Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics (...) from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory. Keywords: critical phenomenology, critical theory, genetic phenomenology, community, normativity. (shrink)

Creation and passibility sketch the new phenomenological style present in the Henri Maldiney’s descriptions. Yet it would be impossible to find a way in the aperture made possible by this new phenomenological practice if some returns weren’t operated towards the first places where phenomenology was born. This paper aims to underline some crossings between the phenomenology of Henri Maldiney and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl in order to think over about the task of the phenomenological description. Following Maldiney’s example, the (...) construction of a method which occupied Husserl’s main work must be completed by its transformations, to be discovered in its application. (shrink)

Beginning with Freud’s treatment of identification as an ambivalent process, we explore identification’s polarization between narcissistic idealization and melancholic division. While narcissistic identification can be seen as a strategy adopted by the ego to avoid the educational development of its drives and to maintain itself either in whole or in part in an infantile state, melancholic identification activates a tension between the ego-ideal and the real ego at the expense of the latter. After discussing the ambivalence of identification, we review (...) Freud’s discussion of mass formations as group identifications, arguing that the work of facilitating a productive sublimation of the drives cannot be reduced to a strengthening of the artificial masses represented by social institutions such as the church and the educational system. Instead, the difference between mass formations allowing for collective sublimation and those suffering from narcissistic or melancholic blockages must be found in the productive qualities of the mass itself. In closing, we outline a few ways in which we might begin to understand the political contribution of masses to the maturation of human drives. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the materiality of experience as stemming from a temporal process of sense-formation (Sinnbildung), whose essence is not just formally configured, but also materially organized. In order to understand this process of sense-formation, I first examine the materiality that is intrinsic to the intentional sense and its relationship with the sensible materiality of experience brought forth by the project of hyletic phenomenology. In the second part of the paper, I propose to overcome the tension between a (...) materiality of sense and a materiality of sensibility by reflecting on the specific materiality that is created in our experience through the dynamism of imaginative modifications. Allowing us to switch between different temporal and spatial horizons, imaginative projections and reveries reveal a hidden “reverse” side of our perceptive field, that we access only when we let go of objectifying acts and established significance. In the last part of the paper, I turn toward bodily gestures, in which I see an expression of experience that resists objectification and straightforward symbolization, attesting for the complex social inscription of our bodily existence. I end the paper with an inquiry into the specific materiality of gestures, understanding them as vanishing archives offered to the future. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relationship between promise and gesture, in order to understand how they co-participate in the configuration of our life-histories. I start by noticing the role played by promise in establishing a dialogical pact of trust, through which an experiential cohesion is maintained through time. Reflecting on the variable conditions of mutual trust, I focus on crisis-situations when we cannot keep the promises we make to others and to ourselves. Relying on the thesis of an “original (...) forgiveness”, I argue that our promises operate beyond the initial intention that animates them and even beyond their failure. I then show that failed promises reveal a broader state of self-fragmentation, engaging the other as a mediator between segments of experience that remain otherwise difficult to bring together and to reconcile by oneself. I close by highlighting the role played by gestures in cultivating this mediation. (shrink)

How can phenomenology help address the problem of social violence? Can phenomenology provide an adequate description of its essence? Is the phenomenological method able to deepen and transform its comprehension? The paper is an attempt to answer these questions through an analysis of three different testimonies of social violence entailing elements of phenomenological description. Starting with a minimal definition of the phenomenological description, understood as search for a meaning for a lived experience and substitution with those who suffer, the article (...) discusses several issues raised by a phenomenological description of social violence, such as the danger of justifying it when searching for its meaning, of blaming the victims who suffered from it or of prolonging its traumatizing effects. The paper ends by questioning the ways in which the phenomenological method can offer support for resilience and inspire resistance to social violence. (shrink)

The three books recently published by C. Romano reconsider the phenomenological senses of world and time starting from the event as original phenomena. This review-article explores the new method that he propose, called “evenimential hermeneutics”, as applied to the relation to ourselves, to the world and to the general sense of being. These analyses lean upon an original way of thinking time, as born in each “sudden” moment. The paper also draws comparisons with Heidegger, Husserl and Lévinas, while proposing a (...) critical point of view on Romano’s thesis, concerning the relationship between the novelty of the event and the past, and its relation with desire and otherness. (shrink)

Quelle est la matière propre à l’activité imaginaire ? S’il est entendu que la perception va « aux choses mêmes » moyennant des impressions sensitives et que la signification les identifie en restant vide de contenu, avec quoi et en vue de quoi l’imagination opère-t-elle ? L’appartenance de l’imagination — depuis toujours reconnue par Husserl — à la famille des actes intentionnels intuitifs nous fournit l’indice que l’imagination ne saurait fonctionner sans un contenu sensible. Mais de quelle nature est-il ? (...) Peut-on parler, dans son cas, d’un simple remplissement d’acte intentionnel, par lequel son sens spécifique est constitué ? Les approches que Michel Henry et Edmund Husserl ont eues de ces questions seront confrontées afin de dégager le spécifique de l’imagination tel qu’il se présente dans son rapport au sens de l’expérience. (shrink)

