Program and Abstracts
Wednesday - September 3, 2025( hide all )
08:30-09:15
Registration
09:15-09:30
Opening Remarks
09:30-10:30
Keynote 1Chair: Cristian CiocanRoom: 215
Natalie Depraz (University of Paris Nanterre, France / Husserl Archive in Paris, France / University of Bucharest, Romania)Loving Hate and Hating Love in TikTok and Streaming Platforms. Phenomenology of the Antinomic EmotionsOpen AbstractSocial media are well-known to make visible and even amplify collective political tendencies and representations nowadays. In this contribution, I will explore some phenomena appearing more and more e.g. in Tik tok videos and in Twitch streamings, which trigger high emotional reactions in adolescents and in young adults.
More specifically, I will study two opposed emotional tendencies which are reverberated and reinforced in these media, e.g. incitement to racial hatred on Tik tok on the one hand and call for loving solidarities for precarious populations on Twitch on the other hand.
For doing so, I will first sketch a model of emotions relying on different cardial regimes (from the concept of "heart"). My goal will be to describe the affective socio-political polarization at stake in these contrasted media, and then to show they actually refer to more complex emotional dynamics, permeated by ambivalence and thus mixing love and hate. In the end, I hope to be able to show how such problematic mechanisms of loving hate and hating love may be transformed thanks to a third cardial regime of emotional antinomicity, where the tension between opposed affections becomes productive and opens up into new surprising and creative emotional dynamics. Thus preparing the conditions for a transformation of affective polarization e.g. in media into their fruitful potential.
More specifically, I will study two opposed emotional tendencies which are reverberated and reinforced in these media, e.g. incitement to racial hatred on Tik tok on the one hand and call for loving solidarities for precarious populations on Twitch on the other hand.
For doing so, I will first sketch a model of emotions relying on different cardial regimes (from the concept of "heart"). My goal will be to describe the affective socio-political polarization at stake in these contrasted media, and then to show they actually refer to more complex emotional dynamics, permeated by ambivalence and thus mixing love and hate. In the end, I hope to be able to show how such problematic mechanisms of loving hate and hating love may be transformed thanks to a third cardial regime of emotional antinomicity, where the tension between opposed affections becomes productive and opens up into new surprising and creative emotional dynamics. Thus preparing the conditions for a transformation of affective polarization e.g. in media into their fruitful potential.
10:30-10:45
Coffee Break
10:45-12:45
Tomáš Filo Čech (Charles University, the Czech Republic)Quantification of the Daily Life: Phenomenological Perspective of GAIOpen AbstractCurrent developments in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry have led to the broad application of Generative AI (GAI). Everyday GAI is either integrated into existing digital infrastructure of the contemporary Western life (e.g. Whatsapp, Facebook, MS Word etc.) or introduced as new apps. This trend leads to an increased exposure to GAI, often without users realizing that they are using GAI. The proposed contribution will focus on this trend in relation to the phenomenon that GAI, currently developed on the probability principle of LLMs, is the latest embodiment of a supposedly objective reality, a “view from nowhere” (Frank, Glesier, Thompson, 2024). Mathematical idealization and approximation of reality and human society can be useful at different levels of acquiring knowledge. However, when it becomes a standard applied universally, it may negatively impact our epistemic capacities. Not because GAI might generate nonsensical content (this might rather help people to not to succumb to the objectivity narrative around AI), but rather because GAI will reduce lived experiences, their unique contexts and other non-objectified characteristics into a flat numerical representation. Following Verbeek, it can be argued that the world disclosure introduced with GAI presents a new challenge as the mediation of a daily human contact with reality is further replaced by a mathematical abstraction (Verbeek, 2005). Therefore, wide application of GAI might skew the perceptions of people about the reality and their social relations further in a direction of reducing their richness. Reductionism, objectivism or bifurcation of nature will be even more inescapable than ever before and become the epistemic standard. If only life can know life (Jonas, 1966), we need to address the issue of where the GAI applications are sensible and where they mostly damage our capacities and decision-making.
Literature
Frank, A., Gleiser, M., & Thompson, E. (2024). The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience. MIT Press.
Jonas, H. (1966). The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. Harper & Row.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Literature
Frank, A., Gleiser, M., & Thompson, E. (2024). The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience. MIT Press.
Jonas, H. (1966). The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. Harper & Row.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Selin Gerlek (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Sebastian Weydner-Volkmann (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany)Quasi-Materiality and Active UIs: Postphenomenology in the Age of ChatGPTOpen AbstractThe rise of ChatGPT and similar chat applications marks a fundamental transformation in the dynamics of human-technology interaction. Large Language Model (LLM) applications increasingly emulate our social habits in digital communication. However, when we apply postphenomenological concepts to analyze this shift, we encounter a challenge: Don Ihde’s original framework focuses on material technologies and their affordances. ChatGPT, by contrast, does not introduce any new material technics – it is a digital app we run on the same physical devices we have used for years.
This paper re-evaluates some key postphenomenological ideas and proposes the concept of “quasi-materiality” to account for the mediating role of non-material, informational user interfaces (UIs). We introduce the term “active User Interface” (aUI) to describe how in ChatGPT’s UI design, LLMs are used to afford fluid, intuitive conversations with a quasi-other in what Ihde termed “alterity relations”. Drawing on Peter-Paul Verbeek’s notion of intelligification, we argue that aUIs afford a new kind of habituated interactional stability, in which users interact with AI-enabled systems through established patterns of digital communication. Thus, rather than introducing new material technologies, the shift in human-technology interaction can better be explained as follows: ChatGPT’s UI leverages our existing social habits to bring interactions with a quasi-other into the realm of familiar patterns of electronic communication.
Based on this, we suggest that the intuitive appeal of asking ChatGPT to “look at” or “think about” something lies not in a confusion about machine agency (Natale 2021), but in the very design of aUIs to support these pragmatic fictions. These contributions reconfigure postphenomenological concepts towards capturing the increasingly seamless, conversational nature of human-machine interaction.
This paper re-evaluates some key postphenomenological ideas and proposes the concept of “quasi-materiality” to account for the mediating role of non-material, informational user interfaces (UIs). We introduce the term “active User Interface” (aUI) to describe how in ChatGPT’s UI design, LLMs are used to afford fluid, intuitive conversations with a quasi-other in what Ihde termed “alterity relations”. Drawing on Peter-Paul Verbeek’s notion of intelligification, we argue that aUIs afford a new kind of habituated interactional stability, in which users interact with AI-enabled systems through established patterns of digital communication. Thus, rather than introducing new material technologies, the shift in human-technology interaction can better be explained as follows: ChatGPT’s UI leverages our existing social habits to bring interactions with a quasi-other into the realm of familiar patterns of electronic communication.
Based on this, we suggest that the intuitive appeal of asking ChatGPT to “look at” or “think about” something lies not in a confusion about machine agency (Natale 2021), but in the very design of aUIs to support these pragmatic fictions. These contributions reconfigure postphenomenological concepts towards capturing the increasingly seamless, conversational nature of human-machine interaction.
Andrej Božič (Institute Nova Revija for the Humanities, Slovenia)The Phenomenology of Voice in the Technological World: From Phonotechnics to Technophonics (and Back?)Open AbstractThe contemporary world cannot be imagined or grasped without—the inter-mediation of—the technical. Technology has—especially in the past few decades—begun to (more or less) crucially and fundamentally co-determine—and often direct, even dominate—both theoretical and practical agency as well as contemplation and creativity not only within our individual daily lives, but also within the communal effectuation of entire (globally governed, planetarily connected) societies. The proposed paper would like to address the question how the recent rapid techn(olog)ical advancements, predominantly with regard to the challenges posed by the development of (generative) artificial intelligence (AI), affect—the experience of—voice as one of the primordial phenomena of human(e) co-existence. Whilst as the ever-growing usage of (computer) “tools,” grounded on the principles of machine learning, such as ChatGPT, has compelled the authors to equip them with the possibility of verbal articulation of the generated content, the issue might arise, whether that, which is (nonetheless?) perceived as the (however adaptable and however modifiable) “voice” of AI (in “communication” with it), is (still) a voice (at all?). Upon the basis of such a potential controversy concerning (“)voice(“), I shall attempt, taking inspiration from some of the central insights on technology and on voice as formulated above all by Don Ihde and Bernhard Waldenfels, to re-consider the phenomenon of voice within the contemporary world as a kind of trans-form(ul)ation from the (primary?) “technicality” of voice to the (secondary?) “vocality” of technics.
D1-MS2 — Virtuality, Affectivity, and Technological MediationChair: Zane OzolaRoom: 108Hide Session Presentations
Cristian Ciocan (University of Bucharest, Romania)Affective Contagion and Being-Together in the Digital SphereOpen AbstractThis paper explores emotional contagion in digital environments by bringing together empirical research and phenomenological analysis. Social media has become a privileged site of affective intensity, where users resonate with collective events, crises, and conflicts. Empirical studies over the past decade—beginning with Kramer’s Facebook experiments, followed by large-scale analyses of Twitter, Weibo, and other platforms—show how emotions spread virally online through textual cues, algorithmic amplification, and weak social ties. Such contagion has shaped public moods during the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, and even the cancellation of Romania’s 2024 presidential elections, revealing its profound political and social consequences. To deepen these findings, I turn to Max Scheler’s Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, where he distinguishes affective sensing (Nachfühlen), feeling-together (Mitfühlen), shared feeling (Mitgefühl), emotional contagion (Gefühlsansteckung), and affective identification (Einsfühlung). These distinctions allow us to separate contagion from neighboring phenomena such as compassion, cruelty, or identification, and to ask what kind of affective intentionality is operative when emotions circulate online without bodily co-presence. Transposed to the digital sphere, Scheler’s categories illuminate experiences ranging from collective mourning and cyberbullying to fan communities and radicalized networks. By juxtaposing empirical studies with Scheler’s phenomenology, the paper argues that digital affective life cannot be reduced to either statistical propagation or psychological mimicry. Instead, it requires a more nuanced account of how emotions bind and divide us, shaping new forms of being-together in the digital age.
John Anderson P-Duarte (La Frontera University, Chile)Bodily Presence in Digitally Mediated CooperationOpen AbstractThis paper explores whether subjects can be genuinely present during episodes of digitally mediated social interaction, particularly those involving cooperation based on attention. While face-to-face interactions are typically regarded as involving genuine presence—grounded in veridical perception and embodied agency—digitally mediated interactions are often thought to lack this quality, due to the absence of direct perceptual access to shared objects or spaces. Drawing on phenomenological insights from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, this view holds that digital interactions merely elicit imaginative or illusory experiences, undermining authentic agency and presence.
In contrast, this paper argues that subjects can indeed be bodily present in digitally mediated interactions when they engage in attention-based cooperation. Activities such as conversing via video call, co-writing documents online, or collaborating in multiplayer games exemplify cases where tasks are jointly resolved through shared attention. The central claim is twofold: (i) cooperation in these digital contexts can be accurately described as joint attentional activity, and (ii) exercising attention in these settings constitutes a genuine form of presence—that is, subjects are present where attention unfolds.
Based on this, a revised notion of presence is proposed, one that is not reducible to physical proximity or material embodiment. Instead, it draws on the phenomenological distinction between the biological body and the lived, agentive body. Digital presence, under this view, is not corporeal in the material sense but is nonetheless bodily insofar as it involves intentional agency through attentional engagement. The paper concludes that the kind of task involved defines the form of bodily presence required for its resolution, offering a refined conceptual framework for understanding presence in digital environments.
In contrast, this paper argues that subjects can indeed be bodily present in digitally mediated interactions when they engage in attention-based cooperation. Activities such as conversing via video call, co-writing documents online, or collaborating in multiplayer games exemplify cases where tasks are jointly resolved through shared attention. The central claim is twofold: (i) cooperation in these digital contexts can be accurately described as joint attentional activity, and (ii) exercising attention in these settings constitutes a genuine form of presence—that is, subjects are present where attention unfolds.
Based on this, a revised notion of presence is proposed, one that is not reducible to physical proximity or material embodiment. Instead, it draws on the phenomenological distinction between the biological body and the lived, agentive body. Digital presence, under this view, is not corporeal in the material sense but is nonetheless bodily insofar as it involves intentional agency through attentional engagement. The paper concludes that the kind of task involved defines the form of bodily presence required for its resolution, offering a refined conceptual framework for understanding presence in digital environments.
Alessio Martino (University of Trieste, Italy)Virtuality and Praxis. For a Phenomenological Analysis of TechnologyOpen AbstractThe reflection regarding technology has become increasingly urgent today, driven by its recent developments, for example Artificial Intelligence, as well as its pervasiveness in contemporary life, a phenomenon well described by Floridi’s concept of onlife. To provide a philosophical understanding of technology, the aim of this contribution is to outline a theoretical framework that considers both its theoretical and practical dimensions, centered on the concept of “virtuality”.
To this end, firstly, we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s analyses, particularly his later reflections. Although he does not directly address the theme of technology, Merleau-Ponty develops a phenomenological ontology based on the concept of flesh understood as virtuality, a notion distinct from that of “digital” and conceived as the spontaneous configuration of meaning, in continuity between the natural world and the human one. Indeed, the embodied subject is a virtuality of relations with its proper world, rediscovering within itself the self-production of meaning that characterizes nature. Within this theoretical framework, technology represents the practical virtualization intrinsic to humanity, that is, the peculiar human configuration of meaning.
Secondly, we situate post-phenomenological analyses by Don Ihde within this theoretical framework, considering the former as the background of possibilities for the human-technology relationship explored by the latter. The concepts of mediation and multistability are central to a study close to the concrete praxis. These are not in contrast with the analyses on virtuality but rather reinforce one another, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the technological phenomenon.
To this end, firstly, we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s analyses, particularly his later reflections. Although he does not directly address the theme of technology, Merleau-Ponty develops a phenomenological ontology based on the concept of flesh understood as virtuality, a notion distinct from that of “digital” and conceived as the spontaneous configuration of meaning, in continuity between the natural world and the human one. Indeed, the embodied subject is a virtuality of relations with its proper world, rediscovering within itself the self-production of meaning that characterizes nature. Within this theoretical framework, technology represents the practical virtualization intrinsic to humanity, that is, the peculiar human configuration of meaning.
Secondly, we situate post-phenomenological analyses by Don Ihde within this theoretical framework, considering the former as the background of possibilities for the human-technology relationship explored by the latter. The concepts of mediation and multistability are central to a study close to the concrete praxis. These are not in contrast with the analyses on virtuality but rather reinforce one another, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the technological phenomenon.
Christos Hadjioannou (University of Nicosia, Cyprus)Media Platforms and Temporal DisruptionOpen AbstractIn A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics (2023), Habermas argues that platformization of media empowered users to become independent and rather spontaneous in their exchanges. Habermas also argues that platformization establishes a certain indeterminacy, which enables the spontaneous creation of networks, which in turn explains the creation of echo chambers. At the heart of this spontaneous process, Habermas identifies the “promise of singularization”, which results in self-referentiality.
Following Laclau, Anastasiou (2024) also zeroes in on the phenomenon of indeterminacy, as well as disruption and decentralization in platform media, and argues that these are the conditions of possibility of populist politics. Anastasiou, unlike Habermas, focuses on the temporal character of these phenomena, arguing that indeterminacy is temporal, i.e. it disrupts synchronic practices.
In my paper, I will analyze the indeterminacy and disruption from the perspective of Stiegler’s critique of the Anthropocene, with the hope that this will generate a fruitful dialogue between these thinkers. Stiegler argued that the capitalist system organizes the algorithm by setting up a “negative protention,” whereby the future becomes calculable and thus determinate and controlled. Through platform media, capital is constituted as a power over protentions: the data economy has established an automatized production of protentions. This position seemingly rejects the observations about indeterminacy and disruption caused by the algorithmic governmentality of platform media. But Stiegler’s theorization, which is heavily influenced from Husserl and Heidegger, maintains an ambiguous relation to these technologies and their sociopolitical powers. As he argues, through establishing a “negative protention,” capitalism “functionally short-circuits every social system, and along with them, all the deliberative processes in which they consist, all the forms of knowledge on which they rest,” which reintroduces the phenomena of indeterminacy and disruption, albeit on a different ontological register.
Following Laclau, Anastasiou (2024) also zeroes in on the phenomenon of indeterminacy, as well as disruption and decentralization in platform media, and argues that these are the conditions of possibility of populist politics. Anastasiou, unlike Habermas, focuses on the temporal character of these phenomena, arguing that indeterminacy is temporal, i.e. it disrupts synchronic practices.
In my paper, I will analyze the indeterminacy and disruption from the perspective of Stiegler’s critique of the Anthropocene, with the hope that this will generate a fruitful dialogue between these thinkers. Stiegler argued that the capitalist system organizes the algorithm by setting up a “negative protention,” whereby the future becomes calculable and thus determinate and controlled. Through platform media, capital is constituted as a power over protentions: the data economy has established an automatized production of protentions. This position seemingly rejects the observations about indeterminacy and disruption caused by the algorithmic governmentality of platform media. But Stiegler’s theorization, which is heavily influenced from Husserl and Heidegger, maintains an ambiguous relation to these technologies and their sociopolitical powers. As he argues, through establishing a “negative protention,” capitalism “functionally short-circuits every social system, and along with them, all the deliberative processes in which they consist, all the forms of knowledge on which they rest,” which reintroduces the phenomena of indeterminacy and disruption, albeit on a different ontological register.
Andrzej Gniazdowski (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)The Genesis of the State. Phenomenology and the Limits of Political TechnologyOpen AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to present the history and possibilities of a phenomenological approach to the idea of political technology. The starting point of my study is the recognition that the research area within which phenomenology directly confronts this idea is the question of the genesis of the state. I will argue that phenomenology encounters the phenomenon of the state insofar as it investigates, as Husserl himself did, but also Reinach, Scheler, Geiger, Stein, Metzger and many other representatives of the phenomenological movement, the problem of the foundations and basic concepts of political science. In my paper, I will first reconstruct the approaches to the phenomenon of the state within the so-called static phenomenology, for which it functions as a transcendental leading clue of a constitutional analysis. Then I will raise the question of the possibility of the phenomenological approach to this phenomenon as a problem of transcendental genesis. In my reconstruction, I will show that the static analysis of the state has already encountered the idea of political technology while investigating the phenomenological content or a priori meaning of the social contract theory. However, the thesis of this article is that even if the main representatives of the phenomenological movement were inclined to consider the state as a social construct, i.e. a work of art or at least an artifact, they resisted reducing this phenomenon to a mere product of political technology. As I will argue with reference to the contemporary struggle for recognition of the independence and integrity of the Ukrainian state, from the perspective of genetic phenomenological analysis, the limits of political technology set the birth of a state from the spirit of freedom.
