Is phenomenology nothing else than descriptive psychology? In the first edition of his Logical Investigations (LI), Husserl conceived of phenomenology as a description and analysis of the experiences of knowledge, unequivocally stating that “phenomenology is descriptive psychology.” Most interestingly, although the first edition of the LI was the reference par excellence in phenomenology for the Munich phenomenologists, they remained suspicious of this characterisationof phenomenology. The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the reception of descriptive psychology among (...) Munich phenomenologists and, at the same time, to offer a re-evaluation of their understanding of realist phenomenology. (shrink)

What is a society? What is political power? John Searle claims that previous political philosophers not only neglected these fundamental questions but also lacked the means to effectively address them. Good answers, he thinks, depend on theories of speech acts, intentionality, and constitutive rules first developed by analytic philosophers. But Searle is mistaken. Early phenomenologists had already developed the requisite theories. Reinach’s philosophy of law includes a theory of speech acts. This theory is based on Husserl’s account of intentionality. Edith (...) Stein extended that account by offering a detailed description of collective intentionality. And it was Stein who brought these strands of early phenomenological research together to address the very questions of political philosophy Searle regards as both fundamental and neglected. In this paper, I recount Stein’s answers to these questions and argue that they compare favourably withthose of Searle. (shrink)

To claim that there is a politics to or expressed within media technology is of course by no means new, but it remains controversial and not always well understood. Walter Benjamin’s (1986b) essay from 1936 on the political import of media technology is often regarded as the starting point of such discussions, since it foregrounds a key theme in critical theory, namely the politics of perception. In what follows, I would like to review the importance of the politics of perception (...) by first outlining Benjamin’s political analysis of cinema and then engaging with a critique of Benjamin by recent American cognitivist philosophy. This will allow a consideration of the competing phenomenological cognitive science of embodied cognition that I argue offers a better account of the mind and cognition than cognitivism. As a result of this analysis of cognition, I conclude that the philosophy of embodied cognition supports Benjamin's political theory of media technology. (shrink)

Jacob Klein’s account of the original phenomenon of formalization accomplished by the innovators of modern mathematics, when they transformed the Greek arithmos into the modern concept of number, and his suggestion that the essential structure of this historically located formalization has become paradigmaticfor the concept formation of non-mathematical concepts (and therefore the most salient characteristic of the “modern consciousness”), is situated within the context of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s understanding of formalization. I show that from the perspective of Klein’s account of (...) formalization the questions thatinform Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenological responses to the problem of formalization are derivative, insofar as both phenomenologists presuppose that the essence of formalization is something that is knowable independent of its historicity. I then show that Klein’s philosophical achievement consists in his account of formalization and the formality of the concepts that it generates as being ungraspable so long as thinking approaches them as something is knowable, independent of its historicity. (shrink)

Presentazione del curatore italiano (C.Corradetti): È possibile conciliare il pluralismo culturale con la dimensione pubblica della deliberazione? Partendo dall’analisi critica di Rawls e Habermas, James Bohman offre una risposta innovativa alla questione dell’accordo democratico. In tale proposta, parallelamente al rigetto di soluzioni meramente strategiche, viene riabilitata la nozione di compromesso morale nel quadro di un accordo normativo. Mantenendo fede ad una prospettiva composta da elementi normativi e fattuali, l’autore si propone di ampliare le opportunità democratiche nella riconciliazione tra conflitti culturali (...) profondi propri delle società contemporanee. L’elemento civico partecipativo risulta essere dunque una componente essenziale per la produzione di una sfera pubblica vibrante. Ne emerge una ricostruzione convincente volta non solo a respingere le critiche degli scettici sulle reali possibilità d’inclusività democratica, ma diretta soprattutto a suggerire un più efficace modello deliberativo per la garanzia della stabilità sociale. Questo testo è diventato ormai un riferimento internazionale classico nella discussione sul tema della deliberazione pubblica. L’autore ha inoltre sviluppato in ambito post-nazionale il suo modello deliberativo senza tuttavia ridiscutere i fondamenti concettuali della sua proposta teorica qui enunciati.Vista la rilevanza del tema e considerata la centralità del testo proposto, sembrerebbe dunque auspicabile rendere il testo disponibile anche al lettore italiano. (shrink)