De Husserl à Henry, l’essence de la phénoménalité a changé de lieu, quittant le monde de la manifestation dans lequel l’être est à la fois caché et livré par des apparences, pour la pureté d’une auto-affection qui ne saurait s’y révéler comme telle, étant donné que son déploiement est purement immanent. Si la phénoménologie husserlienne ne peut, selon Michel Henry, que contribuer à « étendre le règne de l’apparence », la philosophie henryenne ira jusqu’à remettre en question le statut de (...) la phénoménalité à partir de la vie transcendantale incarnée. Le paraître se videra ainsi progressivement de la vie transcendantale dont il s’était fait l’expression sensible chez Husserl. En revenant de Henry à Husserl, nous essayons de montrer que si l’apparence est considérée comme la voix sensible de l’apparaître, ce dernier ne cesse pas pour autant de vivre. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of appearance in Husserl’s theory of knowledge, stressing its importance and its necessity. Far from being an accident that clarity, evidence or reality can evacuate, appearance is constitutive of our experience and of our approach of its grounding principles. In the light of this idea of appearance, the contingent aspects of our lived experience become an expression of the sense-formation process supporting and transforming it. This paper is a contribution to a larger discussion – including, (...) among others, Eugen Fink, Michel Henry and Jean-Paul Sartre – about the relationship between phenomenology and ontology, about the nature of our knowledge and our experience of freedom. (shrink)

Dan ZAHAVI, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity. A Response to the Linguistic-Pragmatic Critique ; Françoise DASTUR, Chair et langage. Essais sur Merleau-Ponty ; Jean GREISCH, Michel Henry et l’épreuve de la vie ; Elisabeth STRÖKER, The Husserlian Foundations of Science ; John McCUMBER, Metaphysics and Oppression, Heidegger’s Challenge to Western Philosophy ; Marc RICHIR, Phénoménologie en esquisses. Nouvelles fondations ; Raphaël GÉLY, La genèse du sentir. Essai sur Merleau-Ponty ; John SALLIS, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental ; Bin (...) KIMURA, L’entre. Une approche phénoménologique de la schizophrénie ; Dermot MORAN, Tim MOONEY, The Phenomenology Reader ; Ion COPOERU, Structuri ale constituirii ; Fabio CIARAMELLI, La distruzione del’desiderio. Il narcisismo nell’epoca di consumo di massa ; Pierre KELLER, Husserl and Heidegger on Human Experience. (shrink)

Luca M. Possati, Jean Grondin, Paul Ricoeur ; Aurore Dumont, François Dosse et Catherine Goldenstein, Paul Ricoeur: penser la mémoire ; Paul-Gabriel Sandu, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Truth of Language. Heidegger, Ricoeur and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement ; Paul Marinescu, Marc-Antoine Vallée, Gadamer et Ricoeur. La conception herméneutiquedu langage ; Witold Płotka, Saulius Geniusas, Th e Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology ; Delia Popa, Annabelle Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel dans la philosophie de Husserl (...) ; Maria GyemantDenis Seron, Ce que voir veut dire. Essai sur la perception ; Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Hans Friesen, Christian Lotz, Jakob Meier, Markus Wolf, Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der Kritischen Th eorie ; Bogdan MincăLarisa Cercel, John Stanley, Unterwegs zu einer hermeneutischen Übersetzungswissenschaft. Radegundis Stolze zu ihrem 60. Geburtstag ; Denisa Butnaru Johann Michel, Sociologie du soi. Essai d’herméneutique appliquée ; Ovidiu Stanciu, Jan Patočka, Aristote, ses devanciers, ses successeurs. Trad. fr. Erika Abrams ; Mădălina Diaconu, Emmanuel Alloa, Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen, Phänomenologie. (shrink)

Hans-Georg GADAMER, Hermeneutische Entwürfe. Vorträge und Aufsätze ; Pascal MICHON, Poétique d’une anti-anthropologie: l’herméneutique deGadamer ; Robert J. DOSTAL, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer ; Denis SERON, Le problème de la métaphysique. Recherches sur l’interprétation heideggerienne de Platon et d’Aristote ; Henry MALDINEY, Ouvrir le rien. L’art nu ; Dominique JANICAUD, Heidegger en France, I. Récit; II. Entretiens ; Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, Fenomenologia percepţiei ; Trish GLAZEBROOK, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science ; Richard WOLIN, Heidegger’s Children. Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas (...) and Herbert Marcuse ; Ivo DEGENNARO, Logos – Heidegger liest Heraklit ; O. K. WIEGAND, R. J. DOSTAL, L. EMBREE, J. KOCKELMANS and J. N. MOHANTY, Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic ; James FAULCONER and Mark WRATHALL, Appropriating Heidegger. (shrink)

