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Abstract: The article contends that respiratory philosophy has, thus far, laid predominant stress upon the empirical form of breathing, as opposed to the transcendental; or at least it has used breath precisely as an occasion to elide or deconstruct this very opposition. Breath is then conceived primarily as material, bodily, and natural: as binding us together with the animals and with all living things.and yet this apparently benign ecological gesture is not without its deleterious side-effects: by contrasting this gesture with a more humanistic and transcendental conception of breath, inspired by Giorgio agamben’s work on the voice, we might begin to gain some clarity as to the jarring contrast that sprang up between the friendly valorisation of a shared con-spiration that has characterised this young philosophy up to now, and the intense, even violent, hostility to the breath of the other which the developed world exhibited from at least 2020 to 2022.We consider whether an overly empiricistic conception of breath and of the human might have played a part in this reversal of values. In conclusion, the article urges upon us a certain turn towards the transcendental form of the breath, and indeed to a certain human exceptionalism in this regard.
Keywords: Agamben, language, voice, breath, animal, human, humanism, transcendental, empirical, masks, stifling, identity, invisibility, virus, pandemic
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 476; Downloads: 307
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Abstract: Breath is a grounding phenomenon present in many forms of Buddhist medi-tation. In traditional Buddhist meditations (including ānāpānasati and vipassanā), the practitioner observes the breath, surveys various physical and mental phenom-ena, and from there realizes that suffering (duḥkha) is not ultimately binding (and along the way, they may experience the nonduality of body and mind). Similarly, the seated meditation practice (zazen) deployed by Rinzai Zen begins with atten-tion to breath, refines one’s attention to psycho-physical sensations, and fosters a realization of mind-body unity that enables the practitioner to face duḥkha. But this form of Zen recasts the respiratory philosophy of early Buddhism in some important respects. This paper explores how these adaptations take place in terms of an explicitly somaesthetic orientation. Emphasizing the postural form of the body, the capacity to sense the pull of gravity, and the performance of breathing from the hara (lower belly), zazen seeks to awaken the somatic body by transform-ing the weight of suffering into nondual, vital energy.
Keywords: zazen, duḥkha, gravity, grief, somaesthetics, hara, breathing
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 382; Downloads: 280
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Abstract: For the sake of a respiratory philosophy, it makes sense to look to the East, since many Eastern traditions such as Sufism include breathwork in their so-matic practices. In my paper, I aim to show how Rumi – a 13th century Muslim theologian and Sufi – used breath or nafas in his Persian poetry to outline how breathing is an originary phenomenon. My paper will take a few samples of his poetry to demonstrate how breath connotes a newness through the “gift” of life that it endows upon us, and how the creative, endowing, and primal nature of breath is linked to an openness to the Divine other and to others. Furthermore, for Rumi, every passing breath ushers in a new existence, annihilating its older form and thus creating an ontological sense in the reader of both the finiteness of existence through what has passed and the infinite possibilities it holds when the newness arrives. Bridging the finite and infinite through breath enables us to develop a respiratory ontology that aims to conceive of dualities through an inter-related perspective. This, I wish to argue, is the true promise of Rumi’s poetry for a philosophy of breathing
Keywords: Rumi, Sufism, breathwork, Irigaray, Merleau-Ponty, embodied philosophy
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 424; Downloads: 259
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Abstract: Intention is one of the catchwords of 20th-century Western philosophy. Positively or negatively, it takes a central role in numerous traditions, from phenomenology to analytic philosophy, and in none of them has it anything to do with air or breath. According to its widely accepted lineage, the concept of intention can be traced back to Medieval Scholastic philosophy, specifically to Augustine’s utilisation of this term. It is in Augustine’s intentio animi (the intention of the soul) – most critics argue – that intention first meant directing one’s attention towards something or a voluntary design or plan. In this paper, such a genealogy will not be proved wrong but rather complicated by taking seriously the (anti-)pneumatological context in which Augustine developed his concept of intention and, at the same time, those unheeded studies of his works that claim the origins of his use of intentio to lie in the Ancient Stoic concept of τόνος (tonos, tension or tone). A new study will show that intentio is what allows Augustine every time to prove the spirit to be immaterial, namely to not be a form of material air or breath. By transforming intentio into attentio (attention) first and voluntas (will) later, Augustine makes possible the realm of the immaterial spirit. Furthermore, however, this article also shows that his arguments seem to take for granted and reject an earlier, materialist pneumatological conception of intention, whose traces can be found in some of the works of the Roman Stoic Seneca, as well as in now-lost 4th century CE Christian heretical theories of the Holy Spirit.
Keywords: Augustine, intention, intentio, attention, will, pneuma, spirit, breath, air, pneumatology, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 424; Downloads: 316
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Abstract: This essay is a study of the element of air and the process of breathing in light of the medieval book of Zohar and related aspects of the broader Jewish tradition. Mapping air onto the divine body comprised of the sefirot, or the emanations of God, I reconsider the connection between breath and spirit, while also focusing on the sensuous and atmospheric aspects of aerial and pneumatic phenomena: wind, scents, the rising expansion of hot air and the falling condensation of the cold. Breathing is examined throughout the entire respiratory system, from the lungs to the nostrils, with respect to both the sefirotic divine body and the breath of life, animating the creaturely realm. Throughout the study, I pay particular at-tention to the paradoxical mode in which air remains an indeterminate, literally groundless element and, at the same time, is at the heart of theo-anatomy, of life, and of sustaining a fragile world
Keywords: air, breath, mysticism, emanations, spirit
Published in DiRROS: 14.05.2024; Views: 363; Downloads: 260
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