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Article

Social practices from


the viewpoint of transsubjective existentialism

European Journal of Social Theory


2014, Vol 17(1) 7794
The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/1368431013505013
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Dimitri Ginev
University of Konstanz, Germany

Abstract
The principal aim of this article is to examine the capacity of existential analytic to suggest
alternatives to entrenched dichotomies and dilemmas in practice theory, and more
generally, in social theory. In this regard, the doctrine of trans-subjective existentialism
is developed. The underlying aim is to inform hermeneutic engagement with social practices potentiality-for-being in order to illuminate a possible existential ontology of practices. It is argued that the concept of chronotope should be central in this ontology.
Thus, the possibility of hermeneutic realism about social practices becomes open to
scrutiny.
Keywords
characteristic hermeneutic situation, practical appropriation of possibilities, projection
of horizon, trans-subjective existentialism

Practices and possibilities


The question of how to situate practice theory in the general typological space of the
social theorys versions continues to be at stake in recent epistemological and methodological debates. These debates were fueled, in particular, by the attempts to draw a
demarcation line between epistemologically classical versions and post-Cartesian versions of social theory. Thus, Andreas Reckwitz (2002) made the case on the pages of this
journal that practice theory belongs together with cultural mentalism, intersubjectivism,
and textualism to a family of theorys versions that are to be distinguished from classical

Corresponding author:
Dimitri Ginev, Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
Email: dimiginev@yahoo.com

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modern versions of social theory associated with the idealizations of homo economicus
and homo sociologicus. What unites the four versions of this family (making them,
according to Reckwitz, variants of cultural theory) is their persistent calling into question of the Cartesian assumptions of classical social theory. Approaching discursive
formations, unraveling unconscious structures, and reconstructing cognitive-symbolic
orders are devices that revise significantly traditional Cartesian assumptions.
Structuralist-semiotic mentalism, discursive intersubjectivism, and social-constructivist
textualism have come to prominence with revisions of this kind. In contrast to the other
three versions, however, practice theory (especially its variants based on hermeneutic
phenomenology) not only challenges traditional assumptions and distinctions, trying to
recast them in terms of a non-subjectivist and non-representationalist epistemology.
It aims rather at undoing the modern methodological and epistemological dichotomies
in a radical manner. Practice theory is neither a mentalist nor an anti-mentalist enterprise since it deals with the constitution of meaning within-the-world-of-practices
which precedes and fore-structures the formation of the opposition between mental and
non-mental. Furthermore, the variants of this theory based on hermeneutic phenomenology are neither subjectivist nor anti-subjectivist, but trans-subjectivist. It is the last
claim that I am going to address in what follows.
Practices are something more than socially recognized forms of activity. By the
same token, a particular practice is something more than a normatively organized conduct to which the members of a certain collective conform. The growing diversification
of theories of practice(s) in the past two decades was prompted in the first place by the
attempts to answer the question of what this something more should be. On the predominant way of addressing this question, the answer must be sought in practices intrinsic
resources to govern (in a reflexive manner) their own production and reproduction.
(Reflecting on these resources provides, supposedly, the point of departure in the construction of a theory of practices.) What lies beyond the scope of the essentialist theories
of practices is not a residuum that remains after carrying out a procedural objectification
of practices as normatively organized forms of activity.1 Beyond this scope one finds
rather the negative partner of what is positively given in the empirical domains of the
essentialist theories of practices.
The aim of this article is to approach the reality of social practices which exceeds all
objectivist identification of them. It is a reality that I will try to make intelligible in terms
of a hermeneutic theory that takes up and reformulates themes of existential analytic. On
this account, the positivity of practice-theoretical knowledge is the ontic outcome of
the thematic approaches to practices operating with firm epistemological criteria of identification, while the negativity (the constitutive nothingness within the positive experience) is what constantly transcends the ontic outcome. (As the worldhood of the
world has an ontological preponderance with regard to the world as thematically objectified reality, the interrelatedness of practices has an ontological priority over each particular, objectively identifiable, practice. A practice is localized always against the
interpretative background of interrelated practices.)
As a first step in approaching the transcending reality of practices I will pay attention
to a conclusion drawn by many authors who otherwise defend quite different positions:
Practices are enacted by actors but the phenomenon of shared interrelatedness of

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practices is not to be accounted for by only having recourse to the network of those
actors who share them. It deserves mention that in arriving at this conclusion, one is not
obliged to admit that something extrinsic to the interrelatedness of practices (something
like a cultural pattern, background knowledge, actors individual and collective tacit
knowledge, and so on) has to be added to give an account of the phenomenon. Interrelated practices project possibilities whose appropriation and actualization constitute the
collective (inter-subjectively attained) identity of those who are in the practices particular interrelatedness. Since the appropriation of possibilities is potentially never-ending,
such an identity is always under construction.
On this account, actors share a particular interrelatedness (nexus) of practices when
they gain a collective understanding of themselves with regard to the possibilities they
can (collectively) appropriate. (Thus considered, understanding has nothing to do with
a competence that is not explicitly articulated.2 It is also not a cognitive ability acquired
gradually and necessary for learning practices. Learning takes place ineluctably in a horizon of understanding, and for that reason, it assumes a kind of understanding that is not
inculcated in its own process.3) In a slightly more sophisticated formulation, a particular
interrelatedness of practices projects its web of meanings upon possibilities. This projection does not amount to a kind of collective intentionality since it does not stem from
practitioners collective mentality. Granted that contextual interrelations among practices generate meaningful possibilities of how one comports oneself in that context, it
ought to be argued that the projection of meanings upon possibilities comes into being
through practices co-referentiality. Accordingly, those who share the interrelated practices have a collective mode of existence that is towards the possibilities projected by
these practices. Put in an equivalent formulation, a collective (group) of actors share
interrelated practices when they articulate that web of meanings which the interrelatedness projects upon possibilities. It is the appropriation of these possibilities that warrants
the ongoing construction of a collective identity. Appropriating (and actualizing) possibilities are, on this account, tantamount to the constitution of meaning. To sum up, the
phenomenon of shared interrelatedness of practices is within an (existential) constellation together with the phenomena of ongoing construction of collective identity, projection and appropriation of possibilities, and constitution of meaning. The foregoing
considerations oppose established accounts of the relationship between (the reality of)
practices and practitioners dispositions, normative attitudes, and forms of interaction.

