Husserl and Continental Philosophers, Misc

The contribution gives an outline of spatial theory as it developed in the 20th century under a certain perspective within Phenomenology: Those approaches differed from conceptualizations of space as they focus primarily on ‘topology’. In mathematical respect topology defines space by its relational aspects and not by referring to metrics or extension. However, within Phenomenology the understanding of topology varies or is not always made explicit: It can vary from an emphasis on the topos to a description of the relation (...) between places. The aim of the contribution therefore is to also show the different understandings of topology, whereby beside central Phenomenologists like Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the work of authors like Kurt Lewin can be rediscovered as a contribution to phenomenological thinking. Finally, by taking into account the topological understanding of space, it can be demonstrated that Structuralism and Phenomenology agree on basic principles of analyzing aspects of culture, communication and consciousness. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between Merleau-Ponty's lectures on institution and his lectures on passivity. I argue that the relationship depends on Merleau-Ponty's internal critique of institution as outlined in Husserl's ouevre. That is, institution is not only human institution, which rests on temporality and time-consciousness, but also animal, biological and even virological, which rests on a certain, non-euclidian space of the body. Merleau-Ponty's focus in the course is animal institution: animal morphology, menstruation, puberty, etc. These are what tie institution (...) and passivity together, and especially the passivity that Merleau-Ponty calls the "symbolic matrix," the touchstone of which is the "implex." While the paper discusses, Merleau-Ponty's critique of Husserl and the consequent understanding of a passivity in institution, it opens the possibility that the virological may be yet another kind of passivity that has instituted a new trajectory in human institution. This is highlighted in the very word "pandemic.". (shrink)

In this article, I start with an analysis of Husserl’s description of the intentional structure of communicative intentions in the Logical Investigations, pointing to some obvious shortcomings of it. Then, I stress some important criticisms of Husserl’s approach, namely by Pfänder, and I endeavor to show that Husserl was very close to a full-fledged theory of communicative intentions in the years around 1910. I then turn to Reinach’s theory of social acts, without deciding whether Reinach’s approach was dependent or not (...) on Husserl’s new views concerning the intentionality of communicative acts. Regarding Reinach’s theory of the Vernehmung, I criticize a widespread trend to construe it as something like a perception, showing that it expresses what I call the “vocative element” of the communicative acts. Then, I point to some complements that Reinach’s description is in need, and I finish with an outline of a phenomenologically oriented concept of communication, based on Husserl’s and Reinach’s insights. (shrink)

This paper examines the influence that Husserl’s drive/instinct theory has on Merleau‑Ponty’s late philosophy. Husserl’s interest in the passive realm of life develops into a study of a more profound level which even precedes the emergence of subjectivity. We analyze how it leads Merleau‑Ponty, in his philosophy of flesh, to furnish an ontological explanation regarding the problem of the relationship with others. In this regard, we investigate firstly Husserl’s theory of originary affection and its limits, before scrutinizing the notion of (...) empathy; thereby we show how Merleau‑Ponty develops the Husserlian intentional relation into a carnal relation based on the idea that others and I belong to the same world. This will reveal that the relationship with the others always lies in the most profound level of our experience, because we share the ontological affinity, namely, the flesh. (shrink)

Life-world, means the world as it is experienced and lived, is a concept that was first born in Husserl's phenomenology and later used in various fields. Alfred Schutz, the founder of phenomenological sociology, who sought to establish a theoretical basis for interpretive sociology, applied the concept to study of mental structures in everyday life and used it in sociology. The present article seeks to answer the question, what changes did life-world undergo in Schutz's thought. The result of this study shows (...) that Schutz establishes a dialectical relationship between individual consciousness and life-world, in such a way that each constructs and influences the other. Unlike Husserl, who saw life-world as the only comprehensible reality, he referred to the multiple layers of reality and considered Husserl's term transcendence appropriate for rotation between these layers, while Husserl used “transcendence” only to awareness of another experience. In addition, Schutz does not consider transcendental phenomenology as a proper basis for the social sciences, and instead of the transcendental ego, he uses the mundane ego for his plan. (shrink)

