Becoming Horse in the Duration of the Moment

This article reflects on Stephen Smith’s influential 2011 phenomenological paper, Becoming Horse in the Duration of the Moment: The Trainer’s Challenge, through a retrospective dialogue between Smith and co-editor Andrew Foran for this Special Issue of Phenomenology & Practice. The discussion traces Foran’s initial skepticism toward the manuscript and the subsequent shift in understanding prompted by peer review and deeper engagement. Becoming Horse is not about literal identification with animals, but about how serious engagement in more-than-human relationships—particularly those involving human–horse interactions—can deepen human relational and pedagogical sensibilities. Smith argues that attunement to animals enlarges humanity, offering insights into care, responsiveness, and pedagogical sensitivity. The dialogue revisits Smith’s motivations, his turn toward the “animal question” in phenomenology, and how equestrian practices such as gentling, liberty play, and motion-based interactivity informed his evolving phenomenological method. Drawing on thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Henry, Barbaras, and van Manen, Smith emphasizes motility, tactility, and life phenomenology as central to making good sense of deeply lived experience. Ultimately, the article positions Becoming Horse as a lasting contribution that challenges human-centered phenomenology, expands pedagogical thinking, and models a phenomenology of possibility grounded in animated, life-affirming relational practices

Attunement · Intentionality · Interpretative phenomenological analysis · Lived experience · Perception · Skepticism · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism