Kirsten Jacobson
University of Maine, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Philosophy of Space, Phenomenological Psychology, Sense of Place, Heidegger, Phenomenology of Space and Place, Continental Philosophy, and 43 moreMerleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of the Body (Philosophy), Jean-Paul Sartre, Phenomenology, Gaston Bachelard, Memory Places, Embodied Memory, Embodied Cognition, Environmental Philosophy, Architecture and Phenomenology, Spatial Practices, Phenomenology of the body, Architecture and politics, Hospitality, Feminist Philosophy, Phenomenology of Illness, Place (Architecture), Being-at-Home, Embodied Mind and Cognition, Existential Psychology, Social and Political Philosophy, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapy, Medical Humanities, Philosophy, Critical Medical Studies, Clinical Ethics (Philosophy), Geographies of Ageing, Bioethics, Nurse Education, Evidence Based Nursing, Nurse education research, Nursing Theories, Public Health, Dementia, User Interface, Technology, Development, Assistive Technology, Telemedicine, Aging, Architecture and Public Spaces, Architecture, and Philosophy of Scienceedit
- Kirsten Jacobson (Professor of Philosophy, University of Maine) specializes in 19th and 20th century Continental phil... moreKirsten Jacobson (Professor of Philosophy, University of Maine) specializes in 19th and 20th century Continental philosophy and the philosophy of art. Her research interests include the study of spatiality and the interpersonal significance of space, the nature of home and dwelling, and more generally, the philosophical significance and status of the phenomenological method. Her published work has focused significantly on using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to conduct novel analyses of psychological and physiological illnesses ranging from spatial neglect to agoraphobia, and more generally to consider issues of “existential health.” In 2009, she created a philosophy outreach program called Philosophy Across the Ages, which brings together undergraduate philosophy students with local high school students and retirement community members for seminar-style discussions of accessible and exciting philosophical texts. In 2014, she worked with Orono High School teachers and local community members to develop a related program—The Humanities Collaboration—that connects faculty members and students from both schools as well as the general public through engaged discussions related to local humanities programing. In 2015, Professor Jacobson received the University of Maine’s top two awards for teaching and advising—the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty in Teaching and Advising Award and the Presidential Outstanding Teaching Award. She is also co-editor with John Russon of a volume on the work of Merleau-Ponty titled Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology (University of Toronto Press, 2017).edit
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I argue that, although we are inherently intersubjective beings, we are not first or most originally “public” beings. Rather, to become a public being, that is, a citizen—in other words, to act as an independent and self-controlled agent... more
I argue that, although we are inherently intersubjective beings, we are not first or most originally “public” beings. Rather, to become a public being, that is, a citizen—in other words, to act as an independent and self-controlled agent in a community of similarly independent and self-controlled agents and, specifically, to do so in a shared space in the public arena—is something that we can successfully do only by emerging from our familiar, personal territories—our homes. Finding support in texts from philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, I construe the claim that citizenship is a developed stance as a spatial issue. I conclude that a state (or, for that matter, a philosophy) that takes the human being to begin as an isolated individual agent fails to recognize the essential spatial relationships on which we depend—namely, those arising through our way of being-at-home in the world; and, as a result, such a stance not only misconstrues the parameters on which citizenship is itself possible but also risks developing a social situation that encourages behaviors we see in the agoraphobic—namely, the behaviors of alienated and fundamentally homeless human beings.
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Though ‘‘dwelling’’ is more commonly associated with Heidegger’s philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘being-at-home’’ is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-... more
Though ‘‘dwelling’’ is more commonly associated with Heidegger’s
philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘being-at-home’’ is in fact integral to
Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-
Ponty’s more familiar notions of the ‘‘lived body’’ and the ‘‘level,’’ and, in particular,
I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that
characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that
while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that rests in
the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life
that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our ‘‘conscious’’ control—
being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain. This analysis of
home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as
well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving.
philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘being-at-home’’ is in fact integral to
Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-
Ponty’s more familiar notions of the ‘‘lived body’’ and the ‘‘level,’’ and, in particular,
I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that
characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that
while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that rests in
the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life
that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our ‘‘conscious’’ control—
being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain. This analysis of
home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as
well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving.