Practice theory between essentialism and reductionist


naturalism
The most prominent (and most traditional) account of this relationship attributes causal
power to shared orchestrated practices, and admits furthermore that each particular practice exists per se as an entity in itself (or, as an irreducible social fact a` la Durkheim).
At the same time, the very orchestration of interrelated practices imposes constraints on
the particular practices performances. Thus, while being constantly regulated by practices with which it is interrelated, a practice exercises (separately or in concert with other
practices) causal power on an individual form of life (by shaping, for instance, some kind
of individuals preferences). The existence of practices is accounted for by the strange

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combination of physical causality and social regularity. On this approach, practices are
quasi-physical entities inhabiting the normative social world. A case in point is Maurice
Halbwachss approach to collective memory. The constraints imposed on the agents by
the actual social order dictate how the collective recollection of the past should work. It
is the social order (as designed by orchestrated practices) that picks out the pertinent past
events which the agents (the practices performers) should keep in their collective memory. The existing social order obligates on a regular basis the agents not just to reproduce
in thought previous events but also to shorten them, or to complete them so that the
agents give them a prestige that reality did not possess (Halbwachs, 1992: 51) In this
regard, the existing social order manages to institute special practices of keeping events
in collective memory. The framework of collective memory is circumscribed by these
mnemonic practices. Each of them causes in a certain way that rhythm of recollecting
(and forgetting) which characterizes the individual memory of a particular member.
Halbwachs states, accordingly, that there is no individual memory that is not a part or
an aspect of collective memory, and the framework of collective memory confines and
binds our most intimate remembrances to each other (Halbwachs, 1992: 53). For
instance, the periodic re-activation of a ritual practice activates past events whereby the
re-activation shapes causally aspects of individual memory. And collective memory (in
its capacity to pick out past events whose recollection is instrumental in maintaining the
existing order) is constrained by the practices circumscribing its framework.
The extreme opposite of the causal-regulative account of practices rejects any autonomy
of practices existence. Habits and habituation (defined in terms of individual behavior) are
the only real phenomena. Practices without inter-subjective sharing are individual habits
(Turner, 2001: 129). Furthermore, the only acceptable construal of practices is as psychologically generated patterns of behavior (Turner, 1994: 117). Why habituation provokes the
illusory existence of inter-subjectively shared practices as particular social entities is a question that has to be relegated to social psychology. From this (presumably radically antiessentialist) perspective, what is repudiated is not only holistic social ontologies but also the
theories of social practices which admit that practices are grounded upon a tacit rule book.
Within the framework of a social theory that does not permit hypostatized entities endowed
with causal power, practices are to be recast in terms of clusters of individual habits.
It is my contention that a genuine overcoming of essentialism in practice theory
would not amount to reducing practices to habits since such a reduction cannot avoid,
for instance, the postulation of cognitive-psychological essences and/or the hypostatization of a teleonomic reality of synchronized habits. An initial step in this overcoming
consists in confronting in a proper manner the dual nature of practices: Practices are at
once thematic entities (in particular, empirical objects of inquiry) and, in their interrelatedness, horizons in which the reality of socio-cultural entities (rules, social roles, normative statuses, networks of interaction, etc.) becomes disclosed. My suggestion of how to
cope with the dual nature of practices applies the following methodological tenet: An
unavoidable dimension in the construction of a reflexive theory of practices amounts
to theorizing (in terms of the same reflexive theory which is intended) those practices
of inquiry by virtue of which (all kinds of) practices are constituted as objects of inquiry.
In my view, this tenet expresses the underlying methodological hermeneutic circle in the
construction of a reflexive theory of practice.

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The diversity of practice theories lies between the extreme poles of the hypostatization of shared practices as primary social entities endowed with causal power (the position of radical essentialism about practices) and the undoing of practices as autonomous
entities (the alleged position of radical anti-essentialism). Between these two poles there
is a wide spectrum of positions. All of them try to get rid of the holism-psychologism
dilemma by singling out mediatory objects. A case in point is the collective routine
activities which cease to be routine at the individual level as this hybrid object is suggested by Barry Barnes (2001). Prima facie the most prominent (and most successful)
in-between position is that of Bourdieu who presumably attributes to habitus the status
of a mediatory object. The concept of habitus defined as durably installed generative
principles of regulated improvisations avoids the pitfalls of both objectivist hypostatization and psychological reductionism. The habitus is something trans-subjective that does
not have existence per se. In fact, Bourdieus position is not an in-between position at all.
His third way (not between but beyond) objectivism and subjectivism is paved by the
search for a genuine anti-essentialism. It is not the empiricist elimination of dubious
social entities (such as collective tacit knowledge, shared practices or Weltanschauung)
that leads to overcoming essentialism. In Bourdieus view, the overcoming requires a
working out of the dialectical relations between the structures revealed by virtue of theoretical (in particular, structuralist) idealizations and the structured dispositions (i.e.
the dispositions of the habitus) within which those structures are constituted.
Following the idea that habitus is a trans-subjective manifestation of agents structured
dispositions that are fore-structuring socially established structures, Bourdieu counters
structural anthropology (and other approaches succumbed to logicism) for their aspiration to enclose in concepts practical logic that is made to dispense with (externally
imposed) concepts, thereby reducing practices to logical operations. Scientific objectification based on theoretical idealizations cannot gasp the principles of practical logic without changing the nature of those principles. The concept of habitus implies that a practice
owes its practical coherence to the fact that it is the outcome of conceptual systems
immanent in practice. Taking into consideration the contextual-situational sensitivity of
the habitus prevents one from reifying practices. The dialectic of objectification and
embodiment of practices rests on the capacity of the habitus to improvise by combining
formulas. The habitus governs practice through its endless capacity to engender thoughts,
perceptions, expressions, actions whose limits are set by the historically and socially situated conditions of its production (Bourdieu, 1977: 95). All symbolic systems (including
the systems of theorizing) owe their practical coherence to the fact that they are products
of practices which cannot be performed unless they bring into play principles that can be
immediately mastered. Bourdieu calls this theorem the economy of practical logic. All of
the claims just mentioned demonstrate how true anti-essentialism and a trans-subjective
view about practices complement each other.
The approach adopted in this article is also trans-subjective and anti-essentialist. Yet
it is not a sociological but a hermeneutic approach. At issue are not the generative principles, which as intrinsic to practices ensure (qua practical logic) the resilience of the
social structures arising out of these practices. Practices will be discussed in the remainder of the article with regard to their potentiality-for-being, i.e. their potentiality for
articulating domains of meaningful objects. In line with this engagement the concepts

