ES autobio and hurling

[LG Brownell]

Linda,

In Ireland we play two traditional Irish sports: Gaelic football and hurling. Each are kind of beyond comparison with anything else you might know...anyway, each are played by county teams. To play for a county, you or your parents need to have been born there. So highly charged. "Sam" is the Sam Maguire Cup, the most desirable trophy in Ireland. I have seen grown men weep when they realised that their playing days were over and that they would never hold "Sam".

I am from County Dublin, so Dublin is "my" team. Haydn is from County Meath, so Meath is "his " team. Dublin is in the quarter finals...Meath is in the also-rans...(apologies, Haydn...just trying to bring Linda up to scratch!).

Okay?

Seán

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 7:46 PM, LG Brownell <rea...@juno.com> wrote:

OK Guys:)....who the heck is Meath and Kildare and Sam...I assume Soccer?

L:)


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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sean Gaffney <sean...@gmail.com>
To: edith-stein...@googlegroups.com
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 23:28:56 +0200
Subject: Re: Primordiality, sadness, and the crying child
Haydn,

Oh dear - another book! Looks interesting.

I am also reminded very fondly of my own dog - Fritz (yes, after Fritz Perls). One very cold, snowy winter's night, I stayed at the T.V long after Fritz's walk...and came out to the hall to find that he had expertly dumped his load into EACH of my shoes! 

I am also reminded of his exquisite sensitivity to my partner's illness. The usual morning procedure was that I would get up, open the kitchen door where he slept, and put the coffee on. When I came back to the bedroom, Fritz could be in a number of places: lying alongside my partner, licking her face = she was not well; On the bed and a metre or so away from her = she is not at all well. In under the covers, and close against her = she is fine today.

Yeah...gotta order that book!

Go, Dublin, go!

Seán

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 11:05 PM, John Gurmin <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Seán,

Amazing really what they can do, and even when they want to get out they stand at the door expecting it to be opened - an 'intentional stance' perhaps? 

In fact there is an interesting essay by Lévinas called 'The name of the dog' where he speaks about a stray dog 'Bobby' that recognised the jews who were in a concentration camp as 'being human'... but while the 'dog'  - bobby, for Lévinas, has a face it wouldn't be in pure form as a human face. See, Lévinas, 'The name of a dog, or natural rights' in Animal Philosophy, ed. Peter Atterton & Matthew Calarco, (London: Continnum, 2005) pp.45-50. 

Derrida also has an interesting article on animals but he talks about a 'cat' - 'The animal that I therefore I am (More to Follow)'  - Derrida seems quite shocked about the gaze of his cat looking at him  when he is caught naked and how embarrassed he becomes! (Ibid., pp. 113-128).

The editors of the book outline that phenomenology has been preoccupied with the question of the human and has not give due attention to the animal. It's an interesting volume with a preface from Peter Singer, and extracts from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Lévinas, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Cixous and Irigaray on the animal.

On another notes seems that the Meath team got its just deserts and were beaten by Kildare so no 'Sam' for us this year. But it probably was justice given the win over Louth.

Best wishes,

Haydn 

On 2 Aug 2010, at 20:10, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Haydn,

Your story of Bonnie and Dion awakened a memory. Maria MacManus is a Gestalt colleague and poetess from Strangford Lough, in the North.

She has a wonderfull poem called "Reading the Dog" about how she and her siblings would know that their hard-drinking father was A) down the bend in the road and B) what state he was in. If the dog hid behind the sofa or under the table, then their father was drunk and angry. If the dog hung about near the hall, then their father was drunk and in a good mood...

Hmmm...so maybe it works both ways?

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 6:29 PM, John Gurmin <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Phil,

Stein doesn't talk about animals as such in On Empathy, but yes one could apply it to 'reading' as Sawicki said in her analysis and to the cat, the dog etc. My dog was involved in a scuffle with another bigger dog a while back, she came in and was a bit distressed, so we knew something was wrong with her, although there were no cuts or signs of injury. She walked the floor that night, and didn't eat the next morning which made us wonder about her teeth, so  when I went to check her teeth there were a number loose, and she winced. Of course I was having an 'inter-subjective' experience with our dog, which allowed me to understand why she walked the floor the previous night. While I can have these sort of experiences of the dog and its feelings of 'pain' etc , the dog wouldn't engage on the same level with my delight at solving a mathematical problem. 