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In “Eye and Mind,” Maurice Merleau-Ponty criticizes the photograph for its unnatural halting of time. Roland Barthes echoes this complaint in Camera Lucida, where he observes that the photographic image generally fails to capture a... more
In “Eye and Mind,” Maurice Merleau-Ponty criticizes the photograph for its unnatural halting of time. Roland Barthes echoes this complaint in Camera Lucida, where he observes that the photographic image generally fails to capture a person’s multiple and ceaselessly shifting layers. In spite of these potential limitations, a favored photograph of a deceased companion is often a privileged possession—something many would grab first if forced to flee their homes. Such photographs also figure prominently in many modern memorial practices and rituals. In conversation with the concerns of both Merleau-Ponty and Barthes, this chapter will explore our relationship to the photograph as a means of considering key existential structures pertaining to our mortality. It will ultimately argue that the photograph’s voice may die at exactly the right moment for us to take up the important work of reflecting on and facing our own relationships with dying and grief.
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It is easy to think of space as something outside and alien to us, as that which in its extension stands in contrast to the interiority of mind, feelings, point of view and other seemingly intangible aspects of subjectivity as regularly... more
It is easy to think of space as something outside and alien to us, as that which in its extension stands in contrast to the interiority of mind, feelings, point of view and other seemingly intangible aspects of subjectivity as regularly conceived in Western culture. In this essay, I challenge this dualistic and inward sense of subjectivity, demonstrating how integral space and spatial experience are to the very possibility and formation of ourselves as subjects-i.e., beings with a point of view on others as well as on ourselves-and as agents-i.e., persons with choosing and meaning-making capacities. 1 Indeed, I show that how we exist varies with how we inhabit space. I am particularly interested here in how our agency is contained by space, but not in the sense in which water is in a pitcher. Rather than a limiting object, space is the extended situation in and through which our sense of self and choice becomes possible in the first place. This study of the interwoven character of personhood and spatiality coalesces with contemporary discussions of agency as interpersonal, situational, and, thus, ultimately heteronomous. Recognizing the constitutive spatial structures of our agency matters because these structures-precisely because of their heteronomy-can oppress the very agency they also constitute. In other words, there are existentially healthy and unhealthy forms of spatial containment that variably support or restrict the range and plasticity of our agency, and a failure to notice the importance of spatial experience leaves this aspect of our reality susceptible to neglect and abuse.
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Contemporary, institutional healthcare is typically based on an interpretation of the human situation that imagines illness and medical practice to be clearly isolatable dimensions of our experience. It is my contention, however, that... more
Contemporary, institutional healthcare is typically based on an interpretation of the human situation that imagines illness and medical practice to be clearly isolatable dimensions of our experience. It is my contention, however, that healthcare modeled on this interpretation occludes and, ultimately, misrepresents essential dimensions of our experience. In this chapter, I will focus specifically on the theme of space to identify problems that arise from isolating the presumed "medical" element from other aspects of our experience. Though our spatial environments are not typically included in medical analyses, I will argue on the contrary that effective healthcare requires that we take into account the inherent spatiality of our experience.
I will identify three levels of human spatial experience-the environmental, the peripersonal, and the personal-and, drawing from phenomenological theory and research as well as field research in nursing, medicine, and psychology, I will argue that issues of health arise at each of these spatial levels. In short, this chapter fleshes out the implications of place and space in our "existential health," and argues that the situated and relational notion of "being-in-the-world" can serve as helpful corrective for some of the reductive approaches to health often found in contemporary Western medicine.
I will identify three levels of human spatial experience-the environmental, the peripersonal, and the personal-and, drawing from phenomenological theory and research as well as field research in nursing, medicine, and psychology, I will argue that issues of health arise at each of these spatial levels. In short, this chapter fleshes out the implications of place and space in our "existential health," and argues that the situated and relational notion of "being-in-the-world" can serve as helpful corrective for some of the reductive approaches to health often found in contemporary Western medicine.
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We explore Heidegger's deepening reflection on space from the notion of lived space and "world" in *Being and Time*, through the distinction between "earth" and "world" in "The Origin of the Work of Art" and the *Contributions to... more
We explore Heidegger's deepening reflection on space from the notion of lived space and "world" in *Being and Time*, through the distinction between "earth" and "world" in "The Origin of the Work of Art" and the *Contributions to Philosophy*, to the critique of technology in "Building Dwelling Thinking."
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It is easy to think of myself as the direct possessor of my identity, as holding within myself the person that I am. Yet, experience tells me otherwise: I find myself in and through the things, the people, and places of my unfolding life.... more
It is easy to think of myself as the direct possessor of my identity, as holding within myself the person that I am. Yet, experience tells me otherwise: I find myself in and through the things, the people, and places of my unfolding life. My identity is sheltered in the world around me; as Bachelard writes, it is "the non-I that protects the I." Building on Merleau-Ponty's notion of the dilated character of our way of being-in-the-world, I explore this idea and specifically argue that it is through memory, and its gift-like character, that we are returned to ourselves by what lies beyond us, that we maintain and develop an identity across time. I argue that memory, like a home, provides us with a dynamic pivot for our past and future; it is the living, breathing landscape of identity.