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of the horizon of possibilities and the hermeneutic fore-structure of a domains articulation occupy in my approach to practices a place similar to that of habitus in the sociological theory of practice.
Theorizing practices from a radically anti-essentialist standpoint leads not to pragmatism, instrumentalism, or conventionalism, but to a position that I should like to dub
trans-subjective existentialism. The underlying formula of the latter can be expressed
as eschewing the reification of holistic social entities and the hypostatization of social
structures, while combating any kind of reductionist naturalism. At stake in this kind
of existentialism are (individual or collective) choices of possibilities within a transsubjective horizon of possibilities projected by an interrelatedness of practices. The
horizon always already transcends that subjectivity (i.e. subjective mentality, cognitive
attitudes, volitional dispositions, narratively organized memory, emotionality, etc.)
which is liable to choices that are made or can be made. Trans-subjectivity connotes the
transcendence of subjectivity which accompanies the individual choices within the
collective appropriation of possibilities.4
Trans-subjective existentialism sounds like an oxymoron. To be sure, practice theory involves concepts that sublate the concepts of the individual agent and individual
choices. Practice theory is about a reality in which individual choices are secondary
and derivable. But this theory is not about something that determines these choices.
Practice theory stresses that the choosing individuals are agents in a state of situated
transcendencethey are constantly creating their situations by choosing and appropriating possibilities that in their openness and inexhaustibility always transcend each situated choice and appropriation. In laying emphasis on the figure of situated
transcendence of agents-within-interrelated-practices, practice theory (tacitly or explicitly) admits a practical subject whose status is akin to the dual status of Heideggers
Dasein.5 Accordingly, practice theory reproduces in new conceptual frameworks figures
of that existentialism which is peculiar to existential analytic.
To sum up, there is no incompatibility (not to speak of contradiction) between practice theory and existentialism since all individual choices (including the decisive choice
that marks the transition from inauthentic to authentic existence) take place within practices. Making individual choices within a trans-subjective horizon that transcends the
individual subjectivity does not amount to presenting the choosing process as determined
by a transcendent essence. Projection and appropriation of possibilities by practices are
in a relation of mutual reinforcement on the level of trans-subjectivity. In the upcoming
considerations I will develop this thesis in two steps, each of which is related to a particular definition of configured practices. (Let me stress again that from the viewpoint of
hermeneutic phenomenology the notion of interrelated practices has priority over the
notion of practice.)
Definition I: A tendency to projection and appropriation of definite possibilities
within a trans-subjective horizon of possibilities is a configuration of practices if the
actualization of the appropriated possibilities leads to a temporal-spatial order of doings
and sayings. With regard to the clusters of doings and sayings one can post hoc single out
within this order, so there can be formulated empirically relevant criteria for distinguishing particular practices in the configuration. The underlying assumption is that every
cluster represents a relatively autonomous practice.

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The expression tendency to projection and appropriation has the character of a technical term in Definition I. The tendency is not a teleological chain of actualized possibilities. It refers to a regime of temporalization as it is informed by the way of
choosing possibilities within a horizon that constantly transcends and situates the choosing agents. A tendency is an established regime of temporalization within routinely performed, interrelated practices.6 Through the choice which is fore-structured by a
projected horizon, one unveils the past (i.e., what has been with regard to the possibilities
that can be appropriated) by means of opening the future, thereby making the present an
actualized possibility. A regime of temporalization is the ongoing differentiation of
temporal modes within interrelated practices that at once project and appropriate
possibilities.7 Put differently, a tendency is the ongoing fore-structuring of the practical
being-in-the-world by the potential future (the possibilities that are open to be appropriated). On this reading, a tendency to projection and appropriation of possibilities is not
a hidden (or transcendent) teleological essence of interrelated practices. It does not externally and causally determine the choice since it comes into being through the choice.
There is interpretative interplay between tendentious (temporalizing) fore-structuring
of choices and actual individual choices. (I say interpretative because the interplay
takes on the form of an unfolding hermeneutic circle. The mutual interpretative dependence within this circle defines a characteristic hermeneutic situation of projection and
appropriation of possibilities.) Against the background of this interplay, a tendency is the
ongoing situated transcendence of agents-within-practices that differentiates past, present, and future. Thus considered, the tendency is an existential phenomenon that characterizes the constitution of meaning and the meaningful articulation of the world.
Definition I does not appeal to the practices performers. It assumes that practices are
collective accomplishments but not in the sense of being enacted and performed by organized collectives entitled to execute them. Practices are collectively shared because the
trans-subjective projection and appropriation of possibilities constantly constitute more
or less sustainable collectives whose tendencies of choosing bring practices to the fore.
Collectives are entities constituted within-the-world-of-possibilities. They are not creators
and designers of practices. A practice comes to the foreso the argument of transsubjective existentialism goesonly by means of choices that are shared within a transsubjective horizon. The latter, however, is projected not by practitioners collective mentality but by that interrelatedness of practices in which the particular practice is involved.
By implication, shared practices cannot be accounted for simply in terms of the
accomplishments of competent members of collectives (Barnes, 2001: 32). Transsubjective existentialism is a conception that overcomes social theorys dilemma whose
horns are the hyperbole of the individual choices and the strong determination of these
choices which makes the social actors judgmental dopes (to use Harold Garfinkels
celebrated expression arising from his criticism of conventional sociology). The social
actors are neither determined by structures and norms, nor are they absolutely free. They
are choosing actors within the horizons of possibilities that are always already projected by changing configurations of practices in which the actors are thrown and
implicated.
A preliminary rationale for Definition I is provided by examples of horizons that are
primarily related only to practices whose performances are not accomplished by clearly

