In this article, I intend to show, first of all, that the metaphysical neutrality of the Logical Investigations leads to untenable consequences and even threatens the coherence of Husserl's project. In truth, Husserl's distinction between phenomenology and metaphysics and its corollary, the pure and simple exclusion of metaphysical problems - such as that of the reality of the so-called external world - from the field of nascent phenomenology, make it impossible to give a satisfactory form to a problem as central (...) to this new discipline as that of perception. However, my final word will not be on the indis-soluble link between the problems that phenomenology poses for itself and those that Husserl would like to be able to "purify" it from the outset. However permeable the boundaries between these two general directions of research may be, phenomenology and metaphysics are not equivalent. Phenomenology can even be said to contribute to formulating and solving certain metaphysical problems, starting with the idealism/realism antithesis. It is to this contribution that I will devote the second part of these reflections. (shrink)

Does Heidegger really have a “theory of the self ” in the same way as, say, Descartes, Locke or Husserl? This is what has often been concluded bymany interpreters of Being and Time, and it is that view that this paper challenges. Heidegger not only rejects the supposition of a substantial ego, along the lines of Descartes’ conception, but he also repudiates, more generally, any “self ” understood as a present-at-hand being, an inner core of Dasein, as he insists on (...) the intrinsic connection between the “egologies,” from Descartes to Husserl, and “traditional ontology”. The fundamental-ontological approach of Selbstheit and Selbstsein, that is, ipseity and Beingoneself, constitutes rather a complete paradigm-shift in the history of Modern philosophy, and a complete break with the egologies as a whole, since both concepts refer only to “ways of being” or “ways of existing” of Dasein. Insofar as its novelty is acknowledged, the concept of ipseity may thus also be taken as an heuristic tool to investigate the history of philosophy, and especially to reformulate in slightly different terms the problem that was at the centre of the courses on « subjectivity and truth » of the late Foucault. (shrink)

In At the Heart of Reason, Claude Romano boldly calls for a reformulation of the phenomenological project. He contends that the main concern of phenomenology, and its originality with respect to other philosophical movements of the last century, such as logical empiricism, the grammatical philosophy of Wittgenstein, and varieties of neo-Kantianism, was to provide a "new image of Reason." Against the common view, which restricts the range of reason to logic and truth-theory alone, Romano advocates "big-hearted rationality," including (...) in it what is only ostensibly its opposite, that is, sensibility, and locating in sensibility itself the roots of the categorical forms of thought. Contrary to what was claimed by the "linguistic turn," language is not a self-enclosed domain; it cannot be conceived in its specificity unless it is led back to its origin in the pre-predicative or pre-linguistic structures of experience itself. (shrink)

Samotność i tajemnica. Prolegomena do fenomenologii ludzkiej więzi (tłum. Marek Drwięga).

What is the event? How the phenomenology of event is possible if the "event" is not the phenomenon in the classical meaning of this word? French philosopher Claude Romano discusses these questions with his Russian colleague Ruslan Loshakov. The interlocutors consider the concept of event in different contexts, paying special attention to the relationships which connect the phenomenology of event with Husserl, Bergson, Heidegger and Levinas' ideas.

Este artículo busca mostrar que en la filosofía de Simone Weil es esencial la reflexión sobre la noción de trabajo. La autora ve con claridad que cuando el trabajo se vuel-ve alienado conduce a la opresión social. Y esto es terrible para el trabajador, ya que le priva de su propia dignidad. El trabajo alienado es consecuencia de la racionalización del trabajo y del maquinismo. De este modo, hace que quienes lo sufren experimenten un sentimiento de esclavitud y pérdida de (...) su dignidad. Es visto como algo que les es impuesto y de lo que no pueden escapar. El verdadero trabajo, por el contrario, es creativo porque no obliga a la persona a dejar de pensar. Más bien garantiza la unidad entre el pensamiento y la acción. (shrink)

For fifty years, Willard Van Orman Quine's books and articles have stimulated intense debate in the fields of logic and the philosophy of language. Many scholars in fact, regard Quine as the greatest living English-speaking philosopher; yet his views remain widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. This book provides the first major explication and defense of Quine's systematic philosophy and is ideally suited for use as a required or supplementary text in a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy and (...) linguistics.The book explores the far-reaching implications of Quine's views on language for contemporary analytic philosophy. It is unique in providing a lucid and rich description and reconstruction of the historical context from which Quine's work grew, focusing in particular on the role that Russell and Wittgenstein played in shaping the problems inherited by Quine. It presents Quine's difficult later views in an accessible fashion, bringing out as no other study has the very radical nature of his position. One of the book's highlights is its careful examination and assessment of Tarski's theory of truth as it relates to the traditions of Russell and Wittgenstein and to Quine's own philosophy.George D. Romanos took his Ph.D. in philosophy under George D. W. Berry and Paul T. Sagal at Boston University. This book grew out of his dissertation with the active criticism and support of Quine himself. (shrink)

IntroductionDignity therapy is brief psychotherapy targeting psychological and existential suffering among patients with a life-limiting illness. Studies have been conducted on the use of DT by healthcare professionals. In Italy, the current legislation defines that any form of psychotherapy may be performed exclusively by psychotherapists. Consequently, this intervention is unlikely to be used by other healthcare professionals. Herein, we will describe a training on DT not as a psychotherapy intervention but as a narrative intervention for non-psychotherapists health care professionals. Finally, (...) we will explore the potential enablers/barriers as experienced by palliative care physicians and nurses.MethodsThe study was conducted in the Psycho-Oncology Unit within the Cancer Research Hospital of Reggio Emilia. It consisted of an exploratory qualitative case study. Data were collected employing observations and interview data and thematically analyzed.ResultsThe training was attended by six physicians and ten nurses and took place during two-afternoon sessions for 10 h. Two participants put their training into practice and administered DT under the supervision of a psychotherapist. Data analysis highlighted five overarching themes relating to the training experience and direct use of DT, namely, time required, psychological skills, patient’s disease awareness, patient’s life history, and distinguishing DT from Advance Care Planning.ConclusionPalliative care professionals found DT to be a valuable non-pharmacological hospital-based intervention to address the person beyond the patient and his clinical conditions. In our experience, considering that in Italy, psychotherapy is an intervention that psychotherapists can only perform, it can help organize different training on DT for psychotherapists and other healthcare professionals. (shrink)

