In this article, I clarify the phenomenological concept of lifeworld by drawing on the geographical themes of place, place experience, and place meaning. Most simply, lifeworld refers to a person or group’s day-to-day, taken-for-granted experience that typically goes unnoticed. One aim of phenomenological research is to examine the lifeworld as a means to identify and clarify the tacit, unnoticed aspects of human life so that they can be accounted for theoretically and practically. Here, I discuss some key phenomenological principles and (...) then draw on phenomenological renditions of place as one means to clarify some of the lifeworld’s social, environmental, spatial, and geographical aspects. To concretize my discussion, I draw descriptive evidence from British writer Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb, a 1990s novel describing one outsider’s efforts to come to inhabit a place—a fictitious present-day village in the southwestern British county of Somerset. -/- . (shrink)

Florida is currently collecting data on the “costs of uncompensated care for aliens who are not lawfully present in the U.S.” (Statutes of Florida, 2023). The Florida data collection law, enacted in 2023, is part of aggressive anti-immigrant legislation. Hospitals accepting Medicaid must inquire about patients’ immigration status and submit de-identified reports. In August 2024, the Governor of Texas signed an Executive Order comparable to the Florida statute. Although presented as a data-collection measure, the legal requirements have far-reaching consequences. The (...) potential adverse impacts on immigrants’ health pose bioethical concerns. Immigration-related inquiries create barriers to healthcare access and advance care planning, exacerbating healthcare disparities and presenting ethical concerns. This article examines the effects on immigrants and the resulting ethical challenges, including respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. The article proposes recommendations for mitigating these challenges, including community outreach, patient education, policy development, in-service education, and advocacy. While the legal requirements apply specifically to Florida and Texas, the ethical issues have nationwide relevance. (shrink)

What I wish to do in this paper is to look at a part of John Stuart Mill's ‘one very simple principle’ for determining the limits of state intervention. This principle is, you will remember, that ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.’.

Caring for unrepresented patients encompasses legal, ethical, and moral challenges regarding decision-making, consent, the patient’s values, wishes, best interest, and the healthcare team’s professional integrity and autonomy. In this article, I consider the impact of the aging population and the effects of the social determinants of health and suggest that without preventive intervention, the number of unrepresented patients will continue to increase. The health, social, and legal risk factors for becoming unrepresented require a multidisciplinary response. Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) bring healthcare (...) and legal professionals together to address risk factors and health-harming legal needs. The article discusses the role of MLPs in identifying at-risk individuals, providing preventive interventions, and providing support. I make recommendations and conclude that proactive MLPs offer a sustainable approach to the ethical challenges in caring for unrepresented patients by providing interventions to prevent individuals from becoming unrepresented. (shrink)

Scholarly analysis of the political philosophy of the eminent 19th century Frenchman.

In recounting some of the key sociological insights offered by over 30 years of research on emotion management, or emotion regulation, we orient our discussion around sociological answers to the following questions: What is emotion management? How does emotion management occur? Why does it occur? And what are its consequences or benefits? In this review, we argue that emotion and its management are profoundly social. Through daily interactions with others, individuals learn to differentiate which emotions are appropriate when, as well (...) as the most effective ways to bring their feelings in line with culturally agreed-upon emotion norms. Emotion management is also functional, not only for the individuals who perform it, but also for the dyads, groups, institutions, and societies in which they are embedded. The social processes through which individuals learn to display culturally appropriate emotions have important implications on many levels, from interpersonal interactions to the development of social movements. (shrink)

Theorising about politics and society has never had firm and settled boundaries. In the past, political theorists have sometimes been moralists, sometimes moral philosophers; now apologists for the existing order, now social engineers; they have tried both to explain society and to discuss social values; and their explanations have been variously based on empirical generalisations, a priori assumptions about human nature or general metaphysical theories. Very few aspects of knowledge have been thought irrelevant to social enquiry, and no problem has (...) been isolated as its central and necessary concern. (shrink)

This study aimed to identify the antibiotic-relevant lessons from the controlled drug regimen for narcotics. Whereas several elements of the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs could be advantageous for antibiotics, we doubt that an international legally binding agreement for controlling antibiotic consumption would be any more effective than implementing stewardship measures through national AMR plans.

