My contribution tries to outline some of the motives that lead Husserl to genetic phenomenology. The starting point are the analyses he wrote to include in Ideas I and Ideas II, which are dedicated to the founding of human sciences during the period 1910–1916. Here we find an intertwinement of investigations concerned with an understanding of others and their contribution to the constitution of objectivity, and new research of the genesis of the way in which individual experience shapes our access (...) to the world. My main interest is to point out systematic connections between these two directions of research which are general characteristics of genetic phenomenology. (shrink)

The neurological discovery of mirror neurons is of eminent importance for the phenomenological theory of intersubjectivity. G. Rizzolatti and V. Gallese found in experiments with primates that a set of neurons in the premotor cortex represents the visually registered movements of another animal. The activity of these mirror neurons presents exactly the same pattern of activity as appears in the movement of one's own body. These findings may be extended to other cognitive and emotive functions in humans. I show how (...) these neurological findings might be “translated” phenomenologically into our own experienced sensations, feelings and volitions. (shrink)

In the first edition of Husserl’s 5th Logical Investigation we find a relatively unknown reductive method, which Husserl identifies retrospectively in the second edition as a ,Reduktion auf den reellen Bestand‘. In the 1913 version of the Logical Investigations the descriptions of this first reduction are nearly completely obscured by Husserl’s tendency to see them as tentative hints to his transcendental reduction. In this paper I will delineate the aims and the methodical context, but also the shortcomings, of Husserl’s first (...) attempt at a reduction, taking into account also the problems of the sense and the motivation of transcendental reduction. This first reduction seems strongly steeped in the methods and presuppositions of empiricism, a stance that was highly problematic already in the phenomenology of the first edition. Thus the present investigation opens up some new ways of understanding the formation of the method of reduction in phenomenology. (shrink)

This chapter establishes the concept of a “symbolic system of representation“ to make clear how it is possible that humans use not only the language-based system of representation for cognitive contents but also a many layered non-linguistic system, a system which we probably share with other species. A symbolic system of representation denotes a general concept of a performance of which our language is only one single case, but which nevertheless is most easily explained through the case of language. A (...) system of representation should enable us to form and manipulate an idea of a state of affairs or of an event without having the appropriate intuition of it. We usually think that we do this only using linguistic expressions, but this is not the whole truth. Language is one system of representation, but we can in principle conceive of other systems of representation with the same performance. Husserl’s theory of meaning already reveals this possibility. A phenomenological analysis reveals that a non-linguistic system of representation is in fact still functioning in our own consciousness. We simultaneously use different means of representation, the most prominent of which are language, gestures, feelings and scenic images. It is especially fruitful to investigate the scenic mode of daydreaming as a central form of non-linguistic thinking. Through a close comparison of alternative systems of representation, the systematic difference of usual semantics in normal language systems based on convention and the more natural similarity semantics of some non-linguistic systems of representation is revealed. (shrink)

Weak phantasmata have a decisive and specifically transcendental function in our everyday perception. This paper provides several different arguments for this claim based on evidence from both empirical psychology and phenomenology.

There are two main objections against epistemological foundation of logical principles: 1. Every argument for them must necessarily make use of them. 2. Logical principles cannot be abstracted from experience because they imply elements of meaning that exceed in principle our finite experience (like universality & necessity). In opposition to these objections I argue for Husserl's thesis that logic needs a theory of experience as a foundation. To show the practicability of his attempt I argue that he is able to (...) avoid the two circles mentioned. Motivated by this investigation the Appendix presents some mathematical doubts concerning the proofs by Cantor of the transfiniteness of the set of real numbers. (shrink)

After a brief outline of the topic of non-language thinking in mathematics the central phenomenological tool in this concern is established, i.e. the eidetic method. The special form of eidetic method in mathematical proving is implicit variation and this procedure entails three rules that are established in a simple geometrical example. Then the difficulties and the merits of analogical thinking in mathematics are discussed in different aspects. On the background of a new phenomenological understanding of the performance of non-language thinking (...) in mathematics the well-known theses of B. L. van der Waerden that mathematical thinking to a great extent proceeds without the use of language is discussed in a new light. (shrink)

Der erste Band dieser Reihe trägt den Titel: Philosophische Grundlagen der Interkulturalität. Neben einer begrifflichen und inhaltlichen Klärung der Interkulturalität geht es in den Beiträgen um eine grundsätzliche Diskussion und Standortbestimmung der interkulturellen Philosophie in dem heutigen Weltkontext der Philosophie. Der heutige weltphilosophische Kontext bedarf einer komprehensiveren Hermeneutik.

