Aron Gurwitsch

The “Freiburg Encounter” begins with a short history painting the picture of Aron Gurwitsch’s factual encounters during the time of his doctoral studies in 1920s Germany. These encounters included exposure to Gestalt theory as well as Husserlian phenomenology, both of which would make a major impact on him. The point is to show how such encounters can shape the thought of an individual who can then go on to shape regional movements. The bulk of the essay concentrates on Gurwitsch’s encounter (...) with Edmund Husserl, the development of his field theory of consciousness, and the manner in which such can be understood as an advancement of Husserlian phenomenology through modifications of consciousness in particular. Close attention is paid to Husserl’s texts available to Gurwitsch at the time and the ways in which Husserl had anticipated such a theory. These approaches are closely compared and it is ultimately shown how Gurwitsch’s critique of the searchlight theory of attention marks his field theory as a genuine advancement. The essay finishes with Gurwitsch emigrating to the United States, describing the encounters he has there, and outlining his tremendous impact on North American phenomenology. (shrink)

We explore the integrated structure of consciousness by examining the “phenomenological axioms” of the “integrated information theory of consciousness ” from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology. After clarifying the notion of phenomenological axioms by drawing on resources from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we develop a critique of the integration axiom by drawing on phenomenological analyses developed by Aron Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty. This axiom is ambiguous. It can be read either atomistically as claiming that the phenomenal content of conscious experience (...) is an integrated complex and holistically as claiming that it is an integrated Gestalt. We argue that the latter reading provides a better characterization of the internal structure of the phenomenal content. Furthermore, the integrated structure of consciousness is not confined to the phenomenal content, but it also extends into the subjective attitude. Subjective attitudes and phenomenal contents are interdependent constituents that jointly make up conscious experiences. This implies a novel theoretical challenge to the scientific component of IIT, which is to explain how to accommodate the subjective dimension of consciousness into its explanatory scope. IIT can respond in a few different ways, but most importantly, it cannot just ignore it once and for all. As one possible way to address the challenge, we propose introducing a novel construct, noetic complex, to develop a fine-grained model of the neural underpinning of consciousness. (shrink)

Daniel Marcelle, Aron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch, Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective, Dordrecht: Springer, 2009; Volume II: Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Volume III: The Field of Consciousness: Theme, Thematic Field, and Margin, Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Claudia Șerban, Jean-Luc Marion, Certitudes negatives, Paris: Grasset, 2010; Christian Rössner, Hans-Dieter Gondek, László Tengelyi, Neue Phanomenologie in Frankreich, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011; Daniel Dwyer, Hans-Helmuth Gander, Husserl-Lexikon, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010; Délia Popa, Jean-François Lavigne, Acceder au (...) transcendantal? Reduction et idealisme transcendantal dans les Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie pure et une philosophie phénoménologique de Husserl, Paris: Vrin, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Lambert Wiesing, Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Eine Autopsie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Sam B. Girgus, Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption. Time, Ethics, and the Feminine, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; Rolf Kühn, Frédéric Seyler, ≪ Barbarie ou culture ≫ : L’ethique de l’affectivitedans la phenomenologie de Michel Henry, Paris: Kimé, 2010; Stephan Steiner, Mette Lebech, On the Problem of Human Dignity. A Hermeneutical and henomenological Investigation, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. (shrink)

In this article, I will discuss Aron Gurwitsch's criticism of Edmund Husserl's theory of hyletic data. First, Husserl’s doctrine will be summarized in its earliest complete formulation. It will then be seen that Gurwitsch's problem with this doctrine is primarily due to his acceptance of gestalt theoretic organization. He conceives of hyletic data as being a kind of formless stuff that undergoes organiza-tion by morphetic components of the noesis, which represents a dualism in percep-tion. Instead, Gurwitsch wants to show us (...) that the organization of these contents is autochthonous. I will consider Gurwitsch's criticism against Husserl's own writings, and especially those that were not available to Gurwitsch. It will be seen that Husserl continues to develop this doctrine and that it very interestingly undergoes a kind of noematization and exhibits certain displays of autochthonous organization that in the end are not far from Gurwitsch's own conception of these affairs.Este artículo versará sobre la crítica de Aron Gurwitsch de los data hylé-ticos de Edmund Husserl. En primer lugar, se resumirá la doctrina de Husserl en su primera formulación completa. A continuación, se verá que el problema de Gur-witsch con esta doctrina se debe principalmente a su aceptación de la organización teórica de la Gestalt. Él concibe los data hyléticos como una especie de material amorfo que se somete a organización por los componentes de morphé de la noesis, lo que representa un dualismo en la percepción. En cambio, Gurwitsch quiere mos-trarnos que la organización de estos contenidos es autóctona. Se examinará la críti-ca de Gurwitsch acerca de los escritos del propio Husserl y especialmente de aque-llos que no estuvieron al alcance de Gurwitsch. Se verá que Husserl sigue desarro-llando esta doctrina y que curiosamente sufre una especie de noematización y muestra ciertas manifestaciones de organización autóctona que, a la postre, no están lejos de la concepción gurwitscheana de estos asuntos. (shrink)