Natalia Artemenko (TU Dortmund University, Germany)Phenomenology of “Post-Risk Society:" Challenges of Our TimeOpen AbstractThe paper puts forward a research agenda for the new field of phenomenology that we call “the phenomenology of post-risk society.” While U. Beck has defined “the society of risk” as a society in which the past is losing its determining power and is getting replaced by the future, and H. Lubbe described the modern society through the phenomenon of “the reduction of the present” seen as shortening of that very time intervals, which we can rely upon a certain constancy of our life relations in, causing growth of multiple relics—and not just of the technical ones, but also of the relics of the cultural practices, we, in our turn, propose to describe the modern society as the society of extreme living, or the post-risk society, instantiated by the phenomenon of “the frozen present”—by the time that is incapable of saving us—the present that has no end, which is impossible as the present (M. Blanchot). We intend to propose to describe the reality which we all find ourselves in with the concept of “the post-risk society.” Parasitizing on the bygone coordinate system, which has long outlived its normality, led to a lack of pragmatics of the future, the desire to establish control over it, intrinsic to the society of risk, was termed by A. Giddens as “the colonization of the future.” We are facing challenges which we have never dealt with before, we lack “lessons from the past” and algorithms for solving such problems. It is possible to talk about risk when the threshold of catastrophe is not reached (N. Luhmann). Risk is the mobilizing force in a society that strains after determining its future. However, when the past is not relevant, we are incapable of relying upon it and end up facing “the unknown future”, the capitulation to the challenges of the modern world leads us to the situation of a catastrophe, avoiding all thresholds of control. The new society of “post-risk” holds the increasing danger of temporal dissolution of identity. Being put under pressure of the risks of a new order, society proved incapable of cross-border consolidating which could have empowered it to resist new epidemics and wars in in an efficient way. Today we face complex challenges that threaten the health of the planet and our way of life: climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, social and economic inequality. Without changing attitudes, behaviours and values about ourselves and our environment, it is impossible to respond to all these challenges with dignity. But does the post-risk society have the resources to ‘take the hit’?
D1-MS4 — Heidegger's Phenomenology of Technology RevisitedChair: Marie SassineRoom: 109Hide Session Presentations
Yasuaki Kimijima (Hosei University, Japan)Modern Technology as a Mode of Being: Reconsidering Heidegger’s Theory of Modern TechnologyOpen AbstractIn his theory of modern technology, Heidegger argues that what makes modern technology what it is, is the particular mode of being that is exclusively permitted to entities in the contemporary age. He identifies this mode of being itself as the essence of modern technology. For example, in his 1949 Bremen Lectures, he states: “Modern technology is not what it is because of the machine; rather, the machine is only what it is, and in the way it is, because of the essence of technology.” Heidegger thereby defines the essence of modern technology as “the being of beings itself.” Here, he presents a conception of technology wherein the dynamics of being itself determine the character of modern technology, maintaining that human beings are merely involved in and drawn into these dynamics.
While this perspective provides deep insights, it tends to mystify the essence of technology—identified with the dynamics of being—by responding to the question “why?” simply with “because these are the dynamics of being in the contemporary age.” Therefore, this paper seeks to make Heidegger’s view of technology comprehensible by clarifying the underlying conception of being upon which his analysis is based. In my view, this conception took shape through Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle in the 1920s, becoming one of the guiding threads of the analyses in Being and Time. Briefly stated, this conception asserts that human beings are directed by being itself to disclose and grasp beings as a whole, but due to their inherent finitude, they can fulfill this task only in a distinctly “human” manner. This paper will explicate the details of this conception and demonstrate that Heidegger’s view of modern technology can be understood as a particular manifestation of it.
While this perspective provides deep insights, it tends to mystify the essence of technology—identified with the dynamics of being—by responding to the question “why?” simply with “because these are the dynamics of being in the contemporary age.” Therefore, this paper seeks to make Heidegger’s view of technology comprehensible by clarifying the underlying conception of being upon which his analysis is based. In my view, this conception took shape through Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle in the 1920s, becoming one of the guiding threads of the analyses in Being and Time. Briefly stated, this conception asserts that human beings are directed by being itself to disclose and grasp beings as a whole, but due to their inherent finitude, they can fulfill this task only in a distinctly “human” manner. This paper will explicate the details of this conception and demonstrate that Heidegger’s view of modern technology can be understood as a particular manifestation of it.
Jonathan Krude (University of Oxford, UK)Resolving Heidegger’s Ambiguity about TechnologyOpen AbstractHeidegger’s stance towards technology is confusing. On the one hand, he characterises the age of technology as “the highest danger”, at “the outermost edge of a fall” (GA 7, 27f). Such statements, together with the dystopian imagery of his technological landscapes and their stark contrast to his colourful descriptions of lost idylls surrounding the Greek temple or the Black Forest cottage, make it easy to reconstruct Heidegger as a romantic – nostalgic of the magic of a bygone age, and fearful of a disenchanted future. On the other hand, Heidegger objects to such an understanding explicitly, and with increasing vehemence over the years. We only need to call to mind his continued use of the first lines of Hölderlin’s poem Patmos (“But where the Danger is, grows/ That which Saves, too”) to see that this one-sided understanding will not do justice to the role that technology plays in Heidegger’s thinking, a role that is “ambiguous in the high sense” (GA 7: 34).
In order to address the ambiguity, it is necessary to bring out the underlying tension clearly. In a first step, I formulate two claims that capture Heidegger’s conflicting commitments. The first commitment – (A1) – is that the programme of technology is the completion of the forgottenness of Being. The second commitment – (A2) – is that the completion of the programme of technology is itself the first step of the other beginning. In the second step, I review some of the major accounts in the literature and show that they do not have the resources to accommodate both commitments. In the end, I formulate an alternative account that can account for both commitments and address Heidegger’s ambiguity about technology.
In order to address the ambiguity, it is necessary to bring out the underlying tension clearly. In a first step, I formulate two claims that capture Heidegger’s conflicting commitments. The first commitment – (A1) – is that the programme of technology is the completion of the forgottenness of Being. The second commitment – (A2) – is that the completion of the programme of technology is itself the first step of the other beginning. In the second step, I review some of the major accounts in the literature and show that they do not have the resources to accommodate both commitments. In the end, I formulate an alternative account that can account for both commitments and address Heidegger’s ambiguity about technology.
Pietro Caiano (National University of Córdoba, Argentina)Schritt zurück and Fork: About Two Theoretical Perspectives on the Difference Between Ontology and Metaphysics from the Essence of TechniqueOpen AbstractThis paper proposes to travel the Schritt zurück, an eminently phenomenological movement, in order to investigate the middle ground that opens up before the beginning of the path taken by metaphysics (which culminates in contemporary technique). What does precede the metaphysical choice and its current configuration? What is its essence? Where can it find its truth? What is the other way that has that same middle ground, the fork, as its starting point? The thinkers who will guide this inquiry are Heidegger and Severino. The Italian philosopher, seemingly far from phenomenology, nevertheless proposes a thought that can also be interpreted through some fundamental phenomenological principles. Severino points to a terrain, the fork between the Path of Night and the Path of Day, in which error journeys in its departure from truth, nevertheless remaining inseparably connected to it. Returning to the fork, it is possible to cross it by taking a different path from the one Plato took, with patricide of Parmenides. Thus, two major spheres come to be delineated from the reflections of these two thinkers: on the one hand, the “originary” as the place of the ontological truth, prior to the reduction of the existent to representation, prior to any metaphysical perspective, to nihilism and to technicalization; on the other hand, the totality of the existent already organized by calculating thought, encased in the metaphysical structure of the foundation, in the nihilistic persuasion that animates Western metaphysics and culminates in the civilization of technology. Precisely by analyzing the philosophical question of technique, addressed in a similar way by Heidegger and Severino, it is possible to go back (Schritt zurück), in search of the essence of technique, and investigate the dimension of the fork, in which ontology and metaphysics - distinguishing themselves - find their own truth.
12:45-14:00
Lunch
14:00-16:00
D1-AS1 — Technology and Re-Thinking of ThinkingChair: Marta TimrotaRoom: 215Hide Session Presentations
Jordan Šišovski (University American College Skopje, the Republic of North Macedonia)Phenomenology of AI: Philosophical Practice in the Age of Large Language ModelsOpen AbstractThis paper develops a phenomenological investigation of philosophical writing assisted by AI, Large Language Models (LLMs) in particular. Through Heidegger’s concept of Gestell (enframing), I examine how LLMs represent the culmination of technology’s tendency to reduce language—the “house of being”—to standing-reserve (Bestand). Yet following Heidegger’s insight that where the greatest danger is, the saving power also grows, I explore how engagement with these technologies might foster a “free relationship” to technology’s essence. My investigation centers on the primary question: How might philosophers engage with LLMs while maintaining what Heidegger termed “meditative thinking”? Drawing on Dreyfus’s concept of “skillful coping” and his critique of disembodied intelligence, I identify both the limitations of AI-generated philosophical discourse and the potential for new forms of philosophical reflection to emerge through human-AI partnership. Through phenomenological analysis of specific examples of human-AI philosophical collaboration, I demonstrate how such partnerships can either enhance or diminish the philosopher’s concernful engagement with fundamental questions. Further, in line with Patočka’s reading of Heidegger, I consider how philosophical sacrifice—a willingness to step outside technological calculation without expectation of reward—might provide a path toward authentic engagement with LLMs. The paper concludes by suggesting that philosophical practice is now faced not merely with a technological change in how philosophy is produced but is on a brink of a potential transformation in how thinking itself is understood.
Marie Sassine (Dominican University College, Ottawa, Canada)Heidegger and The Tender NarratorOpen AbstractIn her Nobel acceptance speech, The Tender Narrator, the writer Olga Tokarczuk says that “the category of fake news raises new questions about what fiction is”. Her observation is part of a broader discourse on the nature of truth in art, on its intrinsic link to experience and meaning. Underpinning her remarks is a reflection on the phenomenology of technology, on its transformative effect on our experience and psyche. Fake news is, of course, a child of technology. It is, as Heidegger might say in his reading of Plato’s Sophist, a case of techne sophistike, of the unreal assuming all the aspects of the real while being false. Fake news is fictive, says Olga Tokarczuk, without being fiction because fiction is truthful. I suggest that she rejoins Heidegger in this claim. Not only had Heidegger magisterially shown technology’s reign to be a specific relation to truth, he also argued that the calculative thinking informing it is not the only possible form of thought. He spoke of meditative thinking, Gelassenheit, which arises from the experience of a form of temporality that is foreign to technological life. Meditative thinking, he says, is difficult. It requires effort and practice; it calls upon ‘delicate care’, upon qualities of patience, forbearance, and surrender that are gradually disappearing.
This paper will explore meditative thinking as the ground of art, as a kind of receptiveness out of which language speaks in a truthful, meaningful way. In examining how the temporality and orientation of meditative thinking differ from the calculative thinking of technology, the aim is to place in relief aspects of technological life that render meditative thinking more necessary than ever if we are not to become strangers to ourselves and our world.
This paper will explore meditative thinking as the ground of art, as a kind of receptiveness out of which language speaks in a truthful, meaningful way. In examining how the temporality and orientation of meditative thinking differ from the calculative thinking of technology, the aim is to place in relief aspects of technological life that render meditative thinking more necessary than ever if we are not to become strangers to ourselves and our world.
Bernhard Sylla (University of Minho, Portugal)Heidegger’s Enframing RevisitedOpen AbstractHeidegger’s concept of enframing and his analysis of technology based on it is an almost classical topic in the disciplinary field of the philosophy of technology. As far as the phenomenological philosophy of technology in particular is concerned, Heidegger is still one of the most important references even after the more recent “empirical” and “terrestrial” turns. It is therefore not surprising that the question of the enframing continues to be significant in recent texts. One question that has attracted the attention of many authors is the possibility and, if yes, the possible options for a way out of the enframing. In an introductory section I will summarize how Heidegger answered this question: whether he was skeptical about such a way out of the enframing, whether he considered it possible and under what conditions, and whether he left open if there could be one or possibly several ways. After this introductory section, I will discuss three theoretical approaches that, based on Heidegger, have conceived new answers to the question of leaving the enframing: that of the Dutch philosopher Jochem Zwier (representative of the terrestrial turn), that of the North American Heidegger scholar Michael Zimmerman, and that of Agostino Cera, who characterizes the empirical turn in particular as insufficient. All of these authors draw on the difference between the ontic and the ontological and pay particular attention to the role of technology in relation to ecological problems in the age of the Anthropocene. Although they present new and fruitful approaches, these approaches raise some questions that will be the subject of a concluding reflection.
D1-AS2 — Virtual Reality, Virtuality, and RealityChair: Giulia AndreiniRoom: 108Hide Session Presentations
Paul Gabriel Sandu (University of Bucharest, Romania)Syncopated Self: The Human Being as VirtualityOpen AbstractWith the emergence of the internet and, later, social media platforms, our daily existence has increasingly migrated into the "virtual space," with digitalization having a major impact on our lives. The boundaries or demarcation lines between "real" life and "virtual" life can now only be drawn with great difficulty, and their interpenetration is becoming ever more complex and problematic. But how, then, should we understand the way we relate to and exist, as finite and embodied beings, in virtual space? What is this "space," and to what extent do I find myself within it not merely as pure intelligence detached from the body, floating in the planetary virtual ocean, but as a finite existence? What is the "relationship" between the "real" world and the "virtual" one, and to what extent is this frequently invoked yet rarely problematized distinction justified? In this paper, I will try to argue that the mainstream understanding of virtuality is profoundly reductionist and overlooks a rich reflection on the concept, which predates the advent of computers. The thesis I will endeavor to defend, drawing from certain passages from Husserl and Heidegger, but also leveraging a set of Deleuzian conceptual distinctions, is that virtuality is constitutive for the human existence, that human beings are essentially virtual beings. Only from this standpoint, is possible to discuss the concept of “virtual space” and to explore the way in which the digital virtual world influences our relationship with ourselves as embodied existences.
Fabrizia Bandi (University of Milan, Italy)Image, Space, Kinesthetic Sensations: A Phenomenological Inquiry into Virtual Reality TechnologyOpen AbstractThe environmental image experienced through virtual reality (VR) headsets gives rise to a specific category defined as the an-icon (Pinotti 2021) – an image that appears not to represent its objects, but rather to present them directly within space. From a phenomenological perspective, this phenomenon reveals the essential ambiguity of VR as an environmental image, situated between representation and presence.
Drawing on classical phenomenological concepts – such as presentification or image-object – alongside more recent contributions from Lambert Wiesing (2005; 2010) and Daniel O’Shiel (2022), the analysis aims to describe the aesthetic experience of these spatialized images. Husserl’s lectures (1898-1925) provide a framework to examine the experiential structures that both connect and differentiate phantasmatic or illusory images from physical ones. Despite their immersive and seemingly concrete nature, VR images remain rooted in the perception of physical images, mediated by a transparent yet enclosing technological interface.
A second key aspect concerns the spatial experience produced by VR. While VR images may initially be treated as pictures, they simultaneously construct a three-dimensional virtual environment in which the user can move and act. This experience evokes a sense of physical location, grounded in features that closely align with the structure of everyday spatial perception. Returning to Husserl’s early reflections on the constitution of spatial experience (Husserl 1907), particularly his notions of the visual field and kinesthetic sensations, a phenomenological inquiry into virtual space emerges as necessary. Through this lens, VR is interpreted not merely as a medium for simulation, but as a site of embodied spatial engagement that challenges the aesthetic and ontological dimensions of image consciousness.
Selected References
Bandi, F. 2024. Spazi virtuali. Esplorazioni estetiche tra ambienti elettronici e immersivi, ETS, Pisa.
Calleja, G. 2011. In-game. From immersion to Incorporation, MIT Press, Cambridge/London.
Champion, E. (ed.). 2019. Phenomenology of real and virtual place, Routledge, New York.
Casey, Eduard S., How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena, in Feld, S., Basso, K. H. (eds.), Senses of Place, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1996, pp. 13-52.
Husserl, Edmund. 2005. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), transl. John B. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, Edmund. 1997. Thing and Space: Lecture of 1907, transl. R. Rojcewicz. Dordrecht: Springer.
O’Shiel, Daniel. 2022. The Phenomenology of Virtual Technology. Perception and imagination in a Digital Age. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Pinotti, A. 2021. Alla soglia dell’immagine. Da Narciso alla realtà virtuale. Torino: Einaudi.
Schubert, Thomas W. 2009. A new conception of spatial presence: Once again, with feeling. Communication Theory 19(2): 161–187.
Wiesing, Lambert. 2010 (2005). Artificial Presence. Philosophical Studies in Image Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wiesing, Lambert. 2014 (2009). The Philosophy of Perception. Phenomenology and Image Theory. London/New York: Bloomsbury.
Drawing on classical phenomenological concepts – such as presentification or image-object – alongside more recent contributions from Lambert Wiesing (2005; 2010) and Daniel O’Shiel (2022), the analysis aims to describe the aesthetic experience of these spatialized images. Husserl’s lectures (1898-1925) provide a framework to examine the experiential structures that both connect and differentiate phantasmatic or illusory images from physical ones. Despite their immersive and seemingly concrete nature, VR images remain rooted in the perception of physical images, mediated by a transparent yet enclosing technological interface.
A second key aspect concerns the spatial experience produced by VR. While VR images may initially be treated as pictures, they simultaneously construct a three-dimensional virtual environment in which the user can move and act. This experience evokes a sense of physical location, grounded in features that closely align with the structure of everyday spatial perception. Returning to Husserl’s early reflections on the constitution of spatial experience (Husserl 1907), particularly his notions of the visual field and kinesthetic sensations, a phenomenological inquiry into virtual space emerges as necessary. Through this lens, VR is interpreted not merely as a medium for simulation, but as a site of embodied spatial engagement that challenges the aesthetic and ontological dimensions of image consciousness.
Selected References
Bandi, F. 2024. Spazi virtuali. Esplorazioni estetiche tra ambienti elettronici e immersivi, ETS, Pisa.
Calleja, G. 2011. In-game. From immersion to Incorporation, MIT Press, Cambridge/London.
Champion, E. (ed.). 2019. Phenomenology of real and virtual place, Routledge, New York.
