My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Edmund Husserl’s views on the differences between human and animal consciousness, with particular attention to the experience of temporality.In the first section, I situate the topic of animal consciousness in the broader context of Husserl’s philosophy. Whereas this connection has been often neglected, I argue that a phenomenological analysis of non-human subjectivities is not only justified, but also essential to the Husserlian project as a whole.In the second section, I introduce two notions (...) Husserl resorts to when describing the essential difference between human and animal subjectivities, namely “strata of consciousness” and “person.” Drawing on textual evidence, I argue that Husserl does not simply see animals as excluded from the sphere of personhood. Rather, he draws a distinction between two modes of personal life, one of which is said to be unique to human adults.What holds these two modes apart, according to Husserl, is a subject’s relation to time. In the third section, I delve deeper into this topic, asking how we should understand Husserl’s claim that animals live in a “restricted temporality.” I argue that this has less to do with an inability to remember, imagine, or anticipate future events, and more with an inability to explore temporal horizons stretching before one’s birth or after one’s death. By contrast, humans gradually overcome these limitations during ontogeny, thanks to the practice of linguistic communication. This also has consequences for our capacity to engage in genuinely theoretical thought. (shrink)

This article seeks to provide a phenomenological inquiry into schizophrenia through which I propose to bring to the fore the mental violence exercised against the self in the case of a psychotic patient. My main aim is to show that a phenomenological analysis of mental illness, interpreted as a disintegration of the ego, can be very fruitful for understanding violence in general because it raises fundamental questions concerning intersubjectivity, intentionality, and self-awareness. In order to accomplish this objective, I will take (...) as my point of departure a case study of mental illness as presented by the analyst Marguerite Sechehaye, and I will explore, first, the phenomenological implications of the disintegration of the ego, and second, the dynamics of the reconstruction of the ego. Third, I will address the question whether mental illness is a form of violence against the self, sketching an answer by interpreting the transition from the disintegration of the ego to its reconstruction as an elevation from a poor phenomenon to a saturated phenomenon. Finally, I will suggest how opening a dialogue between phenomenology and psychoanalysis can contribute to understanding the phenomenon of mental violence. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the problematic frontier that separates the phenomenology of the body and the phenomenology of animality. The main difficulty is to differentiate phenomenologically not only between embodiment and animality, but also between specifically human embodied experience and what is accessible to us through empathy in relation to the corporeality of the animal. I will tackle these questions by considering relevant textual material from the writings of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. On the one (...) hand, I will show that although embodiment and animality are convergent on the level of the naturalistic attitude in Husserl’s Ideas II, they are divergent as soon as we place ourselves in the personalistic attitude, where the body enters into a different conjunction—namely, with the idea of person and of the spiritual world. On the other hand, Heidegger claims that, in spite of the abysmal bodily kinship with the animal, there is an essential difference between the human body and the animal organism, thus opposing the tendencies to humanize the animal and to animalize the human. (shrink)

The question of the animal is one of the most intensely debated in the contemporary philosophical arena. The present article makes the case that Husserl’s phenomenological approach offers a stimulating and open-ended perspective on this discussion. The animal, indeed, is an instance of extreme otherness, which pushes phenomenology to its limits. The paper opens with an outline of the methodological issues raised by the question of the animal. It then examines what the animal—at this point, taken as a whole—and the (...) human being have in common and what Husserl sees as the main differences between them. A critical aspect here is the question of personhood. Finally, Sect. 3 traces Husserl’s progression from a general concept of animality to detailed and nuanced phenomenological descriptions of different animals and their intra- and inter-specific relationships. Husserl understands that the threshold that joins and divides human beings and animals is difficult to pin down, because there is more than one threshold: it is plural. (shrink)

