Seminar: Phenomenology of Will

with Tom Amarque

Starts September 7th, 2025, ends September 28th

 

Synopsis

Do you feel that all these meta-cognitive models and theories don´t help you to lead a more meaningful life, to decide what to do? Do you really know what you really want? There is a disconnect between our levels of cognitive understanding and mapping of the world, and our abilities to proper act in, with and within the world.

Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's educational philosophy, known as "Head, Heart, and Hands," emphasizes a holistic approach to learning that develops intellectual, emotional, and practical skills. We can also call it today the lines of development of conition, emotion and volition. In this seminar you will shift your attention from intellectualizing and world/self-mapping – which you already can do – to a more action-based perspective. What is will, what are the characteristics of proper action and how do you get to know what to do in a given situation?

In this 4 week introductory seminar, Tom Amarque will shift the discourse from descriptive world/self- mapping into a prescriptive mapping of action and will.

Module Outline

The lectures will start Sunday, September 7th, at 6 pm CET. Video-recordings will be available afterwards

Class I:  Setting the Stage

September 7th

  • What do we need to do to shift our attention from world/self mapping to action-mapping?

  • The role of ethics and morale.

  • The role of will in psychology

  • The limits of descriptive maps of self and world

  • Causes for the meaning crisis

Class II: A test dive

September 14th

  • Ways of framing will: modern and postmodern forms of understanding will and volition

  • Hegel, Fichte and Schopenhauer (and a little bit of Nietzsche).

  • Assagiolis theory of will

Class III – A proper foundation

September 21th

  • Can we - in the domain of psyche - find a selfevitend truth?

  • What can we observe: What is observation; how is observation linked to action?

  • Spencer Brown and systems-theory

Class IV – bringing will into the 21st century

September 28th

  • Three stages of will

  • Characteristics of a will after postmodernity

  • How does will feel?

  • How to know what you want, and how to bring the future into being.

About your facilitator

Tom Amarque

is writer, philosopher, podcast host, editor & publisher. His most recent book, ‘Phenomenology of will’, attemps to bring the discouse of will into a post-postmodern age. He founded the German publishing house Phaenomen-Verlag in 2009 and Parallax-Media in 2019. Tom currently lives in Palma, Spain. Contact him a tomamarque@yahoo.de

 
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