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delineated collective subjects. Among these examples are the horizon of a cultural
milieu embracing heterogeneous agencies, the horizon of a big citys everydayness, the
horizon of a large-scale historical situation (as described in historical anthropology or by
Annales School of historiography), and the horizon of a region distinguished by a characteristic type of culture but with loosely defined (geographical, political and administrative) borders. By contrast, the horizon of a tradition as an evolving collective form of
life, the horizon of a spatially located professional everydayness, or the horizons of practices performed by various types of (formal and non-formal) social networks are examples of horizons in which the collective subject is clearly identifiable. In the former
series of examples, the projection and the appropriation of horizons of possibilities entail
the figure of a heterogeneous trans-subjectivity as contrasted to the homogeneous transsubjectivity exemplified by the second series. Yet the identification of a collective subject is not tantamount to a (sociological) identification (i.e., identification by means of
standard sociological criteria) of a concrete collective. However strong the degree of
homogeneity could be, trans-subjectivity resists procedural recognition through such criteria. Regardless of whether it is homogeneous or heterogeneous, trans-subjectivity is
not a sociological but an ontological characteristic of the ways in which possibilities are
projected and appropriated. The collective subjects as synonymous with homogeneous
trans-subjectivity are also to be identified with regard to the possibilities they appropriate
and not with the social structures in which they reside. Accordingly, trans-subjectivity
may or may not refer to collective subjects. But trans-subjectivity is by all means irreducible to the inter-subjectivity of the concrete (empirically identified) collectives. At
the same time, the projection of a trans-subjective horizon of possibilities is a necessary
condition for the formation of a network of inter-subjective relations that takes on the
form of an organized collective distinguished usually by rules, role allocations, schemes
of interaction, patterns of power distribution and the rest of the inter-subjective components studied by theoretical sociology and social psychology.
Definition II: A configuration of practices is the minimal (temporalized) site within
the world (as a transcending horizon of all modes of existence) where the constellation
of interpretative understanding, attunement (state-of-mind) and discourse takes place. (I
will later discuss the notion of a temporalized site. For the moment, let me only note
that the latter results from an elaboration on the notion of a tendency of projection and
appropriation of possibilities from Definition I.) The new definition can stand as an
epigraph for the approach I am advocating. Following the tenets of a version of the
existential analytic, identifying such a constellation amounts to identifying a mode of
being-in-the-world. Thus defined, practice can be conceived of as a unit. Yet it is not
an independent and discrete unit. A particular practice is always circumscribed within
a configuration of interrelated practices. This is a further specification of the argument
for the claim that a particular practice is always (ontologically) secondary with regard to
the primacy of the interrelatedness of practices. A particular configuration of practices
(say, the configuration of experimental, instrumental, and formal-theoretical practices
in a situation of normal scientific research) in its turn is only a moment of the continuous
stream of changing configurations taking place within a mode of being-in-the-world.
Nonetheless, practice should be conceived of as a (non-discrete) unit of an integral
hermeneutic circle that temporalizes a practical mode of being-in-the-world.8

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Trans-subjective existentialism and the ontological concept of


the chronotope
To introduce a further methodological tenet of trans-subjective existentialism, I have to
explicate my ambivalent attitude towards the influential and highly elaborated practice
theory of Theodore Schatzki. The way in which Schatzki sets the agenda by outlining a
practice-theoretical ontology is impressive. The inventive development of a new orientation to established problems and topics in the social sciences is hardly to be underestimated. Placing emphasis on the nexus between site as practices spatiality and situated
accomplishments of practitioners, Schatzki manages to emancipate practice theory from
several other approaches to social theory. Now, my unease with his theory is elicited by
the idea of discreteness that underlies the theory. When Schatzki raises the claim that
practices are organized open sets of doings and sayings, he admits that practices comprise discursive and non-discursive acts (or, bundled activities). The point in this formulation is that practices comprise something, and hence, they have spatial borders.
Each particular practice is accordingly localizable and separable. Because he is concerned with the physical-spatial identification of practices, Schatzki is compelled to treat
the doings and sayings (as practices components) in terms of bodily actions that people
directly perform. Practices are delineated social entities, each of them representing a spatially organized nexus of actions. Practices are integral blocks (Schatzki, 2002: 71). In
delineating practices in this way, his primary intention is to stress a thematic rationale for
a theoretical approach that operationally can compose and decompose the contents
attributed to the concepts of practices, arrangements of practices and orders. Formally
seen, the purview of practice theory is circumscribed by possible operations defined
in sets of discrete elements.9
There is a kind of (in my words) hidden principle of concatenation that governs the
construction of practice theory. The way of making sense of practices from a theoretical
viewpoint looks like an algorithmic concatenation of classes of discrete elements. (Not
by accident the frequent use of metaphors such as assemblages, aggregated doings, bundles, nets, and confederations is typical of Schatzkis language.) At each stage of concatenation one confronts an emerging discrete object (in the reality of practices) whose
explanation compels one to add a new class of discrete entities. (Of course, the number
of stages is final, and accordingly, one admits that there is an ultimate stage at which one
gets presumably a semantically complete theory of practices.) Examples of emerging
objects are integral activity bundles, practical understandings, practical intelligibility,
rules regulating arrangements, rules determining the course of actions involved in practices, and teleo-affective structures (organized sets of ends, projects and affectivities
unevenly incorporated in practitioners mentality and emotional attitudes).10
One should not overlook, however, that the principle of concatenation of discrete
units operates within a world that is understood and interpreted, i.e. a world projected
upon possibilities whose ongoing appropriation articulates what is within-the-world. The
mutual reinforcement of projection and appropriation is a continuity that temporalizes
(i.e., serves the function of a horizon of temporalizing) all doings and sayings
within-the-world. A practice theory has to give an account of how the continuity of
practices stream is (under definite circumstances) transformed (without ceasing to

