A Study of Perennial Philosophy and Psychedelic Experience, with a Proposal to Revise W. T. Stace’s Core Characteristics of Mystical Experience ©Ed D’Angelo 2018 -/- Abstract -/- According to the prevailing paradigm in psychedelic research today, when used within an appropriate set and setting, psychedelics can reliably produce an authentic mystical experience. According to the prevailing paradigm, an authentic mystical experience is one that possesses the common or universal characteristics of mystical experience as identified by the philosopher W. T. Stace (...) in his 1960 work Mysticism and Philosophy. Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience are the basis for the Hood Mysticism Questionnaire, which is the most widely used quantitative measure of mystical experience in experimental studies of psychedelic experience. In this paper, I trace the historical roots of Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience back to Christian Neoplatonism and apophatic theology, and I trace those, in turn, back to Plato’s concept of the Good and to Aristotle’s concept of God as active intellect. I argue that Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience are not universal or culturally invariant but are the product of a specifically Christian religious and moral tradition that has its roots in ancient Greek metaphysics. My paper concludes with a revised list of common characteristics of psychedelic experience that is a better candidate for a list of invariant structures of psychedelic experience than Stace’s common characteristics of Christian mystical experience. (shrink)

Bernard Berenson used to refer to Giovanni Morelli as «the founder of the Method». With these words, he meant that Morelli was the scholar who, first, transformed connoisseurship in a science, giving to the discipline a stringent method. Does Morelli’s theory of painting really deserve this praise? To answer this question, this paper examines in the first part the philosophical and scientific background of Morelli’s doctrine, showing how its original debt payed to romantic philosophy went replaced by a neat positivist (...) orientation. In the second part, the Method itself is discussed, asking in which measure it was anticipated by the intuitions of art experts such as Giulio Mancini or Luigi Crespi and discussing the nature and epistemological relevance of the so-called “morellian details”, that is the forms of the nails, of the ears, of the hair’s curls in paintings. Are these details really sufficient for the attribution of a painting to an artist? Which role play the documents in connoisseurship? And, more generally, how important is aesthetic value in the morellian “Method”? (shrink)

In diesem Band deckt Diego D'Angelo semiotische Strukturen in der Husserl’schen Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung auf. Ist es der Phänomenologie darum zu tun, die Erfahrung von Dingen in unserer Umwelt zu beschreiben, so ist dabei der Begriff des Horizontes von zentraler Bedeutung: Was wir unmittelbar wahrnehmen, verweist immer schon auf anderes, was nur „mitgegeben“ ist. Wenn wir Dinge wahrnehmen, haben wir nur eine bestimmte Perspektive, d.h. wir sehen lediglich einen Aspekt. Aber wir nehmen immer ganze Gegenstände wahr (wir sehen Tische (...) und Stühle und andere Menschen). Jeder dieser Gegenstände erscheint in einem Feld weiterer Gegenstände, und es ist der Horizontbegriff, der es erlaubt, das Verhältnis zwischen Selbstgegebenheit und Mitgegebenheit zu explizieren. Dieses Buch stellt den ersten detaillierten Versuch dar, die Ursprünge solcher horizontaler Felder in semiotischen Strukturen zu suchen. Aus der Verbindung zwischen Husserls eigener Semiotik und seiner Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung ergibt sich, dass das wahrgenommene Phänomen als Zeichen verstanden werden muss. Das Zeichen wiederum bezeichnet etwas, was in leiblicher Bewegung eingeholt werden kann. Mit der Verbindung von Leiblichkeit, Semiotik und Wahrnehmung thematisiert diese Monographie das Verhältnis zwischen folgenden phänomenologischen Forschungsgebieten: • Husserls Semiotik der Wahrnehmung in den Logischen Untersuchungen • Phänomenologische Raumanalyse – kinästhetische Indikation • Horizont und Noema • Passive Anzeige • Zeichen und Leiblichkeit als Grundlagen der Fremderfahrung • Genetische Phänomenologie und Semiotik der Erfahrung • Protentionen und teleologische Semiose • Induktion und Ursprung des menschlichen Ichs Das Buch eröffnet die Möglichkeit, Husserls Phänomenologie jenseits einer Metaphysik der Präsenz zu verstehen. Zudem leisten D'Angelos Einzeluntersuchungen einen Beitrag zu aktuellen Diskussionen in der Philosophie der leiblichen Kognition. – Eine hilfreiche Leseempfehlung für • Interessierte Themenneulinge • Bachelor- und Masterstudenten der Geisteswissenschaften • Hochschulabsolventen sowie Forschungswissenschaftler. (shrink)

L’essai vise à reconstruire dans l’ Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale de Croce de 1902 la relation complexe entre les concepts d’intuition, d’expression et de sensibilité. Pour Croce, l’activité esthétique semble toujours osciller entre une forme de connaissance et une productivité qui trouve dans la matérialité du médium expressif (en particulier l’art) sa propre façon d’apparaître au niveau sensible.

