Chapter 2: Philosophy of the Atmospheric Turn

The atmospheric turn can be understood as a departure from the occidental dominant thing and event ontologies and opens the way to a situation ontology, in which subjective-bodily felt being-in is at the centre. The focus shifts from objective things or events to subjectively experienceable facts of being within situations and atmospheres. Atmospheres have an affective content, a peculiar non-dimensional spatiality and a hybrid status beyond the typical occidental dualisms, such as subject and object or inner and outer world. If the philosophical potential of the atmospheric turn is highlighted and taken seriously, then fundamental new perspectives in thought and action can reveal themselves.