Sara Heinämaa
Biographic Data
| ID | 1225843 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara Heinämaa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara |
| FAMILY NAME | Heinämaa |
| SIGNATURE | HEINÄMAA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8458-2196 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Prolonged pain as an existential feeling
This article explores the nature of pain experience, focusing on the long-standing debate concerning its intentionality. The paper challenges two dominant features of qualitative pain research, common to philosophical and empirical approaches: the tendency to treat pain as one unified and homogenous phenomenon and the related tendency to neglect the need for separate analyses of prolonged pain as a phenomenon in its own right. We argue that consc…
Architectonics of a Method: On the Relations Between Husserlian Phenomenology and Its Feminist and Critical Successors
This paper argues that Husserlian philosophy offers a powerful methodology for feminist phenomenology and for any phenomenology with ethico-political aims. I will first explicate the widely spread notion that Husserlian phenomenology is fundamentally inadequate for such critical purposes and incurably distorted by Husserl’s supposedly ideological commitments. I will distinguish the main variants of this view recently put forward in the field of c…
Age and cultural differences in the relationship between reading and theory of mind
Vocational life: Personal, communal and temporal structures
This paper offers a new philosophical account of vocations as deeply personal but at the same time also communal and generational forms of multimodal intending. It provides a reconstruction and a systematic development of Edmund Husserl’s scattered discussions on vocations. On these grounds, the paper argues that vocational life is a general human possibility and not determined by any set of material values, religious, epistemic or moral. Rather,…
On the transcendental undercurrents of phenomenology: The case of the living body
Today the phenomenological concept of the lived body figures centrally in several philosophical and special scientific debates. In these wide and widening fields, the concept is used with multiple different meanings. In order to clarify and delineate the debates, this paper provides an explication of the phenomenological-transcendental methods. It argues that these methods help us remove the most fundamental ambiguities of the concept of embodime…
Une approche phénoménologique du moi: Temporalité, finitude et intersubjectivité
La philosophie européenne est souvent critiquée comme une manière dépassée de penser et est taxée d’individualiste, d’anthropocentrique et d’euro-centrique. Plusieurs de ces approches critiques partagent la notion que la source majeure des problèmes gît dans la pensée cartésienne héritée de l’ego. Je confronte cette notion anti-cartésienne de la philosophie européenne en argumentant que la phénoménologie husserlienne offre une réinterprétation ro…
Values of love: Two forms of infinity characteristic of human persons
In his late reflections on values and forms of life from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl develops the concept of personal value and argues that these values open two kinds of infinities in our lives. On the one hand personal values disclose infinite emotive depths in human individuals while on the other hand they connect human individuals in continuous and progressive chains of care. In order to get at the core of the concept, I will explicate Husse…
New Perspectives on Aristotelianism and Its Critics
Introduction: Aristotelian Challenges to Contemporary Philosophy - Nature, Knowledge, and the Good I SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE 1. Aristotle's Natural Teleology Seen from Above: A 'Cosmogony' of the Means-Goal Relation, Diana Quarantotto 2. Discursivity in Aristotle's Biological Writings, Sabine Follinger 3. Naturalised versus Normative Epistemology: An Aristotelian Alternative, Miira Tuominen II JUSTICE AND NATURAL RIGHTS 4. Did Plato and Aristotle R…
Anonymity and personhood: Merleau-Ponty’s account of the subject of perception
Sex, gender, and embodiment
This chapter develops an alternative to the dominant articulation of human existence on the basis of classical phenomenology, arguing that Edmund Husserl's phenomenological inquiries into the structures of embodiment provide a very different and more fruitful starting point for the investigation of sexual difference than the ideas of social gender and biological sex. The ways of classifying sex and gender characteristics mark them out on several …
Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy
Introduction: Feminist Philosophy and the Nordic Situation
Feminist philosophy is still considered an oxymoron by many academics. Most philosophers take sex and gender to be non‐philosophical issues (in essence or by nature). At best, the topics of sexual
Beauvoir's Time/Our Time: The Renaissance in Simone De Beauvoir Studies
SINCE THE EARLY SECOND WAVE, Simone de Beauvoir and her work have provided something of a Rorschach test for feminist theory, with dif ferent generations and genres of feminism each projecting their own pre occupations upon her. First hailed as Mother of Us All and as the author of the so-called Bible of Second Wave feminism, she was mainly treated in the 1970s as an icon or held up as an ideal. But although in the 1970s many feminists found pers…
Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation: Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries
Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxi_me Sexe has been studied extensively since its appearance in 1949. Through the years, certain passages have taken on prestige; others are seen as unimportant to understanding Beauvoir's argument. In Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference, Sara HeinSmaa rediscovers those neglected passages in her quest to follow Beauvoir's line of thinking. HeinSmaa, like some other recent philosophers, finds that Le Duexi_me Sex…
Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference
The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue.
Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference
The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue
Merleau-Ponty's Modification of Phenomenology: Cognition, Passion and Philosophy
Kvinna - natur, produkt, stil
Ar kroppen natur eller kultur ? Ar frågan överhuvud taget fruktbar? Hur hänger uppfattningen av/om den biologiska kroppsligheten samman med identiteten och sexualiteten
Commonality and Particularity in Ethics
Original essays by distinguished philosophers from different fields of philosophy are brought together in this book. Reflections on moral discourse and its contexts are provided and the authors discus
What is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference
The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenolo…
What is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference
The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenolo…
The rhetoric of positioning in women's studies
The article examines the requirement of positioning (or localization) often presented in the recent epistemological discussions of women's studies. The paper argues that these discussions include two different epistemological conceptions. First, there is the moderate idea according to which researchers should explicate their personal and political positions, not only their theoretical starting points. The paper demonstrates that this requirement …
Intelligensens politik - kvinnor och artificiell intelligens
Den intelligenta datorn är en omöjlighet, hävdar Sara Heinämaa. Tvärtemot vad dataforskarna tror, har intelligensen ingen kärna som går att upptäcka. Heinämaa fokuserar i stället intelligensbegreppets normativa användning: såväl i filosofihistorien, där kvinnor klassats som icke-rationella, som i samtida diskussioner, bestäms det vem som är intelligent på maktpolitisk väg
What is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference
The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenolo…
Beauvoir's Time/Our Time: The Renaissance in Simone De Beauvoir Studies
SINCE THE EARLY SECOND WAVE, Simone de Beauvoir and her work have provided something of a Rorschach test for feminist theory, with dif ferent generations and genres of feminism each projecting their own pre occupations upon her. First hailed as Mother of Us All and as the author of the so-called Bible of Second Wave feminism, she was mainly treated in the 1970s as an icon or held up as an ideal. But although in the 1970s many feminists found pers…
Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference
The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue
Merleau-Ponty's Modification of Phenomenology: Cognition, Passion and Philosophy
Kvinna - natur, produkt, stil
Ar kroppen natur eller kultur ? Ar frågan överhuvud taget fruktbar? Hur hänger uppfattningen av/om den biologiska kroppsligheten samman med identiteten och sexualiteten
Intelligensens politik - kvinnor och artificiell intelligens
Den intelligenta datorn är en omöjlighet, hävdar Sara Heinämaa. Tvärtemot vad dataforskarna tror, har intelligensen ingen kärna som går att upptäcka. Heinämaa fokuserar i stället intelligensbegreppets normativa användning: såväl i filosofihistorien, där kvinnor klassats som icke-rationella, som i samtida diskussioner, bestäms det vem som är intelligent på maktpolitisk väg
The rhetoric of positioning in women's studies
The article examines the requirement of positioning (or localization) often presented in the recent epistemological discussions of women's studies. The paper argues that these discussions include two different epistemological conceptions. First, there is the moderate idea according to which researchers should explicate their personal and political positions, not only their theoretical starting points. The paper demonstrates that this requirement …
Commonality and Particularity in Ethics
Original essays by distinguished philosophers from different fields of philosophy are brought together in this book. Reflections on moral discourse and its contexts are provided and the authors discus
What is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference
The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenolo…
What is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference
The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenolo…
Kvinna - natur, produkt, stil
Ar kroppen natur eller kultur ? Ar frågan överhuvud taget fruktbar? Hur hänger uppfattningen av/om den biologiska kroppsligheten samman med identiteten och sexualiteten
Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference
The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue.
Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference
The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue
Merleau-Ponty's Modification of Phenomenology: Cognition, Passion and Philosophy
Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation: Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries
Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxi_me Sexe has been studied extensively since its appearance in 1949. Through the years, certain passages have taken on prestige; others are seen as unimportant to understanding Beauvoir's argument. In Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference, Sara HeinSmaa rediscovers those neglected passages in her quest to follow Beauvoir's line of thinking. HeinSmaa, like some other recent philosophers, finds that Le Duexi_me Sex…
Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir
Beauvoir's Time/Our Time: The Renaissance in Simone De Beauvoir Studies
SINCE THE EARLY SECOND WAVE, Simone de Beauvoir and her work have provided something of a Rorschach test for feminist theory, with dif ferent generations and genres of feminism each projecting their own pre occupations upon her. First hailed as Mother of Us All and as the author of the so-called Bible of Second Wave feminism, she was mainly treated in the 1970s as an icon or held up as an ideal. But although in the 1970s many feminists found pers…
Introduction: Feminist Philosophy and the Nordic Situation
Feminist philosophy is still considered an oxymoron by many academics. Most philosophers take sex and gender to be non‐philosophical issues (in essence or by nature). At best, the topics of sexual
Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy
Sex, gender, and embodiment
This chapter develops an alternative to the dominant articulation of human existence on the basis of classical phenomenology, arguing that Edmund Husserl's phenomenological inquiries into the structures of embodiment provide a very different and more fruitful starting point for the investigation of sexual difference than the ideas of social gender and biological sex. The ways of classifying sex and gender characteristics mark them out on several …
New Perspectives on Aristotelianism and Its Critics
Introduction: Aristotelian Challenges to Contemporary Philosophy - Nature, Knowledge, and the Good I SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE 1. Aristotle's Natural Teleology Seen from Above: A 'Cosmogony' of the Means-Goal Relation, Diana Quarantotto 2. Discursivity in Aristotle's Biological Writings, Sabine Follinger 3. Naturalised versus Normative Epistemology: An Aristotelian Alternative, Miira Tuominen II JUSTICE AND NATURAL RIGHTS 4. Did Plato and Aristotle R…
Anonymity and personhood: Merleau-Ponty’s account of the subject of perception
Values of love: Two forms of infinity characteristic of human persons
In his late reflections on values and forms of life from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl develops the concept of personal value and argues that these values open two kinds of infinities in our lives. On the one hand personal values disclose infinite emotive depths in human individuals while on the other hand they connect human individuals in continuous and progressive chains of care. In order to get at the core of the concept, I will explicate Husse…
On the transcendental undercurrents of phenomenology: The case of the living body
Today the phenomenological concept of the lived body figures centrally in several philosophical and special scientific debates. In these wide and widening fields, the concept is used with multiple different meanings. In order to clarify and delineate the debates, this paper provides an explication of the phenomenological-transcendental methods. It argues that these methods help us remove the most fundamental ambiguities of the concept of embodime…
Une approche phénoménologique du moi: Temporalité, finitude et intersubjectivité
La philosophie européenne est souvent critiquée comme une manière dépassée de penser et est taxée d’individualiste, d’anthropocentrique et d’euro-centrique. Plusieurs de ces approches critiques partagent la notion que la source majeure des problèmes gît dans la pensée cartésienne héritée de l’ego. Je confronte cette notion anti-cartésienne de la philosophie européenne en argumentant que la phénoménologie husserlienne offre une réinterprétation ro…
Vocational life: Personal, communal and temporal structures
This paper offers a new philosophical account of vocations as deeply personal but at the same time also communal and generational forms of multimodal intending. It provides a reconstruction and a systematic development of Edmund Husserl’s scattered discussions on vocations. On these grounds, the paper argues that vocational life is a general human possibility and not determined by any set of material values, religious, epistemic or moral. Rather,…
Architectonics of a Method: On the Relations Between Husserlian Phenomenology and Its Feminist and Critical Successors
This paper argues that Husserlian philosophy offers a powerful methodology for feminist phenomenology and for any phenomenology with ethico-political aims. I will first explicate the widely spread notion that Husserlian phenomenology is fundamentally inadequate for such critical purposes and incurably distorted by Husserl’s supposedly ideological commitments. I will distinguish the main variants of this view recently put forward in the field of c…
Age and cultural differences in the relationship between reading and theory of mind
Prolonged pain as an existential feeling
This article explores the nature of pain experience, focusing on the long-standing debate concerning its intentionality. The paper challenges two dominant features of qualitative pain research, common to philosophical and empirical approaches: the tendency to treat pain as one unified and homogenous phenomenon and the related tendency to neglect the need for separate analyses of prolonged pain as a phenomenon in its own right. We argue that consc…
Philosophy (19 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (11 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (9 works) · Psychoanalysis (9 works) · Sexual difference (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)