I had the opportunity to be on a panel with my colleagues from the University of Mary at the American Catholic Philosophical Association in November 2023 in Houston, Texas. The title of the panel was: “Tradition for Today: A Panel Discussion on Philosophical Pedagogy.”
Here is an excerpt from what I shared:
I want to consider two aspects of tradition that are often overlooked: how tradition is sustained dynamically and how tradition is created transgressively. I believe that these two aspects of tradition will shed light on why and how we ought to teach the history of philosophy and perhaps help resolve some of the tension between the contrary positions of my two colleagues. I should add that these thoughts on tradition are heavily influenced by Foucault’s History of Madness and Philipp Rosemann’s Charred Root of Meaning.
I was invited to participate in a Colloquium put on by the Hildebrand Project in early November at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. It was my first time reading Alice von Hildebrand, but I was thankful to learn more about her and meet some wonderful scholars there.
Here is the opening to my response which includes a summary of the Savage’s paper.
“Thank you, Deborah, so much for your paper. I enjoyed reading it and it helped clarify for me some of the deeper motivations that are behind Alice von Hildebrand’s ideas. I’ll try and summarize what I saw as the main points. Savage’s paper draws on Alice von Hildebrand as well as two of her primary sources, Karl Stern and Gertrude LeFort, to demonstrate the essential role that women have in combatting a purely technological approach to life. Savage argues that because of who women are, we can offer a special antidote to the problems of technology; these unique gifts of women, she says, according to Hildebrand, include things such as a focus on the “personal, the living, the concrete, the heart” (p. 2) and the actions of “prayer, sacrifice and love” (p. 3). Savage details for us where these gifts may come from by turning to Stern which includes a phenomenological account of the differing bodily experiences between men and women (pp. 5-6). Next, she turns to LeFort to discuss the idea of receptivity as another gift that women can offer. I see Savage’s conclusion as an empowering call to both men and women to be who we are made to be so that we can respond to the challenges posed by technology today.
In my response, I would like to further the conversation by first talking more about technology — how to define it and how we may relate to it — and second, by asking about this call to combat technology — who is giving it and to whom is it directed.”
Giorgi Vachnadze has written a review of my book here at Phenomenological Reviews. Check it out!
I am very grateful to him for writing such a detailed and thorough review. It is clear that he carefully read my book. As a result, he is able to offer such an engaging synthesis of its contents. I feel that he captures the spirit of what I am doing. He also notes on the organization and accessibility of the book which I was happy to hear as that is always one of my goals in writing.
At the end of the review, Vachnadze criticizes the book for ultimately not being in the spirit of Foucault because I do posit a kind of unified account of the body. This criticism is not surprising as I know other Foucault scholars may feel similarly. But I believe that in order to say anything, we need to assume some kind of unity of meaning and, as I argue, even Foucault implicitly does this with his implied subject and his overarching unreason.
Nevertheless, I hope this review prompts many people to read my book and continue the conversation. Thank you, Giorgi, for the immense time and effort that you spent reading my book and writing this review.
I offered two conference presentations at the Psychology and the Other Conference in Boston from October 6-8, 2023. It was a busy weekend but great conversations were had. My book was also sold at the conference. Here is a picture of me with my book at the book table.
My first paper was titled, “Practical Considerations for Schizophrenia, Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar I Disorder: Drawn from Phenomenological Experiences and Historical Structures.” It was based on Chapter 8, the last chapter in my book.
Abstract:
Many agree that philosophy can contribute theoretically to a better understanding of mental health, but can it practically help practitioners? Without denying the benefits to a theoretical framework, my explicit goal in this paper is to provide practical tools that arise out of philosophy in order to better address three disorders: schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and bipolar I disorder. I discover these tools by bringing together two philosophical perspectives: an analysis of individual experience (using a phenomenological approach) and an analysis of historical background (using an archaeological approach). The phenomenological perspective will be guided by French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the archaeological perspective will be directed by French philosopher, Michel Foucault.
