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The Real-Constitution in Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Realontologie

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Abstract

In this work we try to distinguish five levels of the constitution of reality in Conrad Martius’ Realontologie (1923) (Real Ontology). The difference between “existential autonomy” and “existential relativity” seems to be the first one. The second level of the constitution of reality concerns the problem of “whatness” (Washeit) and the substantial reality (Realität). We can find the third level in the materiality from the eidetical point of view. The fourth level of the constitution of reality concerns the material formation as presupposition of a personal essence. Finally we can distinguish a fifth level of the constitution of the reality in the essential stratification.

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Notes

  1. From this expression we can deduce that her form of realism is not naïve (as Husserl called the not-phenomenological realism). It is rather an eidetical realism. So we can define as real the represented thing, i.e., the thing we can grasp by an intuition. The real thing (real) becomes, in this intuition, an “imagined” real thing (reell).

  2. The problem concerns the relation between the “factually given” datum (that presents itself “in person” and that can be represented by an intuition) and the “not factually” datum (that is directly “representative” and not “in person” hic et nunc).

  3. This distinction, as is known, is also present in Husserl above all in the Logical Investigations, with the difference that here, for Conrad-Martius, the real is not a gnoseological unauthentic reality, while only the reell would be constitutive for the knowledge. For Husserl, in fact, the first one (factual reality) concerns the thing, i.e., the potential material for the knowledge, but of which the being-existent is not significant (and so the knowledge of it). The second one (effective reality) concerns the object, i.e., the reality for the conscience or the Wirklichkeit [the wirklichen Wirklichkeit, as she says (Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 397)]. For Conrad-Martius instead both concern the reality, i.e., the Wirklichkeit. Both (in Husserl factual and effective reality) in fact have as their fundament the existentia (existence) and both are also really effective. According to her, there is almost no difference between effective and factual reality, because both are “present,” i.e., both are existent. For this reason, the reell (real for the conscience) does not exclude the real (the factual being of the thing) as really real (wirklich wirklich), because the latter is precisely its condition. The real (as the really existent thing) “remains” (beibt), in her opinion, in every apprehension reell. In this order of ideas, as we will soon see, we can speak about a “real bearer,” about a “reell bearer” and about an “ideell bearer” (Conrad-Martius 1923, pp. 167–168 a.ff).

  4. The different content in the real bearer and in the reell bearer consists in fact in the self-given datity. In the first case the datity of the thing is given immediately. In the second case the intuition elaborates the thing as a datum. The thing becomes in this way an object for the conscience. For Conrad-Martius then the flow contains in itself the real thing thorough the real bearer (in the first case) and the “elaborated” (mediated) thing, i.e., the object, in the reell bearer (in the second case).

  5. Here lies the difference with the ontology of Heidegger. If, for Conrad-Martius, the being can be grasped in the bearer of its whatness and then, the being reveals itself in the essence, for Heidegger there is an ontological difference between the Being and the entity that prevents the entity from revealing the reality of Being. The realism of Conrad-Martius is different from the heideggerian position since, for her, the being is real and accessible to the phenomenology (as affirmed by Husserl, referring to another kind of being, the transcendental one). For Heidegger instead we cannot grasp and reveal the Being, but it alone can reveal itself. For these reasons, the position of Conrad-Martius, still tied to the truth of being as its revelation by a subject, is still dipped, for Heidegger, in the metaphysical thought of the being.

  6. Ales Bello explains this objectivity affirming: “Hamlet, since it is conceived, is independent from every human representation. In this sense we can talk about an objectivity, because it became a formation, an a-temporal product. Its existence has a stronger absolutity then the real one” (Ales Bello 1992, p. 44).

  7. Ales Bello explains this objectivity, affirming: “Hamlet, since it is conceived, is independent from every human representation. In this sense we can talk about an objectivity, because it became a formation, an a-temporal product. Its existence has a stronger absolutity then the real one” (Ales Bello 1992, p. 44).

  8. In her illuminating essay on Conrad-Martius, Ales Bello explains that the goal of the phenomenology, according to the philosopher, is to wonder about the sense of the facts that it describes, “but it cannot derive from a mental lucubration, on the contrary it has to be the result of a vision, of an intuition, of a given in itself; and since it is a given of the sense, of the essence, Conrad-Martius holds having respected in this way the spirit of the eidetic reduction of Husserl, even having done its only corrected application” (Ales Bello 2003, s. 197).

  9. The scientific point of view and the solution of the phenomenological problem of the reality is for Conrad-Martius the consideration of the basis of the material. Why can we talk about material, i.e., about matter? “Light” is the matter of everything. All the phenomenal formations are light-formations (Lichtgebilde). They have a substantiality deriving from light: light is their materia (Conrad-Martius 1923, pp. 201–202).

  10. “Über das Wesen des Wesen” (“Over the essence of the essence”), as remembers Ales Bello, is the title of two seminars held by the phenomenologist in the winter-semester 1955–1956, dedicated to the essence of the essence (s. Ales Bello 2003, p. 195).

  11. Conrad Martius in fact reproaches Husserl for having “neglected through his reduction the moment of the factuality, i.e., to have forgotten the answer regarding the correspondence between the being in noematic sense and the factual being” (Ales Bello 1992, p. 56).

  12. The eidetic phenomenology of Conrad-Martius is in this point different from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. The existence is the focus of her investigations. It represents in fact the possibility to understand the being of the essence, i.e., the being of the substratum, which “derives” from the factual reality (real). In its becoming a reality for the conscience (reell), the constitution of the effective reality (Wirklicheit) therefore maintains the “quid” of its real existing, i.e., its factual (real) substratum.

References

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  • Ales Bello A (2003) L’universo nella coscienza. Introduzione alla fenomenologia di Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius (The Universo consciousness. Introduction to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius). ETS, Pisa

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  • Conrad-Martius H (1965) Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie (The transendental and the ontological phenomenology). In: Avé-Lallemant E (ed) Schriften zur Philosophie (Philosophical works). Kösel Verlag, München

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Correspondence to Nicoletta Ghigi.

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Ghigi, N. The Real-Constitution in Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Realontologie . Axiomathes 18, 461–473 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-008-9045-0

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