Also my 'i' has been unfolded with others of the same 'type' i.e. other subjects. If I was a feral child and had no exposure to other humans, my 'i' would probably unfold in relation to the animal that I was raised by, so perhaps I'd dig with my 'hands' as the wolf and howl to communicate. 

We have in fact two dogs, one of the dogs was brought up with us  (Bonnie) and around us and it is interesting to see how she 'communicates' with everyone in the house, her twin brother (Dino) was given to someone else but he was left outside with other dogs. But unfortunately the people that had Dino moved to a different house with smaller yard and had to give up the dog, so we took him in. It was interesting to note the differences in terms of how the dogs communicated with us. One can see Bonnie who was brought up with humans all along has unfolded perhaps more in relation to human experience than the other dog who was outside with other dogs. But now I could just be projecting here of course, so it would be interesting to hear other experiences of this. 

Best wishes,

Haydn 

On 1 Aug 2010, at 17:00, Philip Brownell wrote:

Dear Haydn,

I am curious if you include non-humans in the "other."  Much of what we end up talking about is inter-subjective, where it is one human being to another.  However, I believe human consciousness is active in the cloister, in retreat, in solitude.

Phil

On Aug 1, 2010, at 10:31 AM, John Gurmin wrote:

Thanks Dan,

I'll have to think about the womb - which would require me to go back even further, and perhaps chicken and egg would arise there... here's just a piece I'm working on at the moment on the constitution of the 'I' as a pole of experience. 

Having discussed Stein’s understanding of empathy which has opened for her an avenue into the ‘foreign’ the ‘other’ there is a perhaps  a necessity now to consider the interior experience of our ‘I’, the ‘I’ that is given to us as an indispensable condition for our ability to ‘constitute’ anything. Stein outlines in On Empathy that we are capable of differentiating the primordial and non-primordial experience of joy and by doing so we come to realise or identify my ‘I’ as the pole of experience. This distinction is considered to be prior to my constitution of myself as self. Constitution in this regard rests on foreign experience, in relation to the other.  As Lebech explains:

The phenomenological reduction reduces experience in its entirety to being approached as ‘the stream of consciousness’. This stream is not always constituted, i.e. it is not always structured and intelligible, but when it is, it is polarised by an I.[1]

The ‘I’ is necessary for intelligible experience it is as ‘selfness’ and this experience of ‘selfness’ is brought about in contrast to the ‘otherness’ of the other.

---

[1] Mette Lebech, The Identification of Human Dignity, p. 214

As Stein states: 

This ‘selfness’ is experienced and is the basis of all that is ‘mine’. Naturally, it is first brought into relief in contrast with another when another is given. […] The otherness is apparent in the type of givenness; it is other than ‘I’ because it is given to me in another way than ‘I’. Therefore it is ‘you’. But, since [this ‘you’] experiences itself as I experience myself, the ‘you’ is another ‘I’. Thus the ‘I’ does not become individualised because another faces it, but […] its selfness is brought into relief in contrast with the otherness of the other.[1]

---

[1] Edith Stein, On Empathy, p. 38

This is great it footnotes and all in gmail,

h. 

On 1 Aug 2010, at 15:06, Dan Bloom wrote:

We’d have to know what you are boasting about to care. :)

On Aug 1, 2010, at 10:05 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Thanks, Haydn - absolutely right! maybe we better calm down - our American colleagues might think we are boasting!

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 3:52 PM, John Gurmin <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Seán,

I think our Dervla got silver in fact, she was very close to gold two hundreds of a second...

 

http://www.rte.ie/sport/athletics/2010/0731/orourked.html

So you'll have to up the celebrations at Cocktail hour.

H. 

On 1 Aug 2010, at 14:45, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Haydn,

Unfortunately, missed the Dublin game but saw Dervla O'Rourke's bronze...

I like and appreciate your clarification here. It is helping me to focus...it is so easy to forget Edith Stein's purpose: to apply phenomenology to the "problem" of empathy. And yet - how richly she does so!

Will be into my next burst of reading tomorrow - so watch this space!

Áth Chliath Abú!

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 3:33 PM, John Gurmin <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Dan and Seán,

Seán did you see Dublin play yesterday, they are now through the q-finals after beating Tyrone!, and  Derval O' Rourke got a silver at the European Games, great to see her finally reach her potential but I think we'll see more from her. 

Okay, I think that for Stein as long as you can differentiate primordial experience from non-primordial then you are capable of following her thesis, she merely needs to show that we experience primordial and non-primordial experience. She is descriptively analyzing her experience of these feelings and aiming to eidetically describe the act of empathy as such within the phenomenological reduction. 

But I can see what you mean - that perhaps there is no private feeling, that the feeling of joy might be made up of other people's feelings of joy and the community's delight at your book publication. I think here we are forced to move back to the initial differentiation of an 'I' from another 'I' in the first instance, because we'd have to move back to the first time we connected with the community. We would have to imagine the first human being unconscious of their experience - in this state pain states and the like would not register to an 'i', but then somehow we become conscious (perhaps on the lines of Sellars as you mentioned yesterday), I think the moment we would realise we were an 'i', there would be a recognition of a 'you'. It wouldn't be possible to just become self-conscious without some 'other', perhaps it's possible to do so in relation to a 'tree' but we would only unfold in terms of the tree, we'd need another human to fully unfold an 'i'. 

Okay, so we now establish an 'i' and when we do so we recognise the other 'i'. Now we reflect on what is given to ourselves in the very first few seconds or being self-conscious. I might experience 'cold', so I'd have these primordial feelings of cold. Then I might look out and see the other person and notice they were shivering too, and thus I'd have non-primordial experience arise inside, that would signify another 'i' being 'cold'. 

So I'm really just trying to go back to the very first time and try to imagine how it might have been like - and surely my primordial experience would have been just that, a realisation that this immediate feeling of 'cold' was running 'live' from my 'i'... having just come to self-consciousness a moment previously thus it would be without any other person necessarily affecting or influencing my primordial feelings in this first primary hypothetical condition. As long as we can say we have primordial experience and non-primordial experience then this allows Stein to continue her argument for her description of the 'act of empathy'. 

Hope the above makes some sense ... 

h. 

On 1 Aug 2010, at 13:55, Dan Bloom wrote:

So “primordial” is ontological, having to do with being, and “originary” is ontic, having to do with this being’s experience?

Maybe.

I don’t know how the words are used by others. 

I’ve been reading Bauman’s Postmodern Ethics. He uses “primordial” a lot. I’m not sure how his usage fits in.

Then there are Levinas and the rest of the French.

But this is worth considering.

Heidegger. He has a different project from Husserl or Stein. His is an analytic of being in order to find a fundamental ontology. He thinks he is correcting everyone from Plato to Kant, 

etc. This is the appeal of the pre-Socractics to him - that is, Parmenides and Heraclitus. 

In that regard, he adds a different perspective and way of thinking. I bring that to this discussion — to the extent I understand it. 

Ha! 

You ought to see the disagreements of Heidegger scholars on the Heidegger Circle list! They are a model of thinkers working their different ways through things. 

Dan

On Aug 1, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Dan and Haydn,

My warm thanks and appreciation for your recent exchanges - illuminating and evocative.

Please see my two US/EURO cents' worth below...

Seán

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:40 AM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Haydn:

You’ve moved me (us) along in understand ES.

Yes - enough for dan to write in green! 

Let me reply to your replies, below:

On Jul 31, 2010, at 11:09 AM, JOHN.H...@nuim.ie wrote:

Hi Dan, 

Sawicki's commentary on Stein is very good in terms of explaining her idea of empathy, I'll just quote her before going on to comment on your questions below. I think it's good to get a view from many sides especially given Sawicki's careful exploration of Stein's work.

'[Stein] describe[s] empathy as an appearance without any "coming in" or "going out" of personality or information. The feeling registers entirely within one's own consciousness, but it registers there in a way that announces a foreign life. I feel the feeling of another, as such, in that I am aware of something about my own feeling that directly presents the other human being. I feel myself led (geleitet) in this feeling. My awareness is magnetized and configured to a pattern not of my own design. To become aware of this aspect of awareness - its having been led - requires a reflective act [...] You [i.e. Stein] concur here with Husserl's account of the 'doubling' of the i as it engages in such experiences as remembering, expecting, pretending, [...]. In the last chapter, this doubled i-experience was indicated with the formula now/"now". This serves as shorthand notation for events such that, in my flowing lifestream, I now experience what is a 'now' elsewhere in some lifestream -- either an alien lifestream, or my own lifestream at some other time. With such events, the other 'now' cannot become a live now for me because, as Husserl insisted, there are no canals between streams of i-hood. Your monadic model obeys the no-canal rule, because it finds the complete and definitive essence of its target -- one's inward awareness of others -- entirely within the registrations of appearances occurring within one's conscious life.' (Marianne Sawicki, Body, Text and Science, p. 96). 