This article challenges Philip Kitcher’s recent proposals for an ‘enlightened secularism’. I use William James’s theory of the emotions and his related discussion of ‘temperaments’ to argue that religious and naturalistic commitments are grounded in tacit, inarticulate ways that one finds oneself in a world. This indicates that, in many cases, religiosity and naturalism are grounded not in rational and evidential considerations, but in a tacit and implicit sense of reality which is disclosed through phenomenological enquiry. Once the foundational role (...) of these temperaments is appreciated, it emerges that enlightened secularism relies upon a facile conception of the nature of religious belief – one that lessens its chances for success. The article ends with some positive proposals for incorporating phenomenological insights into debates about science, religion, and secularism. (shrink)

Este libro publicado como tal por primera vez en España, reúne dos escritos de juventud de uno de los más fecundos pensadores y traductores de filosofía al español del siglo XX. Estos dos ensayos no son sólo monumentos documentales del momento más esplendoroso de la filosofía académica en la universidad española, ni pertenecen sólo a la brillante historia de la difusión temprana de la fenomenología en España, sino que exponen con indudable originalidad la filosofía fenomenológica de su autor. El trabajo (...) de Gaos está escrito con tan notable claridad y precisión, que el lector interesado sólo puede beneficiarse de su lectura. «El nombre de Gaos sigue siendo, en suma, un emblema fecundo de la comunidad iberoamericana de pensamiento y su obra filosófica es un aliento añadido para no cejar en la feliz manía de pensar». (de la Presentación) «En este trabajo nos proponemos dar idea breve y clara del acontecimiento más importante de la filosofía contemporánea. Suponemos un lector culto, como para poder interesarse por asuntos de esta índole, pero a la vez desprovisto de una preparación filosófica especial. A este lector exclusivamente nos dirigimos». (el autor). (shrink)

The study subjected to scrutiny the context of Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere and Hugo’s novel, Notre Dame de Paris in the search for confluence through the two novels’ use of rhetorical devices and imagery. It utilized Kolb’s Experiential Method, Phenomenology, and Interdisciplinary Approach. Primarily, a connection between Hugo and Rizal is established since no studies relating the two writers existed. Gathered evidences proved the historical and biographical connections: the phenomenology of both writers’ existence in the same Romantic milieu, and (...) of Rizal’s diary and bibliographic entries on Hugo. Thereafter, a focus on the two novels’ literary elements by character, setting, point of view, and conflict, as well as theme, confirmed textual confluence. Moreover, Hugolian symbols and rhetorical devices in Noli Me Tangere are conclusive in the establishment of confluence. Furthermore, evaluation of the Notre Dame de Paris as a historical novel, a poetic novel, a novel of ideas, and a dramatic novel are evident in Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere. Finally, a sharp phenomenology of confluence between Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris and Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere is concluded. Further studies on the novel Noli Me Tangere are recommended to take into account the influence of Victor Hugo. Keywords - Hugo, Rizal, France, Philippines, novel, phenomenology, imagery, criticism. (shrink)

A crescente conscientização ecológica e bioética frente às ameaças de destruição de ecossistemas e de manipulação de populações, em escala mundial, envolvendo não apenas os riscos de extinção de espécies vegetais e animais, ...

t. 2. Le phénoménone et son ombre--aprés Husserl.

In this chapter we give an overview of current and historical conceptions of the nature of obsessions and compulsions. We discuss some open questions pertaining to the primacy of the affective, volitional or affective nature of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Furthermore, we add some phenomenological suggestions of our own. In particular, we point to the patients’ need for absolute certainty and the lack of trust underlying this need. Building on insights from Wittgenstein, we argue that the kind of certainty the patients (...) strive for is unattainable in principle via the acquisition of factual knowledge. Moreover, we suggest that the patients’ attempts to attain certainty are counter-productive as their excessive conscious control in fact undermines the trust they need. (shrink)

This is a japanese translation of Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, "Von Brentano zu Ingarden. Die phänomenologische Bedeutungslehre", Husserl Studies 18 (2002), 3, pp. 185-208.