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be a horizonal-temporalizing continuity) into empirically identifiable, spatially localizable and separable practices (where for each of them at any moment a clear differentiation of past, present and future is possible). Yet by addressing this transformation,
one obligatorily integrates ontological difference in the structure of practice theory.
The phenomenological analysis of continuity (not as a thematically objectifiable process of becoming, but as horizon), which demands for its accomplishment the ontological difference, is the missing aspect in Schatzkis version of practice theory. Since
practice theory cannot escape the task of handling the problematic of meaning constitutionso the argument goesit has to adopt a phenomenological framework to
address this problematic. It is the integration of the ontological difference in practice
theory that harmonizes the interplay of empirical (ontic) and phenomenological (ontological) dimensions in theorys structure. In my view, these are dimensions that complement each other and not subordinated levels of theorizing.
Now, the transcendence of the world is what makes the varying configurations of
practices a battery of a continuous constitution of meaning. In the perspective of
trans-subjective existentialism, the continuous constitution of meaning is the practicalmeaningful articulation of what is ready to hand within the world. By taking the
transcendence of the world into consideration, one displaces the idea of discreteness
in a twofold manner. First, one affirms that each web of meanings enclosed in a local
space belongs to the worlds universal web of meanings which is always in a state of
ongoing formation. (It should be emphasized, however, that the universality of the
worlds web of meanings, or the totality of significance in Heideggers sense, is to
be understood as a horizonal potentiality and not as a thematic givenness [Gegebenheit].)
Second, one comes to the conclusion that the semantic definiteness and determinacy
(regardless of how strongly it is codified with regard to a class of rules of semantic interpretation) is indispensably subordinated to the hermeneutic-horizonal openness of the
world of practical existence. The world does not transcend in an invariant fashion forever. In each particular setting, situation, context, configuration, the world transcends
in a specific manner by disclosing an open horizon of possibilities. The leeway of the
possibilities that can be appropriated in this context (setting, configuration) is finite, but
the process is infinite. This is why the horizon is at once distinguished by situationalcontextual finitude and inexhaustibleness (infinity). By implication, the involvement
of the transcendence of the world in the construction of the ontology of situated transcendence requires a clear demarcation between semantic and hermeneutic interpretation
to be drawn. Furthermore, the only way of addressing the duality of the world (as a
horizon-transcendence and a multiplicity of practical contexts) is through entering the
hermeneutic circularity of the worlds interpretative articulation.
Despite this criticism, however, in an important respect I am following Schatzkis
lead. In unveiling the reification (of either abstract or nominalist entities) as the same
mistake which holistic and individualist approaches to social theory commit, Schatzki
adumbrates a kind of site ontology of practices whose spirit I completely adhere to. In
social theory, a rationale for a commitment to site ontology is the observation that practices (being always contextualized) constitute the site of the social. Thus, the social is
always identified with some site. Schatzki is throughout correct in arguing that the notion
of site has no place in the individualist and holistic ontologies of the social. At issue in

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site ontologies is the sense of embedded situatedness articulated in the notion of spatiality. Treating practices as situated integral nexuses of activity helps one to forge a scenario to avoid the mistake of reification. Only by depriving activity of its situatedness
(and intrinsic temporality/spatiality), can one reify it. The structuralist formal codification of mental structures that supposedly govern types of social activity is a case in point.
Site is the situatedness of practices in the process of their reproduction that involves rearrangements of practices components.
Put more concretely, site (typically exemplified by Bourdieus practice-field compound) is situatedness that enacts such a reproduction. As a corollary, site is the contextually situated reproduction of practices, where practices identities are inherent in that
reproduction, and are not externally imposed by practitioners.11 The concept of site also
connotes the peculiar spatiality constituted by practices operating in concert. (This is a
dynamic spatiality in the sense that practices make room for social entities by entangling them with a regime of temporalizing of spatial relations.) Roughly, the task of site
ontology is to approach the social as being constituted by the unity of practices contextual situatedness and practices creation of spatiality. Schatzki tends to the view that contextualized practices are a clearing or disclosing (in Heideggerian sense) spaces (local
structures of existential spatiality) in which the social exists. Scrutinizing disclosed
spaces in terms of site ontology lays bare at the same time individual forms of life that
hang together through intentional relations, chains of action, and the interpersonal structuring of mentality and practical intelligibility, as well as through layouts of, events
occurring in, and connections among the components of material setting. (Schatzki,
2002: 149).
The situated production of meaning is another dimension of site ontology. All kinds
of site ontology are in need of a spatial definition of the world that relates (existential)
spatiality (as being temporalized) to the ongoing practical constitution of meaning.
Schatzki, like Hubert Dreyfus and many others, borrows such a definition from the existential analytic. It can be formulated as follows: the world is disclosed by each assemblage of practices (including the totality of these assemblages) that creates space in
which a relatively self-contained web of meanings produced by these practices takes
place. Site is something like the spatial unit of meaning constitution. At this point I
am again in a significant disagreement with Schatzkis proposal for how the concept
of site as situated constitution of meaning is to be read off. To set the scene, note that
in his definition of the world the term space is closely related to the figure of semantic
space and a forteriori again to the idea of discreteness.12 The dubious moment in the
definition is the obscure expression of relatively self-contained web. If the web of
meanings produced by an organized set of practices is only relatively enclosed, then
obviously it is related somehow to something that is beyond it. More specifically, the
web is open to what transcends it. The something that is beyond remains unspecified
in the definition being cited. The deficiency is informed by the strong commitment to the
idea that meaning is produced contextually and locally, thereby is enveloped by particular assemblages of practices. The concept of site suffers again from being tied to the
paradigm of discreteness.
Doubtless, the world (as circumscribed in terms of site ontology of the social) is a
multiplicity (or a manifold) of relatively enclosed configurations of practices, each of