The following pages contain a partial edition of Husserl’s manuscript A I 35, pages 1a-28b. The first few pages are dated on May 1927 and are included mostly for completeness’ sake. The bulk of the manuscript convolute, however, is from 1912. Four pages of the convolute, 31a-34b, have been published as Beilage XII (210, 2–216, 2) in Hua XXXII. The manuscript was excluded from the text selection of Husserliana XXI3 based on its much later date of composition. A I 35/24a (...) is mentioned in Husserliana XXII (p. xxi, n. 4) as confirmation for Zermelo’s 1902 “oral report” to Husserl of his own independent discovery of the paradox. The text presented here for the first time has already been the target of at least three extensive commentaries, while still unpublished, by Claire Ortiz Hill and Guillermo Rosado Haddock. These present a good survey in english of the central issues on the text and contain many translated quotations. (shrink)

Inhalt: I. Logik, Methodologie und Hermeneutik der Interkulturalität. Ram ADHAR MALL: Einheit angesichts der Vielfalt. Bernhard WALDENFELS: Kulturelle und soziale Fremdheit. Gerhard PASTERNACK: Hermeneutik als Daseinsanalytik. Intrakulturelle Explikationen des interkulturellen Verstehens. Franz WIMMER: Identität und Kulturbrüche. Hans P. STURM: Die vierfache Negationslogik im östlichen und westlichen Denken. Jayandra SONI: Einheit und Vielfalt aus der Sicht der siebenstufigen Prädikationslogik. Gregor PAUL: Logik, Verstehen und Kulturen. Michael KRAUSZ: Two Aims of Cultural Interpretation: Explaining and Healing. Thierry LENAIN: Understanding the Past: History as (...) an Intercultural Process. Ryosuke OHASHI: Womit muß der Vergleich in der vergleichenden Ästhetik gemacht werden? Georg STENGER: Phänomenologische Methode und Interkulturelle Philosophie. Douwe TIEMERSMA: On the concepts of energy in Western and Indian traditions and the methodology of intercultural investigation. Dieter LOHMAR: Intersubjectivity and the meeting of cultures. A critique of the hermeneutics of the 'strict analogy'. Morteza GHASEMPOUR: Philosophie und Bildung. Notker SCHNEIDER: Verbindlichkeit zwischen Einheit und Vielfalt - Versuch über die normative Kraft eines 'basalen Essentialismus'. II. Erkennen und Handeln. Gibt es eine Differenz der Geschlechter? Tanella BONI: Das Geschlecht und die Macht. Bettina DAUSIEN: Die biographische Konstruktion von Geschlecht. Yacouba KONATÉ: Mythen und Wirklichkeiten der afrikanischen Frau. Hans Jörg SANDKÜHLER: Pluralismus - Geschlechterdifferenzen und andere mögliche Welten. Martina PLÜMACHER: Geschlechterdifferenz als Symbolsystem. Ilse N. BULHOF: Epistemology and Gender: the Question of Alterity. An Intercultural Reflection. Atsuko ONUKI: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Geschlechterdiskurse. Nausikaa SCHIRILLA: Einheit und Vielfalt - Konstruktionen von Weiblichkeit interkulturell. Michael MEUSER: Kulturelle Deutungsmuster von Männlichkeit. Veränderungen und Kontinuitäten. III. Philosophie und interkulturelle Bildung. Jürgen HENGELBROCK: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen philosophischer Kommunikation in der Schule. Peter GRAF: Interkulturelle Pädagogik als Schule der Wahrnehmung. (shrink)

Was Interkulturelle Philosophie ist, und worin ihr besonderer Beitrag zur Philosophie im ganzen bestehen kann, das kann sich allein in konkreten Ausarbeitungen erweisen. Der vorliegende Band repräsentiert eine breitgefächerte Auswahl sowohl der unterschiedlichen Ansatzpunkte, von denen interkulturelles Philosophieren ausgeht, als auch der diversen Forschungsgebiete innerhalb der Philosophie, die durch interkulturelle Fragestellungen angesprochen sind. Die Vielfalt der historischen und systematischen Zugangsweisen reflektiert die Überzeugung, daß Interkulturelle Philosophie kein in sich geschlossenes Lehrgebäude ist und ein solches auch nicht werden kann, sondern interkulturelles (...) Philosophieren eine bestimmte Einstellung und eine Haltung darbietet, die auf der grundlegenden Annahme beruht, daß die letzte philosophische Einsicht, _die_ Wahrheit im Singular, von niemandem allein erlangt worden ist und auch nicht erlangt werden kann. (shrink)