0584892 - FLÚ 2025 RIV DE eng B - Monography
Kouba, Petr
A View from the Outside. Reflections on Social Ontology.
Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz, 2024. 124 s. libri nigri, 104. ISBN 978-3-95948-618-7
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA19-20031S
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : social ontology * phenomenology * the Outside * exocentric view
OECD category: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
https://www.bautz.de/search-results-page/kouba-petr?lang=en

What the studies collected in this book have in common is a belief that we can’t recognise ourselves from the inside by some form of social introspection. Rather, in order to realise who we are, we need to view ourselves from the outside. If there is a phenomenological approach to society, it involves an exocentric rather than endocentric view of ourselves. However, what makes such an exocentric view of ourselves possible is a construction of the outside that allows us to keep a distance from ourselves. The essays collected in this book attempt to demonstrate the various forms of the outside and to examine their efficiency: there are strangers, terrestrial or cosmic voyagers, there are women and other sexual minorities in a patriarchal society, there is boredom and silent insomnia that expel us from the world, there is sacrifice as the ultimate renunciation of life, there is love as capacity for nonviolence and self-sacrifice, and finally there is the event as an outside to all political projects. All these forms of the outside enable and fuel social criticism that uncovers phenomena that remain invisible under normal circumstances. It is a way of thinking about culture and society that highlights such themes as boundaries, cultural differences, and social changes, which can be constructive or destructive, liberating as well as oppressing.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0352737