This paper aims to conceptualize the phenomenology of attentional experience as ‘embodied attention.’ Current psychological research, in describing attentional experiences, tends to apply the so-called spotlight metaphor, according to which attention is characterized as the illumination of certain surrounding objects or events. In this framework, attention is not seen as involving our bodily attitudes or modifying the way we experience those objects and events. It is primarily conceived as a purely mental and volitional activity of the cognizing subject. Against this (...) view, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that attention is a creative activity deeply linked with bodily movements. This paper clarifies and systematizes this view and brings it into dialogue with current empirical findings as well as with current theoretical research on embodied cognition. By doing this, I spell out three main claims about embodied attention: the transcendentalism of embodiment for attention, the bodily subjectivity of attention, and the creativity of embodied attention. (shrink)

One of Heidegger’s most important descriptions of bodily existence can be found in his Nietzsche lectures. This paper aims to elucidate this “metaphysics of the body” both in relation to Heidegger’s Leibniz-interpretation in the later Marburg lectures as well as in the context of his later thought. Leibniz and Nietzsche are Heidegger’s points of departure in the attempt to think the difference between θεωρία and πραξις beyond Being and Time: It is only by understanding their relationship, through a radical re-thinking (...) of the problem of corporeality, no longer as a noun (der Leib) but as a verb (leiben), that one can possibly move beyond every traditional dualism, between theory and praxis but also and most notably between being and becoming. (shrink)

This paper addresses three main concerns about William James’s understanding of attention. In the first section, I will consider the question whether or not James’s famous claim that “every one kno...