John Stuart Mill has often been charged with inconsistency in his social thinking. The reason given is usually that he tries to combine too many different traditions of thought into an ideological whole. Too deeply affected by his father and his severely purposeful early education ever to repudiate utilitarianism, he was yet too sensitive to disregard criticism of his inherited creed, and too open-minded to ignore areas of thought and experience generally allen to the utilitarian mind. Professor Robson, whose editing (...) of Mill’s works has already put social theorists and historians of ideas in his debt, disputes this view. He argues that, beneath Mill’s eclecticism, beneath his perhaps over-generous acknow-ledgements of his obligations to others, there is a basic unity of ideas. His discussion of the influences on Mill’s thought covers some fairly well-trodden ground but he brings a good deal of common sense to bear on an area where the excitement of the academic chase for sources has sometimes obscured the obvious. On the whole, he claims, the influence of Coleridge, the Suint-Simonians, Carlyle and Comte was limited; some of their specific ideas Mill accepted and used, but he was clearly aware of the differences of emphasis and context that did exist. Harriet Taylor and Tocqueville contributed more, the first by extending Mill’s vision of desirable social ends and by emphasising the difficulties of applying social theory in the world of practice, the second by his insights into democratic society and his demonstration of a proper sociological method. The deepest influence was, however, his early Benthamite upbringing and it is this life-long commitment to a utilitarian ethic that constitutes, for Professor Robson, the still, calm centre of his mind. There are other unifying ideas—his bias towards practicality and his constant concern with evolving a satisfactory methodology for the social sciences—but even these centred on a continual examination of the adequacies and inadequacies of his father’s doctrine. (shrink)

Originally published in 1926 and whilst not a biography in the strictest sense, this volume presents John Bridges’ life and character against the social and political background of the nineteenth century as well as examining his legacy for current generations.

With Jan Degenaar and Kevin O’Regan’s (D&O) critique of (what they call) ‘autopoietic enactivism’ as point of departure, this article seeks to revisit, refine, and develop phenomenology’s significance for the enactive view. Arguing that D&O’s ‘sensorimotor theory’ fails to do justice to perceptual meaning, the article unfolds by (1) connecting this meaning to the notion of enaction as a meaningful co-definition of perceiver and perceived, (2) recounting phenomenological reasons for conceiving of the perceiving subject as a living body, and (3) (...) showing how the phenomenological perspective does a better job at fulfilling D&O’s requirement for grounding notions of mentality in ‘outer’ criteria than they do. The picture that thus emerges is one of perceptual meaning as an integration of lived, living, and behavioral aspects – a structure of behavior that cannot be captured by appeal to sensorimotor capacities alone but that is adequately illuminated by the enactive notion of adaptive autonomy. (shrink)

‘We have the strong ground of common hatreds, though perhaps we hate on different or even opposite grounds’. Thus wrote Tocqueville the liberal of Montalembert the liberal Catholic. What lay in common was a desire for an extension of personal liberties, freedom of association, decentralisation, separation of Church and state; but, in recognizing the differences, Tocqueville tacitly acknowledges the areligious nature of his own plea for religion in modern society and asserts the aliberal nature of Montalembert’s dedication to liberal programmes. (...) Both claimed to unite what the French had set asunder, religion and liberalism; both in fact degraded one end by using it as a tool of the other. (shrink)

In this paper I reflect upon my personal experience of chronic progressive multiple sclerosis in order to provide a phenomenological account of the human experience of disability. In particular, I argue that the phenomenological notion of lived body provides important insights into the profound disruptions of space and time that are an integral element of changed physical capacities such as loss of mobility. In addition, phenomenology discloses the emotional dimension of physical disorder. The lived body disruption engendered by (...) loss of mobility includes a change in the character of surrounding space, an alteration in one's taken-for-granted awareness of objects, the disruption of corporeal identity, a disturbance in one's relations with others, and a change in the character of temporal experience. The loss of upright posture is of particular significance since it not only concretely diminishes autonomy but affects the way one is treated by others. Such a change in posture is, therefore, particularly disruptive in the social world of everyday life. An understanding of the lived body disruption engendered by disability has important applications for the clinical context in devising effective therapies, as well as for the social arena in determining how best to resolve the various challenges posed by chronic disabling disorders. (shrink)

