Emmanuel Cuisinier is a Franco-Canadian philosophy student currently doing an MA at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He specializes in ontology, phenomenology, and philosophy of love, and his work connects these areas to themes of intersubjectivity, psychopathology, and morality. He has published literary essays and poetry on these topics as well.
What excites you about philosophy?
Exploring original ideas, always going beyond my own creative logic by learning from others and from experience, having the slightest opportunity to be amazed by looking at a problem with a different outlook. It’s also thrilling to be intellectually ignorant in ways that make me wonder: “What’s the next thing I won’t understand and how can I turn this into an original and helpful problem for others?”
What is your favorite thing that you’ve written?
My favorite thing I’ve written will always be the next thing I will have written. I always enjoy the writing I can come up with that further accentuates my thought – by correcting it or making it more precise – and where I can push further the limits of my own writing style. I always prioritize the next idea that culminates everything I’ve been thinking about for a certain period of time, and I try to write papers in a way that represents this “point of culmination” in my research while keeping open-ended what the next tip of the iceberg will be in my head. I also enjoy the process of writing more than my papers themselves, even when the process is very tedious. But right now I especially liked writing my paper on Spinoza and romantic love (which is still being submitted to journals) because it allowed me to find my proper style of raising critical problems in the areas of philosophy that I’m concerned with.
What are you working on right now?
In my Master’s research I try to offer a new outlook at how transcendental intersubjectivity accounts for spontaneous experiences where individuals risk their lives to save others. Instead of promulgating the typical avenues in moral phenomenology (such as Levinas or Derrida…), I draw from specific passages in Merleau-Ponty’s work that are underestimated and still ambiguous, where most interpreters made connections with his political thought rather than with his work on perception and embodiment. I argue that we must shift M.-P.’s discussion on heroism around the latter two, and that it’s possible to argue that intersubjectivity is the structure that allows these extreme situations of selflessness to “lend themselves”, so to speak, to the subject in ways that precede judgements of perception. Although I’m still working on this point, I’m paying close attention to whether or not this can be indicative that self-awareness isn’t necessarily needed as a condition for intersubjectivity. My goal is to make an original contribution to moral phenomenology that encourages thinkers to get out the trenches of the moral objectivism vs moral relativism debate, by getting rid of the subject-object Cartesian dichotomy once and for all, and to offer some groundwork for the way frameworks in psychotherapy apprehend morality experienced by people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders.
I have presented in the U.S. at two conferences a paper I am still working on, which is about the slim literature on Spinoza and romantic love. I present in it some contentions and conflicts that emerge on the ethical side of romantic love if we try to interpret it in his Ethics – whereas most of the contemporary literature focused on the psychological, emotional, or epistemological side of it – and the result leads us to a need to readdress even more the fundamental questions that make up what philosophy of love is – such as the contingency of the romantic experience itself.
I am also writing a paper to make connections between Roland Barthes’ book, Fragments d’un discours amoureux, with transcendental phenomenology and intersubjectivity in the hopes to contribute to some people who work on better understanding what goes on in crimes of passion and in traumas related to love. But that’s still a long while away from being finished!
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
I think philosophy of love is atrociously under explored (if not at least devoid of any consensus). The result is that a lot of it gets recycled by certain Feminist thinkers who are contentious within feminism itself. Or some thinkers treat it so analytically that it makes the concept devoid of any applicability in real life situations. I would like to see figures like Novalis, Max Scheler, and Dietrich von Hildebrand to be rehabilitated here. Of course, there’s already a lot of literature on love, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for in the field. I think it is still contentious what kind of ontological role it plays (partly because we haven’t settled on the contingency of love itself), and a big difficulty is that the problem links to so many things in various directions. I think it isn’t being taken seriously enough except when it supports other people’s philosophies, or when it exemplifies other transcendental structures we know about, which is a shame because we could probably develop an even more critical eye if we observe situations of love in very peculiar contexts.
What’s your favorite quote?
“Only the beginnings are beautiful.” – Heidegger
What cause or charity do you care about most?
Making psychotherapy accessible to all, and mandatory even. I believe many of our world’s problems would be solved if people went to therapy; if it were accessible and free to everyone.
What is your favorite place for doing philosophy and do you have a routine with this place?
For me it was the humanities library at McGill University (even though I wasn’t enrolled there). Every day, I would go to the top floor with a hot chocolate in my hand, pick a few philosophy books randomly based on my interests, then sit down and read for a few hours before doing my work. It was my favorite place because it made me feel retracted from the world even though it was in the mist of it (the library was located downtown). The floor was set up so that the bookshelves were in the center and the desks area lined with the contour of the building, and the windows provided a stunning view on the city. The place was so cold it was impossible to fall asleep. This place affected the way I do philosophy because it was so intense. It’s all about the books and decorticating everything that is going on around you. Working in tandem with others around influenced me in some way as well (compared to working at home). When I became immersed in Merleau-Ponty’s work I understood how much one’s environment matters when thinking, and the challenges of working home through a pandemic have made this all the more relevant again. So I like to ask this question about philosophers and the people I get on Zoom with to see how much their working environment translates into their thinking, and vice-versa.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
Very interesting interview and Spinoza on Romantic love is a great topic. Agree that the philosophy of love is under explored and often parochial. Your favorite quote is sobering, but generally true. All good – thanks for the short tour of novel subjects