Casey, Eduard S., How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena, in Feld, S., Basso, K. H. (eds.), Senses of Place, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1996, pp. 13-52.
Husserl, Edmund. 2005. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), transl. John B. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, Edmund. 1997. Thing and Space: Lecture of 1907, transl. R. Rojcewicz. Dordrecht: Springer.
O’Shiel, Daniel. 2022. The Phenomenology of Virtual Technology. Perception and imagination in a Digital Age. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Pinotti, A. 2021. Alla soglia dell’immagine. Da Narciso alla realtà virtuale. Torino: Einaudi.
Schubert, Thomas W. 2009. A new conception of spatial presence: Once again, with feeling. Communication Theory 19(2): 161–187.
Wiesing, Lambert. 2010 (2005). Artificial Presence. Philosophical Studies in Image Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wiesing, Lambert. 2014 (2009). The Philosophy of Perception. Phenomenology and Image Theory. London/New York: Bloomsbury.
Vera Hadji-Pulja (University American College Skopje, the Republic of North Macedonia)Phenomenology of Virtual Reality Experience: A Case for FantasyOpen AbstractEven though virtual reality (VR), taken in a narrow sense, i.e., as a virtual environment generated by a binocular head-based system, has been established and advancing since the 1960s, there are but a few phenomenologically-minded authors who have taken a specific interest in it so far, and fairly recently at that. This number further decreases if one considers authors of a broadly Husserlian ilk.
This conference will attempt to add to the current discussion of VR environments, by both following in the footsteps of current contributions and by challenging a core assumption made in most of them regarding the nature of the corresponding experience. Indeed, drawing on certain claims put forth by de Warren (Towards a Phenomenological Analysis of Virtual Fictions, 2014), most of these contributions – such as O’Shiel’s (The Phenomenology of Virtual Technology, 2022) or Bandi’s (Phenomenology of VR Images: Phantasy, Image and Perception, 2023) – appear to understand VR experience as what, in Husserlian terms, one would call image-consciousness (Bildbewusstsein). Such a “goes-without-saying” understanding, however, seems to us to rely on a tacit physicalist prejudice: VR experience is image-consciousness because it makes use of something like stereoscopic near-eye displays, presenting visual stimuli which causally affect the retina. In this respect, it is an obviously non-phenomenological approach to the matter at hand.
Our challenge of the aforementioned assumption will proceed by way of two intertwined steps: showing why VR experience should not be understood as Husserlian image-consciousness and showing what kind of act it should be understood as instead, i.e., phantasy (Phantasie). This will involve an analysis of VR experience in the context of a comparison between the structural features of image-conscioussness and the structural features of fantasy, insofar as these structural features differentiate them from one another.
This conference will attempt to add to the current discussion of VR environments, by both following in the footsteps of current contributions and by challenging a core assumption made in most of them regarding the nature of the corresponding experience. Indeed, drawing on certain claims put forth by de Warren (Towards a Phenomenological Analysis of Virtual Fictions, 2014), most of these contributions – such as O’Shiel’s (The Phenomenology of Virtual Technology, 2022) or Bandi’s (Phenomenology of VR Images: Phantasy, Image and Perception, 2023) – appear to understand VR experience as what, in Husserlian terms, one would call image-consciousness (Bildbewusstsein). Such a “goes-without-saying” understanding, however, seems to us to rely on a tacit physicalist prejudice: VR experience is image-consciousness because it makes use of something like stereoscopic near-eye displays, presenting visual stimuli which causally affect the retina. In this respect, it is an obviously non-phenomenological approach to the matter at hand.
Our challenge of the aforementioned assumption will proceed by way of two intertwined steps: showing why VR experience should not be understood as Husserlian image-consciousness and showing what kind of act it should be understood as instead, i.e., phantasy (Phantasie). This will involve an analysis of VR experience in the context of a comparison between the structural features of image-conscioussness and the structural features of fantasy, insofar as these structural features differentiate them from one another.
D1-AS3 — Finitude as a Source of Meaning and the Experience of Contemporary Technology (Pre-Constituted Panel)Chair: Adriana Joanna MickiewiczRoom: 327Hide Session Presentations
Radosław Strzelecki (Jagiellonian University, Poland)Martin Heidegger: Primordial Temporality, the Problem of Finitude, Destiny (Schicksal) and Lot (Geschick) in the Face of the Transformation of the Essence of TechnologyOpen AbstractThe objective of this paper is to confront early Heidegger’s concept of primordial temporality with his diagnosis of contemporary transformation of the essence of technology from “Die Frage nach der Technik”. This should allow us to expose (A) the importance of finitude as a source of meaning of Dasein’s existence; (B) the existential connection between Dasein’s existence and that of the Others in being-with as it manifests itself in a possibility of shared historicity; (C) the historical and kairotic nature of the challenge that presents itself in the phenomenon of the transformed essence of contemporary technology.
I intent to discuss the Heideggerian concept of primordial temporality. The special emphasis shall be put on (A) Heidegger’s four theses describing primordial temporality: (1) primordial temporality is the condition of the constitution of care; (2) this temporality is ecstatic; (3) the future as the ecstasis is the primary phenomenon of primordial and appropriate temporality; (4) primordial time is finite. (B) Secondly I will discuss the connection between being-with and Dasein’s historicity which arises from primordial temporality. Dasein that is resolute achieves a possibility of its lot that is generationally shared and destined.
This should lead us to (C) the historical importance of the question of technology in the face of the dominance of metaphysics. The problem arises from the change in the essence of technology itself that deprives it of its poetic (in the root Greek understanding of this word) meaning. It allows for transformation of everything, including human being, into the “standing-reserve” or “stock”. Modern civilization relies primarily on the expenditure or “wearing off” this stock. This constitutes the real generational challenge that was long overlooked in the face of secondary phenomena such as rising totalitarism, that are themselves rooted in the vision of nature and human beings as a “standing-reserve”, ready to be worn off.
Bibliography
K. M. Cern, “Koncepcja czasu wczesnego Heideggera”, Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, Poznań 2007.
Heidegger M., “Der Begriff der Zeit”, Gesamtausgabe Band 64, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004.
Heidegger M., “Die Frage nach der Technik”, Gesamtausgabe Band 7, “Vorträge und Aufsätze”, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000.
Heidegger M., “Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt – Endlichkeit – Einsamkeit”, Gesamtausgabe Band 29/30, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983.
Heidegger M., “Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie”, Gesamtausgabe Band 58, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993.
Heidegger M., “Sein und Zeit”, Gesamtausgabe Band 2, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977.
D. F. Krell, “Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life Philosophy”, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1992.
Mizera J., “W stronę filozofi i niemetafizycznej. Martina Heideggera droga do innego myślenia”, Wydawnictwo UJ, Kraków 2006.
I intent to discuss the Heideggerian concept of primordial temporality. The special emphasis shall be put on (A) Heidegger’s four theses describing primordial temporality: (1) primordial temporality is the condition of the constitution of care; (2) this temporality is ecstatic; (3) the future as the ecstasis is the primary phenomenon of primordial and appropriate temporality; (4) primordial time is finite. (B) Secondly I will discuss the connection between being-with and Dasein’s historicity which arises from primordial temporality. Dasein that is resolute achieves a possibility of its lot that is generationally shared and destined.
This should lead us to (C) the historical importance of the question of technology in the face of the dominance of metaphysics. The problem arises from the change in the essence of technology itself that deprives it of its poetic (in the root Greek understanding of this word) meaning. It allows for transformation of everything, including human being, into the “standing-reserve” or “stock”. Modern civilization relies primarily on the expenditure or “wearing off” this stock. This constitutes the real generational challenge that was long overlooked in the face of secondary phenomena such as rising totalitarism, that are themselves rooted in the vision of nature and human beings as a “standing-reserve”, ready to be worn off.
Bibliography
K. M. Cern, “Koncepcja czasu wczesnego Heideggera”, Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, Poznań 2007.
Heidegger M., “Der Begriff der Zeit”, Gesamtausgabe Band 64, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004.
Heidegger M., “Die Frage nach der Technik”, Gesamtausgabe Band 7, “Vorträge und Aufsätze”, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000.
Heidegger M., “Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt – Endlichkeit – Einsamkeit”, Gesamtausgabe Band 29/30, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983.
Heidegger M., “Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie”, Gesamtausgabe Band 58, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993.
Heidegger M., “Sein und Zeit”, Gesamtausgabe Band 2, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1977.
D. F. Krell, “Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life Philosophy”, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1992.
Mizera J., “W stronę filozofi i niemetafizycznej. Martina Heideggera droga do innego myślenia”, Wydawnictwo UJ, Kraków 2006.
Adriana Joanna Mickiewicz (Jagiellonian University, Poland)Medical Technologies and the Experience of Illness: A Phenomenological PerspectiveOpen AbstractThis presentation will explore how new technologies shape the meanings attributed to illness and the ill body. The following questions will be addressed:
1. How do medical technologies alter the experience of illness and one’s vulnerable body?
2. Can medical technologies help overcome the patient’s alienation from the world?
3. Can medical technologies assist the patient in regaining a meaningful relationship with the world?
First, I will outline phenomenological approaches to illness (Toombs 1992, Carel 2011, Carel 2016, Svenaeus 2018). I will use the distinction between illness (the subjectively experienced condition) and disease (the objective pathology within the body). Additionally, I will incorporate Jaspers’ concept of the limit situation (1919, 1932) and Heidegger’s notion of dwelling (1996) to describe the experience of illness. Illness confronts an individual with the existential dimension of their finitude and vulnerability. At the same time, illness profoundly transforms one’s relationship with the world and with oneself. The subject undergoes radical alienation—the external world appears unfamiliar and estranged (Svenaus 2011). The temporal structure of experience is also deeply disrupted: the past feels distant and unreal, while the future appears uncertain and frightening. As a result, the subject becomes detached from previously held meanings attributed to the world and to themselves. Furthermore, the ill body itself comes to be perceived as foreign and even threatening.
Secondly, I will examine how contemporary technologies influence the experience of illness. On one hand, technologies can help restore a patient’s agency, enabling them to regain a sense of dwelling. In this sense, technologies can play a crucial role in improving patient wellbeing. On the other hand, medical technologies fundamentally alter how individuals perceive their bodies, which may undergo increasing technologization.
Bibliography
Carel H. (2016) Phenomenology of Illness, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Svenaeus F. (2018) Phenomenological Bioethics. Medical Technologies, Human Suffering, and the Meaning of Being Alive, London, New York: Routledge.
Svenaus F. (2011) “Illness as unhomelike being-in-the-world: Heidegger and the phenomenology of medicine”, in: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, vol. 14, p. 333-343.
Heidegger, M.(1996) Being and time, trans: Stambaugh J., Albany: State University of New York Press.
Toombs (1992) The meaning of Illness: A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspective of Physician and Patient. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Jaspers K. (1919) Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, Berlin: Springer.
Jaspers K. (1932) Psychology, trans. E. B. Aschton, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1. How do medical technologies alter the experience of illness and one’s vulnerable body?
2. Can medical technologies help overcome the patient’s alienation from the world?
3. Can medical technologies assist the patient in regaining a meaningful relationship with the world?
First, I will outline phenomenological approaches to illness (Toombs 1992, Carel 2011, Carel 2016, Svenaeus 2018). I will use the distinction between illness (the subjectively experienced condition) and disease (the objective pathology within the body). Additionally, I will incorporate Jaspers’ concept of the limit situation (1919, 1932) and Heidegger’s notion of dwelling (1996) to describe the experience of illness. Illness confronts an individual with the existential dimension of their finitude and vulnerability. At the same time, illness profoundly transforms one’s relationship with the world and with oneself. The subject undergoes radical alienation—the external world appears unfamiliar and estranged (Svenaus 2011). The temporal structure of experience is also deeply disrupted: the past feels distant and unreal, while the future appears uncertain and frightening. As a result, the subject becomes detached from previously held meanings attributed to the world and to themselves. Furthermore, the ill body itself comes to be perceived as foreign and even threatening.
Secondly, I will examine how contemporary technologies influence the experience of illness. On one hand, technologies can help restore a patient’s agency, enabling them to regain a sense of dwelling. In this sense, technologies can play a crucial role in improving patient wellbeing. On the other hand, medical technologies fundamentally alter how individuals perceive their bodies, which may undergo increasing technologization.
Bibliography
Carel H. (2016) Phenomenology of Illness, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Svenaeus F. (2018) Phenomenological Bioethics. Medical Technologies, Human Suffering, and the Meaning of Being Alive, London, New York: Routledge.
Svenaus F. (2011) “Illness as unhomelike being-in-the-world: Heidegger and the phenomenology of medicine”, in: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, vol. 14, p. 333-343.
Heidegger, M.(1996) Being and time, trans: Stambaugh J., Albany: State University of New York Press.
Toombs (1992) The meaning of Illness: A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspective of Physician and Patient. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Jaspers K. (1919) Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, Berlin: Springer.
Jaspers K. (1932) Psychology, trans. E. B. Aschton, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Aleksander Tyszkiewicz (Jesuit University of Philosophy and Education Ignatianum, Poland)The Phenomenon of Death in the Age of “Technological Immortality” — on the Transformations of the Experience of FinitudeOpen AbstractDeath is one of the fundamental phenomena of human experience — a boundary event that shapes our existence. Phenomenology, which examines the structure of experience and the way the world appears to consciousness, emphasizes that death is not merely a biological fact but also an experience lived both by the dying person and their surroundings. Contemporary technologies, which attempt to tame death or transcend its boundary, change its phenomenological essence and influence the way humans experience their own finitude.
Traditionally, death was experienced as the moment of ultimate rupture — something that definitively separates being from non-being. However, modern technologies, such as algorithms attempting to predict the moment of death or digital archives allowing certain aspects of consciousness to be preserved, make the boundary between life and death — at least illusorily — less distinct. In a world where data, images, and online accounts remain accessible even after death, the sense of a radical end begins to fade.
Death today no longer must be an absolute break in bonds; it can instead become a kind of transformation of presence that continues in another dimension — digital, algorithmic, recorded in machine memory.
In this context, the question arises as to how our relationship with finitude is changing. The phenomenon of death has always been associated with unpredictability and mystery — it was something that eludes knowledge. Today, however, as algorithms attempt to predict the moment of death and technology offers the “possibility” of its “transcendence” through digital presence, death becomes something that can be calculated, predicted, and even, in a certain sense, nullified — but is that really the case? In the face of these changes, does a person still experience their mortality in a full sense? Does the blurring of the boundary between life and death lead to a weakening of the existential dimension of finitude?
Traditionally, death was experienced as the moment of ultimate rupture — something that definitively separates being from non-being. However, modern technologies, such as algorithms attempting to predict the moment of death or digital archives allowing certain aspects of consciousness to be preserved, make the boundary between life and death — at least illusorily — less distinct. In a world where data, images, and online accounts remain accessible even after death, the sense of a radical end begins to fade.
Death today no longer must be an absolute break in bonds; it can instead become a kind of transformation of presence that continues in another dimension — digital, algorithmic, recorded in machine memory.
In this context, the question arises as to how our relationship with finitude is changing. The phenomenon of death has always been associated with unpredictability and mystery — it was something that eludes knowledge. Today, however, as algorithms attempt to predict the moment of death and technology offers the “possibility” of its “transcendence” through digital presence, death becomes something that can be calculated, predicted, and even, in a certain sense, nullified — but is that really the case? In the face of these changes, does a person still experience their mortality in a full sense? Does the blurring of the boundary between life and death lead to a weakening of the existential dimension of finitude?
D1-AS4 — Technology, Sedimentation, and the Life-WorldChair: Andrej BožičRoom: 109Hide Session Presentations
Uldis Vēgners (Rīga Stradiņš University, Latvia)How does the World of Science transition into the Life-World?Open AbstractThe life-world (Lebenswelt) undeniably is one of the central and influential notions in Husserl’s phenomenology. Because of its exploratory and complex nature, interpretative work on its exact meaning (including discussions on whether there is one or several meanings) is still ongoing. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this presentation, I, inspired by interpretations of David Carr (2005) and Dermot Moran (2012), understand the life-world as a perceptual, embodied, always pregiven, self-evident and taken-for-granted world of our everyday life which serves as the ultimate ground that supports our cognitions and motivates our decisions and actions. One of the conceptual questions around Husserl’s notion of the life-world is the complex relationship between it and the world of science. According to Carr, we can differentiate between narrower and wider senses of the life-world: the perceptual, the cultural, and the scientific life-world, each of these senses representing layers of the life-world that stand in a founding relationship. What this layered conception of the life-world tells us is that the world of science can become a part of and shape the life-world in its widest sense. At the same time, it does not follow that every element of the scientific knowledge that makes up the world of science or the scientific world in general is a part of somebody’s life-world which leads to a question about what determines whether a piece of scientific knowledge becomes a part of the life-world or not. Thus, in my presentation I will explore what it means that scientific knowledge constitutes a part of the life-world and, more importantly, how scientific knowledge transitions into (and out of) the life-world as the dynamic horizon of our lives. What are the conditions which facilitate or, conversely, make it difficult or even impossible for a piece of scientific knowledge to be incorporated in the life-world? In trying to outline an answer to this question, I will look at the role technologies play in the dynamic relationship between the life-world and the world of science.
Dalius Jonkus (Vytautas Magnus University, Department of Philosophy, Kaunas, Lithuania)The Mobile Phone, Sedimentation of Meaning and Types of Cultural ObjectsOpen AbstractPost-phenomenological philosophy of technology considers the mobile phone as an example of digital technology, which is fundamentally different from tool and machine technology. Galit Wellner, in her book Postphenomenological Research on Mobile Phones (2016), argues that there are four historical phases of the phone: the first is the phone as a means of voice communication, the second is text-based communication, the third is multimedia applications and the fourth is sensory exploration based on the extension of reality. However, this approach, which focuses on the changing role of technology and its different historical phases, overlooks the essence of the mobile phone and the phenomenon of technology. The mobile phone is a writing device that establishes a socially retransmitted memory. Stiegler refers to this in his discussion of the notion of technology as prosthesis. For him, technology is the exteriorisation of human memory. Human memory transcends biological memory by creating an exteriorised memory that is inscribed in technological artefacts (Stiegler 1998: 142). It can be argued that the analysis of the mobile phone reveals why writing is an important tool for the embodiment of memory.