Intentionality is a key concept in the phenomenological tradition, but also figures in several other currents of contemporary thought, often as a criteria of consciousness. Husserl adopted the principle of intentionality from Franz Brentano, who was heavily influenced by Aristotle and medieval Aristotelian tradition. Considering that intentionality means a direction of thought or behaviour, it is quite evident that Aristotle remains a major reference in this context : through the idea of natural entelechies, the theory of life, perception and thinking (...) and through the ethical descriptions of dispositions, virtues and decisions. Whatever point of view chosen, it seems obvious that the equivalent of Husserlian intentionality must be something else in Aristotle than a principle of constitution of objects in the sense of modern (Cartesian and Kantian) tradition. What could be called intentionality in Aristotle seems rather to be something like a direction of behaviour, founded on natural tendencies. Such a «physiomorphic» intentionality can shed some light on the contemporary discussions concerning consciousness, knowledge and affectivity and similarly differentiate and situate the «modern» critique of teleology. The present article deals with these questions in relation to phantasia and orexis. (shrink)

In The Troubadour of Knowledge, Michel Serres demonstrates, by means of an extended discussion of learning, that our capacity to adopt a position presupposes a kind of disorienting exposure to a dimension of pure possibility that both subtends and destabilizes that position. In this paper I trace out the implications of this insight for our understanding of obligation, especially as it is articulated in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Specifically, I argue that obligation is given along with a dimension (...) of moral possibility, and not, as Kant thought, as an unmediated fact of reason. (shrink)

The Norwegian historian Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926-2000) is held responsible, in general, for introducing phenomenological methods and concepts into the field of architecture theory, criticism and history. This article examines his legacy and his writings by focusing on one text on the Pyramide-Le-Perthus, built in France in 1976 by the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. In an exemplary way, this text shows how Norberg-Schulz used phenomenology not to ‘experience’contemporary architecture, but rather to protect it from the problems of the modern world. Norberg-Schulz (...) wrote that architecture should “tell us what being in the world implies,” but the world he constructed by means of a phenomenological reading of architecture, proves to be very narrow and almost absurd. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the theory of plurality of realities introduced by Leon Chwistek. A critical analysis of this theory and an extensional interpretation of Chwistek’s axiomatic descriptions of four realities lead to an epistemological interpretation of this theory. The word “plurality” in the title is a result of different waysof understanding the same original set of sense-data. This interpretation is contrasted with Kazimierz Pasenkiewicz’s ontological version of this theory. In the final parts of the paper the most important consequences (...) of this theory are discussed. First, the ethical relativism postulated by Chwistek is criticized. Second, an attempt to illustrate the plurality of realities with an example of different styles of painting is discussed. Third, a critical rationalism in the form of a kind of practical attitude toward social reality, which results from the theory of plurality of realities, is outlined. (shrink)

The term “structuralism” was introduced into linguistics by Roman Jakobson in the early days of the Linguistic Circle of Prague, founded in 1926. The cluster of ideas defended by Jakobson and his colleagues can be specified but differ considerably from the concept of structuralism as it has come to be understood more recently. That took place because from the 1930s on it became customary to equate structuralism with the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure, as expounded in his posthumous Cours de (...) linguistique générale (1916). It can be shown, however, that Jakobson’s group rejected Saussure’s theory for ideological reasons. As theterm “structuralism” became more widely used it came to be associated with positivist approaches to linguistics rather than with the original phenomenologicalorientation that had characterized the Linguistic Circle of Prague. The purpose of this paper is to clarify these different approaches and to suggest that because ofits extreme porosity the word “structuralism” is an example of a “terminological pandemic”. More research on the varied uses to which the key terms “structure”and “structuralism” were put will undoubtedly further elucidate this important episode in 20th-century intellectual history. (shrink)

According to Immanuel Kant, moral experience is made possible by respect, an absolutely unique feeling in which the sensible and the intelligible are given immediately together. This paper argues that Kant's moral philosophy underemphasizes the role of this sensibility at the heart of moral experience and that a more rigorous conception of respect, grounded in Michel Serres's concepts of the parasite, the excluded/included third, and noise would yield a moral philosophy more consistent with Kant's own basic insights.

