Continental Philosophy Review
November 30, 2019
Anna Bortolan
21 citations
A distinction is often drawn between a 'minimal' self, present in immediate experience, and a 'narrative' self, built from life stories. Some argue these are fundamentally distinct, with the minimal self enabling the narrative self but not being shaped by it. This paper challenges that view by examining affective experiences. Drawing on classical and contemporary phenomenology, it argues that certain emotions and moods are complex phenomena where minimal and narrative selfhood are deeply entwined. Because affective states are evaluative, they convey a pre-reflective experience of aspects of the narrative self. This suggests that minimal and narrative selfhood are phenomenologically inextricable, not separate dimensions.
Continental Philosophy Review
July 20, 2026
Saulius Geniusas
Sedimentation, borrowed from geology, serves as a concept-metaphor in phenomenology for the temporal layering of experience, habit, and meaning. It links static, genetic, and generative phenomenology, naming both the formation of a sedimented unconscious and the possibility of reactivation. This grounds accounts of historicity, tradition, and critique. The introduction examines Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricœur, Gadamer, and Derrida, and notes later reinterpretations by Stiegler and in political theory. The special issue explores sedimentation across embodiment, language, narrative, institutions, surprise, gesture, and psychopathology, showing how it conditions continuity while enabling transformation.
Continental Philosophy Review
May 25, 2026
Shaun Gallagher
The concept of sedimentation from phenomenology bridges embodied-enactive theories of habit with how habits and routines shape social practices and institutions. Institutional economics recognizes that institutions shape individual and social habits but says little about how individual habits evolve into institutions. Sedimentation provides a fuller account of these interrelations. Sedimented habits can be structurally rigid and difficult to change, yet they are performatively flexible and adaptive in situated action. This performative flexibility reflects principles of transactional plasticity that extend to institutions.
Continental Philosophy Review
May 12, 2026
Hayden Kee
The concept of an 'institution of nature,' hinted at but not fully developed in Merleau-Ponty's lectures, is elaborated as a model for temporality within consciousness, culture, and embodiment. Unlike sedimentation, institution is protean and malleable. Merleau-Ponty's naturalized alternative contrasts with Descartes's divine institution of nature: nature self-institutes through the autoproduction of sense over deep evolutionary time. The human body exemplifies this, as a primordial institution whose intercorporeality—anatomical, sensory, and affective—grounds higher modes of intersubjectivity, culture, and language. The paper advocates for an expanded 'generative phenomenology' that incorporates evolutionary biology, suggesting that foundations of human experience are rooted in natural institutions laid down through evolution, bridging phenomenology and life sciences.
Continental Philosophy Review
February 14, 2026
Jean Grondin
Gadamer, though rarely discussed in connection with sedimentation, is a key thinker on the topic within the phenomenological tradition. Sedimentation refers to what is deposited in consciousness, shaping it without full awareness. In Gadamer's work, this appears as the immemorial in consciousness, especially through the subterranean work of history in effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte). This yields a consciousness more affected by history than aware of its own sedimentations—more 'Being than consciousness.' Prejudices, traditions, and inherited language determine us more than conscious judgments, revealing that dialogue and language are always more inherited than created.
Continental Philosophy Review
April 9, 2019
D. Zahavi
The necessity of performing the epoché and reduction for a proper phenomenological investigation is debated within both phenomenological philosophy and qualitative research. Amedeo Giorgi argues that no scientific research can claim phenomenological status without some use of these methods, basing this claim on Husserl's writings on phenomenological psychology. This paper discusses Husserl's ideas and argues that while the epoché and reduction are crucial for transcendental phenomenology, their relevance for non-philosophical applications of phenomenology is much more questionable.