Two ephemerides motivated this issue of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia. October 2021 marks the 130th anniversary of Edith Stein’s birth, and in August 2022 we remember her death in Auschwitz. To pay tribute to Edith Stein, this issue seeks to retrieve and discuss her philosophical inheritance. After having studied in Göttingen, Edith Stein moved to Freiburg, where she became an assistant of Edmund Husserl, known as the father of phenomenology. She was among the first women to work as an (...) assistant teacher in one of the most respected European universities of her time. Besides her retrieval of Husserl’s work, a synthesis whose value was recognized by her academic peers, she also developed her own philosophical thought in diverse domains, such as the meaning of values, the role of women in society, the critique against totalitarianisms, among many other contributions. Edith Stein’s most relevant contribution in the field of phenomenology is, probably, an in-depth study of the notion of empathy. She inherited this notion from her master, Husserl, who had, in his turn, inherited it from Theodor Lipps. By defending the thesis that, through empathy, it is possible for one to grasp subjective experiences of other persons, Edith Stein emerged as an original thinker in the philosophical milieu of her time. Her research around the notion of empathy brings out a thematization of the possibility of knowing what other persons, who are different from oneself and with whom one cohabits this world, might subjectively suffer. Edith Stein’s analysis sought to ensure this possibility even without the direct and personal experience that other persons feel. In addition to Husserl’s influence, Edith Stein’s philosophical work was profoundly affected by her conversion to Catholicism in 1922, and, from 1933, influenced by her Carmelite vocation, according to which she lived the last years of her life. In this respect, the interest that she showed in the thought of John Henry Newman and Thomas Aquinas, whose work Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate she translated directly from Latin to German, stands out. Together with Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des hl. Thomas von Aquin, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, and Kreuzeswissenschaft, and without forgetting the fundamental work Endliches und ewiges Sein, published posthumously in 1950, phenomenology, in the works of Edith Stein, developed into a fruitful dialogue with Thomism and Dark Night of the Soul mysticism. This issue starts by posthumously publishing a text by the Jesuit philosopher Xavier Tilliette, S.J.. We are honored to present “La doctrine des anges d’après Edith Stein” in this special issue, which celebrates the figure of the Christian martyr and other disciples of Husserl. The text is followed by a brief presentation by Cécile Rastoin. Tilliette argues that angelology remains current in the context of contemporary philosophy. And Edith Stein was able to express it by connecting classical angelology with the epistemological and anthropological questions of her time. Then, in this first part, we begin with a section dedicated to one of the most important notions in Edith Stein’s work: empathy. “Reflections around the Steinian notion of ‘Empathy’” contains five studies. Anna Maria Pezzella opens the section with “La passione per l’umano. Empatia e persona in Edith Stein,” an article in which the description of the phenomenon of empathy illustrates a person who comes out of himself and is therefore relational. Anna Maria Pezzella analyzes, in this context, what is proper to Edith Stein’s phenomenology, especially in relation to Husserl and Scheler. With the article “‘L’enigma dell’esistenza dell’altro’. Empatia e intersoggettività in Edith Stein,” Antonio Di Chiro draws out from Edith Stein’s philosophical itinerary a phenomenology that, instead of trying to access the consciousness of the other, describes the gesture of opening up to the other in his or her own situation within a shared world. The following article, entitled “Esencia y posibilidad de la intersubjetividad en Edith Stein y Max Scheler: Presentificación empática y percepción simpatética en la Fremderfahrung,” by Juan Velázquez González, proposes a fruitful complementarity, for the phenomenological description of the experience of alterity, between Edith Stein’s notion of empathy and Max Scheler’s concept of sympathy. This text is followed by “Ampliación trascendental de la empatía en Edith Stein: el tipo analógico,” by José Luís Caballero Bono, according to whom analogy is present in intersubjective experience in both Husserl and Stein. To conclude the first section, we include Rastko Jovanov’s article, entitled “Edith Stein’s Theory of Empathy in Applied Context.” This is an original practical application of Steinian theory to group psychotherapy. Entitled “Metaphysical and Phenomenological Issues,” the second section begins with the article “Edith Stein et le débat idéalisme versus réalisme en phénoménologie,” in which Juvenal Savian Filho argues that Edith Stein remains a phenomenologist throughout her entire work, i.e., faithful to Husserl’s approach, in refusing the classical opposition between idealism and realism. Next, in “Il complessivo ed ultimo pensiero di Edith Stein nell’orizzonte della Fenomenologia ultra-husserliana di Karl Jaspers,” Vincenzo Nuzzo shows the dependence on Husserl that Edith Stein exhibits even in the mystical-religious period of her work. Here follows the article “Entre Husserl y Tomás de Aquino. Aspectos metafísicos y epistemológicos del diálogo entre fenomenología y escolástica según Edith Stein,” in which Miriam Ramos Gómez shows how, in Edith Stein, scholastic philosophy meets the epistemological turn of Modernity. This relationship, between phenomenology and scholasticism, concerns the questions regarding the starting point of philosophy and how habit influences knowledge. By Michel Faye, the article “Edith Stein, entre Husserl et Thomas d’Aquin” follows the same direction, insofar as Edith Stein nuances Thomistic realism by staying true to Husserl’s essentialism. The result of this original synthesis is a kind of Augustinian Thomism. Entitled “Análisis de la noción de virtualidad en el contexto de una fenomenología de la conciencia de imagen: un estudio steiniano,” Maria Teresa Alvarez’s article goes further in the relationship between phenomenology and Thomism, showing Stein’s capacity to integrate Thomistic metaphysics in order to better clarify the notion of imagination and virtuality. Section III, entitled “Anthropology, Ethics, and Politics,” contains five articles. In “La questione del male nella filosofia di Edith Stein. Politica, etica e metafisica,” Angela Ales Bello addresses the question of evil in Steinian phenomenology, drawing out its metaphysical and political consequences. The article “A essência do eu: uma análise da constituição do si humano em Edith Stein e Hedwig Conrad-Martius” by Clio Tricarico, reveals the proximity between these two philosophical women in the conception of the human person in his or her pneumatic substance: the intentionality to the other is due to the spiritual and free nature of the person. In “Leib mehr als Körper. Bemerkungen zu Edith Steins Anthropologie,” Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz deepens the distinction between Leib and Körper, to show how the notion of “living body” characterizes the experience that Edith Stein describes as freedom and self-consciousness.” Next, Joachim Feldes seeks to understand, in “Edith Steins Umgang mit Krisen – Phänomenologie, Gemeinschaft und Glaube,” in a very original way, what Steinian philosophy and life experience may say to our contemporary social crisis, linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the same direction, Eric De Rus revisits, in his article “Anthropologie et éducation selon Edith Stein : une approche de la destination surnaturelle de la personne humaine,” the intrinsic connection between phenomenology, metaphysics, and anthropology found in Stein’s work. Thus, insofar as human finitude is inevitably described in its openness to the eternal being, pedagogy that does not take this inner connection into account tends to reduce and destroy the human person. Finally, the fourth section, “Philosophy, Religion, and Mysticism,” begins with the article “El reposo y la seguridad en Dios. Bases para una fenomenología de la religión en Edith Stein,” in which Rubén Sánchez Muñoz elaborates, from the description of the experience of rest, a philosophy of religion from the work of Stein, who never detailed or made explicit such a philosophy. The following article is “El misterio de Edith Stein,” in which Walter Redmond shows how Stein combines philosophy with the mysticism of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, in the final period of her philosophical-spiritual production and in the concrete experience of her life. At the end, we present the article “Edith Stein : une philosophie juive? De quelques résonnances philosophiques avec Martin Buber et Franz Rosenzweig,” in which Bénédicte Bouillot examines the Judaic concepts found in Steinian thought, arguing that her philosophy differs from the Thomistic models because it is inspired by some Jew philosophers. (shrink)