This paper addresses three main concerns about William James’s understanding of attention. In the first section, I will consider the question whether or not James’s famous claim that “every one kno...

Hay un proverbio que circula en algunos países europeos que dice: “el futuro es un mal recuerdo del presente”. Esta expresión, algo paradójica, cobra un sentido claro a la luz de la lectura del último trabajo de Patxi Lanceros, profesor de filosofía política y teoría de la cultura en la Universidad de Deusto. En El robo del futuro, el autor trata de reflexionar, lucida y sosegadamente, acerca de alguno de los fenómenos políticos más acuciantes de nuestros tiempos; de la emergencia (...) migratoria al retorno de viejas formas de intolerancia, de la guerra global permanente a los nuevos miedos colectivos. A lo largo de los tres capítulos que componen en libro, Lanceros procura contestar la pregunta, tremendamente actual: ¿hacia dónde vamos si ya no hay ningún lugar adonde ir? El autor analiza pues un presente “huérfano de pasado e incapaz de futuro”, y lo hace sin nostalgia por un futuro que, según el conocido chiste, ya “no es lo que solía ser”. Es este presente, que procede al paso de una globalización ingobernable, que está al centro del análisis crítico de Lanceros. (shrink)

En este artículo se quiere trazar una teoría política de la insurrección en el pensamiento de Max Stirner, en tanto alternativa ética y política a la revolución. Se mostrará cómo, según el pensador alemán, la revolución es en última instancia una estrategia fallida de emancipación en tanto en cuanto no libera al individuo de las formas de subjetividad que lo mantienen dependiente del poder. Más en general, se enseñará como el orden liberal post-revolucionario, detrás del lenguaje secular de los derechos, (...) las libertades y la igualdad, engendra técnicas más sutiles de gobernabilidad del individuo. La insurrección, en cambio, puede ser vista como un rechazo de las identidades y de los roles que disciplinan al individuo. Al respecto, se prestará una atención especial al concepto stirneriano de Eigenheit, como estrategia ética de auto-determinación y liberación de las formas rígidas de la subjetividad. En última instancia, se querrá mostrar cómo todo el proyecto político de la insurrección stirneriana se basa en un anarquismo ontológico que rechaza la lógica teleocrática del racionalismo moderno y pone en entredicho la misma noción de realización. The aim of this article to outline a political theory of insurrection in Max Stirner’s thought as an ethical and political alternative to revolution. I will show that revolution is ultimately a failed strategy of emancipation as it does not free the individual from the forms of subjectivity that keep her dependent on power. Insurrection, on the other hand, can be seen as a rejection of the identities and roles that discipline the individual. In this regard, special attention will be paid to the Stirnerian concept of Eigenheit as an ethical strategy of self-determination and liberation from rigid forms of subjectivity. Ultimately, I will show how the whole political project of the Stirnerian insurrection is based on an ontological anarchism that rejects the teleocratic logic of modern rationalism and calls into question the very notion of realization. (shrink)

This paper aims to conceptualize the phenomenology of attentional experience as ‘embodied attention.’ Current psychological research, in describing attentional experiences, tends to apply the so-called spotlight metaphor, according to which attention is characterized as the illumination of certain surrounding objects or events. In this framework, attention is not seen as involving our bodily attitudes or modifying the way we experience those objects and events. It is primarily conceived as a purely mental and volitional activity of the cognizing subject. Against this (...) view, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that attention is a creative activity deeply linked with bodily movements. This paper clarifies and systematizes this view and brings it into dialogue with current empirical findings as well as with current theoretical research on embodied cognition. By doing this, I spell out three main claims about embodied attention: the transcendentalism of embodiment for attention, the bodily subjectivity of attention, and the creativity of embodied attention. (shrink)

1. Einleitung 2. Das Berühren im Buch Θ der Metaphysik 3. Berühren und praktisches Zu-tun-haben-mit 4. Der dreifache Sinn von Zeigen und die Wahrheit 5. Das Leiben. Anknüpfung zu dem späten Heidegger Bibliographie.

"Some patients find it difficult to be in the present because they are stuck in the past; others, by contrast, struggle to remain connected with the past and are suspended in a so-called present that is effectively atemporal, that is out of time”.1 For psychoanalysts, the most profound and ultimately ethical way that we can help individuals, is by helping them know themselves. This involves discovering how they were shaped by their past and how their ongoing self-experience cannot be understood (...) in isolation from its constitutive contexts. Psychoanalysts help patients explore foundational questions such as: ‘Who am I?’ ‘How did I get here?’ ‘How am I implicated in my own suffering?’ ‘How can I grow and flourish and truly engage with my life?’. The answers to these questions emerge from a detailed exploration of the persons lived relational history, their current social and relational context and the political systems within which they are embedded. It is via this expansion of self-awareness that individuals can access agency and true freedom of choice. The clinical approach presented by Notini et al 2 is grounded in a completely different, radically decontextualised understanding of human experience. Their conceptualisation of Phoenix’s gender identity is ahistorical and atemporal: it is indeed ‘out of time’. For these authors, gender identity is assumed to be an immutable core essence, much like Ehrensaft’s3 ‘true gender self….there from birth’. It simply ‘is’. This is a …. (shrink)