and

In empathy,  'i' would register a 'live' experience - an experience in which 'someone' lives, and that this 'i' living there is not recognizably identical to my own i. Thus an alien i appears. Second I can go on to discover just who that alien i might be. (But this second step is a matter of empirical investigation and is therefore beyond the remit of Stein's eidetic study) (see, Sawicki, p. 97). 

Yes - I am becoming more and more attached to Sawicki's commentaries. And I am impressed and delighted by her solution to how to address Edith Stein. So she goes for the second-person "you" - in a monumentally academic thesis! Well done, Marianne! 

> Welcome back.  Thank you.   >  I have a question and then some discussion of your example with more questions. > > I see the German “Originarität.”  Primoridal. Excellent.  > Is there a different German word for “originary”?  > What was the transition from the use of “primordial” to “originary.” Was this merely a matter of translator-choice?

I like this Dan, and have another comment on this issue below... 

* I think it was the translator's choice, but I would think probably in the context of Husserl's philosophy, but I'm not totally sure, would need to explore the origin of the term. > > Let me give another example similar to yours for our discussion. > > A miracle happens and I too get a book published  and am flushed with primordial joy. Immediately felt and non-derivative, it is a primordial experience.  > I see a child get injured and crying in sadness. I feel sad — non-primordial experience, an em-pathic feeling.  > All well and good. > But: > > My primordial feeling of joy was about my good fortune and also  about my relationships to others.  > My joy is inextricable with my sense of peoples' joy for me, how I will make my family proud, my teachers happy and so on. Even deeper and unaware, this joy might involve complicated tangles of unresolved feelings that are surely not original but come to the foreground with my good news. > And to the extent that every experience I have is of me in-the-world with others, no experience can be primordially mine. Every experience is situated. Never purely given. (Do you know Sellars “The Myth of the Given”? This is a rare case of me referring to an analytic philosopher!) *I did an M.A. course on Sellar and his myth of the given, the rylean ancestors, where one becomes self-aware and the rest of the group become conscious etc. but I would probably need to read over his stuff to recall his arguments.  Well in relation to the above, if there were no primordial experience - no experience that is 'mine', that I can realise as my experience in my lifestream given to my 'i' then can there be an 'I' at all? How would we differentiate ourselves from the group? It would just be a bundle of experiences without an order? Or we wouldn't be capable of reflecting on my 'i' and another 'i' so no empathy?  There is a primordial  experience that I know is mine.  I am questioning the structure of  “primordial” to suggest that it might be sedimented even though immediately known to me as “mine.”  In fact, I suggest that while the experience seems originary, it occurs against a “more” originary background.  There is no givenness that doesn’t have its context which shapes it. I feel joy because of my relational history along-with-others who taught me my feelings (so say social psychologists).   My “I” is contextualized with a “we,” so no experience I can have stand outside the social world.  There is always an other within my experience, whether or not she “stands” before me.    I am able to know I am an “I” apart from a group and I am able to self-reflect  because I am emergent of a primordial intersubjective foundation and I live in a world where others see me. This is outside ES, but there are lots of philosophers who address the question of the origin of “I” — whether we call it self, subject, ego, or I.  You know them better than I do,.

Dan, I refer back to a recent mail where I commented on how primordial may be more Heideggerean and originary more Lewinian. This is my sense of how to understand the careful unravelling of experience above by you and Haydn. Allow me to test something by writing it, a little before I have understood it fully myself...primordial seems to be a perfect way to describe the process of empathy; and originary a way of describing the experience. I am using primordial here to cover our full social embeddedness as you describe it - my joy at publishing was as much what I was socially and professionally expected to feel, so yes: primordially mine. To use Gestaltspeak (apologies, Haydn), we are here taking id/out of awareness. Moving to originary, we maybe can shift to ego/personality where Self is concerned, contact with awareness where the Sequence is concerned, and the move from Sensory awareness to Figural awareness where the Cycle is concerned...