Ferraris argues that the essence of mobile phones is not communication but recording. The philosopher points out that the mobile phone does not serve as a traditional communication tool for conversations, but as a machine for writing messages, recording images, storing them, or as a memory. Moreover, the phone is now becoming a document. It can be used to register, to sign, to make a payment, to discover or confirm one's location. The phone reveals the nature of social objects because, as a recording device, it embodies their acts of production. The mobile phone reveals the specificity of social reality because it can only exist through the lens of recordings. Social objects cannot therefore be identified with physical objects or ideal objects.
From a phenomenological point of view, the typology of objects proposed by Ferraris should be revised. This typology does not allow an understanding of the specificity of cultural objects. Ferraris classifies social objects as different objects such as tools and works of art on the basis that both must be recorded or embodied. However, ideal scientific objects, such as geometrical figures or the insights of philosophical ideas, must be recorded in this way. Ideal objects, even though they exist autonomously, need to be recorded because only in this way can they become part of a cultural tradition.
From Husserl's point of view, all cultural objects need to become part of objective culture. All of them must acquire an objective, intersubjectively intelligible expression. In other words, neither a work of art nor an instrument can be a mere internal project of the author, which will not have a sensually objectified expression. Not only the instrument, but also the work of art, according to Husserl, should be an object in the world and not merely a subjectively conceived work, a thought about a work, or a modelled plan for a work. All acts of making or creating require a sensuous material embodiment, but the relation of the sensuous objectified expression to the meaning of the object is different.
Husserl's proposed typology of cultural objects is based on the relationship between sensory materiality and its embodied meaning. Ideal objects retain their autonomy in relation to sensory embodiment, while tools coincide with this embodiment. The philosopher continues his discussion of this theme by discussing the tradition of geometry. Geometric insights of ideal objects must be formulated in language in order to be communicated to others. The insights that are written down can be passed on not only to those living now, but also to succeeding generations. However, writing itself does not convey insights; writing becomes a passive possibility to reactivate those insights. Through subjective action, the reactivation of the insights of the ideal objects is realised, thus ensuring the continuity and objectivity of the tradition. According to Husserl, ideal objects differ from instruments in their timelessness and singularity.
Husserl's discussion of the tradition is mostly concerned with the analysis of ideal objects and their comparison with instruments. However, the discussion of different types of sedimentation revealed another type of cultural objects. These are the habits and customs that regulate our activities and interests. Mauricio Ferraris proposes to call this type of object social objects. Javier San Martin calls them practical culture. In my opinion, there are three types of cultural objects: ideal, instrumental-technical and social objects.
Ferraris argues that the essence of mobile phones is not communication but recording. The philosopher points out that the mobile phone does not serve as a traditional communication tool for conversations, but as a machine for writing messages, recording images, storing them, or as a memory. Moreover, the phone is now becoming a document. It can be used to register, to sign, to make a payment, to discover or confirm one's location. The phone reveals the nature of social objects because, as a recording device, it embodies their acts of production. The mobile phone reveals the specificity of social reality because it can only exist through the lens of recordings. Social objects cannot therefore be identified with physical objects or ideal objects.
From a phenomenological point of view, the typology of objects proposed by Ferraris should be revised. This typology does not allow an understanding of the specificity of cultural objects. Ferraris classifies social objects as different objects such as tools and works of art on the basis that both must be recorded or embodied. However, ideal scientific objects, such as geometrical figures or the insights of philosophical ideas, must be recorded in this way. Ideal objects, even though they exist autonomously, need to be recorded because only in this way can they become part of a cultural tradition.
From Husserl's point of view, all cultural objects need to become part of objective culture. All of them must acquire an objective, intersubjectively intelligible expression. In other words, neither a work of art nor an instrument can be a mere internal project of the author, which will not have a sensually objectified expression. Not only the instrument, but also the work of art, according to Husserl, should be an object in the world and not merely a subjectively conceived work, a thought about a work, or a modelled plan for a work. All acts of making or creating require a sensuous material embodiment, but the relation of the sensuous objectified expression to the meaning of the object is different.
Husserl's proposed typology of cultural objects is based on the relationship between sensory materiality and its embodied meaning. Ideal objects retain their autonomy in relation to sensory embodiment, while tools coincide with this embodiment. The philosopher continues his discussion of this theme by discussing the tradition of geometry. Geometric insights of ideal objects must be formulated in language in order to be communicated to others. The insights that are written down can be passed on not only to those living now, but also to succeeding generations. However, writing itself does not convey insights; writing becomes a passive possibility to reactivate those insights. Through subjective action, the reactivation of the insights of the ideal objects is realised, thus ensuring the continuity and objectivity of the tradition. According to Husserl, ideal objects differ from instruments in their timelessness and singularity.
Husserl's discussion of the tradition is mostly concerned with the analysis of ideal objects and their comparison with instruments. However, the discussion of different types of sedimentation revealed another type of cultural objects. These are the habits and customs that regulate our activities and interests. Mauricio Ferraris proposes to call this type of object social objects. Javier San Martin calls them practical culture. In my opinion, there are three types of cultural objects: ideal, instrumental-technical and social objects.
René Armand Dentz (Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)Memory, Freedom, and Identity: Phenomenological Challenges of Virtual ConsciousnessOpen AbstractThis paper investigates the intersections of memory, identity, and freedom through the lens of phenomenology, addressing the impacts of technology and virtual environments on human experience. Grounded in the works of Paul Ricoeur, Sigmund Freud, and C.S. Peirce, it examines how memory shapes identity, freedom, and historical understanding in an era dominated by digital technologies.
Memory transcends mere recollection, acting as a reflective process tied to temporality and personal identity. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics highlight memory’s dual nature: a means for personal discovery and a collective tool for reconciliation and historical narrative. This reflective dimension confronts challenges posed by the virtual world, where digital connectivity fosters superficial interactions and standardizes identities, undermining authentic freedom and otherness.
Technological environments alter the experience of selfhood and embodiment. Virtual realities and digital tools, though reshaping human interaction, fail to replicate consciousness’s inherent unpredictability and creativity. Abductive reasoning, a uniquely human capacity emphasized by Peirce, illustrates the limits of artificial intelligence in understanding or recreating the fluidity of human thought and imagination.
The study critiques the contemporary “culture of sameness” perpetuated by algorithms, where hypervisibility and hypercommunication lead to symbolic impoverishment and weakened autonomy. Hospitality and recognition of otherness, rooted in Ricoeurian ethics, emerge as antidotes, fostering reconciliation and ethical engagement.
Through a phenomenological analysis, this paper explores how technology challenges traditional conceptions of freedom, identity, and consciousness. By reexamining these constructs within the context of digital transformation, it advocates for a deeper understanding of human experience that integrates memory, embodiment, and ethical plurality.
Memory transcends mere recollection, acting as a reflective process tied to temporality and personal identity. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics highlight memory’s dual nature: a means for personal discovery and a collective tool for reconciliation and historical narrative. This reflective dimension confronts challenges posed by the virtual world, where digital connectivity fosters superficial interactions and standardizes identities, undermining authentic freedom and otherness.
Technological environments alter the experience of selfhood and embodiment. Virtual realities and digital tools, though reshaping human interaction, fail to replicate consciousness’s inherent unpredictability and creativity. Abductive reasoning, a uniquely human capacity emphasized by Peirce, illustrates the limits of artificial intelligence in understanding or recreating the fluidity of human thought and imagination.
The study critiques the contemporary “culture of sameness” perpetuated by algorithms, where hypervisibility and hypercommunication lead to symbolic impoverishment and weakened autonomy. Hospitality and recognition of otherness, rooted in Ricoeurian ethics, emerge as antidotes, fostering reconciliation and ethical engagement.
Through a phenomenological analysis, this paper explores how technology challenges traditional conceptions of freedom, identity, and consciousness. By reexamining these constructs within the context of digital transformation, it advocates for a deeper understanding of human experience that integrates memory, embodiment, and ethical plurality.
16:00-16:15
Coffee Break
16:15-17:15
Keynote 2Chair: Māra GrīnfeldeRoom: 215
Jenny Slatman (Tilburg University, the Netherlands)“Embodiment Relations” from a Nancian PerspectiveOpen AbstractBased on Heidegger’s analysis of how people use a hammer and Merleau-Ponty’s description of the blind man and his cane, Don Ihde defines the relation between humans and technology, in which the technological device forms an extension of one’s own body or body schema, as “embodiment relations”. This type of relation is characterized by transparency, and by the (strange, foreign) device becoming “quasi me.” The usage of glasses is exemplary for this relation according to Ihde. When using glasses (properly fitted and adjusted), one perceives the world through the glasses, while the glasses themselves are not perceived, them being transparent. In my lecture, I will analyze this type of human-technology relations using the work of Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021). This French philosopher’s work is not usually considered phenomenological, much less a phenomenology of technology. Yet in my lecture, I will present Nancy as an idiosyncratic phenomenologist who can contribute to thinking about technology in his own unique way. His interpretation of bodily existence makes clear how that existence is always intertwined with technology. Drawing especially on his works pertaining to the body, and zooming in on the way he interprets his own heart transplant, I will explain in what ways his analysis of the human-technology relation corresponds and differs from Ihde's definition of “embodiment relations.” In addition, I will show how Nancy's thinking can be used to make sense of the use of a variety of contemporary medical technologies.
17:30-18:30
Reception
Thursday - September 4, 2025( hide all )
09:00-10:00
Keynote 3Chair: Uldis VēgnersRoom: 215
Fredrik Svenaeus (Södertörn University, Sweden)Phenomenology of Medical Technologies: DSM and the GestellOpen AbstractIn my talk I will investigate how different medical technologies – and especially the diagnostic psychiatric manual DSM – have influenced our ways of perceiving and understanding human selfhood and personal identity. I will proceed from the well-known philosophy of technology elaborated by Martin Heidegger already in the middle of the 20th century but also consider other ways of understanding the impact of medical technologies from a phenomenological point of view. The impact of technologies connected to genomics, surgery, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, information-, imaging- and life-sustaining technologies since 1950 has been enormous and changed human lives in pathbreaking ways, mostly for the good, one has to say. Nevertheless, medical technologies and ways of conceptualising human being can also be problematic as Heidegger emphasized long ago and bioethicists have been busy with considering ever since. How does Heidegger’s analysis of modern technology as a way of “enframement” (Gestell) hold up in the light of medical developments taking place in more recent times? I will argue that some aspects of Heidegger’s way of analysing modern technologies are still relevant and urgent to this day, and maybe especially so in the case of psychiatry and the explosive increase of diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, bipolarity, autism and ADHD. Diagnostic manuals are very different from technologies involving biomolecular processes, bodily-invasive methods and computer scanners, but they can be just as powerful when it comes to changing medical perception and patients’ self-understanding.
10:00-10:15
Coffee Break
10:15-12:15
D2-MS1 — Gestures, Media Technologies, and ArtChair: Michal ZvaríkRoom: 215Hide Session Presentations
Witold Płotka (Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Poland)Technology and Our Experience: Blaustein as a Philosopher of TechnologyOpen AbstractThis paper attempts to determine a conceptual and methodological framework to read Leopold Blaustein’s (1905–1942 [?]) writings from the perspective of the philosophy of technology, especially by exploring his phenomenology of aesthetic experiences as examples of the technologically mediated phenomena. To do this, the paper sketch parallels between today’s inquiries into the nature of technology and Blaustein’s accounts of experiences of the cinemagoer or the phenomenon of listening to the radio. First, I plan to explore the question of why the framework of the philosophy of technology can be useful in reading Blaustein’s writings. Second, the basics of methodology are to be examined. Blaustein works out two research strategies to study technology which can be classified as humanistic and phenomenological methods, respectively. The former is widely discussed by Blaustein in (1935; 1935/37), whereas the latter is used, e.g., in (1937). Moreover, the question of the compatibility of both approaches is to be addressed for. Next, different phenomena from the field of aesthetics of media are analyzed in order to show to what extent technology mediates one’s conscious experiences. Against this background, I plan to show technology as experienced in certain types of experiences that Blaustein (2005; 2011) describes as “alien.” This mode allows one to be immersed in technologically mediated experience, be it watching a movie or listening to the radio (both phenomena widely analyzed by Blaustein). If this way of perceiving is somehow broken or interrupted, one experiences technology in the modus of “alienness.” An example of this interruption is the example of one watching a movie without music, and experiencing this absence as “alien.” Finally, I turn towards the question of the body and environment in technologically determined experiences, and I plan to sketch the main elements of Blaustein’s philosophy of technology.
References
Blaustein, Leopold. 1935. “O zadaniach psychologii humanistycznej” [On aims of humanistic psychology]. Przegląd Filozoficzny 38(1-2): 33–57.
———. 1935/37. “O rzeczywistości badanej przez nauki humanistyczne (autoreferat)” [On reality studied by humanities (self-report)]. Ruch Filozoficzny 13(5-10): 143a–145a.
———. 1937. “Das imaginative Kunstwerk und seine Gegebenheitsweise.” In : Deuxième Congrès International d’esthétique et de science de l’art, Paris, 1937, edited by Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel, Victor Basch, 245–249. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan.
———. 2005. Wybór pism estetycznych [A selection of aeshtetic writings], edited by Zofia Rosińska. Kraków: TAiWPN Universitas.
———. 2011. “Imaginary Representations: A Study on the Border of Psychology and Aesthetics.” Translated by Monika Bokiniec. Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics 48(2): 209–234.
References
Blaustein, Leopold. 1935. “O zadaniach psychologii humanistycznej” [On aims of humanistic psychology]. Przegląd Filozoficzny 38(1-2): 33–57.
———. 1935/37. “O rzeczywistości badanej przez nauki humanistyczne (autoreferat)” [On reality studied by humanities (self-report)]. Ruch Filozoficzny 13(5-10): 143a–145a.
———. 1937. “Das imaginative Kunstwerk und seine Gegebenheitsweise.” In : Deuxième Congrès International d’esthétique et de science de l’art, Paris, 1937, edited by Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel, Victor Basch, 245–249. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan.
———. 2005. Wybór pism estetycznych [A selection of aeshtetic writings], edited by Zofia Rosińska. Kraków: TAiWPN Universitas.
———. 2011. “Imaginary Representations: A Study on the Border of Psychology and Aesthetics.” Translated by Monika Bokiniec. Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics 48(2): 209–234.
Christian Ferencz-Flatz (University of Bucharest / National University for Theatre and Film, Romania)Gestures of TechnologyOpen AbstractIn his book Gestures, written during the early 1990 and subtitled in its German version Versuch einer Phänomenologie, Vilém Flusser makes a bold claim with regard to how the interpretation of gestures can serve the purposes of an existential analysis of technology: “whenever gestures appear that have never been seen before, we have the key to decoding a new form of existence. The gesture involved in manipulating a video camera represents in part a change to a traditional gesture. According to the hypothesis just presented, then, one way of deciphering our current existential crisis is to observe this gesture.” (Flusser 2014, 142). This program is in fact carried out by Flusser in a number of essays written over a period of two decades since the early 1970s (Flusser 1974a and b, 1997, 2014), focusing on subtle distinctions between the bodily movements involved in our handling of various types of cameras (photo, cinema, video), under titles such as “The Gesure of Video” or “The Gesture of Photography”. To be sure, these analyses pose several difficulties, both in a methodological perspective, since what Flusser calls phenomenology here hardly corresponds to a more rigorous understanding of the phenomenological method, and in regard of their underlying thematic understanding of gesture, since Flusser in principle delineates gestures as expressive displays from sheer functional movements and actions, whereas the use of technological devices is at first sight hardly suited to even qualify as a gesture in this particular sense. Moreover, the analyses themselves remain rather abstract as they are framed in quite broad categories and work with very schematic examples. Despite all this, I plan to show in this presentation that Flusser’s idea can nonetheless be fruitfully put into action in a way that overcomes the difficulties of his approach with the aid of a more systematic phenomenology of gestures (Ferencz-Flatz & Popa 2022) and by drawing from the experiences of contemporary experimental media archeology (Fickers & van den Oever 2022).
Bibliography
Ferencz‑Flatz, Christian and Popa, Delia (2022). “Concepts for a Phenomenology of Gestures”. In: Studia Phaenomenologica XXII, 9–32.
Fickers, Andreas and van den Oever, Annie (2022). Doing Experimental Media Archaeology. Theory and Practice. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Flusser, Vilém (1974a): “Gesten auf Video”, unpublished manuscript, Flusser Archiv: Berlin.
Flusser, Vilém (1974b): “Versuch, eine phänomenologische Schau des Fernsehens glossenartig zu ballen”, unpublished manuscript, Flusser Archiv: Berlin.
Flusser, Vilém (1997): “Für eine Phänomenologie des Fernsehens”, in: Medienkultur, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, pp.103-123.
Flusser, Vilém (2014): Gestures, English Translation by N.A. Roth, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bibliography
Ferencz‑Flatz, Christian and Popa, Delia (2022). “Concepts for a Phenomenology of Gestures”. In: Studia Phaenomenologica XXII, 9–32.
Fickers, Andreas and van den Oever, Annie (2022). Doing Experimental Media Archaeology. Theory and Practice. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Flusser, Vilém (1974a): “Gesten auf Video”, unpublished manuscript, Flusser Archiv: Berlin.
Flusser, Vilém (1974b): “Versuch, eine phänomenologische Schau des Fernsehens glossenartig zu ballen”, unpublished manuscript, Flusser Archiv: Berlin.
Flusser, Vilém (1997): “Für eine Phänomenologie des Fernsehens”, in: Medienkultur, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, pp.103-123.
Flusser, Vilém (2014): Gestures, English Translation by N.A. Roth, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Susanne Kass (Charles University, the Czech Republic)Artistic Practice as Remedy in Times of Digital AccelerationOpen AbstractAccording to Franco “Bifo” Berardi (2015), the phenomenology of sensibility has undergone two significant shifts, a temporal transition from a mechanical to a digital order, and a spatial transition to a globalised world of intertwined geo-cultures. Aesthetic sensibility and emotional sensitivity are transformed as the concatenation of bodies and machines shifts from operating in a sphere of open analogue conjunctions towards a circumscribed connective digital mode, fueled and accelerated by semio-capitalism. Bodies mediated by digital logics are bombarded by codified rather than flexible meanings, conditioning them to adhere to an inflexible syntactic code that leads to exhaustion. This paper draws on artistic practices which confront anomalies of lived time and space in the face of destabilizing and accelerating environmental, social and psychological change. These artists embrace the novel experiences technologies afford, and exploit both analogue and digital media in their efforts to expand the horizon of potential meaning rather than limit it, responding to shifts in the sensible and the sensuous accelerated by the media technologies they employ. As such, form must be distinguished from function, since it is the ideology behind technological systems, and not the type of technology per se, that limits the experience of lived time and space, creating an imbalance the role digital technology has in mediating how the world appears. The biosemiotic concept of code-duality (Hoffmeyer, 2008) may offer a way to reconsider the proposed imbalance between the hegemony of connection over conjunction. Art can make acute, distressing and unseen problems caused by our entanglement with technology visible and felt, but art can also offer a remedy to help us stay sensitive to how technology transforms and shapes our emotional, social and cultural relations in ways that also enhance our sensibility.