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Chapter in Jacobson, Kirsten and John Russon, Eds. _Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology)_. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. Merleau-Ponty criticizes both empirical and rationalist metaphysics for... more
Chapter in Jacobson, Kirsten and John Russon, Eds. _Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology)_. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.
Merleau-Ponty criticizes both empirical and rationalist metaphysics for failing to explain or even to notice the way in which perception is forever involved in discovering and creating the meaning of objects and the
world as a whole. In his chapter “Space” in _Phenomenology of Perception_, he specifically argues that, contrary to the tenets of many rationalist and empiricist accounts, we are not in possession of our body as an object in a preset field. Our body is not something we experience as a conglomeration of fixed points that we know either by means of a “physical” map of neural data – as an empiricist would hold – or by means of a unifying map provided by consciousness – as a rationalist would claim. Equally, our sense of orientation is not given to us as a pre-established feature of an existence bound either by the physical forces of gravity or by a perceptual form provided by one’s consciousness – as the empiricist and the rationalist hold, respectively. Rather, our sense of orientation and even our basic sense of space are open to change and must be developed in relationship with our milieu.
This chapter begins by explicating Merleau-Ponty’s insights into the role the body plays in shaping our sense of orientation and in shaping our basic experience of space. I then use Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “spatial level” to provide a novel phenomenological interpretation of spatial neglect – a spatially revealing phenomenon that, I argue, common empiricist and rationalist approaches fail to explain adequately. I
conclude that our ability to be oriented in different ways and even to neglect certain “objective” spaces altogether is only interpretable on the basis of a conception of spatiality that acknowledges the body’s existential involvement in the production of space itself.
Merleau-Ponty criticizes both empirical and rationalist metaphysics for failing to explain or even to notice the way in which perception is forever involved in discovering and creating the meaning of objects and the
world as a whole. In his chapter “Space” in _Phenomenology of Perception_, he specifically argues that, contrary to the tenets of many rationalist and empiricist accounts, we are not in possession of our body as an object in a preset field. Our body is not something we experience as a conglomeration of fixed points that we know either by means of a “physical” map of neural data – as an empiricist would hold – or by means of a unifying map provided by consciousness – as a rationalist would claim. Equally, our sense of orientation is not given to us as a pre-established feature of an existence bound either by the physical forces of gravity or by a perceptual form provided by one’s consciousness – as the empiricist and the rationalist hold, respectively. Rather, our sense of orientation and even our basic sense of space are open to change and must be developed in relationship with our milieu.
This chapter begins by explicating Merleau-Ponty’s insights into the role the body plays in shaping our sense of orientation and in shaping our basic experience of space. I then use Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “spatial level” to provide a novel phenomenological interpretation of spatial neglect – a spatially revealing phenomenon that, I argue, common empiricist and rationalist approaches fail to explain adequately. I
conclude that our ability to be oriented in different ways and even to neglect certain “objective” spaces altogether is only interpretable on the basis of a conception of spatiality that acknowledges the body’s existential involvement in the production of space itself.
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In this paper, I use Heidegger's _Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"_ and Derrida's _Of Hospitality_ and _Rogues_ to examine the argument that the foreigner-guest is essential for our ability to be-at-home, and I conclude with an argument that... more
In this paper, I use Heidegger's _Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"_ and
Derrida's _Of Hospitality_ and _Rogues_ to examine the argument that
the foreigner-guest is essential for our ability to be-at-home, and I
conclude with an argument that it is cosmopolitan political settings
that provide us the politically healthiest home environment. Section
I introduces Socrates' argument from the Crito that our experience
of self-identical self-possession is not our given nature, but that
our ability to be ourselves comes from making a home in the laws.
Section II draws on Heidegger and Derrida to argue that this very
effort to be ourselves, to be at home, requires nonetheless that we
answer to the other: the alien is not something to which we can be
indifferent. Section III cashes out the implications of these analyses
in an argument for our irreducible ethnocentricity, and, drawing on
Derrida's _Rogues_, considers how the political imperative of hospitality
can be interpreted in this context. Section IV, finally, argues that
it is cosmopolitan political settings that offer us the healthiest
environment for cultivating the political habits of plasticity that
are essential to our multicultural political world. I conclude that it
is precisely such existentially healthy homemaking that ultimately
captures the essential spirit of Socrates' own approach to making his
home in the laws.