Some psychopathologic experiences have as one of their structural aspects the experience of restructured temporality. The general argument is that one of the universal microstructures of experience, namely, lived time offers a particular perspective relevant to certain psychopathologic experiences. Lived time is connected with the experience of the embodied human subject as being driven and directed towards the world in terms of bodily potentiality and capability. The dialectical relationship between the embodied human subject and the world results in (...) a sense of lived time (personal time), a lived time that is intimately synchronized with the time of others (intersubjective time). Some experiences of acute suffering, and in particular acute melancholic suffering, can dramatically alter the temporal microstructure of experience to the extent that personal lived time becomes disordered. Normally, past and future withdraw on their own according with their nature of "not being." The future is characterized as openness to change and movement. The absence of this openness is the closing of the future; without this openness, the future appears static and deterministic. When the future is experienced as static, then one longer has the possibility of "things getting better," nor does one have any possibility of relinquishing or escaping from the past because a static future does not allow openness to change and movement. In short, both past and future become static. With the presence of melancholic suffering and the absence of temporal movement, a sense of hopelessness may arise in the individual because suffering without temporal movement becomes, from the sufferer's perspective, eternal suffering. (shrink)

Background: Troubled conscience among nurses and other healthcare workers represents a significant contributor to healthcare worker moral distress, burnout and attrition. While research in this area has examined critical care in hospitals, less knowledge has been obtained from long-term care contexts such as nursing homes, despite widely recognised challenges with regard to vulnerable patients, increasing workload and maintaining workforce sustainability among nurses. Objective: The aim of this study was to illuminate and interpret the meaning of the lived experience of (...) troubled conscience among registered nurses (RNs) working in nursing homes. Research design: This qualitative research employed narrative interviews with eight nurses to obtain essential meanings of their lived experiences of troubled conscience. The interview texts were analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic approach. Ethical considerations: Participation was voluntary, informed and was conducted with written consent. The Norwegian Centre for Research Data approved the data processing of personal data. Findings: The analysis uncovered two themes: (1) troubled conscience means abandoning ideals, with the subthemes: failing dependent patients; being disloyal to colleagues; being inadequate in the performance of work tasks and (2) troubled conscience means facing realities, with the subthemes: accepting being part of the system; responding to barriers. Discussion: Troubled conscience meant experiencing continuous and simmering tension between one’s ideals and realities and feeling a drive to preserve accountability and one’s moral integrity. Endangered ideals were often under cross-pressure and included humanistic values, professional values, working life values and the values of the organisation. Conclusion: Nurses’ troubled conscience refers to a struggle, but also a force that plays out at various levels and arenas in long-term care. Openness and dialogue about how professional values and the welfare state’s intentions can be realised within the given framework are important for individual nurses’ occupational health as well as the quality of care provided to patients. (shrink)

Indigenous people (IP) have faced multiple difficulties in education. Indigenous students often do worse academically than non-indigenous student peers. These stated the low enrollment rates showed a dropout rate, absenteeism, repetition rates, literacy rate, and thus the educational outcomes, with retention and completion being two significant issues. Further, this study explores the lived experiences and challenges faced by indigenous high school students amidst the new normal education. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study were: (1) The (...) reason why IP learners were not satisfied with their performance is that they cannot understand some of the lessons due to the language barrier. (2) IP learners are committed to finishing their studies, however, some of the students lack resources for studying, like gadgets for researching, and they do not have cell phones. And the other students may have gadgets or cellphones, but their internet connection is low or not accessible in some places at their location. (shrink)

How do feminists in the United Kingdom view spirituality and religion? What are their religious and spiritual attitudes, beliefs, and practices? What role do spirituality and religion play in feminists’ lives? This article presents findings from an interview-based study of 30 feminists in England, Scotland, and Wales. It identifies three characteristics of feminists’ approaches to religion and spirituality: They are de-churched, are relational, and emphasize practice. These features warrant a new approach to feminists’ relationships with religion and spirituality. Rather than, (...) as others have done, equating feminism with secularism, secularization, or alternative spiritualities, the article reveals the complex ways feminists forge religio-spiritual lives. The interview data demonstrate that it is unwise to see “spirituality” and “religion” as analytically distinct. Instead, drawing on the growing field of scholarship on “lived religion,” the article proposes conceptualizing feminist spirituality as lived religion. (shrink)