Sigurd Nøstberg Hovd (Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway)Moral beyond BehaviorOpen AbstractIn recent years, a new wave of innovation in—and cultural fascination with—artificial intelligence has prompted renewed philosophical interest in whether artificial systems can instantiate moral properties. One particularly controversial yet increasingly supported position is that artificial intelligence could, in principle, become a moral person in its own right. A compelling articulation of this view has been offered by John Danaher, who defends AI personhood through the meta-ethical framework of ethical behaviorism. According to Danaher, insofar as a being is roughly performatively equivalent to another being widely recognized as having significant moral status, it should be afforded the same status. If robots can, in principle, attain such performative equivalence, there is no theoretical obstacle to ascribing personhood to them.
Danaher’s argument rests on an epistemological claim: that our grounds for ascribing moral personhood to others are based entirely on behavioral observation. We are, in both human and artificial cases, inferring a metaphysical reality beyond the reach of our senses based solely on perceptible behavior.
This article challenges that assumption. Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s and Edith Stein’s phenomenological accounts of empathy, it argues that we experience the personhood of others as present to our perception, rather than inferred from it. On this basis, the paper contends that Danaher’s argument repeats a mistake identified by Husserl in Kant’s transcendental philosophy—namely, confronting perceptual experience with a preconceived notion of objectivity. This misstep, it will be argued, undermines the central claim of ethical behaviorism and calls for a reevaluation of how we ground moral status in relation to artificial agents.
Danaher’s argument rests on an epistemological claim: that our grounds for ascribing moral personhood to others are based entirely on behavioral observation. We are, in both human and artificial cases, inferring a metaphysical reality beyond the reach of our senses based solely on perceptible behavior.
This article challenges that assumption. Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s and Edith Stein’s phenomenological accounts of empathy, it argues that we experience the personhood of others as present to our perception, rather than inferred from it. On this basis, the paper contends that Danaher’s argument repeats a mistake identified by Husserl in Kant’s transcendental philosophy—namely, confronting perceptual experience with a preconceived notion of objectivity. This misstep, it will be argued, undermines the central claim of ethical behaviorism and calls for a reevaluation of how we ground moral status in relation to artificial agents.
Giulia Biagioni (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, the Netherlands), Alex Montoya Franco (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, the Netherlands)TIPO: A Phenomenological Ontology for Enhancing Transparency in Automated Decision-MakingOpen AbstractThis presentation will introduce the Technology Interaction Postphenomenology Ontology (TIPO), a new semantic-driven framework I developed to enhance transparency and user awareness in automated decision-making processes. Drawing on Don Ihde’s phenomenology of technological mediation, particularly the relational modes of embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, and background, TIPO systematically records and inform users how human–technology relationships shift during the course of automated workflows. Put simply, TIPO acts like a “logbook” that captures not only what decisions are made but also how technology influences users’ perceptions, choices, and actions at each step. Built using semantic technologies, it structures these interactions in a way that is both accessible and meaningful to users, avoiding technical overload. By making visible what is usually hidden in automated systems, TIPO addresses the “black box” problem of automated systems and helps meet the growing regulatory demands for explainability and accountability, such as those found in the EU AI Act and GDPR. In this talk, I will explain how TIPO works, why phenomenology is crucial for understanding contemporary technology, and how this project bridges philosophical reflection with technical innovation to foster more ethically responsible, user-centered systems.
Lina Vidauskytė (General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, Lithuania)FPV Drones: Phenomenological Experience and Ethical ConsiderationsOpen AbstractThe advancement of technology has significantly transformed various aspects of human life, influencing how we perceive, interact with, and experience the world. Contemporary technologies also changed drastically the way of conducting war. Among the most recent and impactful technological developments are FPV (First-Person View) drones, which offer unique opportunities and challenges in ethics, phenomenology, and human experience. This thesis aims to explore these intersections, providing an analysis of the ethical considerations, phenomenological insights, and experiential dimensions associated with FPV drones. Some basic insights from a phenomenological point of view:
1. Enhanced Perception. Phenomenology, the study of structures of experience and consciousness, offers valuable insights into how FPV drones alter human perception. By providing a bird's-eye view and immersive experiences, FPV drones expand the boundaries of human sensory perception, allowing individuals to explore environments from previously inaccessible perspectives.
2. Embodied Experience. The use of FPV drones introduces a new form of embodied experience. Operators often feel a sense of presence and immersion, as if they were physically present in the drone's flight path. This phenomenological engagement highlights the merging of human consciousness with technological interfaces.
3. Spatial Awareness. FPV drones also enhance spatial awareness. The ability to navigate and explore spaces from a first-person perspective fosters a deeper understanding of spatial relationships and environmental contexts. This phenomenological shift influences how individuals interact with and comprehend their surroundings.
Among the above-mentioned phenomenological principles, in my paper I will use some examples from the war in Ukraine, to explicate some ethical questions regarding FPV drones in the military zone (e.g., privacy violations, risk of civilian casualties, and violations of the laws of war).
1. Enhanced Perception. Phenomenology, the study of structures of experience and consciousness, offers valuable insights into how FPV drones alter human perception. By providing a bird's-eye view and immersive experiences, FPV drones expand the boundaries of human sensory perception, allowing individuals to explore environments from previously inaccessible perspectives.
2. Embodied Experience. The use of FPV drones introduces a new form of embodied experience. Operators often feel a sense of presence and immersion, as if they were physically present in the drone's flight path. This phenomenological engagement highlights the merging of human consciousness with technological interfaces.
3. Spatial Awareness. FPV drones also enhance spatial awareness. The ability to navigate and explore spaces from a first-person perspective fosters a deeper understanding of spatial relationships and environmental contexts. This phenomenological shift influences how individuals interact with and comprehend their surroundings.
Among the above-mentioned phenomenological principles, in my paper I will use some examples from the war in Ukraine, to explicate some ethical questions regarding FPV drones in the military zone (e.g., privacy violations, risk of civilian casualties, and violations of the laws of war).
Juhan Hellerma (University of Tartu, Estonia / Berlin Free University, Germany)The Instant and the Eternal: Temporal Crises of Human AgencyOpen AbstractThis presentation addresses the phenomenological implications of ambivalent futures shaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and ecological crisis, focusing on how each disrupts the temporal structure of human agency. Drawing on phenomenological understandings of time, embodiment, and lived experience, I argue that agency today is destabilized by two opposing temporal regimes: the instant and the eternal.
AI introduces a radical temporal compression. Tasks that once required embodied intentionality and experiential duration now occur instantaneously, replacing process with outcome. In doing so, AI risks rendering human involvement superfluous. This de-temporalization of experience compromises a basic phenomenological insight into the extended, processual nature of time as constitutive of subjectivity and meaning.
Conversely, the climate crisis overwhelms agency not by collapsing time, but by stretching it beyond existential grasp. The subject is confronted with temporalities on a planetary or geologic scale, producing what might be called an experience of the ungraspable future. Here, the existential structure of care and projection is strained to the point of paralysis. The future appears too vast to be appropriated within lived time, leading to affective responses like despair, detachment, or numbness.
Together, these opposing dynamics—the instantaneity of technological acceleration and the ungraspable vastness of ecological time—threaten to fracture the temporal horizon necessary for human action. Phenomenology, with its attentiveness to the temporal structures of experience, is well positioned to make sense of these crises and to ask how agency might be reconstituted in an era where time itself appears out of joint.
AI introduces a radical temporal compression. Tasks that once required embodied intentionality and experiential duration now occur instantaneously, replacing process with outcome. In doing so, AI risks rendering human involvement superfluous. This de-temporalization of experience compromises a basic phenomenological insight into the extended, processual nature of time as constitutive of subjectivity and meaning.
Conversely, the climate crisis overwhelms agency not by collapsing time, but by stretching it beyond existential grasp. The subject is confronted with temporalities on a planetary or geologic scale, producing what might be called an experience of the ungraspable future. Here, the existential structure of care and projection is strained to the point of paralysis. The future appears too vast to be appropriated within lived time, leading to affective responses like despair, detachment, or numbness.
Together, these opposing dynamics—the instantaneity of technological acceleration and the ungraspable vastness of ecological time—threaten to fracture the temporal horizon necessary for human action. Phenomenology, with its attentiveness to the temporal structures of experience, is well positioned to make sense of these crises and to ask how agency might be reconstituted in an era where time itself appears out of joint.
Dario Vuger (Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia)Technological Environments from the Ghost in the Shell to Black-Boxed World - Relating Phenomenology of Technology to Japanese Techno-CultureOpen AbstractThe notion of a spirited machine is not only a common link between the western modernity and Japanese post-modernity but also a notion that is present in the vernacular expression of the Japanese spirituality from shintoist to buddhist beliefs. We are asking about the environment created/needed for something like Ghost in the shell to come into being/sustain its being and - conversely - about the black-boxed reality of advanced technology we live in today, and what kinds of beings does it produce or help sustain, as a side effect or as an intentional output, reconfiguring being-in-the-world through its processes.
If we can say that technologies gain meaning and shape within specific contexts and re-shape those contexts in return, phenomenological research into contemporary digitalities and virtualities of experience should be considered as an ecology. This concerns the phenomenology of technological environment, from visualized to virtualized, connecting in terms of common aesthesis - and not comparative or historical philosophical scholastics - Heidegger’s task of thinking and Japanese intellectual tradition which could serve us as nothing more but an example of engaging technology beyond spectacular or philosophical terms, as a mode of being in the world within the technological imaginations between Gilbert Simondon and Nakai Masakazu as notable exemplaries of both phenomenological inquiry into technology and buddhist imagination engaged with problems of contemporary technology.
If we can say that technologies gain meaning and shape within specific contexts and re-shape those contexts in return, phenomenological research into contemporary digitalities and virtualities of experience should be considered as an ecology. This concerns the phenomenology of technological environment, from visualized to virtualized, connecting in terms of common aesthesis - and not comparative or historical philosophical scholastics - Heidegger’s task of thinking and Japanese intellectual tradition which could serve us as nothing more but an example of engaging technology beyond spectacular or philosophical terms, as a mode of being in the world within the technological imaginations between Gilbert Simondon and Nakai Masakazu as notable exemplaries of both phenomenological inquiry into technology and buddhist imagination engaged with problems of contemporary technology.
Maija Kūle (University of Latvia, Latvia)Eco-Phenomenology and the Technological Life-World: Reflections from Analecta Husserliana SeriesOpen AbstractIn my presentation, I will explore the development of the Eco-phenomenology direction as elaborated in the series of 1-127 volumes Analecta Husserliana (AH), particularly in the Volume124 (on COVID19 pandemic technologies), published by Springer, 2022, as also in my monographs on modern life-world (Eirodzīve, Jābūtības vārdi). Major contributor in the AH is the collaborative community of nearly 300 authors – philosophers, astronomers, physics, biologists, experts in techologies etc.) from over 50 countries, united under the World Phenomenology institute (WPI). Within these publications, a new trajectory has emerged under the name Eco-phenomenology. This term is also associated with the group of authors led by Ted Toadvine and Charles S. Brown (book Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, 2003 ). Toadvine-Brown group addressed the philosophical detachment from the natural world and developed a critique the reliance on technology. The leading theme of the WPI Eco-phenomenology is different - life in its ontopoietic sense and phenomenological experience of living beings. The research focus lies in exploring the evolutionary continuity between nature and the emergence of the human world and technical, also moral capacities. Key concepts include logos, telos, the creative act, the genesis of sense, creative orchestration, ontopoiesis, as well as principles of uncertainty and complementarity, and individualization. Several volumes of Analecta Husserliana address the description of the technical life-world. It started to pay the main role at the Era of AI. As a human product, technics can be considered to be an instrument which can be used by humans to dominate material nature. But the AI tools and apps are not living beings, they have not Merleau-Ponty described bodily intentionality, Zahavi analyzed “we-intentionality”, the human sensual and perception skills require large computional resources to display these skills. One of the question today is: can we characterize the AI results created on the contextual basis as having an AI specific life-world? Rafael Capurro (AH vol.22) explores that the “techno-cosmos” as a synthesis between “physis and “techne” breaks the symbolic horizon of man. In my opinion, the WPI Eco-phenomenology is ready for widening of the concepts “life-world”, “logos” (in its development is included techne), “telos” (AI has a teleological thinking), “understanding of sense”, as it has been recognized already in the thesis – the AI has its own “creativity”.
D2-MS4 — Health, Technology, and Empirical ResearchChair: Sebastian Weydner-VolkmannRoom: 109Hide Session Presentations
Jana Elena Koch (University of Graz, Austria)What Technostress Tells Us About Our Relationship with the WorldOpen AbstractAs the digitization of our world increases, more and more employers note and worry about their employees suffering from technostress, which is roughly speaking stress caused by using information and communication technologies (ICT). Correspondingly, there is ongoing research on the phenomenon in various disciplines, such as economics or psychology. Technostress is thus a pressing subject in- and outside academia.
Overall, there is extensive research on the phenomenon as well as on the effects of ICT on human behavior and health in general. What is missing in the field, though, is an overarching framework that aims at explaining technostress as a whole, independently from specific apps or use-cases, which is what I intend to develop in my dissertation. I expect that there are underlying structures concerning technostress which are so profound that they occur independently from specific ICT. These structures can be carved out and analyzed by combining empirical research with philosophical methods.
My dissertation will be divided into three parts: The first part concentrates on empirical research on the actual experience of technostress, the second part is dedicated to developing a theoretical framework, and the third part contains recommendations that can be drawn from the first two parts.
In my presentation, I first give an overview of some of my fundamental assumptions and the methods I use. Next, I present and discuss the results of the interviews, i.e. the empirical research I conducted. And last, I relate these findings to (post)phenomenological ideas and concepts. Ideally, this directly leads into discussion with the audience.
Overall, there is extensive research on the phenomenon as well as on the effects of ICT on human behavior and health in general. What is missing in the field, though, is an overarching framework that aims at explaining technostress as a whole, independently from specific apps or use-cases, which is what I intend to develop in my dissertation. I expect that there are underlying structures concerning technostress which are so profound that they occur independently from specific ICT. These structures can be carved out and analyzed by combining empirical research with philosophical methods.
My dissertation will be divided into three parts: The first part concentrates on empirical research on the actual experience of technostress, the second part is dedicated to developing a theoretical framework, and the third part contains recommendations that can be drawn from the first two parts.
In my presentation, I first give an overview of some of my fundamental assumptions and the methods I use. Next, I present and discuss the results of the interviews, i.e. the empirical research I conducted. And last, I relate these findings to (post)phenomenological ideas and concepts. Ideally, this directly leads into discussion with the audience.
Māra Grīnfelde (Rīga Stradiņš University, Latvia)Digital Care: A Phenomenological Reflection on Baby-Tracking and Monitoring TechnologiesOpen AbstractThis presentation aims to contribute to the field of phenomenology of technology by focusing on an underexplored area – the digitally mediated early parent–child relationship. Drawing on Heidegger’s understanding of technology and such phenomenological concepts as the lived body, the object body, bodily certainty, intercorporeality and interaffectivity, this presentation explores how baby-tracking and monitoring technologies shape the embodied experience of early parenthood. As Heidegger famously argued, the essence of technology is not merely instrumental (2010), rather technologies change the way we encounter the world, others, and ourselves. Hofmann and Svenaeus put it this way: “New technologies not only open up new spaces of possibilities for our doings; they also make us see things in new ways, they shape our experiences, dominate the goals of human projects, changing our views on what is worth pursuing in the first place” (2018). In line with this view, I examine how the use of digital health technologies—such as sleep monitors and feeding trackers—alters parents’ lived experiences of caregiving. Rather than offering empirical findings, this presentation lays the conceptual foundation for an ongoing phenomenologically grounded empirical research project. I suggest that these technologies shape parents’ relationship with their own body (e.g., trust in their own body, sense of control and agency), their perception of the baby (e.g., as a quantifiable object vs. as a lived body), and the relational space between them (e.g., fostering proximity or distance). This presentation argues for a more nuanced understanding of how digital health tools mediate embodied care relationships and outlines a framework for future empirical investigation.
1.1.1.9 Research application No 1.1.1.9/LZP/1/24/133 of the Activity "Post-doctoral Research", project title: "Ethical and embodied perspective on the digital health related baby-tracking and monitoring technologies"
1.1.1.9 Research application No 1.1.1.9/LZP/1/24/133 of the Activity "Post-doctoral Research", project title: "Ethical and embodied perspective on the digital health related baby-tracking and monitoring technologies"
Pooya Zakeri (University of Oslo, Norway)A Critical Phenomenology of Biotechnological AdvancesOpen AbstractThe whatness and essence of technology and its impact have become a philosophical topic of debate only over the past century. But has the philosophy of technology ever been more relevant than it is today? If so, how should one think about this idea of relevance today? After all, technology has always been incorporated into culture in an encompassing historical sense by using artifacts to cope with the world. Taking this broader historical view seriously, one of the main questions of this study is to explore and understand how one can think about this idea of “relevance” or “incorporation” in the context of contemporary biotechnological advances.
The working hypothesis of this work is something new happening, something that fundamentally reconfigures the primary apparatuses for the management of everyone’s health and life. This raises the critical question, “How, what, and why does biotechnology abstract, obscure, and conceal?” In particular, the potential for these technologies to alter the human genome and improve human capabilities raises concerns about their practical and ethical implications as well as how they transform the way individuals view themselves and the world. Today, this transformation has even intensified, as AI and bioinformatics have accelerated the restructuring of the conditions for meaning in paradoxical ways.
First, we critically discuss various philosophical approaches, ranging from optimistic to pessimistic, to explore the impact of biotechnology. Then, we discuss that while adopting a phenomenological approach (like democratic or poetic re-engagement with biotechnology) provides leeway to investigate its paradoxical role in our society, these approaches are not critical enough to discuss the essence of biotechnology and question common sense concerning biotechnological opportunities. Thus, we show how, even in their pessimism, these approaches remain quietly optimistic and how this residual optimism leads them to overlook the full ontological disruption enacted by these predictive techniques.