Derrida's _Of Hospitality_ and _Rogues_ to examine the argument that
the foreigner-guest is essential for our ability to be-at-home, and I
conclude with an argument that it is cosmopolitan political settings
that provide us the politically healthiest home environment. Section
I introduces Socrates' argument from the Crito that our experience
of self-identical self-possession is not our given nature, but that
our ability to be ourselves comes from making a home in the laws.
Section II draws on Heidegger and Derrida to argue that this very
effort to be ourselves, to be at home, requires nonetheless that we
answer to the other: the alien is not something to which we can be
indifferent. Section III cashes out the implications of these analyses
in an argument for our irreducible ethnocentricity, and, drawing on
Derrida's _Rogues_, considers how the political imperative of hospitality
can be interpreted in this context. Section IV, finally, argues that
it is cosmopolitan political settings that offer us the healthiest
environment for cultivating the political habits of plasticity that
are essential to our multicultural political world. I conclude that it
is precisely such existentially healthy homemaking that ultimately
captures the essential spirit of Socrates' own approach to making his
home in the laws.
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Drawing primarily on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, we argue that, for human beings, illness must be understood primarily as an existential rather than as a physiological phenomenon. We use IBD and HIV/AIDS as paradigmatic cases for... more
Drawing primarily on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, we argue that, for human beings, illness must be understood primarily as an existential rather than as a physiological phenomenon. We use IBD and HIV/AIDS as paradigmatic cases for demonstrating the existentially complex and inherently intersubjective dimensions of illness.
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Home is one of the oldest themes in the texts of our culture; it is central, for example, to the Jewish Bible and the Homeric epics. It is a prominent theme in the philosophical and political writing of Ancient Greece. Subsequently,... more
Home is one of the oldest themes in the texts of our culture; it is central, for example, to the Jewish Bible and the Homeric epics. It is a prominent theme in the philosophical and political writing of Ancient Greece. Subsequently, medieval Christian writers and philosophical writers of the modern world – notably John Locke and Karl Marx – brought substantial depth to the conception of home. In the contemporary world, it is the phenomenological philosopher Martin Heidegger who has most advanced the study of home.
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A look into some of the inner workings of Philosophy Across the Ages
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A look inside Philosophy Across the Ages
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In 2003, John Russon published Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life. In my judgment, this work makes a major contribution to the philosophic comprehension of human nature. Russon unites a provocative... more
In 2003, John Russon published Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life. In my judgment, this work makes a major contribution to the philosophic comprehension of human nature. Russon unites a provocative synthesis of themes from phenomenology, psychoanalysis and deconstruction with a nuanced study of psychological life to offer an original interpretation of how we establish meaningful lives, and the problems that develop in that process. In this essay, I examine what I believe are the text’s two most insightful and distinctive contributions to the understanding of human nature, namely, Russon’s phenomenological interpretation of family experience, and his “narrative” interpretation of the body that suggests we can read people’s bodies and their actions as we might read a novel or a philosophical argument. I will focus especially on Russon’s argument that our embodiment simultaneously holds us in a past and enables us to turn us toward the possibility of an open future. Russon’s provocative contention that we often live out our embodiment as a “fossilized” memory of our family experience allows him to: 1) articulate the roots of neurosis in a new light, and 2) to reexamine and broaden the scope of sexuality within human experience by recognizing all genuine co-creative acts of meaning-making as inherently erotic. I will conclude the essay by considering how these novel and thought-provoking arguments are especially powerful insofar as they can readily serve as a resource to encourage and support the “existential health” of its readers. Russon’s work in Human Experience does this by speaking directly and constructively to the real demands of the development of one’s personhood, especially in terms of one’s responsibilities to oneself, to others, and to one’s surrounding world—a form of “living communication” that very few philosophical texts accomplish.
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An article in Maine Policy Review in which I describe my volunteer-based outreach program called Philosophy Across the Ages.
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The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real is a children’s story, written by Margery Williams in 1922. Simply, the story tells the tale of a toy rabbit that is portrayed as privately self-conscious, narrating the often difficult... more
The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real is a children’s story, written by Margery Williams in 1922. Simply, the story tells the tale of a toy rabbit that is portrayed as privately self-conscious, narrating the often difficult psychological experiences the rabbit undergoes as a toy belonging to a young boy, and culminating in the rabbit’s magic transformation into a real rabbit. I will argue that, first, by portraying the rabbit as a self-conscious subject, Williams dramatizes the psychological and intersubjective dynamism through which the child who has the toy is himself developing. Second, by presenting this as the life of the toy, Williams shows us the true (educative) role the toy is really playing for the child. Finally, third, by showing us what is involved in becoming real and—correlatively—in experiencing the world as real, Williams shows us that our ability to experience reality as such is mediated by our relations with other people and, indeed, by our relations with toys (or, as D.W. Winnicott calls them, “transitional objects”); the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, thus, allows us readers the opportunity to advance our own understanding of the nature and meaning of reality.
