Why do we need a metaphysics of experience? Because reality is multidimensional and so is human experience. We have not only bodily sense perceptions and intellectual thoughts but also sensitive experiences that appear as events. Even though human experience is not rational, it is not just sensuous but also sensitive, and its sensitivity is what qualifies it both ethically and epistemologically. Sensitive experience is the bridge between sense and intellect because sensitivity is the common root of both.
Without sensitive experience, we would have no knowledge of reality’s multidimensionality. Reality would be flat, one-dimensional. Thanks to our modern scientific way of viewing things, reality does in fact often appear that empty to us. However, we also have a different, sensitive view of things, which we know from childhood and from the moments in life when our thoughts are controlled not by us but by a greater power, historically termed “Nature,” “God,” and “Poetry,” for instance.
The metaphysics of experience is about all the sensitive experiences - the aesthetic, religious, and metaphysic experiences - that open the mind and give food for beautiful thought. It is about the transgressive experiences we all have but often ignore or reject as irrational, and what it takes to treat such experiences philosophically in ways that are loyal and thus poetic but also critical and thought provoking.
Den skønne tænkning: Veje til erfaringsmetafysik. Religionsfilosofisk udmøntet (Beautiful Thinking: Pathways to the Metaphysics of Experience. Religio-philosophically Implemented), Aarhus University Press, 2014, represents Dorthe Jørgensen’s major presentation of her metaphysics of experience. It includes an extensive summary in English. The books Poetic Inclinations: Ethics, History, Philosophy (Aarhus University Press, 2020) and Imaginative Moods: Aesthetics, Religion, Philosophy (Aarhus University Press, 2020) together constitute the most comprehensive English introduction to her metaphysics of experience. Find a brief description here and in Publications.
Dorthe Jørgensen, “The Philosophy of Imagination,” Handbook of Imagination and Culture, eds. T. Zittoun and V. Glaveanu, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 19-45. Formulates the philosophical basis for this book using the metaphysics of experience.
Dorthe Jørgensen, “Creativity and Aesthetic Thinking: Toward an Aesthetics of Well-being,” Routledge Handbook on Well-being, ed. K. Galvin, Routledge, 2018, pp. 243-249. Formulates the philosophical basis for the aesthetic part of the book.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
Dorthe Jørgensen, Nærvær og eftertanke: Mit pædagogiske laboratorium (Presence and Afterthought: My Educational Laboratory), Wunderbuch, 2015, shows the pedagogical implications of the metaphysics of experience and its aesthetic thinking. This book crosses theory and practice, integrating the author’s own pedagogical experiments and experiences as a teacher.
Dorthe Jørgensen, Nærvær og eftertanke: Mit pædagogiske laboratorium (Presence and Afterthought: My Educational Laboratory), Wunderbuch, 2015, shows the pedagogical implications of the metaphysics of experience and its aesthetic thinking. This book crosses theory and practice, integrating the author’s own pedagogical experiments and experiences as a teacher.