I am writing out loud here, in a manner of speaking...anyway, distinguishing this way between primordial and originary is supporting my understanding. They are certainly two terms that warrant a watchful reading...

> My joy at that moment had  a social-personal context without which “I” couldn’t be an “experiencer.” That joy is as affected by its temporal surroundings, context, as it is by its social context.

Yes, see my remarks above... 

* I don't think it's possible to be so affected that the 'I' cannot realise that this experience is its own primordial experience, otherwise as above, the 'I' could not differentiate itself from another 'i' and the 'We' of community. Stein will later talk about an 'I/We' constitution in terms of her studies on community.

And it may be that this "differentiation" is possible and most contextually relevant when I can know that my socially embedded (being-in-world) primordial process ALSO is originary to me. So that while I am inextricably of the community, I can comment on my experience of being other than my community, I can experience being an "I" amongst other "I's". As you know, Dan, this is a distinction I make in relation to Lewin's field and life-space.

> I am interested in learning more about Stein’s I/We. I can recognize this feeling as my own. We do it all the time — at least, in mental health. I think I responded to my questioning of “primordial." > I question the possibility of primordial experience.

Surely not if it can be seen as "id"? 

> “Questioning is the piety of knowledge.” Heidegger > > Now to the child. >  I can feel my empathic instantiation of her sadness.  > But isn’t it also true that I feel sadness without any involvement of empathy. > I am sad because I am sad when a child is hurt — that is, my sadness is not dependent on this child’s sadness empathically experienced by me. > I read a newspaper story about an injured child and become sad. No photo in this instance. > My sadness when I witness a sad child would be stronger than when I read about it, but isn’t that a function of the vividness of the medium by which I am made sad? Eyewitness versus newspaper. > If this is so, how can we separate empathy from other feelingful reactions if the experience is the same? If the experience is felt to be the same? > *Well empathy would work in many situations, not just in 'seeing' the child as you quite rightly point out. I think if you are reading a book, you would still need to be able to empathize. The text would cause you to have feelings for the various characters but you would probably need to hide from yourself the fact that the feelings we feel in these cases are not originary (Stein, 1917/ 1980 p. 35-36).  I’ve read that. I need to be convinced that all “feeling for” is empathy. When I feel sadness for the Haitians, am I being empathic to their suffering even though they are a Generalized They?

Why not? 

Sawicki states:  'To read is to take on the subjectivity offered by the writer: to ride along on the author's i and vicariously to move through the course of an emotional process, an argument, or a story. To write is to display an 'i' as model and guide for such a joinery. if one could not feel-into the experience of another human being, one simply could not learn to read or write. Your Einfuehlungslehre is a theory of literacy. (Sawicki, p. 106).  > Thanks for giving me this to think about on this unusually cool morning. You ask difficult questions, the cold is not stalling your thinking :-).

Haydn: NOTHING stalls Dan's thinking. I seriously that sleep does, for example, based on the profound early morning thoughts he can have! 