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Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential... more
Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential phenomenology provides the resources for an alternative interpretation and treatment of agoraphobia that locates the problem of the disorder not in something lying beyond home, but rather in a flawed relationship with home itself. More specifically, I demonstrate that agoraphobia is the lived body expression of a person who has developed an inward-turning tendency with respect to being-at-home, and who finds herself, as a result, vulnerable and even incapacitated when attempting to emerge into the public arena as a fully participatory agent. I consider this thesis in light of the fact that since World War I agoraphobia has been diagnosed significantly more in women than in men; indeed, one study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia. I conclude that agoraphobia is a disorder that stands as an emblematic expression of the ongoing pathology of being a woman in contemporary society–a disorder that reflects that even today women belong to a political world in which they are not able to feel properly at-home.
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I argue that, although we are inherently intersubjective beings, we are not first or most originally “public” beings. Rather, to become a public being, that is, a citizen—in other words, to act as an independent and self-controlled agent... more
I argue that, although we are inherently intersubjective beings, we are not first or most originally “public” beings. Rather, to become a public being, that is, a citizen—in other words, to act as an independent and self-controlled agent in a community of similarly independent and self-controlled agents and, specifically, to do so in a shared space in the public arena—is something that we can successfully do only by emerging from our familiar, personal territories—our homes. Finding support in texts from philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, I construe the claim that citizenship is a developed stance as a spatial issue. I conclude that a state (or, for that matter, a philosophy) that takes the human being to begin as an isolated individual agent fails to recognize the essential spatial relationships on which we depend— namely, those arising through our way of being-at-home in the world; and, as a result, such a stance not only misconstrues the parameters on which citizenship is itself possible but also risks developing a social situation that encourages behaviors we see in the agoraphobic—namely, the behaviors of alienated and fundamentally homeless human beings.sjp_29 219..245
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Though "dwelling" is more commonly associated with Heidegger's philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, "being-at-home" is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty's thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-Ponty's... more
Though "dwelling" is more commonly associated with Heidegger's philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, "being-at-home" is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty's thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-Ponty's more familiar notions of the "lived body" and the "level," and, in particular, I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that rests in the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our "conscious" control—being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain. This analysis of home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving.
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Influenced by the works of Merleau-Ponty and of Heidegger, I argue that our spatial experience is rooted in the way we are engaged with and in our world. Space is not a predetermined and uniform geometrical grid, but the network of... more
Influenced by the works of Merleau-Ponty and of Heidegger, I argue that our spatial experience is rooted in the way we are engaged with and in our world. Space is not a predetermined and uniform geometrical grid, but the network of engagement and alienation that provides one's orientation in the inter-human world. Drawing on this phenomenological conception of space, I show that the neuroses of agoraphobia and, more unexpectedly, hypochondria must not be understood as mere "psychological" problems, but rather as problems of one's overall way of spatial being-in-the-world, that is, of "dwelling." With respect to both neuroses, I argue that subjects experience a sense of spatial contraction that mirrors a contraction in their abilities to engage with the people, the environment, and the situations that surround them.
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In this paper, I explore the relationship between human spatiality and our interpersonal engagements with others. My argument is that human communication is essentially spatial in nature, and that it is experienced and expressed as... more
In this paper, I explore the relationship between human spatiality and our interpersonal engagements with others. My argument is that human communication is essentially spatial in nature, and that it is experienced and expressed as such. To help me make this argument, I explore the relationship between communication and human spatiality through what I claim is an often misunderstood neurosis: Anorexia nervosa. I consider how the body can be a spatially manifested expression of our intentions and interests—in other words, how it can serve as a performative gesture that can tell others (and ourselves) about how we feel about the world, and that can also effect changes within an interpersonal system. I claim that anorexia should not primarily be understood as an eating disorder, but rather as a spatially expressed and felt communication disorder, or said otherwise, as an embodied expression of a person’s systemic withdrawal from the world. Moreover, I show that anorexia is not an illness of an individual, but rather is a symptom of an ailing system of communication, most commonly that of an ailing family.
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15 essays of original phenomenological research, exploring the continuing significance of Merleau-Ponty's *Phenomenology of Perception*.