Introduction to my Philosophy of the Macabre 'and' Morbid

"The Horror!" --

It would seem that at first 'glance' when I inform someone that my research interests are in the subject area that I have termed "the philosophy of the macabre and morbid" (sometimes just "the philosophy of the morbid, or macabre" - the exact word choice is still developmental) that the typical assumption is that my primary concern is in the direction of the "representations" of the macabre, the morbid, horror, terror, etc. However, this is not precisely the case. Although I must indeed find these elements compelling and fascinating, my concern, or at least my attempted philosophical direction, is more fundamentally in the aspect, or experience, of horror, the macabre, morbidity, itself.... Perhaps this too needs its own terminology. I feel safe in describing such a pursuit as "the phenomenology of horror."

This concern spawns from several divergent arche-points, but just to try to shed light on one, take for instance the, perhaps, over-analyzed problem of the subjective and/or culturally encoded responses (and interpretations of those responses) to the various representations of death, horror, suffering, dread, loss, etc. - In short, there are plenty of arguments to suggest the representations in-themselves do little to nothing... i.e. the actual, physical, psychological, and emotional experiences, and responses, of horror rest in the subject. But, that subjects can and do appeal to the parallelism of an experience called "horror," one cannot throw off the experience wholeheartedly, or outright. Something of primary importance remains in the experience, the "phenomenology," of horror itself....