This chapter considers a fundamental question about how the mind works: Are the algorithms of cognition specifically implemented by the nervous system, with a unique role played by representations and processes internal to the brain? Alternatively, is cognition better understood as a product of the brain and body—or perhaps the result of the entire organism interacting with its environment? The first part focuses on the theoretical shift from mental representation and mind–brain identity to the embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive mind, approaches collectively known as 4E, distributed, or situated cognition. In the second part, 4E concepts such as epistemic action are applied to aspects of art and music, specifically the creation of visual depictions, the invention of musical notation, and the use of musical instruments. In the third part, the scope widens to the interdisciplinary exchange itself. Consistent with the themes of this book, I suggest that expanding the concept of cognition benefits from bringing the empirical sciences in closer dialogue with philosophy and the humanities. Specifically, the distributed perspective strengthens the interdisciplinary framework of naturalized aesthetics by drawing increased attention to the conceptual rigour valued by philosophers and to the cultural–historical contingencies emphasized by scholars of the humanities.

In this chapter a method of ‘somatic enquiry’ is put forward, which demonstrates ways in which the bodily knowledge of the minuet might inform analytical approaches to this repertoire. Drawing on other contributions to the field of somatic studies by scholars such as Suzanne Ravn and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, it demonstrates ways in which the sensation of dancing informs my perception of the musical sounds, and conversely how the sounds affect my body’s kinaesthetic sensations. Taking Elisabeth Le Guin’s similar exploration of Boccherini’s body as a model, it considers challenges faced by any attempts to grapple with bodily knowledge. It builds on Christopher Hasty’s notion of projection, or ‘throwing forth’, in his theory of metre, arguing that to dance is a physical throwing forth of one’s body. The method of somatic enquiry is illustrated through detailed accounts of dancing to movements from Haydn’s Minuets Hoboken IX:11, composed in 1792 for the first annual ball of the Gesellschaft bildender Künstler at the Hofburg Redoutensaal. Ultimately, it argues that musical listening (even when seated) is a more active bodily experience than is typically recognised, even when one’s awareness of this activity is limited.

This chapter, concerned with earliness as an aesthetic category, elicits a productive tension between Webern’s fascination for the ‘purely phenomenological’ dimensions of new-symbolist poetry and Jugendstil architecture on the one hand, and the impact Schoenberg’s ‘dialectic-material’ musical thought had on him as a student on the other – a tension that had crystallised as essentially irreconcilable in fin de siècle philosophical discourse yet in many ways formed the matrix through which much of Webern’s compositional imagination was shaped. From this perspective, it is argued that there is a need to reorient discussion of the works Webern produced under Schoenberg’s tutelage, from questions concerned with style towards a more comprehensive understanding of the ways in which the new stylistic means and devices Webern encountered during his studies with Schoenberg enabled the young composer to (re)voice his concern for presence and immediacy.

This chapter situates Webern’s early works within the discourses of Stimmungsmusik, a genre of musical composition concerned with the evocation of moods or atmosphere. Through a discussion of selected early songs and the symphonic idyll Im Sommerwind, it argues that for the young Webern the idea of Stimmung was tied to a specific set of compositional choices and expressive strategies geared at conjuring notions of depth. This perspective is corroborated with reference to the aesthetic ideas Webern inherited from Ferdinand Avenarius’s poetry and Richard Wagner’s music dramas. Ultimately, it is suggested that by dissolving the subject–object epistemology in favour of a more ‘phenomenological’ conception of the world, Webern’s early works can be understood as offering a radical critique of ‘Romantic’ landscape aesthetics.

This chapter explains how the emotionally expressive motions of characters can reveal their unmet psychological needs, which cultural and economic conditions do not allow them to fully acknowledge. These movements and the environments in which they unfold evoke subgenres of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novel including the marriage plot, the Gothic novel, the Victorian bildungsroman, and the sensation novel. These episodes featuring characters’ emotionally expressive motions invite us to understand these subgenres in a new light, as narratives that depict characters’ unfulfilled needs and respond to those of anticipated readers. The introduction situates this approach both with respect to recent work in novel studies and the earlier approaches of reader response theorists. The chapter also offers an extended interpretation of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, oriented around Clarissa’s expressive motions as she runs away from her family with Lovelace. This moment can be seen as the origin of episodes of getting lost.

