Philosophical Investigations of Body Experiences: Transdisciplinary Perspectives

Research Project

Supported by Czech Science Foundation
Headed by Karel Novotný, MA, Ph.D.
Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences Prague

2010 – 2014

Philosophical Investigations of Body Experiences:
Transdisciplinary Perspectives

The philosophical background of the proposed research project is common for all participants of the research team: the phenomenological and hermeneutical style of thinking in its recent forms. Every united partial research practice uses and develops these forms. The first focus (I) of the project is thereby directed to grasp the forms of the phenomenological and hermeneutical thinking in their diversity and mutual connections. This dimension is the common platform of the research project and each member of the research team plans to publish at least one book as a contribution to the actual state of the theoretical basis of the philosophical investigations of body experiences. Nevertheless this kind of conceptual work of interpretation of the philosophical texts is not the only focus of the project. Its importance consists even more in particular reflections of these experiences in three different contexts or domains which imply some transdisciplinary perspectives. The second and largest domain is that of the expression of the body experiences in humanities and arts (II). The third and fourth domains concern the relation to the psychology, psychoanalysis, psychopathology and ethnology on the one hand (III) and open on the other hand the questions of the bioethics from a particular perspective close to the phenomenology of interviviality (IV). Thus the innovative strength of the project lies first of all in the new impulses and perspectives which each member brings into the contemporary philosophical investigation of the body experiences from a particular empirical science or art – an aspect which seems to be necessary for the philosophical work nowadays.

The core members of researcher teams, Hans Rainer Sepp (*1954), Karel Novotný (*1964), Petr Kouba (*1973), Alice Koubová (*1974), Josef Fulka (*1976), Petr Urban (*1977), have all taken part in the research project „Investigations of Subjectivity – between Phenomenology and Psychotherapy” realized in 2006 – 2009 with the support of the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic (IČ IAA900090603). Kristina Simona Montagová (*1977), holding doctor’s degree in philosophy, three postgraduate students, Milena Fridmanová (*1981), Jan Puc (*1984) and Jan Bierhanzl (*1983), and one student in master degree, Filip Žitník (*1982), are the new members of the actual proposed grant project.

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