Enkinaesthesia

proto-moral value in action-enquiry and interaction

Susan J. Stuart

pp. 411-431

in: Katja Crone, Wolfgang Huemer (eds), Investigating the Social Self, Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences 17 (2), 2018.

Abstract

It is now generally accepted that human beings are naturally, possibly even essentially, intersubjective. This chapter offers a robust defence of an enhanced and extended intersubjectivity, criticising the paucity of individuating notions of agency and emphasising the community and reciprocity of our affective co-existence with other living organisms and things. I refer to this modified intersubjectivity, which most closely expresses the implicit intricacy of our pre-reflective neuro-muscular experiential entanglement, as "enkinaesthesia'. The community and reciprocity of this entanglement is characterised as dialogical, and in this dialogue, as part of our anticipatory preparedness, we have a capacity for intentional transgression, feeling our way with our world but, more particularly, co-feeling our way with the mind and intentions of the other. Thus we are, not so much "mind'-reading, as "mind'-feeling, and it is through this enkinaesthetic "mind'-feeling dialogue that values-realising activity originates and we uncover the deep roots of morality.