Following the issue on Edith Stein, on the 80th anniversary of her death in Auschwitz, we dedicate the present issue to other forgotten disciples of Husserl. Recalling Paul Ricœur’s famous statement, phenomenology is the sum of Husserl’s own work and the “heresies” which followed from him. At its heart, phenomenology could be understood as a set of multiple variations on Husserl’s philosophical thought, some of which could be understood as “heresies” regarding the original phenomenological theses. Some of these “heresies” are (...) still insufficiently explored, especially those associated with generation of students and disciples of the father of phenomenology. The first section, “Current Husserlian Heresies,” contains three important articles. Claude Romano opens the section asking if “La perception est-elle intentionnelle?” His heterodox thesis is that there is no intentionality of perception in the sense that there is an intentionality of memory or imagination. Next, based on Marleau-Ponty and Levinas, Emmanuel Falque argues that phenomenology must be in relationship with non-phenomenology, inviting contemporary phenomenologists to enquire what is outside the phenomenon. To conclude this first section, Pascal Ide presents “Prolégomènes à une métaphysique de l’amour. Sources et ressources,” arguing that metaphysics is completed with the question of disinterested love, because it is this experience of reciprocity and communion that is aimed at by the intentionality of the human person. In the second section, “Husserl’s Context and Early Disciples,” we present five articles. In “Como Husserl chegou ao idealismo transcendental? Uma leitura de Roman Ingarden,” Elias Francisco Fontele Dourado clarifies the reasons that led Husserl to transcendental idealism. Afterwards, in “Revisiting Reinach and the Early Husserl. For a Phenomenology of Communication,” Pedro M. S. Alves argues that Husserl’s approach, with respect to the intentional structure of communicative intentions, is “very close to a full-fledged theory of communicative intentions in the years around 1910,” leading to the same problems. In this way, the author suggests a solution based on “Reinach’s theory of the Vernehmung.” The following article, called “A Importância dos Modelos para o Florescimento Humano. O Contributo de Dietrich von Hildebrand,” is written by Eugénio Lopes. This is a defense of the realist phenomenology of Dietrich von Hildebrand, based on its capacity to support the application of models that promote human virtues and social development. This is followed by “How to See the Essential. Hedwig Conrad Martius’ Theory of Representation,” in which Daniel Neumann argues that Conrad-Martius’ theory of representation is able to free itself from modernity’s own dilemma between idealism and realism. Up next, Jimmy Hernández Marcelo’s article, “Koyré y Husserl: De las matemáticas a la fenomenología,” shows, by analyzing Alexandre Koyré’s work in the genesis of its historical context, the continuity and complementarity of the initial development of phenomenology with the progress in mathematics. In the third section, focused on “Husserl’s Critical Phenomenologists,” we start by presenting the article “Göttingen contra Husserl: The Transcendental Turn and its Discontents.” The author, Victor Portugal, analyzing important criticisms that Husserl’s students addressed to him, concerning the possibility of a pure consciousness and the method by reductions, leads us to the understanding of how Husserl improved his work towards a “mature transcendental idealism which came to express the real meaning of phenomenology.” Afterwards, in “Shestov, anti-discípulo de Husserl,” Ángel Viñas Vera analyzes the way Shestov received Husserl’s phenomenology in the French context. In doing so, the author shows how Shestov changed the way Husserl took on the relationship between the universal and the particular and between truth and freedom, opening the horizon to atypical phenomenologies, which flourished in a Francophone environment. Next, we present two articles on the Sartrian critique of Husserl: “La ricezione critica del pensiero husserliano nel primo Sartre. Intenzionalità, Ego e coscienza” by Ciro Adinolfi and “Ego na fenomenologia. Crítica de Sartre ao Ego transcendental de Husserl” by Pedro Dias. While the first illuminates the way in which Sartre appropriated Husserl’s notions of phenomenology, namely intentionality, clarifying their meaning, the second article shows the importance of Sartre, insofar as he shows that the Husserlian ego is a “product” of the conscience itself. In the final addendum, we present an article situated in the field of theology: “What Can Wojtyła’s Ethics Speak to the Abuse Crisis?” With this analysis, Rebecca Pawloski and Andreas Gonçalves Lind seek to extract from Wojtyla’s ethics lessons for the contemporary Church with regard to the abuse crisis. Independently of his action as Supreme Pontiff, the ethics of his philosophical work, inspired by Max Scheler’s phenomenology, makes it possible to understand various causes and to find preventive measures impacting the way in which abuse is understood within the context of the Church. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to deal with Husserl’s transcendental turn in connection with the reception by the Göttingen circle through three different aspects. My contribution aims to be chiefly historical, in order to provide a general picture of one of the most important events in the history of phenomenology, but also to enact possible systematic consequences related to the interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology after this event. First, I briefly recover the background within which Husserl erected with his Logische Untersuchungen, (...) going over his development until the publication of his Ideen I, reconstructing the main points and features expounded in the latter that characterized transcendental phenomenology. Secondly, I put forward a general characterization of some of the main critiques raised by his students at the time, namely the concept of pure consciousness and world, as well as the performance of the phenomenological method. Thirdly, I attempt to expose, by means of Husserl’s later texts, some of his main responses to misunderstandings regarding his phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper claims that phenomenon of empathy, described by Edith Stein, and phenomenon of sympathy, analysed by Max Scheler, offer complementary insights into the essence of intersubjective link and into the conditions of possibility for experiencing the Other. Stein’s and Scheler’s phenomenological analyses took place in the context of Husserlian researches on intersubjectivity problems, following a critical attitude towards modern theories of sympathy and towards Lipps’ psychology of empathy as well. However, Scheler’s and Stein’s standpoints got also together on the (...) basis of a philosophical affinity and a critical shared position with regard to Husserl’s transcendental constitution of phenomenology. According to Stein to empathize involves a particular kind of apperception that actualizes the original contents of living experiences of the alien body in a non-original way, whereas for Scheler to sympathize refers to the manner of feeling with others some shared emotions, in an original way, thanks to inner perception of the living life of the neighbour, as another condition of possibility for the Fremderfahrung. (shrink)

Shestov is at the beginning of the French reception of Husserl. The first criticism of his approach was made by the Russian thinker. He considered his master Husserl the greatest philosopher of his time and, paradoxically, claimed that he was wrong in his theory of truth. This research shows the relationship between Shestov and Husserl, the dialogues they had and the ideas they shared. In doing so, we show an atypical and heterodox Husserlian, an original philosopher who opened up lines (...) of thought for those of us today who want to continue the dialogue with Husserl beyond Husserl. The idea of philosophy will be at the root of their encounters and disagreements. In it are concentrated capital themes of Husserlian thought such as truth, intuition and evidence. This research exposes the critical arguments of Shestov’s thought to Husserlian thought while recognising the audacity of the founder of phenomenology. Shestov’s dialogue with Husserl, or at least with what he considers to be Husserlian thought, enriches current debates on the relation between the real and the ideal, the genetic, intersubjectivity and the relation between the particular and the universal. (shrink)

Esta contribución presenta como el concepto filosófico de “donación” es reinterpretado en la reflexión de Patočka. Partiendo de la lección husserliana, gracias a la cual las cosas son dadas en la pura inmanencia de la consciencia, él critica esta orientación “subjetivista” porque no desarrolla adecuadamente el tema del aparecer en el campo fenomenal. La segunda sección analiza tres desplazamientos metódicos que abarcan: el rol del sujeto, su relación con la trascendencia, el darse a sí mismo del mundo en su totalidad. (...) La tercera sección compara la reflexión de Patočka con dos referencias cruzadas a algunos intentos similares en la historia de la fenomenología. El tema de “la donación”, por tanto, nos traslada al mayor problema con el que ha trabajado siempre la filosofía: la manifestación del mundo. Patočka intentó esclarecer este problema mediante dos metáforas, pero también subrayó cómo concierne el modo en el que el hombreinterpreta la propia existencia.This paper presents how the philosophical key concept of givenness is reinter-preted in Patočka's reflection. Starting from the Husserlian idea, according to which things are given in the pure immanence of consciousness, Patočka criticized this "subjectivist" orientation because it doesn’t adequately develop the appearing in the phenomenal field. The second section analyzes three main methodical shifts concerning: the nature and the role of the subject, its relationship with the transcendence, the self-giving of the world as a whole. The third section compares Patočka's reflection and two cross-references to similar undertaking in the history of phenomenology. The theme of givenness brings us back in the end to the biggest problem within which philosophy has always worked: world manifestation. Patočka tried to clarify this issue through two metaphors, but he also highlighted as it concerns the way in which man interprets his existence. (shrink)

Edith Stein came to phenomenology after beginning her university studies in psychology. She struggled with the inability of psychology to justify and delineate its founding principles. She found in Edmund Husserl, though his sustained criticisms of psychologism, the possibility of a phenomenological ground for psychology. This article demonstrates how Stein, drawing from but also distancing herself from Husserl, justifies the possibility of a phenomenological psychology framed within a personalist structure of subjectivity and sociality.