In the recent literature, it has been shown that the wave function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory can be regarded as a new kind of field, i.e., a "multi-field", in three-dimensional space. In this paper, I argue that the natural framework for the multi-field is the original second-order Bohm’s theory. In this context, it is possible: i) to construe the multi-field as a real-valued scalar field; ii) to explain the physical interaction between the multi-field and the Bohmian particles; and iii) (...) to clarify the status of the energy-momentum conservation and the dynamics of the theory. (shrink)

Claude Romano seeks to change all that, to describe precisely what sort of phenomenon an event is and to establish how it can be grasped via a phenomenology.

This paper aims to clarify some conceptual aspects of decoherence that seem largely overlooked in the recent literature. In particular, I want to stress that decoherence theory, in the standard framework, is rather silent with respect to the description of (sub)systems and associated dynamics. Also, the selection of position basis for classical objects is more problematic than usually thought: while, on the one hand, decoherence offers a pragmatic-oriented solution to this problem, on the other hand, this can hardly be seen (...) as a genuine ontological explanation of why the classical world is position-based. This is not to say that decoherence is not useful to the foundations of quantum mechanics; on the contrary, it is a formidable weapon, as it accounts for a realistic description of quantum systems. That powerful description, however, becomes manifest when decoherence theory itself is interpreted in a realist framework of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

Husserl saw the Cartesian critique of scepticism as one of the eternal merits of Descartes’ philosophy. In doing so, he accepted the legitimacy of the very idea of a universal doubt, and sought to present as an alternative to it a renewed, specifically phenomenological concept of self-evidence, making it possible to obtain an unshakable foundation for the edifice of knowledge. This acceptance of the skeptical problem underlies his entire conceptual framework, both before and after the transcendental turn, and especially the (...) immanence/transcendence distinction, i.e., the very basis of intentionality. In taking as its starting point an analysis of perception, the article puts forth a certain number of phenomenological arguments in order to put into question the validity of the skeptical problem and, therefore, of the Husserlian conceptual framework; it defends, in the first place, a disjunctive conception of perception and, in the second place, a holism of experience. (shrink)

In The Living God, Fr. Romano Guardini enables you to understand (and finally to experience) God's consoling presence in your soul. When your sins and imperfections weigh you down, turn to the awesome reality of God's love and mercy -- which is just one of the many remarkable themes in Romano Guardini's magnificent book, The Living God.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the phenomenological nature of gratitude. Nevertheless, gratitude would be an affective response triggered by a certain action or object, it has to be considered not properly “intentional” as it seems to be rather a Stimmung. Accordingly, I distinguish two accounts of gratitude and then, I argue that it may be considered a mood only if it is addressed toward the life itself in a way that allows to cover the entire phenomena of (...) someone’s existence. Finally, I argue that Epicureanism is the main philosophical approach that fully recognizes the role of utmost importance played by gratitude toward life, to the extent that it positively accepts its finite nature. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy, from Kant through Bergson and Husserl to Heidegger, has assumed that time must be conceived as a fundamental determination of the subject: Time is not first in things but arises from actions, attitudes, or comportments through which a subject temporalizes mtime, expecting or remembering, anticipating the future or making a decision. Event and Time traces the genesis of this thesis through detailed, rigorous analyses of the philosophy of time in Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, ultimately showing that, in the (...) development of metaphysics, the understanding of the temporal phenomenon as an inner-temporal phenomenon has made possible time's subjectivization. The book goes on to argue that time is in fact not thinkable according to metaphysical subjectivity. Instead, the guiding thread for the analysis of time must shift to the eventual hermeneutics of the human being, first developed in Event and World, and now deepened and completed in Event and Time. Romano's diptych makes a compelling, rigorous, and original philosophical contribution to the thinking of the event. (shrink)

L'Odyssée, le plus ancien poème de la culture occidentale, met en scène la métamorphose qui change Ulysse en lui-même sous les yeux dessillés de ceux qui échouaient jusque-là à le reconnaître. Ulysse constitue ainsi la première d'une longue série de figures donnant corps à cette opération mystérieuse : le passage de l'existence en régime d'obscurité à l'existence "en personne", dans une forme de vérité. Que signifie un tel passage? Comment s'opère cette transition? Quelles formes cette idée d'existence en personne a-t-elle (...) pu revêtir dans la pensée occidentale? Claude Romano interroge les sources, y compris lointaines, de cette idée d' "existence en vérité" telle qu'elle sous-tend notamment l'idéal moderne d'authenticité personnelle, en retraçant la généalogie de cet idéal et en exhumant certaines de ses formes plus anciennes. Chemin faisant, le lecteur découvre différents types et régimes de discours, philosophique, mais aussi théologique, spirituel, rhétorique, littéraire, esthétique. Romano esquisse ainsi une histoire de la philosophie occidentale aux contours bien différents de ceux qu'on lui prête généralement : à l'écart des grandes métaphysiques du moi et de la subjectivité, il emprunte les chemins de traverse d'une enquête sur les formes de vie et les modes d'existence. (shrink)