Serious thinking about the models of application of ethics has enabled us to move away from ethical engineering and adopting a social-scientific vocation that is an aid to moral-engineering. Time is ripe to rethink about the charge of “structuralism” on the non-engineering model of applied ethics. If we fail to resolve this issue, a structuralist application of ethics will be unavoidable, leading way to the old engineering. The paper argues why “structuralism” is undesirable and how it is avoided in a (...) model of discourse, that clears off engineering of any kind. (shrink)

Until now post-structuralism is widely regarded as an opposite to phenomenology. This is also true for the relation of Butler’s post-structuralism and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The aim of this paper is to show how close they are to each other. For this purpose, I will focus on Butler’s poststructuralist theory of performativity to confront it with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory of expression. While Butler accuses theories of expression of being essentialist, I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s theory of experience resists such a criticism. “Expressivity” (...) and “performativity”, and thus phenomenology and post-structuralism, are not opposites but partners in the search for an anti-essentialist concept. (shrink)

"Portions of this work were originally published as La racaille de la Republique by Fadela Amara and Mohammed Abdi, Editions du Seuil, 2006"--T.p. verso.

The title question should be construed as an epistemological and not ontological one. Omitting the difficult problems of the ontology of intentionality we will ask, if all, what is needed to explain the phenomenon of meaningful use of words, could be found “in our private head” interpreted as a sphere of specific privileged access, the sphere that is in the relevant epistemological sense subjective, private or non public. There are many “mentalistic” theories of meaning that force us to the answer: (...) “yes”. According to these theories our words are meaningful in virtue of some intentions of the speaker. And our intentions consist in having some mental states that should be in the relevant sense subjective or private. (Searle, Chisholm) But there are also the philosophers (Kripke, Putnam) who claim to have the evidence to the contrary. They argue that the meanings of our words could not be “in the head”, because of two important reasons. (i) Very often we don’t know exactly the meanings of the words that we use meaningfully. Furthermore, our “semantical self-knowledge” is principally corrigible by other people, and hence our access to the meanings we use could be by no means privileged. And secondly (ii) we can imagine a situation in which two subjects with the same mental intention use the same word with the very different meanings. We will investigate our question on the ground of the Ingarden’s philosophy. As we will see, his answer turns out to be in an interesting sense: “yes and no”. (shrink)

In Reinach’s works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs. Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Now in spite of this claim of the “ontological equality” of positive and negative states of affairs there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs could be directly (...) “extracted” from our experience while to acquire a negative belief we must pass a quite complicated process starting with certain positive beliefs. A possible and reasonable explanation of this discrepancy would be a theory to the effect that these epistemological differences have their basis in the ontology of the entities in question. Our knowledge of the negative states of affairs is essentially dependent on our knowledge of the positive ones precisely because the negative states of affairs are ontologically dependent on the positive ones. Such a theory has been in fact formulated by Roman Ingarden. According to him negative states of affairs supervene on some positive ones and on certain mental acts of the conscious subjects. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) apparteneva a quegli allievi di Husserl che si designano come “fenomenologia di Gottinga”. Si tratta della prima generazione di fenomenologi, nella quale rientravano, fra gli altri, anche Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius ed Edith Stein. I ricercatori di questo gruppo erano influenzati soprattutto dalle Ricerche logiche di Husserl e reagirono un po’ stupiti alla sua successiva svolta idealistica. Per quanto riguarda lo stesso Ingarden, egli incontrò Husserl solo dopo la pubblicazione delle Idee, tuttavia filosoficamente appartiene senza dubbio al (...) periodo della prima fenomenologia “realistica”. (shrink)

This paper seeks to integrate analytic philosophy and phenomenology. It does so through an approach generated, specifically, in relation to imagination and its cognitive significance. As an Introduction, some reservations about existing phenomenological approaches to imagination—in the work of Sartre and Edward S. Casey—are considered. It is argued that their introspective psychological approach needs to be qualified through a more analytic orientation that determines essence, initially, on the basis of public discourse concerning the term ‘imagination.’ Part One then articulates this (...) orientation through an ‘analytic reduction’ that identifies imagination’s essence in public discourse as thought in its quasi-sensory mode. Part Two offers a sustained phenomenological investigation of this essence, and identifies four major intrinsic features. On the basis of this, Part Three shows how imagination is implicated, centrally, in the capacity to acquire language. In Conclusion the proceeding arguments are defended against possible objections, and a final key summarizing argument is formulated to show that imagination must be regarded, also, as necessary to perception and its capacity to articulate a world. The paper ends with a few thoughts on the further potential of post-analytic phenomenology. (shrink)