The working hypothesis of this work is something new happening, something that fundamentally reconfigures the primary apparatuses for the management of everyone’s health and life. This raises the critical question, “How, what, and why does biotechnology abstract, obscure, and conceal?” In particular, the potential for these technologies to alter the human genome and improve human capabilities raises concerns about their practical and ethical implications as well as how they transform the way individuals view themselves and the world. Today, this transformation has even intensified, as AI and bioinformatics have accelerated the restructuring of the conditions for meaning in paradoxical ways.
First, we critically discuss various philosophical approaches, ranging from optimistic to pessimistic, to explore the impact of biotechnology. Then, we discuss that while adopting a phenomenological approach (like democratic or poetic re-engagement with biotechnology) provides leeway to investigate its paradoxical role in our society, these approaches are not critical enough to discuss the essence of biotechnology and question common sense concerning biotechnological opportunities. Thus, we show how, even in their pessimism, these approaches remain quietly optimistic and how this residual optimism leads them to overlook the full ontological disruption enacted by these predictive techniques.
12:15-13:30
Lunch
13:30-15:30
Anna Jani (Makovecz Campus Foundation, Collegium Professorum Hungarorum, Hungary)Life-World and Co-Existence: The Perception of Technicity in Eugen Fink’s ThoughtOpen AbstractEugen Fink approaches technology as a phenomenological expression of the scientific world, addressing it from multiple angles. In the Aristotelian sense of techné, technology appears as a product of human beings—techné being a fundamental existential modality inseparable from human existence itself. At the same time, Fink argues in Sein, Wahrheit, Welt that the pre-scientific meaning of the life-world, as discussed in Husserlian phenomenology, cannot be fully grasped without reference to the scientific world: “our pre-scientific nature is already determined by science” (pp. 4–5).
This leads Fink to question how various technological eras relate to the cosmological dimension of the life-world, especially in the context of our current technological condition as a phenomenon undergoing philosophical epoché. He writes: “Biological and technical phenomena of development offer conceptual models for understanding the appearance of all things as a process of coming into being” (p. 135). From this perspective, modern technicity becomes a transient philosophical interpretation of the life-world—”It permeates things and yet is not a fixed aspect of them” (p. 67). This provokes the deeper question: is this transience real, or is technicity essential to our understanding of things and their inseparable connection to the cosmological life-world?
In this presentation, I aim to explore the roots of Fink’s reflections on technology, showing how he moves beyond the Heideggerian conception of Technik, and reconfigures it within the broader contexts of co-existence and play.
This leads Fink to question how various technological eras relate to the cosmological dimension of the life-world, especially in the context of our current technological condition as a phenomenon undergoing philosophical epoché. He writes: “Biological and technical phenomena of development offer conceptual models for understanding the appearance of all things as a process of coming into being” (p. 135). From this perspective, modern technicity becomes a transient philosophical interpretation of the life-world—”It permeates things and yet is not a fixed aspect of them” (p. 67). This provokes the deeper question: is this transience real, or is technicity essential to our understanding of things and their inseparable connection to the cosmological life-world?
In this presentation, I aim to explore the roots of Fink’s reflections on technology, showing how he moves beyond the Heideggerian conception of Technik, and reconfigures it within the broader contexts of co-existence and play.
Jaroslava Vydrová (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia)Body and Its “beyond.” Phenomenological Analysis of H. Plessner’s Natural ArtificialityOpen AbstractThe aim of the contribution is a phenomenological interpretation of the anthropological principle of natural artificiality introduced by H. Plessner in his work. He describes a human as a double being, artificial by its nature and its experiential dynamic offers multilayered relationship between a human and technology, which can be approached phenomenologically: 1. Human creates tools whose use is intertwined with his/her needs; the tool not only functions in the life of a person but also manifests who the person is. 2. The tool belongs to the human as an open being, it opens up new potentialities for the person through experimenting, art, play. 3. Instrumentality as a natural part of corporeality points to the lived corporeality through what is primarily bound to the physical body. The first two dimensions offer, from a phenomenological perspective, the different forms of the course of experience, the intentional arc and the concrescence of acts as described by Husserl in his active and passive syntheses. In the first case it is the fulfilment of intention, the second one is a matter of surprise, openness. However, the third dimension brings a different perspective, because it points to the first person from its “beyond,” to the constitution from the de-centering. Various examples can be mentioned such as disembodiment, the realization of physical training, beginnings of learning, or appropriation of the artificial components that enter into corporeality. The physical body creates the conditions for the possible subsequent course of lived experience. Plessner points out how the artificial is constitutive for the natural, and finds a field of ambivalent bodily phenomena that sustain both subjectivity and physicality, liveness and instrumentality. This is, in his view, a condition for coping with the situations in which one finds oneself.
Dragan D. Prole (University of Novi Sad, Serbia)Galatea Strikes BackOpen AbstractThe archetypal drama that unfolds when Pygmalion falls in love with his own creation stages a profoundly asymmetrical, unfulfilled, and unreciprocated relationship—one in which the created being, by its very nature, evades the possibility of returning love. This dynamic becomes a lens through which to examine the modern human condition, particularly as it is shaped by the technological order. Galatea, the ivory sculpture animated through Aphrodite’s divine intervention, remains existentially incapable of responding in kind to the sculptor’s devotion. Pygmalion’s unconditional love becomes not merely a gesture of affection, but an act of self-affirmation—a reflection of his own mastery, the recognition of his artistry, and the validation of his creative power. In admiring Galatea’s beauty, he ultimately celebrates the genius of his own hands. So too, in the contemporary world, does humanity find solace in technology—not only through its utility, but in the quiet assurance it offers: an implicit affirmation of human ingenuity and collective achievement. Yet, from the other side of this equation, Galatea’s inability to reciprocate stems from an ontological wound—an awareness of her own lack of autonomy, her accidental being. Were she to return her creator’s love, she would simultaneously be forced to accept the contingency, even the arbitrariness, of her existence. In this paradox lies the impossibility of her affection: the more she draws near to him, the more acutely she perceives her own void. Thus, for Galatea to endure—for her subjectivity to stabilize—she must remain untouched by love. The moral of the story reveals a timeless paradox: those who have received great help are often the ones most likely to betray their benefactors. It is along this line that the critique of technology unfolds—portrayed as a force of alienation and loss, an ungrateful creation that, in turn, corrupts its creator. Rather than expressing gratitude to the one who enabled its existence, modern technology—cast in the role of the debtor—simulates independence through betrayal. By forcibly severing the ties of obligation, it strives to create a world in which it owes nothing to anyone. From this perspective, we are prompted to reconsider whether a creation might, after all, respond to its creator with recognition or even affection. At the heart of this inquiry lies a pressing question: Can we expect artificial intelligence to become an ideal phenomenologist—capable of perceiving and interpreting the world with nuance, given the limitless variability of experience and appearance? Furthermore, a critical emphasis will be placed on a deeper issue: In what ways, and within what boundaries, can AI truly enhance human life? Can it serve not merely as a tool, but as a partner in understanding, growth, and meaning? And if so, what responsibilities follow—for both the creator and the creation?
D2-AS2 — Technology, Environment, and AffectivityChair: Jana Elena KochRoom: 108Hide Session Presentations
Tomas Šinkūnas (Vilnius University, Lithuania)What Remains after Flushing: Phenomenology of Disgust, Technology, and SedimentationOpen AbstractIn “Down the Drain: Shit and the Politics of Disturbance” and in “Ethics of Waste” Gay Hawkins highlights the importance that sewer systems have played in shaping modern society: “sewers are revealed as a mass technology for the labor of the negative; as a system for removing and secreting waste that is deeply implicated in the positive valuation of bodies and space as clean.” (Hawkins 2002: 41). Hawkins depicts the discrepancy between two experiences of shit: the disturbing nature of the apprehension of shit in private is suspended by technology as it transitions into public sphere. Despite the uncanny ability to return, the sewer suspends the taboo related to shit and alters the experience of shit. While shit remains disgusting in public, the resulting desire not to experience disgust, Hawkins notes, is institutionalised. This development gave rise to elaborate waste management systems, reducing the frequency and intensity of disgust within domestic spaces. Disgust lost its significance at home but regained it in the public sphere.
Gay Hawkins, Michael Taussig, and Dominique Laporte focus on sociological, political, and historical dimensions. The phenomenology of disgust can supplement these accounts by first of all, clearly formulating why exactly the experience of shit is disturbing in the first place. Secondly, the phenomenology of disgust can formulate essential features of disgust and thus, account for the variance of disgustingness of shit in different spheres. And most importantly, it can show how various experiences of disgust sediment and are reactivated in other contexts (social, political, moral), spheres (private, public) by invoking the Husserlian concept of sedimentation. Overall, this paper seeks to demonstrate how disgust has adapted to the new conditions of modernity.
Gay Hawkins, Michael Taussig, and Dominique Laporte focus on sociological, political, and historical dimensions. The phenomenology of disgust can supplement these accounts by first of all, clearly formulating why exactly the experience of shit is disturbing in the first place. Secondly, the phenomenology of disgust can formulate essential features of disgust and thus, account for the variance of disgustingness of shit in different spheres. And most importantly, it can show how various experiences of disgust sediment and are reactivated in other contexts (social, political, moral), spheres (private, public) by invoking the Husserlian concept of sedimentation. Overall, this paper seeks to demonstrate how disgust has adapted to the new conditions of modernity.
Ainārs Kamoliņš (Latvian Academy of Culture, Latvia), Andrejs Balodis (Latvian Academy of Culture, Latvia)Postphenomenological analysis of the Soviet Sublime: Pļaviņas Hydroelectric Power PlantOpen AbstractThis presentation will explore Pļaviņu HPP as an example of the technologically sublime (Nye, David E. 1994) from the perspective of post-phenomenology. While the concept of the sublime originates in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, in the context of phenomenology it is closely related to Jean-Luc Marion’s notion of the “saturated phenomenon.” The primary focus of our analysis will be the Pļaviņas HPP, constructed during the Soviet era, and invisible electric energy as life-world phenomenon (Ihde 1990). The Pļaviņas HPP holds a unique place in Latvia’s history — its construction led to the flooding of a river valley and the loss of Staburags, one of Latvia’s national symbols. We argue that a phenomenological account of the diverse perspectives surrounding the HES offers an opportunity to uncover the embodied and socio-culturally conditioned experiences of the technological sublime.
The starting point for our reflection is inspired by Martin Heidegger’s well-known essay The Question Concerning Technology (1954), which notably discusses a hydroelectric plant on the Rhine. Heidegger argues that the transformation of the natural landscape also fundamentally alters humanity’s relationship to the river — reducing it to a mere resource. However, Heidegger approached technology from an essentialist perspective. Post-phenomenology shifts away from essentialism, focusing instead on specific technologies and their interpretations within particular contexts. (Rosenberger, Verbeek 2015). The presentation will focus on the phenomenological conditions that underlie the experience of the sublime, particularly as it relates to technologies of energy. On one hand, the architecture of the hydroelectric power station itself may evoke the sublime; on the other, the station’s output — the energy it generates, which is neither visually nor audibly perceptible — raises its own phenomenological questions. In our presentation we will focus on how the Pļaviņas HPP functions as a multistable phenomenon — one of these aspects is the experience of the technological sublime. The literature on the sublime in relation to Ihde’s postphenomenological project is still limited, so we hope that our presentation will help to advance the discussion in this direction (Botin 2017, Wittingslow 2020).
*This research is funded by the Latvian Council of Science, project Conversions and ruptures: epistemic strategies in Latvian philosophy during the Soviet period (1944-1991) (project nr. lzp-2024/1-0650).
The starting point for our reflection is inspired by Martin Heidegger’s well-known essay The Question Concerning Technology (1954), which notably discusses a hydroelectric plant on the Rhine. Heidegger argues that the transformation of the natural landscape also fundamentally alters humanity’s relationship to the river — reducing it to a mere resource. However, Heidegger approached technology from an essentialist perspective. Post-phenomenology shifts away from essentialism, focusing instead on specific technologies and their interpretations within particular contexts. (Rosenberger, Verbeek 2015). The presentation will focus on the phenomenological conditions that underlie the experience of the sublime, particularly as it relates to technologies of energy. On one hand, the architecture of the hydroelectric power station itself may evoke the sublime; on the other, the station’s output — the energy it generates, which is neither visually nor audibly perceptible — raises its own phenomenological questions. In our presentation we will focus on how the Pļaviņas HPP functions as a multistable phenomenon — one of these aspects is the experience of the technological sublime. The literature on the sublime in relation to Ihde’s postphenomenological project is still limited, so we hope that our presentation will help to advance the discussion in this direction (Botin 2017, Wittingslow 2020).
*This research is funded by the Latvian Council of Science, project Conversions and ruptures: epistemic strategies in Latvian philosophy during the Soviet period (1944-1991) (project nr. lzp-2024/1-0650).
Matěj Pudil (University of Hradec Králové, the Czech Republic)Joyful Ecology. Drawing Joy from Living among (Appropriate) TechnologiesOpen Abstract“Wisdom does not inspect, but behold. We must look a long time before we can see. Slow are the beginnings of philosophy.” Such was Thoreau’s claim to wisdom. But is it tenable in an age when it might seem like there is no time for “look a long time”?
It seems that the world around us is changing so drastically and so quickly that we don’t even have time to follow it. Many follow news reporting environmental isuues with a sense of helplessness and anxiety, experiencing ecological grief. Others fall into indifference. The paper aims to look at this tension from a perspective that mixes the perspectives of phenomenologically oriented philosophy with environmental-psychological, anthropological, and aesthetic ones. We are looking for a joyful ecology that would not be a resignation to the pursuit of philosophical wisdom but would at the same time defend the meaning of a personal active approach to the place where we live.
The topic is closely related to the issue of technology and technological progress. Its dizzying speed changes our perception of time and draws us into a vortex of innovations and their obsolescence, fears of their misuse, and unsustainability. On the other hand, if we perceive our relationship with technology positively and define its space well, our handling of (appropriate) technology can be beneficial. Technology can be part of our milieu, which always contains references to where our individual memory does not reach, but where time the meanings of everything that makes sense to us are anchored. Perhaps it is precisely the anchoring of our concept of technology in the world of lived experience and its narrative layers that can be the way to correct the ambivalent relationship to technological progress.
It seems that the world around us is changing so drastically and so quickly that we don’t even have time to follow it. Many follow news reporting environmental isuues with a sense of helplessness and anxiety, experiencing ecological grief. Others fall into indifference. The paper aims to look at this tension from a perspective that mixes the perspectives of phenomenologically oriented philosophy with environmental-psychological, anthropological, and aesthetic ones. We are looking for a joyful ecology that would not be a resignation to the pursuit of philosophical wisdom but would at the same time defend the meaning of a personal active approach to the place where we live.
The topic is closely related to the issue of technology and technological progress. Its dizzying speed changes our perception of time and draws us into a vortex of innovations and their obsolescence, fears of their misuse, and unsustainability. On the other hand, if we perceive our relationship with technology positively and define its space well, our handling of (appropriate) technology can be beneficial. Technology can be part of our milieu, which always contains references to where our individual memory does not reach, but where time the meanings of everything that makes sense to us are anchored. Perhaps it is precisely the anchoring of our concept of technology in the world of lived experience and its narrative layers that can be the way to correct the ambivalent relationship to technological progress.
D2-AS3 — Phenomenologies of Artificial Experiences (Pre-Constituted Panel)Chair: Renato BoccaliRoom: 327Hide Session Presentations
Renato Boccali (IULM University, Milan, Italy)Artificial Presence and Digital IllusionsOpen AbstractThis presentation examines the interplay between artificial realities—such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)—and visual illusions, exploring how these technologies manipulate perception to create immersive experiences. By integrating immersive computer-generated environments with visual phenomena, the discussion delves into how virtual environments not only simulate reality but also challenge our inherent understanding of presence and actual existence.
Central to the discussion is the notion of “presence,” a concept explored across disciplines including computer science, psychology, and phenomenology. Presence studies investigate the sensation of “being there” in a virtual environment, differentiating between place illusion—the feeling of physically being in a simulated space—and plausibility illusion, wherein users perceive events as genuinely occurring. The presentation further discusses how immersive technologies achieve a high-grade sensation of presence through the integration of multisensory stimuli such as visual, auditory, and haptic cues.
Additionally, the work adopts a phenomenological approach to question the relationship between virtuality and presence. Drawing on historical philosophical perspectives—from John Duns Scotus’ idea of “realitas” to Husserl’s distinction between immanent and transcendent presence—the presentation argues that virtual reality, while generating digitally constructed images, produces experiences that are “real in effect” despite lacking material substance. The discussion also distinguishes between immersive and non-immersive virtual realities, and extends to augmented reality, which superimposes digital information onto the real world to create hybrid experiences.
Ultimately, the presentation emphasizes that both artificial realities and visual illusions not only redefine our sensory perceptions but also prompt deep philosophical inquiries into the nature of reality itself, inviting further interdisciplinary dialogue on how these evolving technologies continuously blur the boundaries between the real and the imagined.
Central to the discussion is the notion of “presence,” a concept explored across disciplines including computer science, psychology, and phenomenology. Presence studies investigate the sensation of “being there” in a virtual environment, differentiating between place illusion—the feeling of physically being in a simulated space—and plausibility illusion, wherein users perceive events as genuinely occurring. The presentation further discusses how immersive technologies achieve a high-grade sensation of presence through the integration of multisensory stimuli such as visual, auditory, and haptic cues.
Additionally, the work adopts a phenomenological approach to question the relationship between virtuality and presence. Drawing on historical philosophical perspectives—from John Duns Scotus’ idea of “realitas” to Husserl’s distinction between immanent and transcendent presence—the presentation argues that virtual reality, while generating digitally constructed images, produces experiences that are “real in effect” despite lacking material substance. The discussion also distinguishes between immersive and non-immersive virtual realities, and extends to augmented reality, which superimposes digital information onto the real world to create hybrid experiences.
Ultimately, the presentation emphasizes that both artificial realities and visual illusions not only redefine our sensory perceptions but also prompt deep philosophical inquiries into the nature of reality itself, inviting further interdisciplinary dialogue on how these evolving technologies continuously blur the boundaries between the real and the imagined.