In The Human Place in the Cosmos Max Scheler argues the question of philosophical anthropology must address three problems: the difference between man and animal; the Cartesian problem of the mind and body; and the essence of spirit. In a recent issue of Human Studies, two articles by Cristian Ciocan and Christian Ferencz-Flatz addressed the first of these problems through investigations of Husserl’s Nachlass. In this paper, I respond primarily to Ciocan by drawing on Scheler’s phenomenology and the implications this (...) has for understanding Husserl’s phenomenology. By looking at Husserl’s published comments, we can see how the attempt to differentiate between man and animal is bound up with his understanding of spirituality. This allows an alternative way of understanding normality and abnormality which shifts emphasises away from how far we can empathise with the Other to emphasise what it means to be normal or abnormal. This will allow us to address an ambiguity of Husserl identified by Ferencz-Flatz. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to offer a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s theory of minimal mind and his ideas pertaining to the lowest level of consciousness in living beings. In this context, the term ‘minimal mind’ refers to the mental sphere and capacities of the simplest conceivable subject. This topic is of significant contemporary interest for philosophy of mind and empirical research into the origins of consciousness. I contend that Husserl’s reflections on minimal mind offer a fruitful contribution (...) to this ongoing debate. For Husserl, the embodied character of subjectivity, or consciousness, is essential for understanding minimal mind. In his view, there is an a priori necessary constitutive connection between the subjective and objective aspects of the body, between _Leib_ and _Körper_, and this connection is especially important for exploring minimal mind from a phenomenological perspective. Thematically, the essay has three main parts. In Sect. 2, I present an overview of how minimal mind is framed in contemporary philosophy of mind and empirical research. I then analyse Husserl’s conception of embodiment with regard to the problem of minimal mind in Sect. 3. Finally, I present a more detailed investigation into Husserl’s account of minimal mind, highlighting features from his descriptions of animal mind and consciousness in early infancy (Sects. 4 and 5 ). (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the emotional dimensions involved in the phenomenon of interpersonal violence, identifying various modalizations of affectivity occurring in the architectonics of this phenomenon. I will first concentrate on symmetrical violence, namely, on the emergence of irritation, annoyance, anger, and fury leading to fierce confrontation. Next I will explore asymmetrical violence, where the passive pole experiences the imminence of the other’s violence in fear and in being terrified. I will then focus on the experience (...) of the third in the face of violence, showing that here the affectivity is differently constituted each time, depending on the various situations of symmetrical and asymmetrical violence that the third witnesses. Finally, I will contrast the experience of real violence with the experience of violence-as-image, and I will pose several questions regarding the modifications of the affective experience of the third in the face of depicted violence. (shrink)

Straipsnyje analizuojamos 2 fenomenologinės prieigos prie gyvūnų gyvenimo antropocentrizmo kritikos kontekste. Pirmoje dalyje apžvelgiamas antropocentrizmo klausimas. Pradedant posthumanistine antropocentrizmo kaip žmogiškojo išskirtinumo ideologijos kritika siūloma fenomenologiniu požiūriu reflektuoti žmogaus antropocentriškumą kaip patirties sąlygą. Antroje dalyje apžvelgiama San Martíno ir Pintos prieiga, kuri, remdamasi Husserlio transcendentalinio ego analize Ideen II, atskleidžia žmonių ir gyvūnų tapatumą egotiškumo, kūniškumo ir prasmės konstitucijos aspektais. Jų pozicija labai svarbi antropocentrizmo kritikoje, tačiau laikoma nepakankama žmonių ir gyvūnų santykių įvairovei reflektuoti. Trečioje dalyje analizuojama Depraz pateikta keturių (...) pakopų empatijos struktūra ir siekiama nustatyti, kokios yra ribinių subjektų – gyvūnų – prieinamumo sąlygos ir ribos. Išskiriamas kūniškumas kaip bendriausias sluoksnis, analizuojama gyvūnų sąmonių prieinamumo, jų patirties supratimo galimybės ir ribos. Galiausiai daroma išvada, kad šios dvi pozicijos gali prisidėti suprantant žmonių ir gyvūnų bendrumo ir skirtumo ribas bei tai, kiek gali būti apribotas antropocentrizmas. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the concept of animality from the perspective of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. More precisely, the question arises as to whether the animal possesses the status of otherness or lacks it. Indeed, the animal, with respect to the human, turns out to be another entity, but, from the assumptions of phenomenology, is that enough for it to be apprehended as an intersubjectivity or a coexistence that is donated to the world of human beings? To answer (...) this question, we will review Husserl's argumentation, especially in Hua IV and Hua XXXIX, and Heidegger's in GA 2 and GA 29/30. Finally, we will add a critical consideration of the ideas of the authors studied in the face of developments in contemporary biology to ask ourselves to what extent their philosophical inquiry would be consistent with current zoological evidence. (shrink)