Staff
Publication details for Prof Matthew Ratcliffe
Ratcliffe, M. (2013). The Structure of Interpersonal Experience. In Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity. Moran, D. & Jensen, R. Dordrecht: Springer (in press).- Publication type: Books: sections
Author(s) from Durham
Abstract
This chapter sketches a phenomenological account of what it is to encounter someone as a person. I take, as a starting point, Sartre’s view in Being and Nothingness that our sense of others involves a bodily response that is inextricable from a distinctive way of experiencing possibilities. I concede that Sartre’s emphasis on the loss of possibilities is too restrictive, but defend this more general claim. In so doing, I consider alterations in the structure of interpersonal experience that can occur in psychiatric illness. These, I propose, are best interpreted as changes in a felt sense of possibility that constitutes our sense of others as persons.
