovia, Spain (Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2011 September and December: research stays at Archives Husserl, Paris (Christian Ferencz-Flatz)
  • 2011: Zur Entstehung einer phaenomenologischen Hermeneutik der Geschichte, in: Heidegger Studies, vol. 27, 2011, pp. 119-136 (article Gabriel Cercel)
  • 2011 July 6-8: „Film-Philosophy Conference 2011”, John Moores University, Liverpool. Conference: How Does a Film Show Its Purpose? A Husserlian Perspective on Manipulation and Reflection in Contemporary Cinema (Christian Ferencz-Flatz)
  • 2011 May 9-11: Totalité et Infini, une oeuvre de ruptures (Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris). Conference: „Le phénomène du corps dans Totalité et infini“ (Cristian Ciocan)
  • 2011: The Empathetic Apprehension of Artifacts: A Husserlian Approach to Non-figurative Art, in Research in Phenomenology, vol. 41, nr. 3, 2011, pp. 358-373 (article Christian Ferencz-Flatz)

Year 2010

  • Methodological problems concerning the phenomenological approach of corporeality.
  • The delimitation of the interdisciplinary field of research.
  • The relation between the phenomenological-hermeneutical research of corporeality and the historical-philosophical and theological research of the body.

Year 2011

I) phenomenological analysis of body.

A) Edmund Husserl: Ideen I. Topics addressed:

  • Interpretation of the apprehensive mode of cultural objects.
  • The comparison with the apprehension of the human “body” in its relation with the “spirit” that animates him.
  • Objects of this type are not just simple “bodies” (Körper), but rather, like human bodies (Leiber), they are fully “animated” by a cultural significance.
  • Interdisciplinary application: the problem of body and inter-corporeality in the filmic perception. Interpretation of the images as “artifacts.”

B) Emmanuel Levinas: Some Reflections about the Philosophy of Hitlerism; De l’evasion; From Existence to Existence; Time and the Other. Topics addressed:

  • body and identity.
  • body and the elemental.
  • corporeality and work.
  • the body, between the ethics and the erotic.

II) Interdisciplinary dimension: hermeneutics and historical-religious approach.

  • The historical and methodological presuppositions of the hermeneutic-anthropological interpretation of the problem of the body.

Year 2012

I) The phenomenological analysis of body:

A) E. Husserl: Ding und Raum; Ideen II; Ideen III; Cartesian Meditations, Krisis. Topics adressed:

  • the distinction between Leib and Körper.
  • body and perception.
  • the problem of kinestesis.
  • body and space.
  • body and “I can”.
  • body and intersubjectivity, the problem of empathy.

B) Emmanuel Levinas: Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Topics addressed:

  • the relation between psyche and body.
  • the relation between embodiment and responsibility.
  • the relation between  substitution and vulnerability.

II) Interdisciplinary dimension.

  • the relation between body and psyche in  the Austrian philosophy and psychoanalysis (the relation between Freud and Brentano)
  • the theological and philosophical issues of corporeality in ancient and medieval Christianity (“the body of martyrs” and “the body of angels”)

Year 2013

I) The phenomenological analysis of body:

A) Edmund Husserl, Ding und Raum; Ideen II. Topics adressed:

  • The idea of ​​muscular sense or sense of movement, developed in the nineteenth century English empiricism.
  • The relation between perceptual and practical kinesthesia.
  • Mastering the body.

B) Martin Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars. Topics addressed:

  • The relation between phenomenology and medicine.
  • Sickness as an existential phenomenon.
  • Body and tactility.
  • Corporeality and spatiality.
  • Being of the body as Leiben.

C) Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and infinity. Topics addressed:

  • The ambiguity of the body.
  • Body and donation.
  • Autonomy and sacrifice.

D) Walter Benjamin. Passagenwerk. Topics addressed:

  • The relation between body and fashion.
  • The problem of “exercise”.
  • The idea of ​​”tactile reception”
  • The analysis of gesture.

II) Interdisciplinary dimension.

  • The German psychology in the late nineteenth century (especially Brentano, Bolzano and Lipps) and Freudian theory of the unconscious.
  • The problem of body in medieval philosophy: the relation between corporeality and language.
  • Cristian Ciocan: De la corp la memorie și înapoi: memorie corporală sau trup mnemic? Workshop: “Urmă, sediment, memorie corporală”, 24 June 2013, Casa Lovinescu, București;
  • Cristian Ciocan: “Heidegger’s phenomenology of embodiment in the Zollikon Seminars“, 11th Annual Meeting of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology: The Significance of Phenomenology, 18 – 20 April 2013, University of Copenhagen;
  • Cristian Ciocan: “Penser devant les docteurs. Heidegger à Zollikon”, Séminaire: Qu’appelle-t-on la pensée ? Le philosopher heideggérien, 20 martie 2013, Collège International de philosophie, Paris;
  • Cristian Ciocan: Phénoménologie du corps dans “Autrement qu’être” de Levinas, at the International Conference: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest, 27-28 November 2012;
  • Maria Gyemant: Phénomènes physiques. Brentano et le partage entre le corps et l’esprit, at the International Conference: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest, 27-28 November 2012;
  • Christian Ferencz-Flatz: Husserl’s Begriff der Kinästhese, at the International Conference: Phénomènes psychiques et corps, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest, 27-28 November 2012;
  • Cristian Ciocan: Levinas’s Phenomenology of Eros, at the International Conference: The Varieties of Phenomenology. Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP) 10th annual meeting, June 7–9, 2012, University of Oslo, Norway.
  • Cristian Ciocan: Notes sur la phénoménologie lévinassiene du corps dans Totalité et infini, at the International Conference: Reason and Life. The Responsibility of Philosophy, 19-23 September 2011, Segovia, Spain;
  • Christian Ferencz-Flatz: How Does a Film Show Its Purpose? A Husserlian Perspective on Manipulation and Reflection in Contemporary Cinema, at the International Conference: Film-Philosophy 2011, 6-8 july 2011, John Moores University, Liverpool, Great Britain;
  • Cristian Ciocan: Le phénomène du corps dans “Totalité et infini”, at the International Conference: Totalité et Infini, une oeuvre de ruptures (Alliance Israélite Universelle), 9-11 mai 2011, Paris, France;
  • Cristian Ciocan, Emmanuel Levinas et le problème de la corporéité, at the International Conference: L’eredita fenomenologica: Convegno Internazionale di Studi, 5-6 November 2010, Rome, Italy;
  • Cristian Ciocan: Etică și corporalitate: o privire dinspre Lévinas, at the National Conference: Fenomenologie si etică, 21-23 October 2010, University of Bucharest, Faculty of Philosophy
  • Cristian Ciocan: Problema corporalităţii în scrierile timpurii ale lui Lévinas, at the National Conference: Sensuri ale corpului, University “Al.I. Cuza” Iași, 28-29 October 2010.