The last few years have seen increasing research interest in moods and atmospheres. While this trend has been accompanied by growing interest in the history of the wordStimmungin other disciplines, this has not yet been the case within philosophy. Against this background, this paper offers a conceptual history of the wordStimmung, focusing on the period from Kant to Heidegger, as this period is, presumably, less known to researchers working with notions like mood, attunement or atmosphere today. Thus, considering this period (...) might provide conceptual resources not yet considered in current debate.Stimmunghas the remarkable feature of encompassing the entire semantic field of mood and atmosphere, insofar as both subjects and objects can literally be inStimmung.Stimmungmight refer to the state or condition of being attuned, which is understood as a dispositional state, as well as the process or act of attuning, which includes self-activating and foreign-determined forms of attuning. The word was first used for the tuning of musical instruments, but was quickly transferred to the fields of aesthetics, psychology, and physiology. This paper will focus on the contrast between the psychological canonization ofStimmungas a type of mental state, and the use ofStimmungas an untranslatable, irreducible metaphor with unique semantic force allowing for original theorizing. (shrink)

Medical schools are among the most important spaces for the history of the body. It is here that students come to know the anatomical bodies of their future patients and, through a process of cognitive and embodied practice, that the knowing bodies of future clinicians are also shaped. Practical and theoretical understandings of medicine are formed in these affective and historied buildings and in collaboration with a broad material culture of education. Medical schools are, however, both under-theorised and under-historicised. This (...) article integrates ‘materialist’ considerations of the body with Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy of space and rhythm in order to compare two markedly different spaces – the 19th-century Anatomy Department at Semmelweis University in Hungary and the mid-20th-century ‘skills laboratory’ at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. This comparison suggests that biomedical bodies are variously shaped by the agential and affective material histories present in the everyday experience of contemporary medical education. (shrink)

This paper seeks to analyse the concept of atmosphere in the philosophical system of Hermann Schmitz, the founder of New Phenomenology, as a fundamental concept for understanding his philosophical system; he uses this concept to transcend the duality of subject-object as well as to show the hidden realities and the foundations of lived experience of reality, by looking at how phenomenological analysis is revealed. Beside being used in sciences such as physics, meteorology, and psychology, the term also refers to the (...) atmosphere as a concrete phenomenon; it is also an evidence of his understanding the phenomenology and reformulating it. This paper aims to show the connection between the concept of the felt-body (Leib), as the theoretical core of his work, and space and emotion as other key concepts in his philosophical system, by using the structural analysis of the concept and the phenomen of atmosphere.The result of the analysis in this paper shows the special place of the concept of atmosphere in Schmitz's philosophical system and its prominent role in establishing his method of New Phenomenology. (shrink)

A neo-phenomenological and atmospherological approach, mainly based on a first-person perspective, seems perfectly entitled to consider subjective and collective well-being as the starting point for a philosophical reflection. The question is, however, whether and how well-being, also as an atmosphere, can be really investigated and verified. The paper examines many traditional roblems hindering the research and suggests to analyze well-being from a pathic-atmospheric point of view. It therefore focuses especially on the idea of “flow”, wonders how much our well-being depends (...) on the felt-bodily resonances triggered by atmospheric situations, considers the probable parallels between the aesthetic-phenomenologic notion of “atmosphere” and the sociological one of “climate”, finally, underlines the need of an atmospheric competence that is able to partly immunize against today’s widespread manipulative atmospherization. (shrink)

The boom in new theories of resonance is most certainly due to an intellectual atmosphere closely linked to the so-called “affective turn” in the humanities. The paper compares some theories of resonance or responsivity such as Thomas Fuchs’ phenomenological-psychopathological analysis of resonance and Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenology of responsivity with a sociological research on resonance by which Hartmut Rosa aims at contrasting the capitalist dictatorship of the growth-acceleration-innovation triad and the resulting loss of bodily resonance in the modern age, and above (...) all with Hermann Schmitz’s phenomenology idea of felt-bodily communication. My aim is to show that by providing a neophenomenological approach to atmospheric perception – viewed as an affective and pre-reflexive bodily communication triggered by a spatial feeling whose sounding board is our Leib – a pathic aesthetics can assign both a diagnostic and a therapeutic value to the concept of resonance. This furthermore means that a sociology also attentive to the bodily and pre-linguistic dimension and a phenomenology also attentive to situative and historical-collective dimensions, both being able to focus on the pathicity of everyday life, may find an unexpected but promising point of contact. (shrink)

Selective permeability holds that people’s distinct capacities allow them to do different things in a space, making it unequally accessible. Though mainly applied to urban geography so far, we propose selective permeability as an affordance-based approach for understanding diversity in education. This has advantages. First, it avoids dismissing lower achievements as necessarily coming from “within” students, instead locating challenges in the environment. This implies that settings (not just people) need remedial attention, also raising questions about normative judgments in disability nomenclature. (...) Second, affordances can be negotiated in numerous ways to reach a goal, analogously to how people with missing arms have learned to drive with their feet, so restrictive problem-solving methods are often counterproductive. Third, our approach illuminates how cultural factors ranging from gait styles to language and hence group coordination modulate action possibilities, so that cultural groups may encounter objectively different affordances in the same classroom. But fourth, while fit with environment allows for skill refinement, non-fit can contribute to growth situations, which suggests a degree of selective closure can be desirable. Throughout, we argue social constructs—including educational ones—are literally built or enacted barriers or openings that have reality in environments in the same way that affordances do. (shrink)

Considering the propositions of the virtual universe with its short history, there are digital twins and various economic investments. While the Metaverse points out a novel universe, it is able to promise much more than producing a copy of the self and imitation of conventional economic interactions. To reveal these potentials, it is necessary to determine the areas that must be meticulously focused on. Although Metaverse has permeated daily life dialogues, studies in the academic field are limited. Likewise, research about (...) its architecture and space needs to be developed in this area. No matter how far the new universe propositions go, they still stick with the quantitative values of the physical world. This issue obstructs the creation of its own reality. However, the universe's own digitalized digitalised structure does not require that the imagination of the spaces stuck with a quantitative basis. To avoid quantitative and reductive attitudes, focusing on the atmosphere of this universe may be a solution. The study aims to collide the possibilities of the Metaverse and the architectural atmosphere discussions to make an alternative reading of the Metaverse. Developing theories about the atmosphere of spaces and conducting atmospheric studies about Metaverse allow us to develop meta-experiences of the Metaverse. Focusing on the architectural atmosphere, immediate appreciation, ecstatic being and hallucinatory image will deepen the definition of Metaverse and provide a multi-layered experience. The image of the atmosphere and ecstatic being is associated with a ‘hallucinatory image'. The hallucinatory image has a structure that does not narrow down its references to the physical world. With this aspect, it may provide forms of alternative perceptions specific to the Metaverse. The hallucinatory image, parallel with the sensation of an ecstatic being, stimulates us to sense the atmosphere produced by the Metaverse. (shrink)