On the lived truths of atmospheres: the qualities of existential contexts

Abstract

This article starts from Dewey’s claim that neglect of context is the single greatest disaster that philosophical thinking can incur. It explores the heuristic value of Dewey’s notion of a context not just for philosophy but for thinking and living as a whole. Contexts have deep existential power in as much as we have embodied ourselves in them. Contexts work behind our backs, as determining backgrounds, influencing in extensive ways as fore-structures our forms of feeling, our patterns of action, and the idioms in which we describe ourselves and our worlds. Dewey also thinks of contexts as kinds of atmospheres or hazes and connects them with the defining qualities of the problematic situations in which we find ourselves. I support Dewey’s argument with analytical tools supplied by Michael Polanyi’s analysis of embodiment and the tacit nature of premises and by Gernot Böhme’s exploration of the notion of atmospheres and toned spaces. Recognition of the various kinds of contexts in which people live and out of which they speak is essential for arriving at the kinds of trust that reduce the appeal to force and make possible agreement in common meanings while recognizing the existential roots of difference.