In the following paper we will attempt to analyze and reconstruct Edith Stein’s interpretation of Husserl’s “transcendental idealism,” notably, the reason why, in her opinion, the latter ended up embracing that specific philosophical position. As will soon become apparent, according to Stein, Husserl misunderstands the peculiar ontological structure of individual essences and, in particular, the specific connection with reality that they carry within themselves. Without raising the question of whether Stein’s own understanding of transcendental idealism perfectly corresponds with Husserl’s, we (...) will confine ourselves to discussing, first, the wider context within which she tackles it and, second, the relation between Husserl’s idealism and the formal-ontological issue of how to characterize the internal content of individual essences. No matter what we think of Stein’s critical assessment, her approach has the great and undeniable merit of forcing the “interpreter” to face the problem of the tight connection between the transcendental dimension and the eidetic dimension of Husserl’s thought. (shrink)

Following a brief summation of the phenomenological method, the paper considers three metaethical positions adopted by phenomenologists and the implications of those positions for a normative ethics. The metaethical positions combine epistemological and ontological viewpoints. They are non-intellectualism and strong value realism as represented by the axiological views of phenomenologists such as Scheler, Meinong, Reinach, Stein, Hartmann, von Hildebrand, and Steinbock; non-intellectualism and anti-realism as represented by the freedom-centered phenomenologies of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty; and weak intellectualism and weak value (...) realism as represented by Husserl and Drummond. The paper argues that only the third metaethical view can support a normative ethics that is consistent with the essential features of the phenomenological method, that allows for freedom in an agent’s choosing from a multiplicity of first-order goods, including vocational goods, practical identities, and life plans, available in the agent’s factical circumstances, and that provides norms governing the correctness of our actions and our obligations to others. The normative dimension is introduced, first, by the requirement that the fulfillment of first-order evaluations and choices be truthful, that is, that the evaluations be appropriate and the actions right. Second, transcendental considerations revealed in the phenomenological analysis of intentional experience disclose a notion of second-order goods of agency that universally bind agents in their exercise of freedom and their dealings with others. (shrink)

This paper is about the topic of psychologism in the work of Kazimierz Twardowski and my aim is to revisit this important issue in light of recent publications from, and on Twardowski’s works. I will first examine the genesis of psychologism in the young Twardowski’s work; secondly, I will examine Twardowski’s picture theory of meaning and Husserl’s criticism in Logical Investigations; the third part is about Twardowski’s recognition and criticism of his psychologism in his lectures on the psychology of thinking; (...) the fourth and fifth parts provide an overview of Twardowski’s paper “Actions and Products” while the sixth part addresses the psychologism issue in the last part of this paper through the delineation of psychology and the humanities. I shall conclude this study with a brief assessment of Twardowski’s solution to psychologism. (shrink)

Stein claims that Husserl’s transcendental idealism makes it impossible to clarify the transcendence of the world because it posits that consciousness constitutes being. Inspired by Aquinas, Stein counters that making thinking the measure of being deprives what is of its epistemological and ontological independence from and primacy over what thinks. She contends that this approach inverts the natural relationship between the mind and the world. Given the complicated relationship between them, however, the question is whether Stein’s argument that Husserl lacked (...) an adequate understanding of and appreciation for the phenomenon of transcendence is sound. In fact, Husserl’s treatments of “limit problems of phenomenology” in his manuscripts from 1908 to 1937, which were only recently published in Husserliana XLII, show that he undertook extensive investigations of metaphysical, metaethical, and religious and theological questions. Tragically, Stein was prevented from gaining an even remotely complete picture of Husserl’s work. In this paper, therefore, I examine Stein’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental idealism in light of the fuller evidence. (shrink)

Sesemann’s philosophy is similar to Hartmann’s in many respects. They were both influenced by the Marburg Neo-Kantians and they both discovered phenomenology as an alternative to Neo-Kantian idealism. However, the reception of phenomenology in their works is critical. Observing from a realist standpoint, they understood phenomenology as a method for describing objects of experience and their a priori structures. Hartmann described his philosophical position as a “critical ontology,” whereas Sesemann called himself a “critical realist.” Hartmannn and Sesemann understand Husserl’s phenomenology (...) as the practice of intuitive knowledge, which can be contrasted to conceptual construction. Both authors seek to join intuition and conceptual knowledge using the concept of dialectics or the genesis of knowing. However, their positions differ concerning the relationship between intuition and construction. Hartmann emphasizes the perspective of the natural sciences as a necessary element of knowledge, and Sesemann criticizes naturalistic scientific knowledge as objectifying and therefore insufficient to understand consciousness and values. I first discuss how Hartmann understands the dialectical tension between givenness and conceptual construction. Then, I analyze how Sesemann criticizes phenomenological idealism. Finally, I discuss the genesis of knowledge and the realist interpretation of phenomenological intuition in Sesemann’s Philosophy. (shrink)

Already in his 1913 Ideen I, Husserl claimed that there are two types of intuition: experiencing, that is, sense, intuition and ideal intuition. The former provides us with contingent facts, whereas the latter provides essences. Commenting on this dichotomy in his own book-length work, Appearance and Sense, published in 1914, Shpet believed Husserl had overlooked an important and distinct type of phenomenon that we call “social” and thereby omitted a corresponding third type of intuition that reveals the social function or (...) purpose of a thing. This oversight on Husserl’s part led him to claim that an “I,” or ego, stood behind or possessed the human individual’s consciousness. Husserl failed to notice that we can and do meaningfully speak of a social consciousness that, as such, belongs to no single individual. Apart from the “evidence” of ordinary language, Husserl’s strict dichotomy leaves unaddressed how we can proceed from external appearances to their understanding, which cognitively is always in terms of concepts, traditionally called “universals.” That is, we frame our experiences and express them verbally, the words employed being meaningful to us and hopefully to “the other.” Realizing the problem of transiting from the intuition of the contingent to that of the ideal, Shpet in early 1917 downplayed the difference, preferring to call them different degrees of seeing with different conscious attitudes. He called the conscious “seeing” associated with an understanding of words “intelligible intuition.” With an interest in historical methodology predating his acquaintance with phenomenology, Shpet recognized that the only tool available to the historian is the words appearing on documents, which serve as signs. How we understand these signs forms the study of hermeneutics, which functions as the epistemology of history. However, the fear remains that if we conceive the understanding of signs and “intelligible intuition” subjectively, we lapse into a psychologism. We must not forget the social origin of language, that language is no more the possession of an individual than is consciousness. The sense of words is established in an intersubjective context. Thus, Shpet turned to a study of language much as he had previously turned to consciousness and saw neither as subjective. (shrink)