Hans-Georg GADAMER, Hermeneutische Entwürfe. Vorträge und Aufsätze ; Pascal MICHON, Poétique d’une anti-anthropologie: l’herméneutique deGadamer ; Robert J. DOSTAL, The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer ; Denis SERON, Le problème de la métaphysique. Recherches sur l’interprétation heideggerienne de Platon et d’Aristote ; Henry MALDINEY, Ouvrir le rien. L’art nu ; Dominique JANICAUD, Heidegger en France, I. Récit; II. Entretiens ; Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, Fenomenologia percepţiei ; Trish GLAZEBROOK, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science ; Richard WOLIN, Heidegger’s Children. Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas (...) and Herbert Marcuse ; Ivo DEGENNARO, Logos – Heidegger liest Heraklit ; O. K. WIEGAND, R. J. DOSTAL, L. EMBREE, J. KOCKELMANS and J. N. MOHANTY, Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic ; James FAULCONER and Mark WRATHALL, Appropriating Heidegger. (shrink)

Delia Popa, Emmanuel Levinas, Les aventures de l’economie subjective et son ouverture a l’alterite (Eemmanuel Levinas, The adventures of the subjective economy and its opening towards alterity) Lumen Publishing House, Iasi, 2007.

Pendant l’été 2012, les artistes Ellen Rothenberg et Délia Popa participèrent à un projet d’échange culturel avec une famille rom vivant dans une petite communauté agraire du comté de Sibiu, vieille région de Transylvanie. Le deuxième volet de ce projet comprenait une exposition des œuvres inspirées par cette expérience, dans les Galeries d’Art Contemporain du Musée National de Brukenthal, à l’automne 2013. Intitulée « Chelen Amenca (Danse avec nous) », cette exposition fut organisée par la c...

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)

The aim of this paper is to explore the view that some ontological disputes are “metalinguistic negotiations”, and to make sense of the significance of these controversies in a way that is still compatible with a broadly deflationist approach. I start by considering the view advocated by Eli Hirsch to the effect that some ontological disputes are verbal. I take the Endurantism–Perdurantusm dispute as a case-study and argue that, while it can be conceded that the dispute is verbal at the (...) object-level, this does not rule out the possibility of a non-verbal disagreement at the metalinguistic level. I then explore the metalinguistic dispute hypothesis by seeing how it can be defended from a first objection playing on the idea of inter-translatability, as well as a second objection raising the question of equal theoretical virtues. (shrink)

This study presents some of the contributions to the process of the constructing Europe since the illustrated ideas of the German philosopher Krause that were promoted and represented by eminent Spanish Krausist legal experts, such as Francisco Giner de los Ríos. His conception of Europe and European civilisation contains theories that, despite being surprising and openly opposed at the time, have today become part of the global heritage of modern day legal philosophy and our social aspirations. We firstly study how (...) the development of the Krausist legal philosophy contributed to the political development of Spain and how this ius-philosophical thinking had a modernising influence on Spanish legal philosophy and science. Secondly, we delve deeper into the basic principles of Krausist legal-sociological theory that have had a major influence on Europeanisation, reviewing its most ardent criticism of the European imperial nationalism doctrine. (shrink)

Review of Mădălina Moraru, Mit și publicitate (Myth and advertising) (Bucharest: Nemira, 2009).

ABSTRACT: If an event of one kind does not always lead to an event of a second given kind, it does not follow (of course) that the occurrence of an event of the first kind can never explain the occurrence of an event of the second kind. I’m concerned here with cases of belief. In the service of defending a plausible “boundary-shifting” solution to the sorites paradox, I argue that a certain paradoxical belief(in the universally-generalized premise of the sorites paradox) (...) can be explained by our having reasonable beliefs that entail it (beliefs in the instances of that generalization). Some have argued against boundary-shifting solutions on the grounds that beliefs in instances do not always lead to beliefs in generalizations over those instances. I argue that the objection flounders. An event of one kind can explain an event of another kind even if events of the first kind do not always lead to events of the second kind. One does not impugn an explanation merely by pointing to its defeasibility. (shrink)

One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates (...) in all of their occurrences; they are predicates that are true of their bearers. When a name appears as a bare singular in argument position, it really occupies the predicate position of what in this essay is called a denuded definite description: a definite description with an unpronounced definite article. Sloat provided good evidence for this. The definite article is sometimes pronounced with names in the singular: ‘The Ivan we all love doesn't feel well’. Sloat proposed a disjunctive generalization of when the definite article must be pronounced with a singular name. This essay shows that by slightly revising Sloat's generalization, we arrive at a simple, nondisjunctive, syntactic rule that governs the overt appearance of the definite article with singular names. But Ivan does not necessarily bear the name ‘Ivan’, so one might worry that the sentence “Ivan might not have had ‘Ivan’ as a name” would incorrectly be predicted false. This essay shows that Predicativism does not have this consequence by showing that incomplete definite descriptions in general and incomplete denuded descriptions, such as ‘Øthe Ivan’, in particular are rigid designators. (shrink)