This, the second in the Psychological Series of Duquesne Studies, is a translation of the author’s classic Théorie du Champ de la Conscience, written in 1953, first published in 1957. The thesis of the book is that ‘every total field of consciousness consists of three domains, each domain exhibiting a specific type of organization of its own. The first domain is the theme, that which engrosses the mind of the experiencing subject, or as it is often expressed, which stands in (...) the “focus of his attention”. Second is the thematic field, defined as the totality of those data, co-present with the theme, which are experienced as materially relevant or pertinent to the theme and form the background or horizon out of which the theme emerges as the center. The third includes data which, though co-present with, have no relevancy to, the theme and comprise in their totality what we propose to call the margin’. The aim is ‘to bring out the structure of each of these domains’. We perceive a material thing in a context of other things, and if our mind is preoccupied with a problem we are also aware not only of its intellectual background and possible solutions, but of our actual environment and of ourselves as sitting in our room or walking in the street; all these data are experienced simultaneously. Consciousness here includes not only perceiving but remembering, imagining etc and its objects may be material things, mathematical relations, musical compositions or theoretical implications. These objects of consciousness are, however, objects understood descriptively, not as independent realities with causal relations to a mind but as they appear to a subject. It is the intentionality of consciousness, the bipolarity of the subject and its object which is shown to render inadequate Bergson‘s and William James’ correction of Humean empiricism in terms of temporal interpenetration of elements of the ’stream of thought‘, although the author uses concepts and theories of James’ to formulate and present problems to which a more Husserlian answer is given. Gestalt theory is explored and its phenomenological potential used to solve the problems of a theory of organization. (shrink)

Eighteen of Gurwitsch's papers, all previously published between 1929 and 1961; nine of the papers appear in English for the first time. With the exception of the mainly expository "The Last Work of Edmund Husserl," in which Gurwitsch limns the structure of Husserl's Krisis, all of the papers are serious forays into "constitutive" as distinguished from "existential" phenomenology. At times Gurwitsch goes about his business historically, engaging Descartes, Kant, a good deal of Hume, James, and, of course, Husserl in dialogue. (...) In almost half of the papers Gestalt psychology, the psychological and biological work of Gelb and Goldstein, and the distinctively psychological work of James are the focus. The dominant theme of all the studies is consciousness and an exploration of the logical rather than existential problematic of intentionality. Gurwitsch wishes his work to be assessed as part of the Husserlian program of radically founding in the constituting consciousness all the systematized noematic fruits, i.e., sciences, of this same consciousness.. He is, however, a self-confessed heretic from the strict Husserlian point of view, having abandoned the doctrines of hyletic data, and, more interestingly, the egological root of consciousness.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Aaron Gurwitsch's The Field of Consciousness develops with great care a phenomenological "field theory of conscience." The explorations of various aspects of, and approaches to, experience include extensive references to the literature; both mention and use are made of the work of Husserl, James, Piaget, von Ehrenfels, Stumpf, Koffka, Bergson, Ward, G. F. Stout, and Merleau-Ponty. Out of this research a phenomenological basis is provided for the concepts of an objective space, time, and existence. Roman Ingarden's Time and Modes of (...) Being, a translation of part of the first volume of his two-volume Spór o istnienie swiata, published in Polish in 1946-7, is concerned with developing for metaphysical use the concepts of all possible modes of being, once time, space, and individual existence are granted. Gurwitsch and Ingarden use highly sophisticated phenomenological tools originating with Husserl to gain phenomenological and ontological results. Nathan Rotenstreich in Spirit and Man, 1963, uses introspection as his method, accommodating himself to a number of the distinctions of phenomenology, e.g., intentionality; but the puristic stance of the phenomenologist is missing; hence the average number of conclusions per paragraph is notably higher than in either of the other works. Rotenstreich begins with awareness, like Gurwitsch; like Ingarden he discusses modes of being; but his purpose lies in discovering and interrelating the basic themes appropriate to certain conclusions about man's status in and over against the space-time world. (shrink)

Gurwitsch's concern in this book is with the doing of phenomenology rather than the explication of what other phenomenologists have done. His analyses of Husserl's views, with whom he appears to be in close agreement, are in the service of the concrete phenomenological analyses Gurwitsch himself undertakes. His remarks on William James serve as a further corroboration of the interest practicing phenomenologists are taking in James' thought and the phenomenological strains which run through it. What emerges in Gurwitsch's own thought (...) is a view of consciousness and its objects which parallels in large measure Husserl's middle period investigations, in particular those appearing in the Ideen. Gurwitsch's work is to be praised as an attempt to introduce concrete and sometimes original phenomenological insights into the American philosophical scene.—S. A. E. (shrink)