Orientation in Space, Thought and Life: Continuing Some Recent Conversations with Stephen

This contribution, more personal than academic, is in two parts. The first part relates my last encounter and conversation with Stephen, which took place in London in June 2023. During our conversation we explored a prospective book project that Stephen was contemplating. It would be about orientation, and about the loss of orientation that he was experiencing as a result of his illness. This part presents an event that actually happened. The second part offers an imaginary continuation of the same conversation, set in an oneiric framework in springtime Paris and framed in the style of popular philosophy. Resuming the thread of our past conversation, it offers a discussion of orientation in its various dimensions, approached from conceptual and intellectual history. In the course of this conversation, we address the geographical, and anthropological dimensions of orientation, a term that emerged in the eighteenth century. We reflect on the rise to prominence of orientation as a modern philosophical paradigm in the work of Pluche, Kant, Mendelssohn, and Schiller. I try to imagine the shape that Stephen’s project on orientation and on Schiller might have taken, had he still been able to carry it out.