Reinach believed that basic legal concepts exist, that their existence is independent of the positive law, and their existence is independent of moral obligation. In this idiosyncratic juxtaposition of positions, Reinach is joined by contemporary theorists drawing on evolutionary psychology and cognitive science in jurisprudence. But Reinach emphatically insisted that his claims were ontological, not psychological. This chapter explains why. For Reinach himself, the ontological status of legal concepts was one front in a broader debate over whether basic mathematical and logical concepts were true a priori or features of human psychology; a demonstrative project in the breadth of the a priori. But it is suggested that today’s theorists need not be as preoccupied with this distinction as Reinach was. Not only is the practical difference between ontological and evolutionary theories not as wide as Reinach seems to have assumed, but arguments for metaphysical reality in other domains are substantially less persuasive as applied to Reinach’s legal concepts.

This Introduction situates Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law, and Adolf Reinach, in contemporary currents in private law theory and philosophy.

The conclusion returns to Charlotte Brontë to consider why Victorian authors might have preferred to explore pre-reflective experiences through episodes of getting lost rather than through the technique of stream-of-consciousness narration. The conclusion also addresses more directly the disturbing resemblance of strategic confusion to the willful ignorance that enables white people to uphold oppressive norms.

This Introduction situates Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law, and Adolf Reinach, in contemporary currents in private law theory and philosophy.

This chapter critically examines the treatment of concepts of legal personality and representation provided by the great (if lamentably now mostly forgotten) German realist phenomenologist Adolf Reinach. In The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law (1913), Reinach offers what is meant to be a phenomenological elucidation of the a priori nature (essential formal characteristics) of a wide variety of foundational legal concepts, the latter understood as denoting distinctive modalities of speech act. The primary interest of the chapter lies in the analysis that Reinach provides of concepts of personality and representation. However, one cannot understand what is distinctive in – and distinctively compelling or puzzling about – Reinach’s analysis of these concepts without appreciating what is distinctive about his general methodology of conceptual analysis (i.e., his phenomenological, speech act theoretical understanding of social behavior denoted by legal concepts). Thus, in addition to examining Reinach’s views on persons, legal personhood, and legal representation, the chapter provides a critical introduction to Reinachian conceptual analysis and explains its enduring interest for contemporary private law theory.

Chapter 4 explores the normative challenge of the experience of dehumanisation. It starts from a paradigmatic case of dehumanisation, as it was described from a first-person perspective: the torture of Jean Améry. This description offers a phenomenology of dehumanisation. In order to deepen the analysis, the experience of dehumanisation is subsequently confronted with recent work on alienation. This opens up the critical potential of the experience of dehumanisation challenging important concepts that figure prominently in debates on (the aftermath of) atrocities.

The introduction serves a threefold purpose. First, it aims to sensitise the reader to the all-pervasiveness of humanity in international criminal justice, more in particular in the discourse on the atrocity crimes. This part of the introduction argues that the concept of humanity provokes more questions than it is meant to solve. Second, it outlines the book’s methodology to the reader. Third, the introduction sketches the main argument of the book through an overview of the chapters.

This chapter sheds light on phenomenological aspects of personality disorders. Although research on personality disorders has increased in the last decades, it remains relatively underexamined compared to other mental health conditions. This discrepancy is even more evident in phenomenological psychopathology. To fill this lacuna, this chapter offers an analysis of the implicit, temporal foundation of self-experience in personality disorders. It is argued that personality disorders can be understood in terms of a temporal inflexibility of the self. Important aspects of lived inflexibility are described across five topoi: repetitiveness of interpersonal patterns, affective rigidity, reification of self-experience, lack of future openness, and the feeling of being stuck.

This chapter will examine how intentionality shapes the intimate life of people affected by narcissistic traits. Focusing on the notion of interaffectivity, the chapter will discuss the affectivity of people suffering from narcissistic traits through the lenses of passive, active and practical intentionality as expounded in Husserl’s work. I believe that the clarification of the narcissistic wound and its impact on the interaffective dynamics of daily life might help rehabilitation to a healthier life. Removing the “intentional blockage” that prevents them from exploring the content of their lived-experience would restore an interaffective space conducive to a more flourishing intimate life with their loved ones.