Abstract This introduction to the special issue “What is Sedimentation? Consciousness, History, Language” clarifies the central role of sedimentation in Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology and sets the stage for the essays that follow. Borrowed from geology, sedimentation functions in phenomenology as a concept-metaphor for the temporal layering of experience, habit, and meaning,...
Abstract The concept of sedimentation, developed in phenomenology, provides a bridge between recent discussions of habit in embodied-enactive theories of cognition and skilled performance and conceptions of how habit and routine function in social practices and institutional formation. Although the notion of habit is little discussed in mainstream neoclassical economics, various theorists of...
Abstract This paper explicates the concept of an institution of nature, a notion hinted at but never fully developed in Merleau-Ponty’s Collège de France lectures. The study begins by distinguishing institution from sedimentation, arguing for the protean, malleable character of institution as a model for temporality within consciousness, culture, and embodiment. The paper then critically...
Building on the Husserlian discourse, this article explores the pathological modification of sedimentation within the context of phenomenological psychopathology. It begins with a recapitulation of Husserl’s original account of sedimentation, which is characterized by an implicit temporal stratification of experiential contents and the harmonious nature of their return in the subsequent course...
Abstract This paper examines the different ways in which the metaphor and concept of sedimentation play a decisive function in Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness. Through an examination of the different layers and implications of meaning in Husserl’s image of sedimentation, the entangled significance of this crucial metaphor is connected to other metaphors in Husserl’s thinking,...
Abstract In the framework of Husserl’s phenomenology, we can distinguish three conceptions of sedimentation: static, genetic, and generative. After briefly sketching the static and genetic conceptions, this paper offers a detailed examination of generative sedimentations, showing how present consciousness is shaped not only by its own past but also by intersubjective and intergenerational...
Gadamer rarely spoke of sedimentation and is not known as a philosopher who had much to say about the issue. This article would like to make the case that he is an important thinker of sedimentation and one who stands, in this regard as in others, in the best tradition of phenomenology. If one understands by sedimentation what is “deposited” in consciousness and determines it, but of which it...
Although few other phenomenologists have provided a more insightful analysis of sedimentation than Alfred Schutz, the importance of his reflections remains heavily underappreciated. To counteract this deficiency, this paper develops a systematic account of Schutz’s phenomenology of sedimentations. While recognizing the Husserlian background that underlies Schutz’s investigations, the paper...
In this paper I examine a set of exceptional aesthetic experiences that remove us from our pragmatic everyday life and involve a specific type of unaffordability. I then extend this notion of unaffordability to experiences of awe and its relation to the sublime. My analysis is guided by considerations of the phenomenologically inspired enactivist approach that supports an affordance-based...
The phenomenological method (or rather, methods) has been fruitfully used to study the experience of illness in recent years. However, the role of illness is not merely that of a passive object for phenomenological scrutiny. I propose that illness, and pathology more generally, can be developed into a phenomenological method in their own right. I claim that studying cases of pathology,...
In the contemporary phenomenological literature it has been argued that it is possible to distinguish between two forms of selfhood: the “minimal” and “narrative” self. This paper discusses a claim which is central to this account, namely that the minimal and narrative self complement each other but are fundamentally distinct dimensions. In particular, I challenge the idea that while the...
The question of whether a proper phenomenological investigation and analysis requires one to perform the epoché and the reduction has not only been discussed within phenomenological philosophy. It is also very much a question that has been hotly debated within qualitative research. Amedeo Giorgi, in particular, has insisted that no scientific research can claim phenomenological status unless it...
In Heidegger's last seminar, which was in Zähringen in 1973, he introduces what he called a "phenomenology of the inconspicuous" (Phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren). Despite scholars' occasional references to this "approach" over the last 40 years, this approach of Heidegger's has gone largely under investigated in secondary literature. This article introduces three different, although not...