Atmospheric Spaces
Ambiances January 13, 2025 Hermann Schmitz
The article develops a fundamental conception of atmospheres integrated into a phenomenology of the felt body [Leib]. It critiques the ancient split of the world into a private inner realm of experience and emotions versus an external world separated from it. The felt body is conceived as space without area—what one can sense as belonging to oneself without the five senses. Atmospheres are another category of spaces without area, regarded as a total or partial occupation of such space in the sphere experienced as present. A distinction is made between atmospheres of the felt body, atmospheres of emotion, and atmospheres that are not emotions. The example of dwelling clarifies how people achieve their own space of emotion from the atmospheres of emotion available at places.