It is sometimes said that Heidegger neglected the ontological significance of the lived body until the Zollikon Seminars, where he elaborates on the bodily aspect of Being-in-the-world as a “bodying forth.” Against such a contention, in this article I argue that, because of the central role that Heidegger grants to mood (disclosive affectivity) as a primordial way of disclosing Being-in-the-world, and because it is impossible to think mood without also thinking the lived body, Heidegger has actually placed the latter at the very center of Dasein’s disclosedness. Heidegger’s account of mood thus entails and highlights, rather than neglects, the ontological significance of the body.

Interpretations of Heidegger’s existentialism tend to emphasize states of mind such as anxiety and boredom in his work, and his analysis of human being-toward-death. With such talk, one might rightly come to the conclusion that Heidegger had a morbid fascination with death and the horrible aspects of life. However, I am not alone in recognizing that Heidegger was not really a philosopher of anxiety, but, rather, one of joy (Robbins, 2003; Smith, 1981). Read in context, his analyses of anxiety and death are preparatory for an authentic appropriation of finitude in which one finds what Heidegger calls an “unshakeable joy.” And it is also within this spirit of joy that Heidegger explores in a radical way – what is called thinking?

This essay develops the metaphor of energy to address the meaning of God. It does so by drawing upon aspects of Buddhist thinking and certain findings in contemporary science. It approaches energy as the activity of inter-reling, pregnant with the possibility of emerging as spirit, in a manner that heals, especially becoming the highest quality within relatedness: that of care and love. Love as we understand it may not have been at the beginning; but it does emerge from the giving forth of the beginning; and it does emerge from the activity of interrelatedness that occurs in and as world. Such is the divine impulse that has given birth and empowers world. Those are the activities within which God, world, and humanity most express one another, most are synonnomous with one another.

In this paper I offer some existential-phenomenological reflections on the interrelationships among the forms of love, loss, and human finitude. I claim that authentic Being-toward-death entails owning up not only to one’s own finitude, but also to the finitude of all those we love. Hence, authentic Being-toward-death always includes Being-toward-loss as a central constituent. Just as, existentially, we are “always dying already,” so too are we always already grieving. Death and loss are existentially equiprimordial. I extend these claims to a discussion of the four forms of love identified by the ancient Greeks, contending that the nature of a loss experience will depend complexly on the forms or dimensions of love that had constituted the lost relationship. I argue that authentic solicitude can be shown to entail one of the constitutive dimensions of deep human bonding, in which we value the alterity of the other as it is manifested in his or her own distinctive affectivity, in particular, in those painful emotional states disclosive of authentic existing. Lastly, I explore the ethical implications of these claims.

I presented a version of this paper in November of 1999 after the Columbine Shootings. Currently, I have come to focus less on the gun as a technological augmentation and extension of desire and more on the mooded, lived situation of the immediate shootings. However, I have included a small portion of that previous analysis here in order to set the stage, if you will, for a phenomenological explication of the shooting spree. I put forth that the spree itself, as it is experienced, is an important consideration in further understanding and preventing rampage, mass killings in the United States.

This article examines James Hillman’s notion of psyche in relation to metaphor as the foundation for his archetypal psychology. In pushing Jung to his imaginal limits, Hillman provides an archetypal corrective to the Cartesianism inherent in modern scientific psychology in order to understand all aspects of contemporary psychological life. He proposes an ontological view of metaphor that locates psyche beyond language and mind to places in the world, thus seeking to establish a postmodern archetypal psychology. In the end his notion of psyche is not radical enough in its critique to advance archetypal psychology into acknowledging its postmodern condition.

This article describes the experience of habitual boredom including: contrasting situational and habitual boredom, reviewing the humanistic-existential literature on habitual boredom as well as presenting a theory of habitual boredom. The theory suggests that habitual boredom develops from ambivalence (1) an emotional tear between one’s self and others. This ambivalence leads to a passive-avoidant stance (2) toward one’s life. This passivity includes a passive hope (3); the bored person believes something or someone else will change the bored person’s life, but not one’s own actions. Gradually, this passivity exposes identity confusion (4) but corrective action is thwarted because the person is too ashamed (5) to ask for help. Habitual boredom is conceptualized as an unresolved experience of personal meaninglessness.

This interdisciplinary essay investigates J.M.G. Le Clézio’s short story “Martin” from the collection entitled La Fièvre (Fever) from the lens of recent empirical studies related to bullying. The 2008 Nobel Laureate in Literature creates a rending portrait of the physical and cerebral anguish suffered by casualties of peer-victimization. The profound inner turmoil experienced by the protagonist Martin mirrors the searing pain felt by millions of innocent victims around the world on a daily basis. Although the nefarious, long-term effects of bullying are often dismissed by misinformed individuals as a reflection of “boys being boys,” research unequivocally demonstrates that bullying is a global pandemic that should be taken seriously. In this disquieting narrative from the early part of his illustrious career, Le Clézio extends an ethical summons to the reader which compels us to think harder about the dire social consequences of bullying. Specifically, the tragic dénouement leaves little room for ambivalence concerning the author’s position related to the anguish experienced by casualties of peer-victimization. In “Martin,” it is the destabilizing realism that attacks the sensibilities of the reader the most. Although this text is a work of fiction, it deeply resonates with the reader given that deplorable incidents, which leave deep inner scars, like the one described in “Martin” occur far too often all across the globe. When analyzed in conjunction with the disconcerting research compiled by international scholars from around the world, “Martin” is an invaluable tool that allows us to catch a small glimpse of the unbearable torment felt by the victims of these heinous crimes.

