My research has centered on the phenomenological method and the problem of expression, and I have published articles on Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre. More recently I have become interested in the actual practice of phenomenology, and have undertaken several investigations of the experience of media, lived space, and the body. I also maintain an abiding interest in social and political questions. For more information see my website at www.koukal.org. Phone: 313.993.1138 Address: University of Detroit Mercy
4001 W. McNichols Road
Detroit, MI 48221-3038
USA
Back to the Things Themselves! (BTTTT!) is an annual attempt to effect a liberation from textual ... more Back to the Things Themselves! (BTTTT!) is an annual attempt to effect a liberation from textual exegesis/critique and return to the lived world to divine the essential structures of experience through rigorous phenomenological description. Please visit website at www.btttt.net
Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, McGill Universi... more Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, McGill University (Montreal, Canada), June 18, 2024
In this paper I am seeking an understanding of what it means to be fully in the midst of a world brimming with accrued significance and confronted with a future of possibilities, portended by a living present evolving out of a meaningful past. At the same time, I invite my readers to also reflect on what it might mean to be deficient in “world.” It is my hope that these reflections will serve to highlight what concrete elements of lived experience are in play within situations where abortion emerges as a possibility, so we can more clearly see the ontological stakes involved. By pointing out these elements, it is my hope that we can begin to more thoroughly inspect the ground upon which the abortion debate is founded, a ground which in my view has not yet been sufficiently explored.
Presented by video to the German Society for Phenomenological Research, Friedrich-Schiller-Univer... more Presented by video to the German Society for Phenomenological Research, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität (Jena, Germany), September 29, 2022
Accepted for presentation to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture,... more Accepted for presentation to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Western University (London, Canada), June 1-3, 2020. Meeting canceled due to coronavirus pandemic. Presented virtually April 30, 2021.
Presented by video to the annual meeting of the British Society of Phenomenology, University of E... more Presented by video to the annual meeting of the British Society of Phenomenology, University of Exeter (Exeter, UK), September 3, 2020
Accepted for presentation to the annual meeting of North American Society for Early Phenomenology... more Accepted for presentation to the annual meeting of North American Society for Early Phenomenology, St. John's University (New York, NY), April 22-24, 2020. Meeting canceled due to coronavirus pandemic.
Presented to the annual meeting of the Philosophy of the City conference, University of Detroit M... more Presented to the annual meeting of the Philosophy of the City conference, University of Detroit Mercy (Detroit, MI), October 4, 2019
Local Co-Organizers:
D. R. Koukal, Professor of Philosophy, University of Detroit Mercy, College... more Local Co-Organizers:
D. R. Koukal, Professor of Philosophy, University of Detroit Mercy, College of Liberal Arts & Education
Noah Resnick, Professor and Associate Dean, University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture
Presented to the annual meeting of the Society for Values in Higher Education, Loyola University ... more Presented to the annual meeting of the Society for Values in Higher Education, Loyola University (Chicago, IL), July 11, 2019
Presented to "Teaching Philosophy in the Michigan Area," Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti,... more Presented to "Teaching Philosophy in the Michigan Area," Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, MI), September 24, 2016
Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Saint Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick (Fredricton, Canada), May 30 – June 4, 2011
Back to the Things Themselves! (BTTTT!) is an annual attempt to effect a liberation from textual ... more Back to the Things Themselves! (BTTTT!) is an annual attempt to effect a liberation from textual exegesis/critique and return to the lived world to divine the essential structures of experience through rigorous phenomenological description. Please visit website at www.btttt.net
Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, McGill Universi... more Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, McGill University (Montreal, Canada), June 18, 2024
In this paper I am seeking an understanding of what it means to be fully in the midst of a world brimming with accrued significance and confronted with a future of possibilities, portended by a living present evolving out of a meaningful past. At the same time, I invite my readers to also reflect on what it might mean to be deficient in “world.” It is my hope that these reflections will serve to highlight what concrete elements of lived experience are in play within situations where abortion emerges as a possibility, so we can more clearly see the ontological stakes involved. By pointing out these elements, it is my hope that we can begin to more thoroughly inspect the ground upon which the abortion debate is founded, a ground which in my view has not yet been sufficiently explored.
