Call for Papers – ‘Phenomenology and Practice of Attention’

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CfP for an issue of InCircolo: Rivista di Filosofia e Culture, edited by Diego D’Angelo. Submission deadline 1 April 2022.

InCircolo – Rivista di Filosofia e Culture
Call for Papers, n. 13: “Phenomenology and Practice of Attention”
Edited by Diego D’Angelo

In recent years the topic of attention has become increasingly prominent in philosophical research. Particularly in the field of phenomenology there is a need to flank analyses of perception with a discussion of attentional processes, since it is these that primarily structure the constitution of the perceptual field. If for Husserl attention had already been the object of both extensive analyses in his own published writings and acute reflections in his manuscripts and lectures, this concept plays only a secondary role in Merleau-Ponty and other classical authors from the phenomenological tradition.

In contemporary phenomenology, on the other hand, especially in the wake of the analyses of Bernhard Waldenfels and Natalie Depraz (to name but two prominent examples), the phenomenon of attention has proved to be a privileged field of research that fosters the encounter of phenomenology with other directions of research: in Natalie Depraz, the dialogue with the cognitive sciences and the results of empirical investigation are crucial to achieve a phenomenology of attention that matches the very complexity of the phenomenon; in Bernhard Waldenfels, the phenomenology of attention results in an intersubjective ethics based on the concepts of question and answer. Natalie Depraz will contribute the opening essay for this special issue.

In the light of these brief considerations about the state of the art, this issue aims to investigate both how attention is thought about in classical as well as in modern phenomenology, and the different practices of attention at play in scientific and in everyday contexts. Attentional practices concern firstly the field of cognitive science, where the concept of attention is redefined so that it can be the object of experimental investigation, and secondly the intersubjective ways in which an ethics of attention becomes a concrete practice. In this sense, some of the possible themes concern (but are not restricted to):
1) Historical-philosophical reconstructions regarding the concept of attention in the history of phenomenology;
2) Discussions, from a phenomenological perspective, of contemporary contributions to the philosophy and psychology of attention;
3) Analysis of particular attentional phenomena or dysfunctions of attention;
4) Comparisons between phenomenology and cognitive science regarding the concept of attention;
5) Research related to the ethics of attention.

More Info on https://www.incircolorivistafilosofica.it

Contributions are requested to be sent by email to [email protected]. The submission deadline is April 1st, 2022. Authors are kindly asked to follow the editorial guidelines available for download at: https://www.incircolorivistafilosofica.it/per-gli-autori/