What kind of ethics can we consider in the framework of feminist phenomenology that takes poststructuralist feminism into account? This seems to be a difficult task for at least two reasons. First, it is not yet clear what ethics in poststructuralist feminism is. Second, phenomenology and poststructuralism are still regarded as opposites. As a phenomenologist with strong affinities to poststructuralism, I want to take on this challenge. In this paper, I will argue that phenomenology and poststructuralism share the idea of the “indeterminable.” If this idea is applied to the topic of gender, we can speak of an “indeterminable gender.” Moreover, phenomenology and poststructuralism support an ethical attitude toward genders inasmuch as they both avoid making problematic determinations. My goal is to explore what the so-called “indeterminable gender” is and to illuminate the ethical implications of this concept.

Th is paper explores the unique phenomenology of habit and temporality put forth in Beauvoir’s La Vieillesse. I situate her understanding of temporality in relation to her early work Pyrrhus and Cinéas. I extract her notion of a boundary marked future that decreases anticipation for the future and thus rigidifies habits (through an increased reliance on the past). In the final section I appropriate the notion of a boundary mark for a cultural phenomenology where we understand boundary marks as constituted by our understandings of ourselves in time and not through aging alone. This cultural boundary mark can be used to understand how societal prejudice operates at the level of lived temporality.

Feminist phenomenology has contributed significantly to understanding the negative impact of the objectification of women’s bodies. The celebration of thin bodies as beautiful and the demonization of fat bodies as unattractive is a common component of that discussion. However, when one turns toward the correlation of fat and poor health, a feminist phenomenological approach is less obvious. In this paper, previous phenomenological work on the objectification of women is paralleled to the contemporary encouragement to discipline one’s body in order to pursue better health. Similar ideologies of free choice in the face of bodily habits run through discussions of health and beauty. The paper uses the work of Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir as well as the contemporary feminist phenomenologists Diaprose, Bartky, Bordo, Young, Grosz, and Carel to explore how women are constrained by health testing and health normalization. It argues that despite the apparent benefits of a focus on modifying health habits, feminists have good reason to be wary of the good health imperative.

Drawing on phenomenology’s account of “passive synthesis,” this paper seeks to provide a phenomenological vocabulary that could be useful in explaining institutional oppression to those who find it difficult to understand that we can be responsible for acts and meanings that we do not intend. Though the main goal of the paper is to justify the use of the terminology of passive synthesis in the discourse on oppression, the paper ends by suggesting how employing passive synthesis in this manner suggests ways of combating oppression.

In the Nordic countries, at a time when women have only recently won the right to their own bodies and to a sexuality of their own and for themselves, women nevertheless fake orgasms. Moreover, a common question posed to the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) deals with lack of desire. Not only are women faking and complaining of lack of desire, but men as well. It seems that contemporary ideals surrounding sexuality converge with quests for not only pleasure and love, but also for fitting in and experiencing what is conceived of as normal and “successful” sexuality. This essay examines the contemporary and prevalent phenomenon of faked orgasms from the perspectives of feminist theory and phenomenology.

With the ascent of obstetrics, gynecology, and psychoanalysis, the childbearing woman’s subjectivity has been increasingly eclipsed by that of her child-to-be. This article describes the sociohistorical understanding of childbearing and shows how it has become intertwined with four women’s lived experiences of pregnancy and birth based on diaries and interviews they completed for this study. The participants’ childbearing experiences revealed an ambiguous, sensual symbiosis between themselves and others that threatens the Western notion of a free-floating, solipsistic subject exemplified in fetal photographs and ultrasound images.

In this case study we have used a relational-centred, existential-phenomenological approach to explore the lived world of a woman – Mia - who has experienced a traumatic abortion. We offer an account of her story, followed by an explication of emergent existential themes: ‘Feeling Torn’, ‘Cutting Shame’ and ‘Monstrous (M)othering’. Trauma associated with abortion is found to be complex, layered and enduring. We present examples of our own reflexive writings and supervision extracts to illustrate how our relational stance within the methodology helped deepen the exploration of Mia’s experience.

This article describes findings from a qualitative study that investigated the lived experiences of four mothers recovering from crack cocaine addictions who lost custody of their children. The project was guided by feminist interpretive inquiry, van Manen’s approach to hermeneutic phenomenology, and involved thematic analysis of in depth interview data. By telling the stories of these women and using their own words as well as interpretive poetry written by one of the authors to describe their suffering, our research offers important insights to professionals involved in the field of addictions.

Beginning with the idea that our bellybuttons specifically and our guts more generally are a good thing to think with, this paper proposes the idea of “gut sociality”—that is, a material-semiotic, posthumanist mode of responsivity between bodies that hovers in, around, and through the gut. In order to deepen our understanding of this notion, I provide a phenomenological sketch of morning sickness as one instance of gut sociality. To conclude, I propose that in order to accommodate new modes of being embodied in our twenty-first century world, a method of posthumanist feminist phenomenology should be further developed. This practice should draw upon science discourses, but consider both the risks and the promise of a biological turn.