The issue of whether the phenomenology presented in Ideas I was a metaphysical realism or an idealism came to the fore almost immediately upon its publication. The present essay is an examination of the relation of Gustav Shpet, one of Husserl’s students from the Göttingen years to this issue via his understanding of phenomenology and, particularly, of the phenomenological reduction, as shown principally in his early published writings. For Shpet, phenomenology employs essential intuition without regard to experiential intuition. If we (...) look on transcendental idealism as the label for this methodology, which disregards but does not deny either the empirical or its correlative species of intuition, then Shpet was such an idealist, all the while adhering to a metaphysical realism. In this way, Shpet could proclaim phenomenology to be the fundamental philosophical discipline without precluding the possibility of other philosophical disciplines insofar as they were conducted in relation to consciousness taken not as the “possession” of a human individual, but eidetically and thus not a “possession.”. (shrink)

Jan Patočka desarrolló un original trabajo fenomenológico pese a circunstancias adversas. En él, pasó de defender unas tesis muy cercanas a Ideas I a sostener unos planteamientos notablemente alejados. Para el filósofo checo, Husserl habría localizado la esfera trascendental pero habría errado al tomarla por un ente o preente subjetivo. Por el contrario, una aplicación consecuente hasta el final de la epojé nos permite ir hasta la auténtica esfera trascendental, que es el mundo como proto-estructura universal de aparición. En consecuencia, (...) Patočka diverge muy notablemente de Husserl al tiempo que mantiene la propuesta de una fenomenología trascendental. Asimismo, esta noción de la esfera trascendental permite profundizar la crítica a Husserl, pues su subjetivismo vendría dado por haber confundido la realización concreta del aparecer en cada sujeto concreto con la esfera pura del aparecer. Husserl no habría sido, a ojos de Patočka, lo suficientemente trascendental.Jan Patočka developed an original phenomenological research in spite of adverse circumstances. He underwent a profound evolution. If at first his theses were very close to Husserl’s Ideas, at the end of his life his position was notably different of his master’s. For the Czech philosopher, Husserl was right to speak about a transcendental sphere but was wrong to take it as an entity or pre-entity of subjective nature. On the contrary, a consequent use of epokhe enables us to get to the true transcendental sphere. This sphere is the “world” as the universal structure of appearing as such. Consequently, Patočka diverges from Husserl but he keeps the idea of a transcendental phenomenology. Furthermore, Patočka thinks that Husserl mistook the realisation of appearing in each particular subject with the pure sphere of appearance. According to Patočka, then, Husserl’s Phenomenology would not have been transcendental enough. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay will explore the constitution of a transcendental theory of space through an examination of the notion of spatial synthesis in the works of Husserl, Paliard, and Deleuze. First, we shall explore the constitution of the sensorial fields in Husserl’s phenomenology. In Husserlian terms, space is not originally an empty form that can eventually be filled with a certain empirical content. Accordingly, the philosopher claims that spatiality is a consequence of the immanent synthesis of sensations. Then, we will (...) move on to Jacques Paliard’s psychology of perception, where we will find both aesthetic and noetic synthesis as transcendental conditions for the perception of space. Lastly, we will explore Deleuze’s theory of intensive space, specifically the concept of depth developed in a dialogue with Paliard. This comparative analysis shows that purely intensive fields of individuation are a transcendental a priori for the perception of an extensive space. (shrink)

This article explores Jan Patočka’s notion of “asubjective phenomenology,” which the Czech philosopher elaborated in the mature phase of his thought. More specifically, it proposes to analyze that notion in light of Patočka’s interpretation of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, in which he identifies the original, though implicit, possibility of a phenomenology independent of a subjective foundation. In the first part of the paper, the author offers an interpretation of Husserls’ concept of “theory in general” as the original model of the (...) Patočkan phenomenal field, which, just like the logical dimension thematized by Husserl in the Prolegomena to Pure Logic, is independent of both objective structures and subjective conditions. It is reasonable to assume that the absence, in Logical Investigations, of “transcendental consciousness,” inspired Patočka in conceiving the manifestation of the object as a thing’s “showing-itself.” This idea is advanced in the second part of the article. Lastly, the final section of the article discusses the concept of “representative” (the sensory content of the intentional act representation) as the second and most significant seed of “asubjective phenomenology” that can be retraced in Husserl’s Logical Investigations. (shrink)

The following essay serves as a general introduction to the idealism-realism debate at the core of the schism between Edmund Husserl and the early adherents of his phenomenology. This debate centers around two core issues: whether the “real” world exists independent from the mind, and whether epistemological idealism leads to metaphysical idealism. Husserl’s early critics saw his transcendental phenomenology as a denial of the existence of mind-independent reality and as a solipsistic form of idealism. Husserl considered many of these arguments (...) to be predicated on misinterpretations. After contextualizing the idealism-realism debate as it unfolded within the phenomenological movement, I introduce the papers that comprise the present volume. These papers revive the debate concerning Husserl’s idealism among his mentors, peers, and students. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl intentó excluir supuestos metafísicos y ajustarse a lo dado en la experiencia inmediata, con el fin de buscar una verdad primera e indubitable sobre la cual basar verdades ulteriores, teóricas. Pero, en la segunda etapa de su pensamiento, él abandonó ese camino para usar, sin tematizarlo, el supuesto subjetivista de René Descartes. Para reconducir la fenomenología al proyecto original de ir a las cosas mismas, eliminando supuestos y ateniéndose a la experiencia inmediata, el lósofo español Antonio González Fernández (...) propone la praxeología. Esta aproximación reemplaza el concepto de sujeto, que considera al ser humano como una cosa pensante, por el de persona, entendida como acto encarnado. Esta definición antropológica, coherente con la visión teológica del ser humano como imagen y semejanza de Dios, posibilita orientaciones éticas de las acciones en pro de la descosificación y dignificación del ser humano y el cuidado de la naturaleza. (shrink)

Much of our experience today is mediated through mathematical constructs that escape our immediate intuitions, social media being a primary example. Understanding the proliferation of these constructs may help us see how they are destabilizing ethical judgment. Since its inception with Husserl, phenomenology has set out a sustained critique of the philosophical sources that led to the mathematization of nature. It has also been alert to the dangers that this mathematization presented. Husserl argued that the life-world was being transformed with (...) a gradual substitution of the abstract object for the authentic phenomenon. This paper looks at what I consider to be a contemporary form of Husserl’s critique, largely through the lens offered by the Belgian philosopher, Jean Ladrière. In line with Husserl, Ladrière argues that we are witnessing the prevalence of a specific scientific rationality of construct that is populating the life-world with its products, its artifacts. The artifacts represent fragments of reality—ones constructed on the basis of mathematical ideals, of a reduced and formal grasp the real. The consequence, according to Ladrière, is a destabilization of ethical judgment. Hermeneutic phenomenology, he suggests, offers the elements of a potential response, essentially constituted by a hermeneutic of the artificial. (shrink)