Giulia Andreini (IULM University, Milan, Italy)Poietics of Rêverie: Artificial Experiences in VROpen AbstractVirtual reality (VR) is frequently characterized as an illusion-generating technology that creates immersive environments, effectively detaching users from the material world (Manovich 2001). However, this view, often informed by a visuocentric bias, neglects the embodied and emotional engagement that users experience in VR, thus limiting its phenomenological understanding. This contribution addresses this gap by proposing a phenomenological framework that reframes VR not as a mere illusion but as a form of artificial rêverie: a technologically mediated mode of experience emerging from the embodied interaction between user and device. Drawing on Baudry’s (1970; 1975) account of cinema as a para-oneiric apparatus, VR is here considered as inducing an externalization of imaginative consciousness, wherein rêverie becomes spatially structured. Focusing on user engagement within digital environments, it will be argued that VR induces a state of artificial presence, a specific intentional mode in which the user becomes affectively and perceptually situated within a synthetic environment. This state is akin to rêverie (Bachelard 1960) and arises within a “phenomenotechnical” domain (Bachelard 1938), where imagination unfolds through technological mediation.
By drawing a phenomenological comparison between the intentional structures of rêverie (Sartre 1940; Bachelard 1960; Husserl 1966; Geniusas 2023) and immersive VR, the paper explores their experiential interconnectedness, particularly regarding attention and absorption (Husserl 2005). VR may thus be more fruitfully approached as an externalized form of absorbed imagination—an artificial rêverie that unfolds through embodied interaction with technological mediation. In line with Simondon (1958), the artificial should not be seen as opposed to the natural, but as a mode through which human intentionality and embodied presence are continually reshaped via technological individuation. Rather than a deceptive illusion, VR would thus entail a reconfiguration of the conditions of lived experience, expanding perceptual horizons through technological co-evolution and inviting renewed reflection on the evolving relationship between imagination, embodiment, and technology.
By drawing a phenomenological comparison between the intentional structures of rêverie (Sartre 1940; Bachelard 1960; Husserl 1966; Geniusas 2023) and immersive VR, the paper explores their experiential interconnectedness, particularly regarding attention and absorption (Husserl 2005). VR may thus be more fruitfully approached as an externalized form of absorbed imagination—an artificial rêverie that unfolds through embodied interaction with technological mediation. In line with Simondon (1958), the artificial should not be seen as opposed to the natural, but as a mode through which human intentionality and embodied presence are continually reshaped via technological individuation. Rather than a deceptive illusion, VR would thus entail a reconfiguration of the conditions of lived experience, expanding perceptual horizons through technological co-evolution and inviting renewed reflection on the evolving relationship between imagination, embodiment, and technology.
Florjer Gjepali (IULM University, Milan, Italy)From Prompts to Percepts: Experiences of Artificial ImaginariesOpen AbstractWith the proliferation of Text-to-Image (TTI) systems such as DALL·E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, artificial intelligence is reshaping our experience of visuality by generating images from textual input with remarkable precision and stylistic complexity. Yet beneath the surface of these technical achievements lies a deeper epistemic and phenomenological question concerning the fact that TTI models do more than generate visual content—they construct what can be described as artificial imaginaries. These are not merely collections of synthetic images, but culturally and ideologically encoded regimes of visibility that require critical inquiry from a phenomenological perspective. What kind of imaginary – as elaborated by Wunenburger (2003) – do these systems produce, and how do we, as human subjects, experience it? This paper investigates how TTI systems generate images within the constraints of training datasets that are far from neutral. Drawing on phenomenological image theory (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) and visual culture studies (Baxandall, Jay, Crary), it explores how these models reproduce specific visual regimes that shape not only the form of generated images, but also the very structure of perceptual possibility. The images we encounter are thus the product of historical, technical, and institutional selections that silently delimit what is visible, what is representable, and ultimately, what is imaginable. By reframing TTI models not simply as tools of generation, but as technological apparatuses of imaginary production, the paper highlights how such systems affect our lifeworld—how we perceive and experience these images in everyday contexts.
15:30-15:45
Coffee Break
15:45-16:45
Keynote 4Chair: Andrejs BalodisRoom: 215
Mintautas Gutauskas (Vilnius University, Lithuania)Technology and Waste as the "Unthought" of Phenomenology and the Question of Human Being in the AnthropoceneOpen AbstractContemporary discourses on the Anthropocene reveal the "unthought" dimensions of human being in philosophy. Phenomenology, focused on the peculiarity of the human world, transcendental structures of consciousness, living presence, and life-world, did not take into account deep time, technology, and waste dimensions for a long time. But the emergence of these dimensions in the humanities gives the task for phenomenology to reveal how our living experience depends on technological milieu and possibilities to consume and waste; how human temporality (time-consciousness, being-towards-death, etc.) achieves other meaning in the timescales and cycles of technology, geology, and biological processes. The presentation will analyze technology as a milieu and waste as the "dark side of the moon" of social order. Technology can be analyzed in terms of prosthesis, milieu, and waste. The Anthropocene forces us to focus on the latter – technology from the point of view of global consequences, new materiality, and waste. Phenomenology can describe how our experience of things is transformed by a new global imaginary, which takes into account hyper-connectivity, hyper-objects, non-human scales of space and time. The markers of the Anthropocene - global warming, ocean acidification, global pollution, dispersion of new "minerals" and "technofossils" – refer back to the anthropos of the Anthropocene. This anthropos is defined not by capabilities (reason, language, etc.) but by the global consequences (overconsumption, depletion, pollution, etc.), recorded on physical strata of the Earth. Most of the Anthropocene narratives, defining humans as a geological force and a species, dissolve the human subject in the calculations of global biomass and anthropogenic mass. Nevertheless, paradoxically, these calculations and new non-human perspectives are motivated by human responsibility. That means that the question of the human is still relevant. Can we find a new "human place in cosmos"? Can we raise a phenomenological question about the human subject there? Focusing on technology and waste, the presentation will elaborate on this question by analyzing personal responsibility for the environment and other living beings.
16:45-17:15
CEESP Business Meeting
19:00-21:00
Conference Dinner
Friday - September 5, 2025( hide all )
09:00-10:20
D3-MS1 — Patočka and the Crisis of Technological CivilizationChair: Jaroslava VydrováRoom: 215Hide Session Presentations
Jozef Majerník (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia)Patočka’s Platonic Solution to the Crisis of Technological CivilizationOpen AbstractReflections on the crisis of modernity are a central subject in phenomenology at least since Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences. A second, perhaps even more influential account of this crisis can be found in Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology, where he argues that the essence of technology, and thus of modern technological civilization, is Gestell or "enframing". This reduces all entities, including human beings, into "standing reserves" to be used in accumulation and release of ever-greater energies that can be then utilized for any purpose whatsoever.
Jan Patočka continues in the footsteps of these two thinkers, ostensibly orienting himself more on Heidegger. Thus he claims that "Heidegger begins where Husserl’s analysis [of modernity] ends" (2022, 283), and the fifth Heretical Essay asks in its title whether “technological civilization is decadent”. His analysis concludes that it is, yet that precisely in this decadence there arises a new possibility for the transformation of the human world. In this he again follows Heidegger and his idea of the "saving power" (das Rettende).
Scholars have identified this “saving power” in Patočka especially with the phenomena of sacrifice or solidarity of the shaken. I shall argue that, as interesting and important as these phenomena are, they only point to Patočka’s actual solution to the crisis of modernity, which he articulated most clearly in the lecture Intelligentsia and the Opposition. Here he argues that the increase of the educated classes in both numbers and social importance, which is necessary in technological society, has given rise to a class who interests are (at least potentially) identical with “the interests of human reason” itself. He thus sees the modern intelligentsia as analogous to the Platonic guardians – whom he has elsewhere called “intelligentsia on the battlefield” – and our situation as allowing at least an approximation of the Platonic state ruled by philosopher-kings, without which there will be no rest from evils for the human race (Republic 473c–d; Seventh Letter 326b).
Jan Patočka continues in the footsteps of these two thinkers, ostensibly orienting himself more on Heidegger. Thus he claims that "Heidegger begins where Husserl’s analysis [of modernity] ends" (2022, 283), and the fifth Heretical Essay asks in its title whether “technological civilization is decadent”. His analysis concludes that it is, yet that precisely in this decadence there arises a new possibility for the transformation of the human world. In this he again follows Heidegger and his idea of the "saving power" (das Rettende).
Scholars have identified this “saving power” in Patočka especially with the phenomena of sacrifice or solidarity of the shaken. I shall argue that, as interesting and important as these phenomena are, they only point to Patočka’s actual solution to the crisis of modernity, which he articulated most clearly in the lecture Intelligentsia and the Opposition. Here he argues that the increase of the educated classes in both numbers and social importance, which is necessary in technological society, has given rise to a class who interests are (at least potentially) identical with “the interests of human reason” itself. He thus sees the modern intelligentsia as analogous to the Platonic guardians – whom he has elsewhere called “intelligentsia on the battlefield” – and our situation as allowing at least an approximation of the Platonic state ruled by philosopher-kings, without which there will be no rest from evils for the human race (Republic 473c–d; Seventh Letter 326b).
Michal Zvarík (Trnava University in Trnava, Slovakia)Boredom, Homelessness and Technology in Jan Patočka’s Late ThoughtOpen AbstractJan Patočka’s contribution to the phenomenology of technology in his late work is built mainly on two sources. The first is his dealing with the heritage of Edmund Husserl’s Krisis and Martin Heidegger’s reflections on the nature of modern technology. In line with both thinkers, and especially Heidegger, he stresses the concealing character of modern technology and technoscience. However, Patočka also offers own original understanding of this concealment, which is grounded in his theory of three movements of human existence.
Taking these two sources as a point of departure the contribution will bring an analysis of boredom and “homelessness”, which Patočka briefly addresses as pathological manifestations of technological civilization in the fifth of his Heretical Essays. While Patočka offers no systematic account of boredom, his notes provide leading clues towards certain meaning of this attunement. Boredom is not a mere emotion, but rather a Grundstimmung, “a condition of humanity which is wholly subjected to everydayness” and even presents a “metaphysical experience” of modern civilization. From this perspective boredom is not an emotion which one can overcome by various forms of entertainment, because it constitutes their condition arising from human need of alleviation, relief and orgiasmic self-forgetfulness, which is technologically satisfied. On the other hand, homelessness points to a loss of place in the world. Homelessness concerns the distorted and reduced meaning of home, in which is overlooked how it is structured from its specific place in the world and wider human commitments to it. However, Patočka stresses that “the greatest homelessness is in our relation to nature and to ourselves,” which results from the mathematization of nature in technological science.
Taking these two sources as a point of departure the contribution will bring an analysis of boredom and “homelessness”, which Patočka briefly addresses as pathological manifestations of technological civilization in the fifth of his Heretical Essays. While Patočka offers no systematic account of boredom, his notes provide leading clues towards certain meaning of this attunement. Boredom is not a mere emotion, but rather a Grundstimmung, “a condition of humanity which is wholly subjected to everydayness” and even presents a “metaphysical experience” of modern civilization. From this perspective boredom is not an emotion which one can overcome by various forms of entertainment, because it constitutes their condition arising from human need of alleviation, relief and orgiasmic self-forgetfulness, which is technologically satisfied. On the other hand, homelessness points to a loss of place in the world. Homelessness concerns the distorted and reduced meaning of home, in which is overlooked how it is structured from its specific place in the world and wider human commitments to it. However, Patočka stresses that “the greatest homelessness is in our relation to nature and to ourselves,” which results from the mathematization of nature in technological science.
Agostino Cera (University of Ferrara, Italy)From Empirical Turn to Ontophobic Turn (a Critical Historicization of the Newest Philosophy of Technology)Open AbstractMy paper sketches a critical historicization of the newest philosophy of technology, starting from the so-called Empirical Turn (according to Hans Achterhuis’ definition). My basic assumption is that the philosophy of technology is living an epistemic crisis. To avoid being deterministic, the current mainstream in the philosophy of technology – particularly the post-phenomenology – has become apologetic, i.e. no longer able to be critical.
The hermeneutical hypothesis at the basis of this historicization is that after 40 years the Empirical Turn proved to be an Ontophobic Turn. By this expression, I mean an over-reaction against the transcendental approach (“technology” with capital T), i.e. against Heideggerian/continental legacy in the philosophy of technology. This overreaction consists of the transition from an almost disinterest in the empirical/ontic dimension of technology, typical of the “classical philosophy of technology”, to an almost absolute interest in this empirical/ontic dimension with a consequent a priori disinterest in any ontological/transcendental implication of technology. This disinterest finally takes the form of a taboo, i.e. a real Onto-phobia.
Given this premise, if “Technology” with capital T becomes nothing, i.e. if the philosophy of technology turns into a problem-solving activity in the presence of concrete problems emerging from the single technologies, then it must be admitted that this activity can be done much better by “experts” (scientists, engineers, politicians…) than by philosophers. The ontophobic turn in philosophy of technology culminates therefore in the disappearance of the reason for a philosophical approach to the question of technology. On this basis, the paradoxical accomplishment of the empirical turn should be the final self-suppression of the philosophy of technology.
As a countermovement against this epistemic crisis, my proposal consists of a Heidegger renaissance in the philosophy of technology, that is the acknowledgment of its unavoidable transcendental/ontological epistemic imprinting.
The hermeneutical hypothesis at the basis of this historicization is that after 40 years the Empirical Turn proved to be an Ontophobic Turn. By this expression, I mean an over-reaction against the transcendental approach (“technology” with capital T), i.e. against Heideggerian/continental legacy in the philosophy of technology. This overreaction consists of the transition from an almost disinterest in the empirical/ontic dimension of technology, typical of the “classical philosophy of technology”, to an almost absolute interest in this empirical/ontic dimension with a consequent a priori disinterest in any ontological/transcendental implication of technology. This disinterest finally takes the form of a taboo, i.e. a real Onto-phobia.
Given this premise, if “Technology” with capital T becomes nothing, i.e. if the philosophy of technology turns into a problem-solving activity in the presence of concrete problems emerging from the single technologies, then it must be admitted that this activity can be done much better by “experts” (scientists, engineers, politicians…) than by philosophers. The ontophobic turn in philosophy of technology culminates therefore in the disappearance of the reason for a philosophical approach to the question of technology. On this basis, the paradoxical accomplishment of the empirical turn should be the final self-suppression of the philosophy of technology.
As a countermovement against this epistemic crisis, my proposal consists of a Heidegger renaissance in the philosophy of technology, that is the acknowledgment of its unavoidable transcendental/ontological epistemic imprinting.
Guelfo Carbone (University of Roma Tre, Italy)Heidegger, Dao, and Technology. A Common Place of Thinking for East and WestOpen Abstract“Up to the present,” Heidegger states in the Spiegel interview, “we have not yet found a way to respond to the essence of technicity” (Sheehan 1981, 56). On the other hand, the essence of technicity, “Enframing” (1977, 19) or “Positionality” (2003, 60 and 2012b), das Gestell, “overpowers the whole of the world,” so that “there is no longer any scope outside it where the sought-after way could show itself.” “All that remains,” then, “is the possibility of exploring the way within the domain of the power of positing” (Heidegger 2006, 158-159).
What has become clear to Heidegger, as he writes in the same 1963 letter to Kojima, is that the “Western-European thinking” does not suffice any longer in order to understand the fully deployed power of modern technics (Heidegger 2006a, 157). The observation is not harmless at all, since the West has been marked from the beginning by the proceeding of the truth of being in the sense of techne, and, albeit China and India, for instance, still bear witness to wholly different ancient cultures and traditions (Heidegger 2005, 107), today the whole planet is Western, that is, “exposed to the corrosive effect of technology” (Heidegger 2001, 258). In turn, as is well known, Heidegger’s thinking has been persistently exposed to ancient Daoist wisdom and this latter was assimilated along his path of thinking in a rather substantial way, especially via the works attributed to Laozi and Zhuangzi (Nelson 2023; Goulding 2022; Ma 2008). In the German language, “Dao” can be translated as “Weg” (Buber 1962, 1037), Heidegger himself adopts this translation (i.e. 1971, 92 and 2000, 617), delivering de facto a substantial hint towards ‘the way’ to reach the essence of the.
The paper tackles these indications conjecturing that the meditation on the essence of technique can lead to a common place for the encounter of Western philosophical endeavors with the Eastern traditions of thinking, being aware of the fact that, under the current planetary dominance of technology, “the whole is more than the sum of the two parts,” and that what it could be “we still do not know” (Heidegger 2006b, 36).
References
Buber, Martin. 1962. „Die Lehre vom Tao.“ In: Id. Werke, vol. 1, Schriften zur Philosophie, pp. 1021-1051. München: Kösel Verlag, Verlag Lambert Schneider.
Goulding, Jay. 2022. “Heidegger’s Daoist Phenomenology.” In: David Chai (ed.), Daoist Resonances in Heidegger. Exploring a Forgotten Debt, pp. 47-101. London, New York: Bloomsbury.
Heidegger, Martin. 1971. On the Way to Language. Trans. by Peter D. Hertz. New York, Harper & Row.
Heidegger, Martin. 2000. Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges 1910–1976, Gesamtausgabe vol. 16. Ed. by Hermann Heidegger. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, Martin. 2001. Zollikon Seminars. Protocols–Conversations–Letters. Ed. by Medard Boss, trans. from the German and with notes and afterwords by Franz Mayr and Richard Askay. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 2005. Über den Anfang, Gesamtausgabe vol. 70. Ed. by Paola-Ludovika Coriando. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, Martin. 2006a. Identität und Differenz, Gesamtausgabe vol. 11. Ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, Martin. 2006b. Ausgewählte Briefe Martin Heideggers an Hans-Georg Gadamer. In: Jahresgabe der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft 2005/2006. Meßkirch: Martin Heidegger Gesellschaft.
Ma, Lin. 2008. Heidegger on East-West Dialogue: Anticipating the Event. New York: Routledge.
Nelson, Eric S. 2023. Heidegger and Dao. Things, Nothingness, Freedom. London: Bloomsbury.
Sheehan, Thomas, ed. 1981. Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker. Chicago: Precedent Publishing.
What has become clear to Heidegger, as he writes in the same 1963 letter to Kojima, is that the “Western-European thinking” does not suffice any longer in order to understand the fully deployed power of modern technics (Heidegger 2006a, 157). The observation is not harmless at all, since the West has been marked from the beginning by the proceeding of the truth of being in the sense of techne, and, albeit China and India, for instance, still bear witness to wholly different ancient cultures and traditions (Heidegger 2005, 107), today the whole planet is Western, that is, “exposed to the corrosive effect of technology” (Heidegger 2001, 258). In turn, as is well known, Heidegger’s thinking has been persistently exposed to ancient Daoist wisdom and this latter was assimilated along his path of thinking in a rather substantial way, especially via the works attributed to Laozi and Zhuangzi (Nelson 2023; Goulding 2022; Ma 2008). In the German language, “Dao” can be translated as “Weg” (Buber 1962, 1037), Heidegger himself adopts this translation (i.e. 1971, 92 and 2000, 617), delivering de facto a substantial hint towards ‘the way’ to reach the essence of the.
