Springer Home - Lived Experiences: Philosophical Reflections

This book explores the lived experience of being at home as well as being homeless. Being at home or not is typically a matter of being at a place or not, where such a place is carved out of space and designated as such. It is a place that is both empirical and trans-empirical. When one is at home or not at home, one typically has in mind an inhabited place. To inhabit or not to inhabit it is to find oneself in a place that has an affective presence or absence. In either case, affectivity points to a lived place where lived experience is constituted and displayed. Thus, in this context, affectivity becomes more than the subject of empirical psychology. If psychology were to have access, it would be in the context of phenomenological or existential psychology – a psychology that has its roots in the sensible world and, hence, a psychology that expresses an aesthetic dimension.  Each of the contributors in this book extends an invitation to the readers to participate in constituting, extending, and sharing with others the sense of either being at home or of being homeless. This book appeals to students, researchers as well as general interest readers.  From the Back Cover This book explores the lived experience of being at home as well as being homeless. Being at home or not is typically a matter of being at a place or not, where such a place is carved out of space and designated as such. It is a place that is both empirical and trans-empirical. When one is at home or not at home, one typically has in mind an inhabited place. To inhabit or not to inhabit it is to find oneself in a place that has an affective presence or absence. In either case, affectivity points to a lived place where lived experience is constituted and displayed. Thus, in this context, affectivity becomes more than the subject of empirical psychology. If psychology were to have access, it would be in the context of phenomenological or existential psychology – a psychology that has its roots in the sensible world and, hence, a psychology that expresses an aesthetic dimension.  Each of the contributors in this book extends an invitation to the readers to participate in constituting, extending, and sharing with others the sense of either being at home or of being homeless. This book appeals to students, researchers as well as general interest readers. About the Author John Murungi, PhD, JD, is Professor of Philosophy at Towson University, USA.  His research focuses on twentieth-century continental European philosophy, philosophy of law, and African and African American philosophy.  He is the author of An Introduction to African Legal Philosophy, African Musical Aesthetics, African Philosophical Illuminations, and African Philosophical Currents.  He has also co-edited and authored chapters in Sensorial Trajectories; Elemental Sensuous:  Phenomenology and Aesthetics; Rendezvous with the Sensuous:  Readings on Aesthetics; Symbolic Landscapes: Transformations of Urban and Suburban Landscapes; and Lived Topographies and their Mediational Forces, among others.  He is the co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place, and the founder of the Geo-Aesthetics Conference Series. Linda Ardito, PhD, researches and writes extensively on the arts and humanities after a long and distinguished career in New York as Professor of Music.  She has co-edited and authored chapters in Sensorial Trajectories; Elemental Sensuous:  Phenomenology and Aesthetics; and Rendezvous with the Sensuous:  Readings on Aesthetics.  She has also authored chapters in Creativity:  Fostering, Measuring and Contexts, and Symbolic Landscapes, as well as entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians; The Grove Dictionary of American Music; The Encyclopedia of Education and Human Development; and journal articles in Skepsis; International Journal of Musicology; and Perspectives of New Music