Context: The founding idea of neurophenomenology is that in order to progress in the understanding of the human mind, it is indispensable to integrate a disciplined study of human experience in cognitive neuroscience, an integration which is also presented as a methodological remedy for the “hard problem” of consciousness. Problem: Does neurophenomenology succeed in solving the hard problem? Method: I distinguish two interpretations and implementations of neurophenomenology: a light or “mild” neurophenomenology, which aims at building correlations between first-person descriptions and (...) neural recordings, and tries to evaluate the validity of first-person descriptions through objective criteria; and a deep or radical neurophenomenology, which aims at investigating the process of co-constitution of the subjective and the objective poles, within lived experience, and tries to evaluate first-person descriptions through processual criteria. Results: While mild neurophenomenology does not solve the hard problem, radical neurophenomenology solves it by dissolving it. Exploring the early stages of phenomenal processes such as the emergence of a perception or an idea highlights: a dimension of experience where the separation usually perceived between the subjective and the objective poles vanishes; micro-actions that instant after instant create and support this process of co-constitution, which Varela called “enaction.” This involves on the one hand experiencing concretely the dissolution of the hard problem, and on the other hand verifying the theory of enaction in lived experience. Implications: Radical neurophenomenology is a research programme that enables us to investigate precisely the mutual unfolding of the subjective and objective poles, from its most primitive phases such as perceptual events, to its latest phases such as the co-construction of scientific objectivity and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Abstract:In this article, we present a pragmatic approach to neuroethics, referring back to John Dewey and his articulation of the “common good” and its discovery through systematic methods. Pragmatic neuroethics bridges philosophy and social sciences and, at a very basic level, considers that ethics is not dissociable from lived experiences and everyday moral choices. We reflect on the integration between empirical methods and normative questions, using as our platform recent bioethical and neuropsychological research into moral cognition, action, and experience. (...) Finally, we present the protocol of a study concerning teenagers’ morality in everyday life, discussing our epistemological choices as an example of a pragmatic approach in empirical ethics. We hope that this article conveys that even though the scope of neuroethics is broad, it is important not to move too far from the real life encounters that give rise to moral questions in the first place. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 199-203 [Access article in PDF] Lived Time and to Live Time Christian Kupke Keywords time, dimensional time, temporality, dialectics, subjectivity In this paper, I argue that a phenomenological description of temporality is a description of what it is to "live" time, that is, to live time in its three-dimensional aspects: past, future, and present. And it is suggested that this dimensional time (...) can be analyzed on two different levels: on a microstructural level that is part of the subject–object relationship (cognitive–intentional time), and on a macrostructural level that is part of the subject–subject relationship (intersubjective time). In a close reading of Martin Wyllie's paper "Lived Time and Psychopathology" (2005) some implications and consequences of these suggestions are discussed. Conceptual Problems: Personal and Intersubjective Time One of Martin Wyllie's main theses is that to accurately describe suffering one may have to use a conceptual framework of a bipartite structure that includes the embodied temporal subject on the one hand and the temporal world on the other. It is this what the author calls a "dialectical relationship" between the time of the individual person called "personal time" and the time of the world called "world time" or "intersubjective time" (Wyllie 2005, 173).But then Martin Wyllie also deals with another model, another conceptual framework that follows a different logic and that—in contrast to the dualistic model—is usually associated with dialectics: the tripartite structure of past, future, and present. "Now in lived time", Wyllie claims, "is a unity of the past, present, and future, and is more than simply a succession because the immediate 'no-more', 'present', and 'yet-to-come' are ordinarily never sharply separated" (Wyllie 2005, 174).I want first to discuss the conceptual problems that come along with Martin Wyllie's use of these models. It seems to me that the author is dealing with the complexity of the relationship between these models by means of a double strategy: to conceptualize world time as intersubjective time (a), and to focus the analysis on the external, dualistic model of personal and intersubjective time (b).(a) "World time" may be differentiated at least into three categories: physical and cosmological time; natural and biological time; and social or sociocultural time. But the question is: how are these (quasi-) objective time matrices realized (and perhaps even "constituted") by the individual subject? To answer this question it is, also in my view, a good strategy for a psychopathology of time to concentrate on intersubjective [End Page 199] time, for, as Martin Wyllie states, there is indeed no doubt that "the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world" (Wyllie 2005, 177).But what I think might be a severe problem with this focal point of the analysis is the tendency to identify the world exclusively with an intersubjective world. That the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world does not mean that the subject's whole world is nothing more than an intersubjective world. Those temporal processes that are, for instance, necessary to "read"—in an intersubjective world—Martin Wyllie's text and to "write" a comment on it (as I do now) are part of at least a double temporal structure.First, reading and writing are formal processes of an integration of cognitive and intentional activities that are the transcendental basis of any intelligible discussion of semantic questions, namely, to recognize signs, retentionally and protentionally, as integral parts of higher temporal units to enable the subject to understand what is read or written. Without such retentional and protentional acts, as they were generally described by Husserl, any text would be a mere accumulation of signs without any formal or logical order.But, second, reading and writing are also informal processes of an integration of those intersubjective activities that result in an intelligible discussion of semantic questions. Here it is necessary to remember what was read or written, by Martin Wyllie, myself, and others (an intersubjective remembrance that is essential for the... (shrink)