One might presume that elite educational environments, including colleges and universities, have been the exclusive venues for rhetorical theory. Rhetorical theory typically takes the form of published treatises, monographs, and essays. Thus, the status of theorist would have been denied to, among others, African Americans during the nineteenth century because they were not afforded opportunities to become literate or, even if literate, not admitted into realms of elite literacy. But there are the seeds of a competing story, particularly regarding the (...) narratives written by Frederick Douglass. Henry Louis Gates Jr., for example, has stated that Douglass used... (shrink)

One of Heidegger’s most important descriptions of bodily existence can be found in his Nietzsche lectures. This paper aims to elucidate this “metaphysics of the body” both in relation to Heidegger’s Leibniz-interpretation in the later Marburg lectures as well as in the context of his later thought. Leibniz and Nietzsche are Heidegger’s points of departure in the attempt to think the difference between θεωρία and πραξις beyond Being and Time: It is only by understanding their relationship, through a radical re-thinking (...) of the problem of corporeality, no longer as a noun (der Leib) but as a verb (leiben), that one can possibly move beyond every traditional dualism, between theory and praxis but also and most notably between being and becoming. (shrink)

New Realism and Phenomenology: Editor's Introduction.

Traditionally the doping debate has been dominated by those who want to see doping forbidden (the prohibitionist view) and those who want to see it permitted (the ban abolitionist view). In this article, the authors analyse a third position starting from the assertion that doping use is a symptom of the paradigm of highly competitive elite sports, in the same way as addictions reflect current social paradigms in wider society. Based upon a conceptual distinction between occasional use, habitual use and (...) addiction, and focusing on the physical and/or mental dependency caused by the addictive use of a certain drug, we argue that marihuana, stimulants and anabolic steroid abuse—the most frequently detected substances in doping tests—satisfies at least one, often both, of these conditions. A conclusion to be drawn from the authors' arguments is that the prohibitionist view is inappropriate for dealing with doping, as the severe sanctions attached to it will cut the doper off her/his social and professional environment, thereby risking reinforcing her/his addictive conduct. But the ban abolitionist view seems inappropriate as well. At first sight, it seems neither rational nor humane not to intervene when confronted with conduct which is highly harmful for the individual and upon which she has reduced or no control whatsoever. Instead the authors' proposal will be to contextualise dopers' conduct within sport healthcare and see it strictly in relation to each athlete's personal background. Developing preventive programmes—implemented through person-tailored counselling and eventually treatment, rather than severe sanctions or the mere lifting of the ban—seems to be a more reasonable, and probably more efficient, way of conducting ‘the war against doping’. (shrink)

This paper develops the concept of ‘creative attention’. Against classical theories that understand attention as a spotlight that brings objects into focus, I will argue that attention is a complex phenomenon structured in different layers. The most basic layer is perceptual, passive and pre-predicative: at this level, attention is creative – and this is the central claim of this paper – because it institutes meanings and rules for our behaviour.

The present contribution tackle the question of which kind of philosophy is apt to thinking contemporary Europe. In order to thematize this problem, the philosophy of Roberto Esposito is analyzed in detail. The central idea of the paper is that contemporary politics cannot be founded upon classical metaphysical instances, such as God, a teleological structur, or some other moral good. The foundation of contemporary politics must rely in politics itself. Esposito’s philosophy of the “impolitico” can help us in thiking this. (...) Following his path, we claim that Europe is to be conceived as a political structure that has its origin in its own “outside”: Europe must take responsibility for its constitute lack of identity, for its own fragility. In this fragility and in the community of death lies the potential for an immanent foundation of European politics. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature of emotional experience in relation to the senses, and it defends the thesis that emotional experience is partly non-sensory. In §1 I introduce my reader to the debate. I reconstruct a position I call ‘restrictivism’ and motivate it as part of a reductive approach to mind’s place in nature. Drawing on intuitive but insightful remarks on the nature of sensation from Plato, I map out the conditions under which the restrictivist thesis is both substantive and (...) plausible. I then present two arguments against it. The first argument, which I lay out in §2, draws on recent empirical results in emotion research to show that restrictivism cannot be reconciled with the possibility of knowledge of one’s own emotional state by acquaintance. The second argument, which I present in §3, individuates a claim on which most contemporary theories of emotional valence converge and uses it to demonstrate that restrictivism has a false implication: it must deny that valence is experientially felt. (shrink)