Beginning with schizophrenia, I will demonstrate how an experience of a hallucination comes from a nonrational behavior that is shared both in hallucinations and perceptions. This shared behavior is often overlooked due to the unspoken cultural structure that labels signs of nonrationality as moral failure. What we will find is that, even though there is no longer an explicit moral condemnation of schizophrenia today, the past and present historical structures help us identify one source for unexplained feelings of guilt experienced by many patients.
In regard to major depressive disorder, I will trace the structures of the world, such as spatial and temporal structures, that patients rely on in their state of sadness, to both understand their condition and secure a path forward. We will learn that the structures that patients depend on are not just bodily structures, but also cultural perceptions of depression which have changed over time. Surprisingly, these changes are not always due to observations of the disorder but are constructed to satisfy prior qualitative systems.
For bipolar I disorder, I will map the experience of a manic episode onto a spectrum of space centeredness. Although manic episodes demonstrate an extreme relation to space, we will find that usual human experiences are based on the same patterns of “lived space” which can range from decentered to overly-centered perceptions of objective space. Due to the variety in manifestations of this disorder, a cultural analysis encourages practitioners to treat a diagnosis of bipolar as a descriptive interpretation rather than an explanation.
The motivation behind these descriptions is to give a fuller — more human picture — to experiences of illness. From his decades of work in psychiatry, Arthur Kleinman writes that practitioners must consider the “illness” of a patient, which is the “innately human experience of symptoms and suffering,” in addition to the “disease,” which only includes the ordering of theories about a disorder.(fn) Following Kleinman’s appeal, this paper helps us see illness “as important as disease” by investigating an individual’s experience of a disease and the placement of that disease in our historical context.(fn) Although the applications offered in this paper by no means replace the medical accounts, they supplement them by grounding these disorders in the wider frame of our humanness.
My second paper was titled, “No Longer Foreign: Four Phenomenological Principles Drawn from Disability Studies.” This paper came out of my class that I taught in Spring 2023 on the Philosophy of Disability.
It is a common misconception that an analysis of abnormal behavior gives us insight into normal behavior by means of contrast. In other words, we may think that if we identify the defects and problems in abnormal behavior, we can then find the opposite to be true in normal behavior. Readers of phenomenological literature can sometimes be confused by the frequent discussion of disabilities and assume that these accounts are there to demonstrate the lack of something that is then present in those without disabilities. While phenomenology does not want to do away with distinctions entirely between the normal and abnormal, its purpose in addressing disability is precisely the reverse: a phenomenological account of disability gives us insight into human behavior — not because it is foreign — but because it reveals what is shared in all human experience. In fact, it is sometimes in the so-called abnormal behavior and experiences that we are best able to identify the fundamental human ways of encountering the world.
This paper would like to contribute to the growing discussion in phenomenology that exposes these shared human patterns by exploring one area in particular of disability studies: the bodily process of adaptation and learning for those with disabilities. I will argue that as we explore the experiences described here, we will find four common principles which apply to general human adaptation and learning. First, in consideration of cases of blindness, deafness and depression, we will see how humans rely on our bodies to take in the world. Second, in reviewing cases of spinal cord injury, we will find that the development of habits is through a gradual movement from the “I cannot” to the “I can.” Third, analyzing the use of technology for mobility, such as a wheelchair, we will discover how we all incorporate instruments into our experience of the world. And fourth, by looking at experiences in disability sports, we will discuss how we all receive satisfaction in healthy bodily activities.
The motivation behind the accounts in this paper is to bridge the gap between a disabled and non-disabled way of learning about the world. This is not to diminish the great achievements made by those who have had to adapt to challenging disabilities, but to humanize all ways of learning and adapting. In this way, we can relate and support one another in all manners of bodily experiences.
In terms of sources, the disability cases will be drawn from Berger and Wilber’s Introducing Disability Studies as well as other individual studies done on rehabilitation and recovery. The phenomenological approach for considering the cases will be drawn from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea and Being and Nothingness.
Through Wonder 