Micro-phenomenology is an interview and analysis method for investigating subjective experience. As a research tool, it provides detailed descriptions of brief moments of any type of subjective experience and offers techniques for systematically comparing them. In this article, we use an auto-ethnographic approach to present and explore the method. The reader is invited to observe a dialogue between two authors that illustrates and comments on the planning, conducting and analysis of a pilot series of five micro-phenomenological interviews. All these interviews (...) asked experienced researchers of micro-phenomenology to browse their memories to identify one successful and one challenging instance of working with micro-phenomenology. The interview then focused on this reflective task to investigate whether applying the method to itself might reveal quality criteria. The article starts by presenting a shortened and edited version of the first of these interviews. Keeping the dialogue format, we then outline the micro-phenomenological analysis procedure by demonstrating its application to part of this data and corresponding passages of other interviews. We focus on one unexpected finding: interviewed researchers judge the quality of an interview in part based on a connection or contact between interviewer and interviewee. We discuss these results in the context of the means and intentions of the method and suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

Toril Moi has argued that recent deconstructive challenges to the concept of gender and to the viability of the sex/gender distinction have brought feminist and queer theory to a place of increasing theoretical abstraction. She suggests that we should abandon the category of gender once and for all, because it is founded on a nature–culture distinction and it tends incorrigibly to essentialize women’s lives. Moi argues that feminist and queer theories should replace the concept of gender with a concept of (...) the lived body derived from existential phenomenology. In this essay I take up and develop this suggestion, and argue that there are several advantages that a category of the lived body has over a category of gender for feminist and queer theories: (1) no nature–culture distinction is necessary but the body can be described as historically and socially specific; (2) it is not necessary to break out a gendered and “raced” part of identity with this category; (3) differences of sexual desire can be described without recourse to an “inner core” of identity or “sexual orientation.” I go on to argue, however, that it is important to retain a concept of gender for a theoretical purpose beyond that which Moi and those she criticizes conceive. In recent years feminist and queer theories have tended to conceive their theorizing as restricted to identity and subjectivity. How large scale social structures differentially position people in relations of privilege and disadvantage has been ignored, relatively. This essay argues then that theorizing structural processes and inequalities is crucial, and that a concept of gender is important for such theorizing. I propose three aspects of gendered social structure that are irreducible to one another: (1) a sexual division of labor (2) normative heterosexuality, and (3) hierarchies of power. In each case I illustrate the social theoretical work these categorizations of gendered structure can and should do. (shrink)

Historically, the sociology of emotion has been relatively long on theory and short on methods. This collection of articles seeks to remedy this by introducing new ways to capture the four factors of emotion, as articulated by Thoits (1989): meaning, expression, label, and physiology. As a group, these studies reify existing dichotomies in the literature—that is, emotional experience versus emotional expression—and seek to reconcile them. Additionally, they all champion the use of mixed methods—either simultaneously or sequentially—adopting some combination of direct (...) or indirect observation, subjective understanding/experience, and physiological change. Using examples drawn for their own research, the authors provide new ways to capture emotion that will carry emotion scholars into the next four decades of research. (shrink)