Presented by video to the German Society for Phenomenological Research, Friedrich-Schiller-Univer... more Presented by video to the German Society for Phenomenological Research, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität (Jena, Germany), September 29, 2022
Accepted for presentation to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture,... more Accepted for presentation to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Western University (London, Canada), June 1-3, 2020. Meeting canceled due to coronavirus pandemic. Presented virtually April 30, 2021.
Presented by video to the annual meeting of the British Society of Phenomenology, University of E... more Presented by video to the annual meeting of the British Society of Phenomenology, University of Exeter (Exeter, UK), September 3, 2020
Accepted for presentation to the annual meeting of North American Society for Early Phenomenology... more Accepted for presentation to the annual meeting of North American Society for Early Phenomenology, St. John's University (New York, NY), April 22-24, 2020. Meeting canceled due to coronavirus pandemic.
Presented to the annual meeting of the Philosophy of the City conference, University of Detroit M... more Presented to the annual meeting of the Philosophy of the City conference, University of Detroit Mercy (Detroit, MI), October 4, 2019
Local Co-Organizers:
D. R. Koukal, Professor of Philosophy, University of Detroit Mercy, College... more Local Co-Organizers:
D. R. Koukal, Professor of Philosophy, University of Detroit Mercy, College of Liberal Arts & Education
Noah Resnick, Professor and Associate Dean, University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture
Presented to the annual meeting of the Society for Values in Higher Education, Loyola University ... more Presented to the annual meeting of the Society for Values in Higher Education, Loyola University (Chicago, IL), July 11, 2019
Presented to "Teaching Philosophy in the Michigan Area," Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti,... more Presented to "Teaching Philosophy in the Michigan Area," Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, MI), September 24, 2016
Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Saint Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick (Fredricton, Canada), May 30 – June 4, 2011
This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education ... more This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education by first drawing on Edmund Husserl's conception of "world" and connecting this notion to education conceived as a "world-disclosing" activity. The essay will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and specialization manifest themselves in contemporary university culture, and how they work together to "de-world" the lives of our students and deprive them of possibilities that are part of what it means to be human. After showing how this impoverishment undermines the world-disclosing function of higher education, the essay will then suggest one way to counter this "de-worlding of world": the teaching of the situated finitude of the human condition by reminding our students that our knowledge or sense of the world is always only partial. It is this realization that has the potential of placing our students once again before the vastness of the world in wonder and curiosity. In this realization they will gain a better sense of the world as a distant horizon still to be explored in all of its inexhaustible complexity and meaning. At the same time, coming to grips with their own ignorance will imbue them with an intellectual humility that will shield them not only from their own finitude, but the finitude of others as well.
The Journal of Teaching in Marriage and Family, 2002
This essay analyzes distance learning that is totally computer mediated through the phenomenology... more This essay analyzes distance learning that is totally computer mediated through the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger. We claim that there are the rudiments of a pedagogy embedded in Heidegger's thought, the terms of which uniquely lend themselves to an analysis of the pedagogical possibilities of computer-mediated distance learning. After outlining Heidegger's nascent pedagogy, elements of this pedagogy are applied to the traditional and " virtual " classroom. Concrete examples are juxtaposed throughout the essay for the purpose of comparison at each level of the analysis. It is our hope that this essay opens a discussion in such fields as family sociology, marriage and family therapy, and family relations regarding the degree to which the various emergent instructional technologies should be brought into family studies classrooms.