In this text I argue that a phenomenological conception of reality cannot simply consider ‚reality’ to be a feature of the objects of our experience, nor can ‚reality’ be understood as a somehow subconscious experience of resistance, as Max Schelers notion of a „primary resistance“ tries to show. In opposition to these insufficient conceptions I suggest – following some husserlian inspirations – that the notion of ‚reality’ is to be understood as a elementary feature of our experience of objects – (...) not of the objects of our experience. Is this perspective accepted, a minimal ‚realism’ appears as a presupposition of the concept of intentionality. (shrink)

Responding to the myth of a purely sensuous “given”, we turn to phenomenology, to the structure of consciousness in an everyday perception of an everyday object. We first consider Brentano’s model of an act of consciousness: featuring the presentation of an object “intentionally” contained “in” the act, joined by the presentation of that object-presentation in “inner consciousness”. We then dig into Husserl’s intricate “semantic” theory of intentionality: featuring “noematic” meaning within a “horizon” of implicated meaning regarding the object of perceptual (...) consciousness. Brentanian inner consciousness morphs into “inner time consciousness” for Husserl, where noematic sense shapes more basic sensory elements of temporal experience. Drawing on these Brentanian and Husserlian analyses, we develop an enhanced account of how an object is “given” in perceptual acquaintance or “intuition”: by virtue of a structure of meaning entertained in the experience. This account we develop further in a “modal” model of the structure of consciousness in everyday perception: distinguishing fundamental factors of phenomenal intentional experience, including inner awareness, phenomenality, and spatiotemporal awareness. Within this model, we specify how the external object of perception is “constituted” in consciousness by virtue of ideal meaning, all within the real world wherein an intentional relation of acquaintance links the perceptual experience with its object. What is “given” in a familiar type of perceptual acquaintance turns out to be quite complex, embracing: the object perceived, the visual experience, its subject, the spatiotemporal context including consciousness and object, and the manifold of meaning shaping the “constitution” of the given object. Where we refer to historical figures, including Husserl, the aim is theoretical rather than exegetical, seeking to develop a contemporary theory of “the given” with roots in classical philosophical views. The resulting theory develops in a series of explorations of increasing complexity in the phenomenology and attendant ontology of “the given”. (shrink)

This paper deals with the Munich phenomenologist Johannes Daubert’s attitude towards Husserl’s turn to idealismIdealism as well as the problem of reality, taking Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith’s article AgainstIdealismIdealism: Johannes Daubert vs. Husserl’s Ideas I as its point of departure. Indeed, the present work constitutes a supplement or addendum to Schuhmann and Smith’s text, relating the theses presented therein to Daubert’s investigations into the issue of questioning. Here we bring together two overarching motifs found in Daubert’s vast unpublished writings, (...) namely “the consciousness of realityConsciousness of reality [WirklichkeitsbewusstseinConsciousness of reality ]” and the problem of the question. According to Daubert, it is not the case that being is constituted on the level of transcendental consciousness, the latter he regarded as purely fictitious. Instead, being is found in opennessOpenness, which is in turn established by the direct, felt encounter of incarnate human beings with reality. (shrink)

The present paper aims at reconstructing the reactions to Husserl’s idealism in the writings of two of his Japanese students: Satomi Takahashi and Tomoo Otaka. While both Takahashi and Otaka hold that Husserl’s phenomenological “idealism” is ultimately not idealism at all, they argue for this claim in quite different ways. Takahashi argues that Husserl’s position is not idealist enough to establish subjective idealism, which he takes to be the Master’s intended position and which Takahashi himself favors. In contrast, Otaka finds (...) a possibility of realism in Husserl’s position. (shrink)

Después de la evocación de un encuentro con J. Iribarne, el ensayo intenta, primero, hacer una ‘lectura del sentido de la lectura’ que Iribarne hace de la fenomenología husserliana —la fenomenología como sistema. En un segundo momento se estudiará la teoría de la intersubjetividad en la obra de J. Iribarne y la ética como una ciencia fundada en esa teoría. El alcance último de lo dicho en estas páginas es mostrar la coherencia entre el empeño filosófico de J. Iribarne y (...) las metas vitales y vocacionales de la filosofía husserliana, por tanto, mostrar que el esfuerzo de ver la fenomenología como una filosofía de una vida trascendental arraigada en la existencia humana es una preocupación propia de la fenomenología trascendental, y su exposición es parte del valioso legado de Julia Iribarne a la filosofía iberoamericana.Through a remembrance of a meeting with J. Iribarne, this paper aims to make a “reading of Iribarne’s vision” of Husserl’s phenomenology —phenomenology as a system—, following with a study of the theory of inter-subjectivity in Iribarne’s work, and the place of ethics as a science founded in this theory. The final purpose is to demonstrate the consistency that lies within Iribarne’s philosophical efforts and Husserl’s philosophical goals throughout his life and career, in order to assert that the practice of phenomenology as a philosophy of life and a transcendental life rooted in human existence itself is a concern of transcendental phenomenology —for this exposure forms part of Julia Iribarne’s valuable legacy to Latin American philosophy. (shrink)

Summary This paper deals with the development of Husserl’s and Merleau-Pontys analyses of the affective lived experience of body and space. Both the concept of „flesh“ (Merleau-Ponty) and „Hyle“ (Husserl) stand for a sensuous principle that underlies the original givenness and solidarity of body and world and I claim that this interaction and the concomitant intertwining of body and place make up the existential dimension of architecture, i.e. the, being-here-in-a-place’. In this connection, I argue that the fact that bodily affective (...) experience endows the world with sense has led to a double break: On the one hand with representation and on the other with perspectivity and compossibility of the realms of being in Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective approaches. Finally, I will exemplify this break and the development of genetic insights – from an anthropocentric, organic and harmonious space conception to a topologic space made up of incompossibilities expressing an ambiguous sense – with paradigmatic works of architecture, so as to make evident the explanatory potential of phenomenology for architecture. (shrink)

