Constantin Mehmel

University of Essex, Department of Philosophy, Graduate Student

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PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Essex. Supervised by Prof Béatrice Han-Pile, I am working towards a phenomenological account of the experience of disorientation. My PhD is fully funded by the University of Essex Doctoral Scholarship and the Consortium for the Arts and Humanities South-East England (CHASE) Doctoral Training Programme.

Prior to starting my PhD, I was a visiting researcher at the Heidelberg University Hospital to work on the intersection of hermeneutics and social cognition, particularly enactivist approaches to intersubjectivity, under the supervision of Prof Thomas Fuchs, as part of the interdisciplinary working group “Phenomenological Psychopathology and Psychotherapy” (April - July 2017). Previously, I read for the MA in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick (2016), and the BA in Philosophy and Politics at the University of Durham (2015).

My research interests are primarily in phenomenology (classical, applied and critical), philosophy of emotion, philosophy of psychiatry, queer and feminist theories, social cognition, and hermeneutics (esp. Gadamer).
Supervisors: Béatrice Han-Pile
Address: Department of Philosophy and Art History,
University of Essex,
Wivenhoe Park,
Colchester CO4 3SQ

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Lucy Osler

Cardiff University

Joel Krueger

University of Exeter

Jan Slaby

Freie Universität Berlin

Michael Cholbi

University of Edinburgh

Louise Richardson

University of York

Matthew Ratcliffe

University of York

Ashley Atkins

Western Michigan University

Eleanor A Byrne

University of Nottingham

Emily Hughes

University of York

Allan Køster

Aalborg University

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CALL FOR PAPERS by Constantin Mehmel

CFP - Feelings of Belonging and Affective Spaces: Phenomenological Explorations

by Lucy Osler, Constantin Mehmel, Luna Dolezal, and Sophie Loidolt

Call for Papers for a workshop entitled "Feelings of Belonging and Affective Spaces: Phenomenolog... more

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CFP: Uniting Two Perspectives on Mental Illness Philosophy and Linguistics

by Constantin Mehmel, Sara Vilar Lluch, and Ian Hare

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BOOK CHAPTERS by Constantin Mehmel

Transformation through dialogue: Gadamer and the phenomenology of impaired intersubjectivity in depression

The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Psychiatry, 2019

In this chapter, I aim to sketch a phenomenological account of impaired intersubjectivity in depr... more In this chapter, I aim to sketch a phenomenological account of impaired intersubjectivity in depression. Depression, I propose, can be framed as a ‘dialogical’ illness insofar as it fundamentally alters the way one relates to other people and the presupposed shared background. I therefore argue that depression entails what I call a reformed ‘experience of the Other’. To understand how depression alters the phenomenology of intersubjectivity, I draw on Gadamer’s phenomenology of understanding via the fusion of horizons, thus on his emphasis on transformation through dialogue. I begin by sketching a Gadamerian perspective of an intact dialogue between two people. The rest of the paper is dedicated to understanding the deviating forms of dialogue occurring in depression. What this involves can best be understood when broadly conceptualising the depressed as what I call a ‘radical Other’. In an intact dialogue, two people experience things differently in virtue of each having a unique horizon, and yet both belong to a shared, intersubjective horizon. In a dialogue between the depressed and non-depressed person however, the two perspectives differ more fundamentally insofar as the former does not seem to be part of the same framework. The resultant, seeming impossibility for the depressed to fuse horizons equally affects the non-depressed person. In fact, the phenomenological analysis points to the paradoxical situation of the depressed feeling like a radical Other, yet ultimately not wanting to be reduced to such. A Gadamerian approach stresses the importance of a continuous practice of openness and trust, without which transformation is unlikely to occur.

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Papers by Constantin Mehmel

Grief, disorientation, and futurity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2021

This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifical... more This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifically the relationship between disorientation and the breakdown in practical self-understanding at the heart of grief. I argue that this breakdown cannot be sufficiently understood as a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space that leaves the bereaved individual at a loss as to how to go on. Examining the experience of losing a loved person and a loved person-to-be, I instead propose that this breakdown should be understood primarily in relation to a distinctive kind of futurity operative in disorientation, irrespective of the extent to which there is a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space. Drawing on the resources afforded by Heidegger's phenomenology, I argue that it is a core characteristic of the experience of disorientation in grief that the grieving person can no longer meaningfully press ahead into a specific futural self. This view comes with certain advantages over existing accounts of the temporality of grief for making sense of the disorientated relationship to futurity, which the appeal to Heideggerian resources makes possible.

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Possibility of Hermeneutic Conversation and Ethics

Theoria & Praxis: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Thought, 2016

In this paper, I aim to defend Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics against what I call the radic... more In this paper, I aim to defend Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics against what I call the radical hermeneutic critique, specifically the critique developed in Robert Bernasconi’s article “’You Don’t Know What I’m Talking About’: Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal” (1995). Key to this critique is the claim that Gadamer’s account does not rise to the ethical task of embracing the alterity of the Other, but instead reduces it to a projection of one’s self. The implication is therefore that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics has to be rejected on ethical grounds, as it does not appreciate but assimilates the alterity of the Other. In contrast to this radical hermeneutic critique, I argue that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics can accommodate an Other that is not assimilated but appreciated, on the condition that the unique status of a dialogue with the Other as a person is no longer neglected, as Gadamer does, but instead truly distinguished from a dialogue with the Other as a text.

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