Abstract
Despite whatever academics say, international politics is not an intellectual enterprise and to intellectualize it is to misunderstand it. Instead international politics, at its most basic level, is a matter of how we, and the collectivities we have created for ourselves, find ourselves in the world. Finding ourselves in the world is first and foremost a task which our bodies solve. Eugene Gendlin’s phenomenological psychology, and his focus on the “felt sense,” provide ways of investigating the embodied nature of international politics. No one has so far analyzed international politics the way Gendlin’s psychology makes possible. The prospects are exciting.
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Notes
- 1.
Gendlin, 2001, As presented in popular titles such as Gendlin, 2003b; See further “The International Focusing Institute,” n.d.; Gendlin was an occasional lecturer at the Ensalen Institute in Big Sur, California, a leading center for the New Age movement . A personal account is Weisel-Barth, 2008, p. 386.
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Thanks to Ross Crisp, Artie Egendorf and to the editors for comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
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Ringmar, E. (2018). Eugene Gendlin and the Feel of International Politics. In: Clément, M., Sangar, E. (eds) Researching Emotions in International Relations. Palgrave Studies in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65575-8_2
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