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which is characterized by its own local spatiality. Yet the world is first and foremost an
inexhaustible horizon of practical (concernful) constitution of meanings that transcends always already each and every spatially organized assemblage of practices. This
is why any particular assemblage produces only a relatively self-contained web of
meanings. The webs partial seclusion is relative to the transcendence of the world
which Schatzkis site ontology simply does not take into account. The figure of contextual situatedness presupposes the figure of situated transcendence.
Site is a located constitution of meaning that is characterized by a regime of temporalization (Zeitigung der Zeitlichkeit). Speaking in terms of the existential analytic, site is
a spatial multiplicity of places. Place is the spatial characteristic of a tool-entity that is
ready to hand. Thus considered, the multiplicity of places is the spatiality of a certain
context of equipment (Zeugzusammenhang) within the world. One can admit (as a kind
of convention) that each practice is distinguished by a multiplicity of places, and for that
reason, it is spatially contextualized. Though Schatzki does not deny that there is a constant re-contextualization of practices (and consequently, a constant interference and
co-penetration of contexts of equipment) within the world, this observation does not play
a significant role in his theory. Yet the site (as situated reproduction of practices that
brings into being a web of meanings) exists only in this interference that constantly disseminates the meanings produced within the relatively enclosed multiplicity of practices.
The interference of contexts does not destroy or dissolve the site. Rather, it makes the site
interconnected with potentially infinite (and constantly proliferating) world-sites. (Due
to the re-contextualization, the meanings produced in a certain site by a multiplicity
of practices become immediately dispersed/disseminated in other multiplicities of practices.) The contextual situatedness of a multiplicity of interrelated practices has (qua the
spatiality of a relatively enclosed web of meaning) a relative autonomy within the continuous re-contextualization of practices. To this autonomy belongs also a multiplicitys
characteristic regime of temporalization which takes place, however, within the worlds
horizon of temporality.
Each particular multiplicity of practices is temporalized due to the worlds transcendence. Being temporalized within-the-world, site is neither a discrete location nor an
enclosed space. The interference of spatial contexts of equipment which brings the
ongoing re-contextualization of practices into play is the spatial counterpart of the constant temporalizing of temporality (whose outcomes are the relatively autonomous
regimes of temporalization). Site as considered with regard to the figure of situated transcendence is inevitably temporalized. The world is not a container of sites. Though
Schatzkis theory would not approve a view of the world as a manifold of sites, this theory has no resources to reject argumentatively such a view. By the same token, it does
not offer good arguments for the claim that sites are a characteristic disclosure of the
world through changing configurations of interrelated practices. As a corollary to this
claim, the world-as-transcendence is potentially infinite hermeneutic situations of
spatial-temporal disclosure of the world. In each of these situations a form of practical
life projects and appropriates possibilities.
Against the background of the foregoing considerations, my point is that the site
ontology of practices has to work with the concept of a temporalized site or, more precisely, with the concept of (what Mikhail Bakhtin calls) the chronotope. In this regard,

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one should also distinguish between site ontologies of actuality (actually given discrete
units) and site ontologies of potentiality that employ a kind of ontological difference.13
To reiterate an argument already discussed, since situatedness and transcendence are
existentially (not only equiprimordial but also) correlative, the image of site (spatiality
disclosed by social practices) as intrinsically tied to discreteness is wrong. Site as not
being detached (1) from the stream of meaning constitution, which temporalizes all
doings and sayings within-the-world, and (2) from the ongoing re-contextualization of
practices is a chronotope. In literary criticism, the chronotope is spatial-temporal plotting
(emplotment), and consequently, it is, in Bakhtins words, a formally constitutive category of literature that reveals the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships (1981: 8491).14 Yet even in this discipline one assumes that the concept of
the chronotope is relevant not only to the fictional narration. The basis for a nonfictional extension of the concept is provided by Bakhtins claim that every entry into
the sphere of meaning is accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope (1981:
258). The chronotope is first and foremost a discursive-practical phenomenon that
reflects and expresses the pre-narrativity of existence.15 To use a distinction spelled out
by the School of Russian Formalism, the chronotope belongs not only to the sphere of
syuzhet but to the sphere of fabula as well, whereby fabula actively participates in
the construction of the syuzhet. (On this reading, the fabula is not the raw material of
a story, but the pre-narrative fore-structuring of a constructed narrative with a temporal
plot. Accordingly, fabula and syuzhet are involved in a joint horizon of temporalizing.)
Now, for the purposes of the present article, the concept of the chronotope should be
brought into accord with the tenets of trans-subjective existentialism. Site is a spatialtemporal context whose inhabitants are inherently part of it. They (not permanently but
quite often) face the need to make a decisive choice of one possibility among alternative
possibilities that can be appropriated in a given situation.16 (By definition, a decisive
choice is the one in which the multiplicity of practices that constitute a site becomes rearranged. For instance, the decisive choice in favor of a new reading of tenacious anomalies in experimental results, i.e. a reading of results that look anomalous because they do
not agree with the established horizon of expectation, leads to the overall rearrangement
of those practices of doing research which constitute the site of a scientific domain.) The
chronotopic structure of site is disclosed at the moments of such a choice. Put differently,
it is the situation of decisive choice of possibilities that discloses site as a chronotope.
What is at issue in this disclosing is first and foremost the way in which the practitioners
construct their (collective) identity as inhabitants of a particular site. In this regard, a site
is a chronotope of decisive collective emancipation from what does not belong (persons,
groups, contexts, artifacts, practices, policies, arrangements, orders, plans, normativity,
intentions, feelings, attitudes, etc.) to that site.
The use of the term emancipation in this formulation is not to be confused with the
use of the same term in those kinds of social (and critical) theory which are after an universal liberation from the anonymous dictate of instrumental and strategic rationality. As
a rule, the appeal to the universal liberation is in the name of a united life-world whose
own rationality is supposedly oppressed by that dictate. Accordingly, all cultural lifeforms are to be embraced by the horizon of the united life-world whose idealized normativity of social integration is presumably counterfactual to all culturally contingent