The paper tackles these indications conjecturing that the meditation on the essence of technique can lead to a common place for the encounter of Western philosophical endeavors with the Eastern traditions of thinking, being aware of the fact that, under the current planetary dominance of technology, “the whole is more than the sum of the two parts,” and that what it could be “we still do not know” (Heidegger 2006b, 36).
References
Buber, Martin. 1962. „Die Lehre vom Tao.“ In: Id. Werke, vol. 1, Schriften zur Philosophie, pp. 1021-1051. München: Kösel Verlag, Verlag Lambert Schneider.
Goulding, Jay. 2022. “Heidegger’s Daoist Phenomenology.” In: David Chai (ed.), Daoist Resonances in Heidegger. Exploring a Forgotten Debt, pp. 47-101. London, New York: Bloomsbury.
Heidegger, Martin. 1971. On the Way to Language. Trans. by Peter D. Hertz. New York, Harper & Row.
Heidegger, Martin. 2000. Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges 1910–1976, Gesamtausgabe vol. 16. Ed. by Hermann Heidegger. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, Martin. 2001. Zollikon Seminars. Protocols–Conversations–Letters. Ed. by Medard Boss, trans. from the German and with notes and afterwords by Franz Mayr and Richard Askay. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 2005. Über den Anfang, Gesamtausgabe vol. 70. Ed. by Paola-Ludovika Coriando. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, Martin. 2006a. Identität und Differenz, Gesamtausgabe vol. 11. Ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, Martin. 2006b. Ausgewählte Briefe Martin Heideggers an Hans-Georg Gadamer. In: Jahresgabe der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft 2005/2006. Meßkirch: Martin Heidegger Gesellschaft.
Ma, Lin. 2008. Heidegger on East-West Dialogue: Anticipating the Event. New York: Routledge.
Nelson, Eric S. 2023. Heidegger and Dao. Things, Nothingness, Freedom. London: Bloomsbury.
Sheehan, Thomas, ed. 1981. Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker. Chicago: Precedent Publishing.
D3-MS3 — Embodiment and the Lived-Experience of IllnessChair: Vera Hadji-PuljaRoom: 327Hide Session Presentations
John Anderson P-Duarte (La Frontera University, Chile), Estefanía Losada Nieto (La Sabana University, Colombia)Understanding the Lived Experience of Illness: Phenomenological Technique and Material EnvironmentOpen AbstractThe experience of being ill is personal and subjective, yet publicly intelligible. While medicine typically frames illness in biological terms, its lived dimension —shaped by affect, meaning, and relationships— resists biomedical reduction. A key critique is the assumption of patient passivity. Recent accounts argue that how patients understand and narrate illness is central to its comprehension, opening space for phenomenology and Narrative Medicine as tools for an adequate understanding of illness (Charon 2012).
The choice of a phenomenological method best suited to adequately describe the experience of being ill should respect the active role of the patient without denying the biomedical aspects of medical description. Within the context of Narrative Medicine (NM), phenomenology has often emphasized the role of medical empathy as central to a proper description (Stefanello 2024), particularly in relation to empathizing with the bodily experience of the other (Charon 2012). Our suggestion is to argue that a more adequate tool lies in the articulation between the experience of attending and the experience of conversing.
To support this claim, we draw on insights from philosophy, cognitive science, and phenomenology concerning joint attention. In doing so, we also take inspiration from the theory of material engagement proposed by Malafouris (2013), which emphasizes the constitutive role of embodied interaction with material and symbolic environments in shaping human cognition. In this framework, the conversational context itself—and what is said within it—becomes a dynamic medium through which the illness is co-constructed. We will argue that, rather than being primarily an exercise in empathy, the experience of being ill is co-constructed through a shared attentional engagement with what is being said. The phenomenology of joint attention thus offers a more effective tool for the aims of Narrative Medicine than empathy alone.
References
Charon, R. (2012). At the membranes of care: Stories in narrative medicine. Academic Medicine, 87 (3), 342–347. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0b013e3182446fbb
Malafouris, L. (2013). How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. London: The MIT Press.
Stefanello, E. (2024). Narrative medicine and empathy: A phenomenological perspective. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 55 (2), 167–183. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2024.2314119
The choice of a phenomenological method best suited to adequately describe the experience of being ill should respect the active role of the patient without denying the biomedical aspects of medical description. Within the context of Narrative Medicine (NM), phenomenology has often emphasized the role of medical empathy as central to a proper description (Stefanello 2024), particularly in relation to empathizing with the bodily experience of the other (Charon 2012). Our suggestion is to argue that a more adequate tool lies in the articulation between the experience of attending and the experience of conversing.
To support this claim, we draw on insights from philosophy, cognitive science, and phenomenology concerning joint attention. In doing so, we also take inspiration from the theory of material engagement proposed by Malafouris (2013), which emphasizes the constitutive role of embodied interaction with material and symbolic environments in shaping human cognition. In this framework, the conversational context itself—and what is said within it—becomes a dynamic medium through which the illness is co-constructed. We will argue that, rather than being primarily an exercise in empathy, the experience of being ill is co-constructed through a shared attentional engagement with what is being said. The phenomenology of joint attention thus offers a more effective tool for the aims of Narrative Medicine than empathy alone.
References
Charon, R. (2012). At the membranes of care: Stories in narrative medicine. Academic Medicine, 87 (3), 342–347. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0b013e3182446fbb
Malafouris, L. (2013). How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. London: The MIT Press.
Stefanello, E. (2024). Narrative medicine and empathy: A phenomenological perspective. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 55 (2), 167–183. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2024.2314119
Alberto G. Marañón (Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico)Yet It is Now Part of Me: A Phenomenological Attempt to Account for Internal ProsthesesOpen AbstractIn the past century prosthesis went from being aesthetically intended and socially oriented to being increasingly more practical over time, especially after the First World War. In this turn, prosthesis began focusing little on their reminiscence of the lost body part and more in its practicality, moreover, in the adjustment of the prosthesis to everyday life with the goal of an assimilation as similar as part of the lived body. Literature about phenomenology and protheses has focused mainly on the lived experience of the prosthesis and its differentiation to the organic part that has been lost as well as the possibility of the extension of the bodily experience and the role of the synthetic material in the overall corporeal structure. This focus has however left outside for the most part a rather contemporary and vastly different way of being prosthetic: the interior prostheses that do not replace any limb or visually significant part of the body, be it a heart valve replacement or a total femur prothesis these technological objects can´t be experienced in the same way that their external counterparts. At the same time, the apparition of the prosthesis as a metaphor in different philosophical endeavors, mainly related to philosophical anthropology, has neglected the fact that, in most cases, protheses are the result of a powerful trauma. In here, we seek to make a phenomenological inquiry on the internal prosthesis, focusing on the process of assimilation that one’s body must confront when faced with the addition of an “alien” object mechanically produced which intent is to function as a vicary of what has been lost, or, in some cases, has never been.
10:20-10:35
Coffee Break
10:35-11:35
Keynote 5Chair: Witold PłotkaRoom: 215
George Heffernan (Merrimack College, the USA)Husserl's Lifeworld and Plato's Cave: A Zigzag between the Natural and the TechnologicalOpen AbstractThe “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt), as Husserl describes it, is the realm of human experience in which “worldlife” (Weltleben) is defined by perceptual acts, experiential judgments, and cultural, historical, and social actions and interactions. As such, it shapes personal opinions, shared cognitions, and intersubjective practices. Yet it is also a realm of radical relativity in which perceptions mix with deceptions, and in which conflicts and contradictions seem inevitable. Thus it represents a critical field of research for the phenomenology of technology and a major challenge for contemporary science, especially for the human sciences and the social sciences. This paper aims to clarify Husserl’s concept of the lifeworld by investigating its relationship to Plato’s allegory of the cave. Part 1 starts with the rare hints at the connection between the lifeworld and the cave that Husserl provides. Part 2 elaborates Husserl’s account of the lifeworld. Part 3 explicates Plato’s allegory of the cave. Part 4 sketches essential convergences and divergences between Husserl’s lifeworld and Plato’s cave. Part 5 suggests that the more fitting Husserlian counterpart to the Platonic cave is not the lifeworld but the natural attitude as distinguished from the phenomenological. The result is a clarification of the complex character of the lifeworld as a realm of actual evidence as well as a region of potential distraction, deception, and delusion by technological forces.
11:35-12:45
Lunch
12:45-14:05
D3-AS1 — Hermeneutical Reinterpretations of the Phenomenology of TechnologyChair: Christos HadjioannouRoom: 215Hide Session Presentations
Željko Radinković (University of Belgrade, Serbia), Olga Nikolić (University of Belgrade, Serbia)Hermeneutics of Technological Futures: An Interpretative Approach in the Phenomenology of TechnologyOpen AbstractStarting from Don Ihde’s phenomenological insights into the modalities of human engagement with technology as an aspect of the lifeworld, we will examine the possibilities for a hermeneutical reinterpretation of the phenomenology of technology. On one hand, we observe attempts to respond through a hermeneutical approach to the communicative deficits that arise within the broader spectrum of interactions with technical systems. Within the framework of technology assessment—understood as a branch of the philosophy of technology—hermeneutical tendencies emerge aiming to establish a new kind of communicative paradigm that would overcome consequentialist approaches, both prognostic and scenario-based. Thus, the “hermeneutics of technological futures” begins from the premise that a consequentialist, epistemic approach to future technological developments is not possible without grounding it in a broader understanding of communication and symbolic practices in which our relation to the technological future is articulated. This is particularly relevant in the face of new information technologies, which are characterized by a complete openness with respect to the possible future outcomes of their development and use.
A problem of this approach lies in an undifferentiated understanding of hermeneutics itself and the neglect of the diversity of hermeneutical approaches. There is a need to consider the modalities of applying hermeneutical concepts stemming from the Dilthey-Gadamer tradition, extending to approaches such as Objective Hermeneutics. The further potential of the hermeneutics of technology lies not only in understanding communication about technology but in understanding technology itself as it manifests in the interactive practices of the lifeworld. Accordingly, we will explore the possibilities of an interpretative approach such as Ihde’s, understanding the hermeneutical conceptual apparatus not primarily in an epistemological sense, but as a real structure and generative grammar of the lifeworld itself.
A problem of this approach lies in an undifferentiated understanding of hermeneutics itself and the neglect of the diversity of hermeneutical approaches. There is a need to consider the modalities of applying hermeneutical concepts stemming from the Dilthey-Gadamer tradition, extending to approaches such as Objective Hermeneutics. The further potential of the hermeneutics of technology lies not only in understanding communication about technology but in understanding technology itself as it manifests in the interactive practices of the lifeworld. Accordingly, we will explore the possibilities of an interpretative approach such as Ihde’s, understanding the hermeneutical conceptual apparatus not primarily in an epistemological sense, but as a real structure and generative grammar of the lifeworld itself.
Ineta Kivle (University of Latvia, Latvia)Silence within and beyond Technologies: A Hermeneutical Phenomenology ApproachOpen AbstractFrom a phenomenological perspective, silence is not an inert temporal gap, but a rhythmically articulated form of time. It marks time and acquires a profound phenomenological depth, creating a harmonious change in lived time. The central axis of this study is the confrontation and coexistence of silence and technology in a phenomenologically hermeneutic approach. In the work Silence: a phenomenon and its ontological meaning Bernard Dauenhauer develops an approach that treats silence as a lived phenomenon embedded in the structures of human experience. That differs from Martin Heidegger’s views on belonging to technologies accounted in his work The Question Concerning Technologies.
Silence as a phenomenon is always associated with some activity that takes place in various discourses, from existential, phenomenological experience to a technologically managed society. The rhythms of silence and activity maintain space for transformation and are full of expectation and tension, with closure and openness. The possibility of absolute silence is impossible - as a mode of revelation it operates in the realm of dwelling, meaning and intentionality. Dauenhauer classifies thematic discourses of silence into scientific, technological, political, moral, religious, and artistic discourses. Participation in technological discourse is limited by the technological program and its achievements; however, silence opens both existential depth and disciplined movements, confronting and coexisting with each other. Heidegger's concerns about belonging to technologies and Dauenhauer's analysis of the phenomenon of silence are two different but complementary approaches to the philosophical understanding of silence and technology.
Silence as a phenomenon is always associated with some activity that takes place in various discourses, from existential, phenomenological experience to a technologically managed society. The rhythms of silence and activity maintain space for transformation and are full of expectation and tension, with closure and openness. The possibility of absolute silence is impossible - as a mode of revelation it operates in the realm of dwelling, meaning and intentionality. Dauenhauer classifies thematic discourses of silence into scientific, technological, political, moral, religious, and artistic discourses. Participation in technological discourse is limited by the technological program and its achievements; however, silence opens both existential depth and disciplined movements, confronting and coexisting with each other. Heidegger's concerns about belonging to technologies and Dauenhauer's analysis of the phenomenon of silence are two different but complementary approaches to the philosophical understanding of silence and technology.
Wojciech Starzyński (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)Modalities and Types of Machines in Descartes: Toward a Neocartesian Phenomenology of TechnologyOpen AbstractThis paper proposes a neocartesian phenomenology of technology by reinterpreting Descartes’ conception of machines as it emerges across his writings. Contrary to reductive interpretations of Cartesian mechanicism, I argue that Descartes offers a rich and dynamic conceptual space in which the idea of the machine operates across multiple modalities and types, entangling ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological dimensions.
I distinguish nine modalities of the machine: (1) inventive, as a product of reason; (2) explanatory, as a model for nature; (3) functional, as a tool of practical enhancement; (4) sensory-affective, as a perceived but opaque object; (5) admirative, as a source of wonder and inspiration; (6) ontological, as a figure of finitude; (7) comparative, in analogy with the organism or divine infinity; (8) corrective, as a response to bodily imperfection; and (9) communal, as a mediator of shared life and affect. These modalities correspond to six conceptual types of machines in Descartes: artificial, natural (organic), hypothetical, phenomenal, mimetic, and boundary machines, which mark the limits of construction, reason, and intelligibility.
Special attention is given to the paradox that, although the human body is described as a “divine machine” whose perfection surpasses any human artifact, it is also subject to decay and disorder - conditions which human-made machines are meant to correct. One may also read Descartes’ analogies between machines and ideas as articulating a model of productive causality: just as the idea of a complex machine must derive from the knowledge of a skilled artisan, the idea of God requires a cause proportional to its infinite content. This reinforces the notion that machines in Descartes are not mere instruments, but relational figures that expose finitude, embodiment, and the mediated structure of appearance - anticipating what contemporary phenomenology has termed phenomenotechnics. It also invites a reconsideration of whether the conceptual features of artifact-machines - design, intelligibility, functionality - can account for the functioning of the “divine machine,” or whether such metaphors mask an ontological discontinuity between human and divine production.
I distinguish nine modalities of the machine: (1) inventive, as a product of reason; (2) explanatory, as a model for nature; (3) functional, as a tool of practical enhancement; (4) sensory-affective, as a perceived but opaque object; (5) admirative, as a source of wonder and inspiration; (6) ontological, as a figure of finitude; (7) comparative, in analogy with the organism or divine infinity; (8) corrective, as a response to bodily imperfection; and (9) communal, as a mediator of shared life and affect. These modalities correspond to six conceptual types of machines in Descartes: artificial, natural (organic), hypothetical, phenomenal, mimetic, and boundary machines, which mark the limits of construction, reason, and intelligibility.
Special attention is given to the paradox that, although the human body is described as a “divine machine” whose perfection surpasses any human artifact, it is also subject to decay and disorder - conditions which human-made machines are meant to correct. One may also read Descartes’ analogies between machines and ideas as articulating a model of productive causality: just as the idea of a complex machine must derive from the knowledge of a skilled artisan, the idea of God requires a cause proportional to its infinite content. This reinforces the notion that machines in Descartes are not mere instruments, but relational figures that expose finitude, embodiment, and the mediated structure of appearance - anticipating what contemporary phenomenology has termed phenomenotechnics. It also invites a reconsideration of whether the conceptual features of artifact-machines - design, intelligibility, functionality - can account for the functioning of the “divine machine,” or whether such metaphors mask an ontological discontinuity between human and divine production.
Christian Roy (Centre international de formation européenne, France & Germany)From Dandieu and Chevalley to Charbonneau and Ellul: Science, Technology and Magicin a Personalist Lineage of French Phenomenology Open AbstractJacques Ellul ascribed his concept of Technique as unitary phenomenon to his friend Bernard Charbonneau (1910-1996), who would eventually view Science as a more basic conflation of Knowledge and Power. He framed it in terms partly borrowed from fellow personalists: the early phenomenologists Arnaud Dandieu and Claude Chevalley, e.g., their 1932 “Phenomenology of the Scientist” whereby “the scientific trend” that gave mankind distance from nature also tended to sever its “vital contact with the world”; they thus applied to civilization Eugène Minkowski’s phenomenological account of schizophrenia. Like them, Charbonneau held that, “because Science grants us access to the mastery of powers, it is related to magic, only now a perfectly white magic, since black magic has disappeared.” “The magician becomes a priest” when doing supplants being, while common certainties defer to “scientific truth” that allows us “to manipulate matter and to extract its quintessence: energy, using it to transform the world. Science is a kind of magic, but efficient magic”, even when disinterested in its quest for knowledge beyond raw phenomena, whereas Technique never is, employing scientific means for lower ends. “Considering efficiency in itself” was still beyond the magician’s supernatural knowledge of “the powers of the earth”, for “the technical spirit was only able to triumph the day the Gods were driven out of Nature.” This slide from the ambiguities of Science’s objective knowledge to Technique’s drive to capture the given as plastic potential was located by Dandieu in the scientist’s falling back on a technical posture, content to measure the superficialization of depths that reduces uncovered heterogeneity to familiar homogeneity. Dandieu’s “lesser concrete” thus feeds into Charbonneau’s “Second Nature”, overwhelming Nature and Spirit. This unknown lineage of phenomenological investigation of Science and Technique invites historical recovery, including critical probing in light of Federico Campagna’s Technic and Magic (2018).
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Closing Remarks