Sensuous Practice and Navigability

From raw feeling to observed intersubjectivity.

Calibration: Does the world really need more philosophy? I cannot help but ask that question as I travel through Europe delivering talks and presentations at philosophical and scientific conferences about Way-making and Navigability. Those of you who listen to the podcast and watch the Love and Philosophy channel can likely already guess that my answer to this question is not yes and not no.

The answer is in holding the paradox.

There is nothing new under the sun. All the philosophy we need is already present to someone somewhere (maybe even to you), though many of us are still searching for connective links.

We each hold a part of the pattern, but it takes communication to notice that pattern and move into a better one.

The practice of philosophy is how we find those patterns and learn to notice and observe them. Always anew. Opening, sharing and connecting with what David Abram illustrates in The Spell of the Sensuous: We do need a new philosophy, and we already have all we need.

Holding subjectivity with objectivity: Spells of the sensuous

David Abram published The Spell of the Sensuous in 1996, but it has yet to fully resonate. The book is rich and layered and deserves multiple readings. It offers a gentle, rigorous way to begin our discovery: When it comes to discussions of phenomenology, it is accessible, sensual and immediate, and it offers a good summary of the primary sources. In coming posts, I’ll go further into those primary sources, and also introduce other ones—Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gibson, Du Bois, Hegel, Carson, Spinoza, Bateson, de Beauvoir, Camus, hooks, Sacks, Butler, Deleuze, the Zhuangzi. Today, however, I would like to appreciate Abram, as his book helps us ease into a discussion around way-making and navigability