This paper argues that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy attempts to reopen the question of human transcendence in contemporary terms. While his conception of language as self-transcending is deeply Husserlian, Ricoeur also responds to the analytical challenge when he deploys a basic distinction in Fregean logic in order to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology of world. Ricoeur’s commitment to a transcendental view is evident in his conception of narrative, which enables him to emphasize the role of the performative in literary reading. The meaning (...) of the self in time provides Ricoeur with a discursive basis for distinguishing his own position from that of Kant and other philosophers in the transcendental tradition. (shrink)

This is the first book-length philosophical study of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The book investigates the possibility for Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to clarify Freud’s concept of the unconscious with a focus on the theory of repression as its centre. Repression is the unconscious activity of pushing something away from consciousness, while making sure that it remains active as something foreign within us. How this is possible is the main problem addressed in the work. Unlike previous (...) literature (including Ricœur, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida) this book makes full use of the resources of genetic phenomenology and passivity in the attempt to clarify the Freudian unconscious. The central argument developed is that the structure of the lebendige Gegenwart as the core of Husserl’s theory of passivity consists of preliminary forms of bodily kinaesthesia, feelings and drives in a constantly ongoing process where repression occurs as a necessary part of all constitution. The clarification of Freudian repression thus takes place by showing how it presupposes a broad conception of consciousness such as that presented by Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. By arguing that “repression” is central to any philosophical account of subjectivity, this book takes on the most distinct challenge to philosophy posed by Freud. (shrink)

S ’ il faut en croire plusieurs wittgensteiniens, l ’œ uvre de Wittgenstein représenterait de facto une réfutation de l ’ idéalisme. Selon cette grille de lecture, le retour au langage ordinaire impliquerait un rejet implicite de l ’ idéalisme. Puisque Husserl prétend lui-même que la phénoménologie est une forme d ’ idéalisme transcendantal, on pourrait être tenté d ’ insister sur le gouffre philosophique qui sépare ces deux auteurs, auteurs qui s ’ inscrivent par ailleurs dans deux traditions très (...) différentes. En revenant sur le désaccord entre Fink et Husserl relativement à la question du langage ordinaire, je voudrais déconstruire cette opposition en mettant en relief le fait que l ’ idéalisme husserlien ne s ’ oppose pas frontalement à la grammaire du langage ordinaire. (shrink)