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configurations of norms. (This is why the idealized normativity can serve as a regulative
ideal in a Kantian sense.) As a consequence, a progressive unification of the cultural lifeforms chronotopes should take place. This is an unavoidable consequence within the
framework of, for instance, the social theory based on the tenets of universal pragmatics.
My talk of a collective emancipation is to be understood as the attainment of a chronotopic autonomy of a cultural life-form shared by a group/collective. This understanding
underscores, first, the uniqueness of each particular cultural life-form, and second, the
non-integrability of the cultural life-forms in a united life-world (or, from another perspective which takes into account the multitude of cultural life-forms in a multicultural
state, their non-integrability in a civil society guided by unified system of political values
and norms).
The chronotope is the interconnectedness of temporality and spatiality of a collective
emancipation (e.g. the emancipation of an artistic group committed to a new manifesto
and style, a scientific team committed to a new research paradigm, a religious minority
creating through a new exegesis of sacral texts and new ritual practices its own public
sphere that cannot be assimilated by the official sphere of public life, and so on). In
a situation of decisive choice the emancipatory process defines its own regime of temporalizing (i.e. the way of differentiating between the future as projected possibilities
that are to be appropriated for the sake of emancipation, the moment of the present as
the Augenblick in which the state of emancipation is envisaged in a proper manner, and
the relevant past as those possibilities already actualized which serve the emancipatory
process). Alongside the regime of temporalizing, a collective existences specific spatiality (i.e. a collective making room for a particular cultural life-form) begins to take
shape. This is why a theory of existential spatiality (as complementing a theory of existential temporality) is a part of (the ontology pertinent to) the hermeneutic theory of
practices.

Why hermeneutic realism about practices?


Let me in conclusion address the issue of why the view of trans-subjective existentialism
implies a kind of hermeneutic realism about social practices. To begin with, a thesis
already discussed provides the key to the explication of the view of hermeneutic realism:
the world of practices has the potentiality-for-being through its openness towards possibilities. By implication, the world always is disclosed (as the reality of multiplicities of
practices) in a hermeneutic situation of projection and appropriation of possibilities. The
hermeneutic situation becomes specified as a characteristic hermeneutic situation by
virtue of the decisive choice of possibilities. Important from the viewpoint of transsubjective existentialism is not only the exceptionality of the decisive choice but also the
way in which the re-contextualized practices which possibly form a new site become
routinized. All novelties informed by the decisive choice are doomed to be situated in
an average everydayness. Soon or later the characteristic hermeneutic situation leads
to a collective form of life governed by new trans-subjective They in Heideggers
sense. The reality of social practices is revealed not as a-temporal presence. It is a reality
that is always disclosed within a characteristic hermeneutic situation that by circumscribing the fore-having, the fore-sight, and the fore-conception of a tendency of choosing

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possibilities brings into being a definite regime of social practices situated temporalization. Within this regime, the present is a function of a constructive future (appropriated
possibilities) and a past that is always in statu nascendi (a past that is disclosed with
regard to the actualized possibilities). The reality of social practices is in a state of constant temporalization as informed by characteristic hermeneutic situations.
Hermeneutic realism is a view that in many respects is the counterpart of the conception of situated transcendence. On this view, if the reality were to be out there, ready to
be represented by the human mind, then the human mind would be something outside the
reality. Hermeneutic realism takes the reality to be the totality of being-in-the-world in
which the mental faculties of the humans (the human mind) are ecstatically united with
the worlds contextual entities. Mental capacities are not only an integral part of the reality. They are always organized and working as particular cognitive practices (such as
practices of perception, recollection, imagination, narration, cognition, and so on). Thus
considered, all practices of gaining knowledge are contextually situated. These practices
(or, their particular configurations in which by all means also non-cognitive practices are
included) take place in a certain chronotope. Like all other kinds of practices, the cognitive practices disclose the reality in characteristic hermeneutic situations that belong
to the reality.17
Being contextually situated, practices are inherently accountable for their characteristic situation and the site in which their particular interrelatedness takes place.18 Therefore, the multiplicity of interrelated practices is distinguished by reflexivity. What is
articulated within the multiplicity of practices is a meaningful-reflexive reality. The deepest meaning of the concept of reflexivity consists in the ontological thesis that disclosing reality is a moment of the reality itself. Of course, not the reality in toto but a site (the
chronotope) is always disclosed in a characteristic hermeneutic situation. The sites inhabitants (the participants who share a multiplicity of practices) gain access to reality
through the presuppositions of fore-having, fore-seeing, and fore-grasping that are implicated in their practices.
The reality disclosed within a characteristic hermeneutic situation has nothing to do
with the reality to which the doctrine of internal realism subscribes. The claim that there
is no reality that is independent of any hermeneutic situation does not amount to holding
that the structure of the world is ontologically dependent on the human mind. The hermeneutic situation is an event that belongs to the thrown projection of existence and the
worlds transcendence. It is an ontological and not an epistemological (related to the
implementation of a conceptual scheme) event. On hermeneutic realism, the meaningful
reality disclosed in a characteristic hermeneutic situation is not the upshot of loading a
pre-practical (and non-contextualized) reality with meaning. Such a (neo-Kantian) view
wrongly assumes that the constitution of meaning transforms a reality in itself into a
meaningful reality. There is no reality that precedes the reality of being-in-the-world
practically.
Notes
1. By the expression essentialist theories of practices, I mean two principal types of theories:
(1) theories that admit an initial presence at hand (something like the objective reality of
practices) whose conceptualization starts with sorting out the primitive terms (in the

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2.

3.
4.

5.

6.
7.
8.

9.

10.

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logical-epistemological sense) of theorizing; and (2) theories that by virtue of their intrinsic
logic of constituting objects of inquiry hypostatize what is objectified as invariant entities.
For a reading of the existential-analytic concept of understanding as unarticulated competence
that makes it possible to follow rules, see Rouse (2007: 642). Such a reading transforms the
hermeneutic-ontological nexus of understanding and interpretation into a kind of protoepistemological relation.
On the view of understanding as the ability to learn practices that is set in the stream of behavior, see Taylor (1985: 26).
The integration of the figure of the transcendence of subjectivity in the theory of practices
helps one to undo any kind of transcendental subjectivity as a requisite for (the analysis of)
the constitution of meaning.
Notoriously, Heidegger opposes any reduction of Dasein either to individuality or to a kind of
sociality. Yet Dasein as portrayed in Being and Time is by no means a hybrid between individuality and sociality. It is a subjective self-constitution that projects its existence upon possibilities. With regard to trans-subjectivitys inherence to Dasein, Heidegger draws the
conclusion that being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with, a mode that continues to be
involved in trans-subjective practices. Dasein is the ecstatic unity (in the sense of Being and
Time) of subjectivity (it is in each case I myself) and trans-subjectivity (of linguistic
medium, cultural milieu, traditions, institutions, communities, etc.) that transcends the self
in a way that makes it a situated self (or, culturally embodied self).
The technical term that Heidegger uses for practices in Being and Time is concernful dealings
within-the-world.
Regime of temporalization within practices is the practice-theoretical counterpart of what
Heidegger calls the temporalizing of temporality.
To stress again, this is a bit paradoxical formulation. On the one hand, a practice is a location
(something static) and a unit (something discrete). On the other hand, a practice is not an independent entity since it is ineluctably involved in a hermeneutic circle set up by the configuration
of practices to which it belongs. Being involved in such a circle, a practice is neither static nor
discrete. Yet it is still a location and a unit. The way out of this paradox is by conferring a chronotopic meaning to the notions of location and unita step I will undertake in a moment.
Schatzki suggests a plan for constructing practice theory that is, as it were, built on a quasimodel of discrete mathematics in a double sense. First, the theory deals with sets of discrete
entities (like actions, groups, constellations of doings, scattered practices, organized practices,
orders, sets of localized practices, etc.) that are structured in accordance with the operations
one can define on the sets elements. Second, only countable sets of such entities belong to
the purview of research delineated by the theory of practices. That the strong emphasis on discreteness may threaten practice theory with an undesired exclusion of interesting phenomena
from its purview makes several theorists cautious about the paradigm of discreteness. In Bourdieus theory, for instance, the threat of hypostatizing a discrete world of practices units is
removed by elaborating on the constant interplay between the product of practices (opus operatum) and practical mastery (modus operandi). To the question of what is wrong with the
methodological paradigm of discreteness, the answer straightaway is that the paradigm
implies an objectivist view of practices pure spatial presence.
It is not to be denied that Schatzki very often insists on the endless becoming of the sites at
which organized practices and orders are constituted. In various methodological contexts he

Ginev

11.

12.

13.
14.

15.
16.

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makes the case that becoming (and not being as abidingness) is the constitutive feature of
social life. In placing emphasis on becoming, however, he does not break with the paradigm
of discreteness. Becoming is a movement within a world divided into discrete units that are
present at hand. Becoming is a reordering of arrangements. Depending on whether this reordering is an intentional or unintentional process, becoming is either a reorganization of rules
and teleoaffective structures or a recomposition of practices and shifts in their practical understandings (see Schatzki, 2002: 241). From the phenomenological point of view which I adopt
in this article, continuity is to be ascribed in the first place to the horizons transcendence that
makes possible the ongoing constitution of meaning. It is this continuity that is the opposite of
the epistemic/semantic discreteness which results from objectification. This rendering of continuity is to be strongly distinguished from the way of treating continuity on a par with stability
and as opposed to change. In the latter case, continuity belongs not to the world-astranscendence but to the world that is already objectified.
The external imposition of such identities leads to the formation of patterns as a-temporalized,
normative models of social behavior. A prerequisite for having such an imposition is the transformation of practitioners intrinsic reflexivity into external attitudes toward the performances
of practices. This transformation comes into play, in particular, via narrating these performances. Though narrating is by itself no objectification of practices, it creates a medium in
which the practitioners are enabled to take a distance from their embeddedness in practices.
Repeatable narration of practices performances in social communication leads to stylizing
them in normative patterns. The classic versions of social theory (but also the traditional theories in cultural anthropology and several other social disciplines) take for granted the existence of normative patterns. Accordingly, they refrain from scrutinizing the pre-normative
genesis of normative patterns.
Building on Charles Taylors theory of interpretation in the human sciences, Schatzki uses the
concept of semantic space in a manner that allows him to draw a strong parallel between the
spatial units of the social and the discrete units of meaning as related to the different fields of
practices arrangements. More generally, the notion of meaning Taylor and Schatzki refer to is
a notion of semantic meaning that is alien to the meaning arising out of interpretative circularity (the hermeneutic meaning).
The former place emphasis exclusively on the contextual spatiality, thereby ignoring the
issues of contextual temporality.
Bakhtin holds that the chronotope stands for the fusion of spatial and temporal indicators into a
concrete whole. Furthermore, he points out that this is not a static fusion but rather an
ongoing spatialization of time (whereby time takes on flesh) and the temporalization of
space that is responsive to plots narrative time. Of course, Bakhtin confines his considerations
to the literary artistic chronotope and the fictional world of chronotope. Yet his notion is
spelled out along the lines of a kind of site ontology. More specifically, this is an ontology of
the narrative-generic configurations which (not as discrete structures but in their continuous
variability) underlie human action. (This is why several students in literary criticism admit that
any typology of chronotopes as clearly delineated structures would be a futile enterprise since
there is a whole spectrum of possibilities and variations.)
On the concept of pre-narrativity, see Meuter (1994).
Here I am adopting the concept of situation from Otto Friedrich Bollnows critique of existentialism. Bollnows critical point is that the situation of decisive choice is not a permanent

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situation. In this connection, he distinguishes between Lage and Situation. The former designates the usual surrounding of circumstances which does not define a specific site of existence.
Differentia specifica of situation is the nexus of decisive choice and the specification of a site
of existence. See Bollnow (2011: 2832).
17. See, for arguments of this claim, Ginev (2011).
18. This formulation assumes the ethnomethodological way of equalizing accountability with
reflexivity: practices are reflexively accountable achievements. More specifically, the
accountability of practices is the primary evidence of their reflexivity.

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Author biography
Dimitri Ginev taught Continental Philosophy of Science at the Western Kentucky University and
History of Modern Hermeneutics at Sofia University. He was a Fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, and a Senior Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg of the
University of Konstanz. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the international journal Studia
Culturologica. Among his books are The Context of Constitution (Boston/Dordrecht, 2006),
Transformationen der Hermeneutik (Wurzburg 2008), Das hermeneutische Projekt Georg Mischs
(Vienna, 2011), and The Tenets of Cognitive Existentialism (Athens, O, 2011).

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