Life without a Ground: A Praxis of Being-in-the-World

This book argues for the pragmatist thesis of the primacy of praxis on a phenomenological basis. Demonstrating the relevance of phenomenology, it provides a systematic overview of the contemporary pragmatic landscape, taking into account not only a family of neo-pragmatic approaches but also the current pragmatic readings of phenomenology. This volume offers an innovative formulation of the primacy of practice thesis based on the genetic reformulation of Heidegger’s notions of disclosure, Dasein, and average intelligibility ( Das Man ). Investigating the dynamic interrelation among those notions, the author arrives at the phenomenological conception of forms of life or average background practices and argues that a form of life is not a pragmatic condition of meaningfulness but an outcome of the dynamic process of meaning-formation. This text concludes that the formation of meaning has no overarching origin but sources from the bundle of disparate practical spaces, and is ‘anarchic’ in nature. It appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and philosophical anthropology.