A discussion on the dangers that emerging authoritarianism pose to the constitutional order and t... more A discussion on the dangers that emerging authoritarianism pose to the constitutional order and the rule of law at the University of Detroit Mercy (Detroit, MI), February 25, 2020
Presented by invitation at the Shimer Great Books School of North Central College (Naperville, IL), April 25, 2018, and to the College of Liberal Arts and Education Faculty Development Colloquium, University of Detroit Mercy (Detroit, MI), April 13, 2018
Presented at “Defining Detroit: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Detroit,” sponsored by the Economic and Global Affairs Alliance at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), April 12, 2014
In recent years a burgeoning bicycle culture has reanimated the city of Detroit. The following es... more In recent years a burgeoning bicycle culture has reanimated the city of Detroit. The following essay analyzes this reanimation through the themes of embodiment, mobility, spatiality, and the intersubjective creation of place, using the techniques of phenomenology. The description that emerges is an evolving social ontology with implications for cities like Detroit. In such cities any plan for re-urbanization must re-conceptualize both transportation schemas and public space on terrain once dominated by the automobile. The provisional phenomenological description on offer here should be thought of as just one tool in this project, as Detroit and cities like it negotiate the reconstitution of their communities.
Of all of the various forms of political dissent, the most dramatic as a form of expression is th... more Of all of the various forms of political dissent, the most dramatic as a form of expression is that which places lived bodies in tension with the prevailing social order. Bodies so presented—in marches, strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations and other mass assemblies—are just the opposite of Foucault’s docile bodies. They are a collective will concretized, an intersubjective mass animated by a common purpose that fills a public space and obstinately makes their shared demand. The presence of such dissenting bodies assembled in various public spaces have at times been essential in dramatizing grievances and re-constituting the meaning of a political landscape. Though such dissenting bodies have often been met with the full force of the state, the political efficacy of such bodies has been seriously undermined in recent years due to more subtle strategies to suppress such dissent, and counterstrategies meant to circumscribe these efforts at suppression. The goal of this essay is to explore ...
In this essay I endeavor to provide such an account, and describe at a pretheoretical level an em... more In this essay I endeavor to provide such an account, and describe at a pretheoretical level an embodied subjectivity at odds with its own state of embodiment, and on the other hand, to explore the limited agency induced by constraints that fall upon an embodied subject who is compelled to live a body which is free to engage the various possibilities of the world in every respect except one, within the context of an intercorporeal social reality. This description will provide a sound ontological foundation where the central place of embodiment in the abortion debate can be re-asserted and properly taken into account. What this description will reveal is the ontological drama of such “aversely pregnant subjectivities” at a time when ever more legislation is being passed that poses ever more restrictions on reproductive rights of women in the United States (Guttmacher Institute 2018). This investigation is all the more pertinent in light of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s recent announcem...
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In this paper I am seeking an understanding of what it means to be fully in the midst of a world brimming with accrued significance and confronted with a future of possibilities, portended by a living present evolving out of a meaningful past. At the same time, I invite my readers to also reflect on what it might mean to be deficient in “world.” It is my hope that these reflections will serve to highlight what concrete elements of lived experience are in play within situations where abortion emerges as a possibility, so we can more clearly see the ontological stakes involved. By pointing out these elements, it is my hope that we can begin to more thoroughly inspect the ground upon which the abortion debate is founded, a ground which in my view has not yet been sufficiently explored.
D. R. Koukal, Professor of Philosophy, University of Detroit Mercy, College of Liberal Arts & Education
Noah Resnick, Professor and Associate Dean, University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture
In this paper I am seeking an understanding of what it means to be fully in the midst of a world brimming with accrued significance and confronted with a future of possibilities, portended by a living present evolving out of a meaningful past. At the same time, I invite my readers to also reflect on what it might mean to be deficient in “world.” It is my hope that these reflections will serve to highlight what concrete elements of lived experience are in play within situations where abortion emerges as a possibility, so we can more clearly see the ontological stakes involved. By pointing out these elements, it is my hope that we can begin to more thoroughly inspect the ground upon which the abortion debate is founded, a ground which in my view has not yet been sufficiently explored.
D. R. Koukal, Professor of Philosophy, University of Detroit Mercy, College of Liberal Arts & Education
Noah Resnick, Professor and Associate Dean, University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture