Abstract
In this article, my purpose is to explore conversion in its onto-phenomenological structure. To this end, in the first section, I develop a notion of form of life as an ontological unit. That is, the totality of the possible actions of a subject according to the principle that drives him/her. In this way, the subject is the result of the actions that constitute the adopted form of life. In the second section, I hold that all conversion is precisely the passage from one form of life to another triggered by a crisis, and that if this requirement is not met, neither is there a conversion. This makes it possible to reduce any type of conversion, whether religious, moral, or intellectual, to a single onto-phenomenological structure based on the form of life as an ontological unit. And it even allows for the analysis of other phenomena in terms of conversion, such as the passage from one social group to another.
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Notes
The strength of Sartre’s statement is nevertheless qualified throughout the pages of this article by the quotations of various thinkers and philosophers who in times before Sartre had reflected on conversion, although certainly not as an existential phenomenon but rather as a mainly religious one.
The notion of language games in Wittgenstein is not clear either, but it could be defined as the functions with which language is used in specific contexts, a community, a social group, etc.
The italics are mine.
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Rueda Garrido, D.‘. Forms of Life and the Phenomenological Ontology of Conversion. SOPHIA 62, 33–47 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00838-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00838-4