LOL.  It really is shocking how the temperature is 25 degrees cooler than last week’s. > Haydn  Thanks again for helping me think. > > > On Jul 31, 2010, at 9:13 AM, JOHN.H...@nuim.ie wrote:> > > Hi all, > > > Have been particularly busy lately. Now, the German that is used for primordial is - 'Originarität' and non-primordial is 'Nicht-Originarität'. (ZDE, p. 6)  > > > When I feel primordial joy - it is a feeling that is, as it were, 'live' experience - so I publish a book and am filled with this 'joy' which is given 'live' in the 'present' moment of experience (rather than say memory which is not an experience of a present experience but a present experience of a 'past' experience in time), but then if I see a child who falls on the street and cuts his/her legs really badly and she's crying, this may raise the experience of 'sadness'. So I am primordially experiencing joy - in present experience, but suddenly 'within' a non-primordial or 'Nicht-Originarität' experience arises of sadness or 'pity' or whatever because I am empathising after experiencing the child who had that horrible fall. So, there is no reason for me to be feeling 'sad', because I am primordially happy after the publication of my book and this joy runs through me, but because of this incident that occurs with the child - a 'non-primordial' experience arises which is given in response to my experience of the 'Other' - (fremdem Bewusstsein).  > > > Primordial is a particularly important term alright.  >   > Haydn  > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Sean Gaffney <sean...@gmail.com> > Date: Saturday, July 31, 2010 1:56 pm > Subject: Re: ? > To: edith-stein...@googlegroups.com > > > I have seen the German, which gave me the Swedish - though in one of the commentaries, I think. I am in Stockholm. Apart from PE and Sawicki, all the rest of my books are in my country house, 2 hours away... > > > > So more later! > > > > On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote: > > Perfect. “Originary” and “non-originary.”  > > > > > I think that Heidegger also uses “primordial” along with “originary” to mean different but similar things.  > > > > > > “Originary" refers to something epistemological, such as an "originary experperience”? “Priomordial” is ontological, such as in a “primordial basis” for experience. I don’t know enough to say any more. Except that I may be completely wrong. > > > > > What is it in German. > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Jul 31, 2010, at 6:01 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote: > > > > > > Just reading Sawicki on "Husserl's Early Treatments of Intersubjectivity" in her Body, Science and Text. > > > > > "In terminology later adopted byHusserl and and by Edith Stein, this is the distinction between "originary" and "non-originary" live experience. Here Husserl counts two acts and two different contents (i.e., "data"). Stein will count two acts but only one content, although that content ("datum") will be entertained in two slightly different versions." > > > > > Hmmm. > > > > > Seán > > > > On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Sean Gaffney <sean...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Folks, > > > > > The best way for me to check if I understand something is to explain what I think I understand, and see if it works. > > > > > So: "primordial" has to do with origin, from where/whom something originates. If Phil is happy at some recent event, then his happiness originates with him, is primordial to Phil. If I empathise with Phil's happiness, then the act of empathy, the experience is primordial to me. This is a connection of two subjectivities. > > > > > So Edith Stein was describing intersubjectivity in a publication of 1916.  > > > > > She was also proposing Lifepower simultaneously with Freud's proposal of libido. Yet somehow, of the two of them, she would seem to connect via Bergson's elan vital to Lebensphilosophie more than he.  > > > > > Making sense? > > > > > Seán > > > > > > > On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Sean Gaffney <sean...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Dan & Phil, > > > > > I can see where you're coming from...and find myself nodding in agreement...and then find myself going back to her own note, 21, on page 121. I think this note is one of the things that throws me off target a little. "Act of experience"...surely equivalent to "experiencing"? I need to think this through a bit more... > > > > > Seán > > > > > > > On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote: > > Phil, yes, that’s it. > > > > This is also Husserl’s pre-reflective consciousness or close to it. Isn’t there a primordial basis from which consciousness develops and which flows beneath consciousness? I need to check. But I’m pretty sure Husserl has a primordial basis for experience.  > > > > > > > Id function is primordial. I think. > > > Since id is of the situation (world?) it is primordial to our differentiation as subjects (egos). Peter says that this means id function is not a self function, but a field function. I don’t agree. Self is of the world and is primordially undifferentiated. We need an other to be an I. But that is a later functioning of self. Self includes a primordial sense of the situation since we are beings-in-the-world.  > > Empathy, then, is a function of our worldednesss. We immediately have a sense of one another before we reflect on the situation.  > > > > > I am trying to work-out the distinction between “world (lifeworld)” and “situation.”  Situation is the current term of the moment. I think it is more precise than “field,” but it seems to me that situation is developed from world. We are in-the-world prior to being in a situation.  > > > > > I am also playing with “lifeworld” and “world.” This is murky and takes me between the lines of Husserl and Heidegger. Then to Stein, Schütz, Lewin, Gurwitsch, Welton  and so on. > > > > > This is relevant to my EAGT  presentations.    > > I can’t get rid of this underline.  > > It means nothing other pointing at my confusion. > > > > > Dan > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Jul 30, 2010, at 9:17 AM, Philip Brownell wrote:> > > Well, Dan, I think you nailed it as far as my understanding went anyway.  This is the pre-reflective givenness of experience as well, isn't it?  Would this what Jean-Marie Robine calls the "Id of the Situation?" > > > > Phil > > > > > > > On Jul 30, 2010, at 8:02 AM, Dan Bloom wrote:> > > Hi: > > > > > What do guys say the meaning is? > > > > > I might be missing something. > > > > > Doesn’t it mean “in the beginning”? And as used, it means before anything else? Original. From which everything else develops.  It is unfiltered or modified.  > > PE p 7 — Stein talks about things being “primordially given.” I read that to mean “immediately.” > > The word connotes a primitive state or quality from which more complex states will develop. It is a ground. > > A non-promoridal experience, as she uses it, is not immediate, original, or unmodified. Her examples are memory, expectation, and fantasy.  She says they involved representations, and for her, representations cannot be primordial because they are developed from something else, not an immediate given.  > > > > > In Heidegger’s terms, the world is primordially given. We don’t create it for ourselves, we are thrown into it. I wake up in the morning to a Mood that I experience as already there.  It is the tone of the moment.  > > > > > This is how I think about the term.  > > I may be way off. I haven’t spent much time with PE. > > > > > Dan > > > > > > > On Jul 30, 2010, at 8:32 AM, Philip Brownell wrote: > > > Hi Seán, > I'm glad you asked that.  I had to look up primordial to see I really understood the word, and every time I run across it, I have to remind myself what that means.  I could use a bit more development of the concept. > > > > > > Phil > > > > > PS I have now added Mette Lebech to the group, who will looking in on us to see how this operates before deciding to remain or not > > > > > > > > > On Jul 30, 2010, at 6:28 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote: > > > Folks, > > > > I would like to use this lull in the Husserlian storm to ask a question about Edith Stein.  > > > > > I finally got past page 5, though I still find myself re-reading it, as if there is something there I need to understand better. Anyway, I got to page 17, and had to stop: I am uncertain whether my understanding of "primordial" and "non-primordial" is consistent with what Edith Stein means by them. I cannot find a clear definition in her own text, McIntyre doesn't treat the topic. Calcagno does, page 38, though this adds to my confusion. He seems to treat these terms as if they are common currency in philosophical circles, with no added Steinian dimension. > > > > > Can someone point me in a useful direction? > > > > > Seán > > > > -- > > www.egenart.info/gaffney > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > www.egenart.info/gaffney > > > > > > > > > > -- > > www.egenart.info/gaffney > > > > > > > > > > -- > > www.egenart.info/gaffney > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > www.egenart.info/gaffney > > >