This essay critically assesses Roman Ingarden’s 1915 review of the second edition of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations. I elucidate and critique Ingarden’s analysis of the differences between the 1901 first edition and the 1913 second edition. I specifically examine three tenets of Ingarden’s interpretation. First, I demonstrate that Ingarden correctly denounces Husserl’s claim that he only engages in an eidetic study of consciousness in 1913, as Husserl was already performing eidetic analyses in 1901. Second, I show that Ingarden is misguided, (...) when he asserts that Husserl had fully transformed his philosophy into a transcendental idealism in the second edition. While Husserl does appear to adopt a transcendental phenomenology by asserting–in his programmatic claims–that the intentional content and object are now included in his domain of research, he does not alter his actual descriptions of the intentional relationship in any pertinent manner. Third, I show Ingarden correctly predicts many of the insights Husserl would arrive at about logic in his late philosophy. This analysis augments current readings of the evolution of Ingarden’s philosophy, by more closely examining the development of his largely neglected early thought. I execute this critical assessment by drawing both from Husserl’s later writings and from recent literature on the Investigations. By doing so, I hope to additionally demonstrate how research on the Investigations has matured in the one hundred years since the release of that text, while also presenting my own views concerning these difficult interpretative issues. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology was particularly influential for a number of French philosophers and their theories. Two of the most prominent French thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, turned to the instruments offered by phenomenology in their attempts to understand the notions of the body, consciousness, imagination, human being, world and many others. Both philosophers also provided their definitions of perception, but they understood this notion in very different ways. The paper describes selected aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology that were adopted by Sartre (...) and Merleau-Ponty and depicts the presumptions of their respective theories of perception, as well as the differences between them. The main thesis presented here is that theories as different as those proposed by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty may, and indeed do, lead to the same conclusion, i.e. that perception represents a different form of cognition. Despite the differences between these theories, they can both be placed in the contemporary context of phenomenological research carried out by cognitive philosophers Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher, as well as by the proponent of the enactive theory of perception, Alva Noë. (shrink)

The distinction between perception and fantasy is not a cliché among others. Tracing the path to its correct elaboration even allows us to think this distinction as the engine of the early Husserlian phenomenology. For this reason, this brief article aims to contrast Brentano and Husserl's vision of this subject. For the former, fantasy is an improper representation [Vorstellung] with an intuitive nucleus; for the latter, it has a properly intuitive character. In this transit, it will be shown that this (...) opposite view is mainly due to Husserl's general critique of Brentano's idea, according to which intentionality has essentially two objects and this critique is in turn rooted in Husserl's well-known theory of Auffassung. Thus, we will finally show that the dispute of both authors regarding fantasy and perception must be understood as one of the consequences of the theory of apprehension, elaborated by Husserl in the VI Logical Investigation. (shrink)

Taking its point of departure from Husserl’s recognition that consciousness is intentional, and Sartre’s concomitant non-reificatory notion of consciousness, understood therefore as not a thing, or as nothingness, definitive of human identity, the article proceeds by asking how, if this is so, is it possible to become conscious of consciousness, which is to say reflectively self-conscious. Explicating the relationship between the reflective mirroring of the Self to the Self, as reflected in “the look of the Other,” and the self’s unmediated (...) or immediate self-recognition, the article proceeds to evaluate each, before providing reasons for the perhaps somewhat startling conclusion that it is our view of the world that is apt to reflect our most authentic image of ourselves to us. While exploring the implications of this, the article concludes by investigating the role of intellectual or rational reflection in ensuring our freedom of choice, and consequent responsibility, for who we choose to be. (shrink)

The paper comparatively deals with the concept of attention in Bergson’s and Husserl’s philosophy. Special attention is devoted to their confrontation with psychological interpretations, as well as to methodological aspects of their theories. Analysed are the vitality, intentionality and temporality of attention by keeping in mind the complex terminological background in both Bergson and Husserl. The author holds that what connects them is that they both define attention as an inherent dynamic modification, with the different dimensions of presence, past and (...) future. Similarities and differences are both taken into consideration concerning the most important dilemmas. (shrink)

Both Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl addressed sound while trying to explain the inner consciousness of time and gave to it the status of a supporting example. Although their inquiries were not aimed at clarifying in detail the nature of the auditory experience or sounds themselves, they made some interesting observations that can contribute to the current philosophical discussion on sounds. On the other hand, in analytic philosophy, while inquiring the nature of sounds, their location, auditory experience or the audible (...) qualities and so on, the representatives of that trend of thought have remained silent about the depiction of sound and the auditory phenomena in the phenomenological tradition. The paper’s intention is to relate both endeavours, yet the perspective carried out is that of analytic philosophy and, thus, I pay special attention to conceptual analysis as a methodological framework. In this sense, I first explain what sound ontology is in the context of analytic philosophy and the views that it encompasses— namely, the Property View (PV), the Wave View (WV) and the Event View (EV)—. Secondly, I address the problems it entails, emphasising that of sound individuation. In a third section, I propose the possibly controversial conjunction of a “Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time” (for short “Brentano-Husserl analysis”) and outline the commonalities of both authors, without ignoring its discrepancies. My main focus is Husserl’s 1905 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins. While addressing the Brentano-Husserl analysis, I elaborate on the problem of temporal and spatial extension (Raumlichkeit and Zeitlichkeit, respectively) of both consciousness and sound. Such comparison is a key one, since after these two developments, one can notice some theoretical movements concerning the shift of attention from sounds to the unity of consciousness, and how they mirror each other. After examining the controversial claims concerning the temporal and spatial extension of both consciousness and sound, I argue in the concluding paragraphs that while considering the accounts of sound ontology, the Brentano-Husserl analysis would probably endorse a Property View and that this could have interesting consequences for the issue of Sound Individuation. (shrink)

The article « La Défenestration » by Belgian philosopher Marc Richir has been translated into Russian for the first time for this issue of the “Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology.” In his early work “The Defenestration” Richir raises the question of relation between the subject and conceivable world. Here, a philosopher is pictured contemplating the world through the window of his tower. In such detachment from the world the thinker finds himself according to all Modern philosophies of consciousness. Husserl’s phenomenology inherits (...) this detachment, since Husserl imposes the structure of transcendental ego as external to the world. Richir abolishes the concept of transcendental ego with the help of heideggerian Dasein, but analyzing Heidegger’s ontology he comes to the conclusion that the latter remains fixated on beings. Believing a person to live in the fundamental openness of Being, Heidegger places such a person in the secondary world of “truth.” In order to overcome the remains of traditional philosophy in Heidegger’s ontology Richir turns to Merleau-Ponty’ “cosmology of the visible.” The author takes the Merleau-Ponty’s thesis that everything visible has something fundamentally invisible in it. This allows him to discover the universe of “nothing”, which includes both the visible and what is “behind” it. As a result Richir overcomes the classical dualism of the sensual and the intelligible. The concept of defenestration places the subject and the world in the same universe. (shrink)

Phenomenology and structuralism are commonly understood as two opposing and largely incompatible schools of thought. Indeed, if the former is thought of as the philosophy of subjectivity par excellence, and the latter as the tradition in which the “death of man” is declared, it seems difficult to challenge the antagony between them. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that this picture represents an oversimplification and turns out to be, to a great extent, fallacious. The aim of this paper is (...) to show that the philosophy of the early Husserl – notably as exposed in the Logical Investigations – ought to be fully considered as both part of the wide tradition of Transcendental philosophy as well as Structuralism. To this end, the paper mainly addresses Husserl’s notion of Wissenschaftslehre and the mereology developed in the Third logical investigation and, as a result, tries to show how Husserl’s position can be defined in terms of a “phenomenological structuralism” or a “structural phenomenology” or, as I propose, a “transcendental structuralism”. (shrink)

Despite extensive discussion of naïve realism in the wider philosophical literature, those influenced by the phenomenological movement who work in the philosophy of perception have hardly weighed in on the matter. It is thus interesting to discover that Edmund Husserl’s close philosophical interlocutor and friend, the early twentieth-century phenomenologist Johannes Daubert, held the naive realist view. This article presents Daubert’s views on the fundamental nature of perceptual experience and shows how they differ radically from those of Husserl’s. The author argues, (...) in conclusion, that Daubert’s views are superior to those of Husserl’s specifically in the way that they deal with the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. (shrink)

According to some phenomenological accounts of intersubjectivity, self-awareness precedes and makes possible our understanding of others. Consequently, an "egological account of consciousness" is a precondition for a viable theory of intersubjectivity.1 While Edmund Husserl embraces this assumption of the primacy of self-awareness, Jan Patočka seems to elaborate the opposite stance. As Patočka puts it, in the "contact and in the mirror of the other we encounter ourselves, for the first time."2 Is self-awareness a precondition for an intersubjective encounter, or is (...) it the other way around? Husserl and Patočka seem to espouse exactly opposite claims.Nevertheless, the picture I draw here is more nuanced. On the one... (shrink)

Assuming the importance of Alfred Schutz’s “protosociology” in social theory as a given, the paper tries to explore its philosophical core, treating Schutz’s sociophenomenology as an answer to the most fundamental questions of phenomenology, such as evidence and phenomenological reduction. It analyses Schutz’s point of departure – the problematization of Max Weber’s concept of the meaning of social action and its deepening by means of Henri Bergson’s and Edmund Husserl’s notion of time – and tries to unravel the double structure (...) of consciousness, revealing increasingly its complex temporal character. Brentano’s and Husserl’s double intentionality, seeming to offer a kind of “decent realism” in modern philosophical context, in Schutz turns out to be marked by the profound pastness of reflexive consciousness, reaching the primary stream experience only by means of primary and secondary acts of remembrance, re-effectuated intersubjectively in acts of phantasying about future, thus constituting the very core of meaning, with its reference to external objects. It appears that only analysing this mode of phantasying in reference to its motives that we can solve the conundrum of realism in its modern shape. (shrink)

Traditionally, phenomenology has understood the self in light of intentionality and hence the world. However, contemporary French phenomenology—as represented here by Jean-Luc Marion—contends that this view of subjectivity is open to challenge: our mode of existence is not simply one of “being-in the-world.” I develop this claim by examining Marion’s reformulation of the reduction. Here, the phenomenon of vanity is key. I first present Husserl’s and Heidegger’s own formulations of the reduction. Following Marion, I show that the blow of vanity (...) neutralizes both, by undercutting the respective questions to which they respond. For, in response to vanity’s own question—“What’s the use?”—neither the transcendental nor ontological reductions have a reply. Vanity consequently renders the Heideggerian distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity existentially moot. To establish this, I evaluate how existing interpretations of authenticity overlook the phenomenon of vanity. Phenomenology, I urge in conclusion, should shift its attention to the horizons opened by Marion’s erotic reduction. (shrink)

Der transzendentalen Subjektivität als sinngebender Instanz liegt in der Husserlschen Phänomenologie ein fundamentaler, der Reflexion nicht zugänglicher Bewusstseinsbereich zugrunde: die absolute Subjektivität.Das basale Defizit der epistemisch ausgerichteten Phänomenologie Husserls ist die Unmöglichkeit einer unmittelbaren Selbstreferenzialität in Bezug auf das eigene Selbst-Bewusstsein. Ausgehend von einem ersten Zugang zur Präreflexivität bei Sartre wird auf Grundlage eines radikalisierten phänomenologischen Designs Michel Henrys und Jean-Luc Marions die Struktur dieser basalen Bewusstseinssphäre systematisch entwickelt.

The chapter contains a brief intellectual biography of Herbert Spiegelberg, building on his numerous autobiographical remarks. It provides a survey of Spiegelberg’s early life and works and his German period, focusing more extensively on his American period. The chapter considers in some detail three important themes in Spiegelberg’s works. First, Spiegelberg’s role in spreading and developing the phenomenological method in the United States through the organization of his workshops, based on ideas from his teachers Reinach and Pfänder to phenomenologize “co-subjectively”. (...) Second, his life-long concern with the development of a phenomenological ethics and the detailed development of the core notion of “deontic state of affairs” (Sollverhalt). Last but not least, his monumental contribution to the historiography of phenomenology with his The Phenomenological Movement. The chapter takes a critical look at the early controversies with Farber on the idea of a phenomenological “movement” in order to clarify and qualify Spiegelberg’s own conception of phenomenology. The chapter is meant as a companion piece to the translation of Karl Schuhmann’s unpublished article “Phenomenological Ontology in the Work of Herbert Spiegelberg: Ideas and Ontic and Deontic States of Affairs” which will appear in the second volume. (shrink)

Any effort to think passivity to some extent undoes itself by its own intentional activity. This inevitable and ambiguous paradox is explored by a reading of the allure of passivity in Husserl’s passive synthesis lectures and is paired with a reading of Merleau-Ponty’s course notes on passivity and his late course on Husserl. The uncanny fragmentation of passivity, and indeed of the efforts of any genetic phenomenology to think its own origins, brings to the forefront for thought the problematic space (...) between noema and noesis. Borrowing Merleau-Ponty’s characterization, we will suggest calling this a diaphragmatic relation of a center of egoic activity that cannot hold, that fragments. The essay concludes with a brief fragment on love that shatters in its passivity. (shrink)

In a discussion of the constitutive role of colour in our visual perceptual experiences, Wilhelm Schapp centrally argues that we cannot visually perceive certain distant things, like a house seen far down in the valley. My main contention is that, in cases relevantly similar to Schapp’s, we do perceptually experience distant things, viz., as drastically “decayed” things, which are part of distant scenes. In doing so, we adopt towards them a kind of conservative “attitude.” The ideas of decay and scenicness (...) will be unpacked in terms of the Husserlian ideas of fulfilment, and fulfilment conditions, capturing the idea that we perceptually experience objects in terms of anticipated possibilities for further experiences of these objects. These ideas will also be considered in relation to Herbert Leyendecker’s notion of an attitude, e.g., of observing, searching for, or working with objects. (shrink)

This article brings out the crucial role of the issue of “institution” in Merleau- Ponty’s thought. Building on Husserl’s concept of Stiftung and reacting to suggestions from ethnology, arts and politics, Merleau- Ponty goes beyond Husserl’s logic of “constitution” by dismantling all “philosophy of consciousness”, and at the same time formulates a deeply innovative notion of institution, whereby this is conceived as rooted in an invisible “power” – the underlying facet of history.

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)