The following excerpts are from the article, “Disquieting experiences and conversation,” by Lívia Mathias Simão (2020), published in Theory & Psychology. Disquieting experiences, according to Simão, are inseparable from human life, to the extent that we strive to know ourselves, others, and our shared realities. We are continually acting based on what we believe and we also enact our desires to know (our questions). These actions take place against a background. It’s in the background…
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Marc Applebaum. We talked about his experience and education in psychological research and about how his interest was first developed in phenomenology. We also talk about phenomenological attitude, the importance of empathy with the experience of another human being, the connection between knowing someone and the style of relating to them, and how the phenomenological attitude differs from the attitude encouraged by natural scientific psychology. I hope…
The most profound philosophical concepts tell us something like this: ‘If you want your life to have some meaning, you must accept the event, you must remain at a distance from power, and you must be firm in your decision.’ This is the story that philosophy is always telling us, under many different guises: to be in the exception, in the sense of the event, to keep one’s distance from power, and to accept the…