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[Philip Brownell]

Hello All,
This is to let you know that Mette Lebech has quit the group. She thinks what we are doing is important, and she's available for pointed questions if anyone gets stuck, but she can't devote as much time to the computer as it would take to keep up with us.

In a message letting me know all this, she also extended an invitation. She said, "In the IASPES we are organising an international conference on Stein end of June next year in Ireland. It would be wonderful to have a halfday seminar on Stein and Gestalt-therapy there and also to meet you." (I understand the "you" to be plural, meaning all of us.)

I think that sounds pretty special, and Linda and I would love to attend, but we will need an influx of $ to pull it off (I have to be in Istanbul July 4-8 that year). I am curious how many of the rest of you are interested in putting together such a half-say seminar and participating in their conference. Perhaps we could discuss this a bit more deliberately?

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

IASPES Conference, June 2011 - I'm already committed to being there, and would be delighted and honoured to be the face and voice of myself and any others interested in preparing a joint paper...

I will anyway be doing a very minor piece on the strange connections between myself and Edith and their impact on me, personally and professionally.

Seán

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[Philip Brownell]

Hi Seán,

I knew, or thought I knew, that you would be there.  If nothing else, you could be our face and voice, but I sensed perhaps a panel or something more extensive than one paper in Mette's invitation of a "half-day" seminar (I could be wrong).  If others are interested in developing this, I think the half-day format might give us room to explore more than one paper's worth of figures/ideas.  For instance, we each came to this topic from different backgrounds and with diverse interests.  I think we would represent the various ways in which Edith Stein has potential to affect the ongoing development of gestalt therapy and its praxis.

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Hi Phil,

My thinking has been and is this: the cost and time to travel is less for me and, anyway, I will be able to visit my son (now living in Dublin and marrying there within 6 - 9 months). When I first mentioned the conference, you already then raised the issue of cost and time...so I'm just trying to keep our context alive and well...

And GREAT if more than one of us can be there...

And an invitation to a half-day is an invitation, rather than a fait accompli...

So, yes, let's hang on in here and do the best we all can.

Preparing to get to grips with the four phenomenal layers of the individual in PE...she's quite a thinker, is our Edith.

Seán

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[Philip Brownell]

: - )

Sounds good to me.