This article reviews experimental evidence for a specific sensorimotor function which can be dissociated from higher level representations of space. It attempts to delineate this function on the basis of results obtained by psychophysical experiments performed with brain damaged and healthy subjects. Eye and hand movement control exhibit automatic features, such that they are incompatible with conscious control. In addition, they rely on a reference frame different from the one used by conscious perception. Neuropsychological cases provide a strong support for (...) this specific motor representation of space, which can be spared in patients with lesions of primary sensory systems who have lost conscious perception of visual, tactile or proprioceptive stimuli. Observation of these patients also showed that their motor behavior can be ''attracted'' by a goal only under specific conditions, that is, when the response is immediate and when no cognitive representation of this goal is elaborated at the same time. Beyond the issue of the dissociation between an implicit motor representation and more cognitive processing of spatial information, the issue of the interaction between these two systems is thus a matter of interest. It is suggested that the conscious, cognitive representation of a stimulus can contaminate or override the short-lived motor representation, but no reciprocal influence seem to occur. The interaction observed in patients can also be investigated in normals. The literature provides examples of interaction between sensorimotor and cognitive framing of space, which confirm that immediate action is not mediated by the same system as delayed action, and that elaborating a categorial representation of the action goal prevents the expression of the short-lived sensorimotor representation. It is concluded that action can be controlled by a sensory system which is specialized for on-line processing of relevant goal characteristics. The temporal constraints of this system are such that it can affect the action before a full sensory analysis of this goal has been completed. The performance obtained on the basis of this spatial sensory processing suggests that short-lived motor representations may rather be considered as real ''presentation'' of the action world, which share its metric properties. (shrink)

Environmental education usually appeals to the students’ knowledge and rational understanding. Even though this is needed, there is a neglected aspect of learning ecologically fruitful action; that of the lived-body. This paper introduces the lived-body as an important site for learning ecological action. An argument is made for the need of a biophilia revolution, in which refined experience of the body and enhanced capabilities for sensing are seen as important ways of complementing the more common, knowledge-based environmental education. (...) Alienation from the physical environment is seen as one key element in producing environmental devastation. Consequently, human alienation from nature is seen as closely related to alienation from one's body. It is claimed that through overcoming the dualist alienation of human consciousness from its lived body, we can decrease the alienation of human beings from their environment. Methods of contemplative pedagogy are introduced for addressing alienation. By getting in touch with the tangible lived-body in yoga or mindfulness meditation we reconnect to the material world of nature. Contemplative pedagogy cultivates the body and its senses for learning intrinsic valuation and caring for the environment. Lived-body experience is challenging to conceptualise; we use Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of the flesh in our attempt to do so. Finally, this paper suggests some contemplative practices of the lived-body for environmental education. Experiencing the flesh of oneself and the world as one and the same is an environmentally conducive experience that gives value and meaning to the flourishing of all life, human and non-human. (shrink)

Context: The topic of my article, fragility, is a theme that has been little broached in philosophy and phenomenology, except by Ricœur, in the fifties, and recently Chrétien. I aim to bring it ….

ABSTRACT:This essay explores a more inclusive and equitable interpretation of "religion" within the context of religious vaccine exemptions. The existing literature critiques the prevalent interpretation of the meaning of religion in religious exemption cases, but frequently overlooks the importance of incorporating the concept of "lived religion." This essay introduces the concept of lived religion from religious studies, elucidates why this lived religion approach is crucial for redefining "religion," and illustrates its application in the domain of religious vaccine (...) exemptions. The author contends that broadening the meaning of religion by employing the concept of lived religion would promote a more inclusive and equitable implementation of religious vaccine exemptions. (shrink)

Through an atmospherological approach, primarily inspired by the Aisthetik and the New Phenomenology, the paper investigates the relationship between atmosphere and lived space, defines what kind of perception the atmospheric one is and examines the space we experience in the lifeworld and to which plane geometry turns out to be completely blind. Sketching briefly the history of lived space, we assume that atmospheres function as affordances that permeate the lived space, i.e. as ecological invites or meanings that (...) are ontologically rooted in things and quasi-things. (shrink)