In this paper, I start with the opposition between the Husserlian project of a phenomenology of the experience of time, started in 1905, and the mathematical and physical theory of time as it comes out of Einstein’s special theory of relativity in the same year. Although the contrast between the two approaches is apparent, my aim is to show that the original program of Husserl’s time theory is the constitution of an objective time and a time of the world, starting (...) from the intuitive giveness of time, i.e., from time as it appears. To show this, I stress the structural similarity between Husserl’s original question of time and the problem of a phenomenology of space constitution as it was first developed in the his manuscripts from the nineteenth century, in which we find the threefold question of the origin of our representation of space, of the geometrization of intuitive space, and of the constitution of transcendent world space. Finally, I reconsider some of Husserl’s main theses about the phenomenological constitution of objective time in light of the main results of special relativity time-theory, introducing several corrections to central assumptions that underlie Husserl’s theory of time. (shrink)

If I see, hear, or touch a sparrow, the sparrow seems real to me. Unlike Bigfoot or Santa Claus, it seems to exist; I will therefore judge that it does indeed exist. The “sense of existence” refers to the kind of awareness that typically grounds such ordinary judgments of existence or “reality.” The sense of existence has been invoked by Humeans, Kantians, Ideologists, and the phenomenological tradition to make substantial philosophical claims. However, it is extremely controversial; its very existence has (...) been called into question. This paper aims to clarify the nature and reality of the sense of existence by studying a psychiatric condition in which the sense appears to be disrupted: depersonalization disorder (DPD). (shrink)

In Voir l'invisible Michel Henry applies his philosophy of autoaffection (which is both inspired by, and critical of, Husserl) to the realm of aesthetics. Henry claims that autoaffection, as non-objective experience, is essential not only to self-experience, but also to the experience of objects and their qualities. Intentionality tempts us to experience objects merely from the 'outside', but aesthetic experience returns us to the inner life of objects as a lived experience. On the basis of an examination of Henry's aesthetic (...) theory in the light of Husserl's analysis of our experience of visible objects, I conclude that revisions are required in both Husserl's and Henry's approaches: Husserl's noema must be considered to be a lived-through experience, and non-objective lived-through experience must be recognized as primordial evidence; Henry's claim that intentionality makes unreal all that it objectifies must be replaced by a recognition of the interdependence between autoaffection and heteroaffection. (shrink)

La llamada _nouvelle phénoménologie_ ¿practica efectivamente una fenomenología? Este artículo se propone demostrar, a partir de un análisis de las propuestas de sus dos autores más representativos: Jean-Luc Marion y Claude Romano, que las obras de estos filósofos constituyen una auténtica fenomenología si se tiene en cuenta el particular estatuto que le otorgan a la instancia antepredicativa.

La fenomenología tiene una fuerte impronta asociada con el método, que dio lugar a numerosos desarrollos teóricos. Por esta vía más tarde recibió cuestionamientos profundos en relación con una supuesta falta de radicalidad, derivada de las limitaciones impuestas por su compromiso con la estructura intencional. Una revisión de esta esfera, atendiendo a la tematización de la excedencia, muestra la pertinencia de incorporar la fenomenología de lo inaparente a los estratos de estaticidad, geneticidad y generatividad; además, permite morigerar estos cuestionamientos sumándolos (...) como rendimientos de la disciplina. En este trabajo consideraremos algunos aspectos centrales sobre el método de la fenomenología, para establecer luego los rasgos de una dimensión orientada a la excedencia y sugerir, finalmente, como ejemplo de esta dirección teórica, que el contramétodo marioniano es compatible con la fisonomía que adopta la intencionalidad morigerada propia del plano de la fenomenología de lo inaparente. (shrink)

The article follows the mutation suffered by the issue of alterity from Husserl to Heidegger and from Heidegger to Lévinas, envisaging it starting from temporality. We aim at replacing the question “Where is the other?” – that betrays the spatializing presuppositions of description – with “When is the other?” that can be clarified starting from the question “When are we together?”. Rather than deducing from the issue of co-presence, the final postponement of all attempt to conceive intersubjectivity in terms of (...) contemporaneity, we subject it to an analysis that raises again the theme of world-time starting from an attention that testifies to the multiple layers that constitute temporality and the plurality of durations that intertwine in it. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the issue of the ontological status of qualitative properties. I discuss the prevalent approaches to the problem of qualia in philosophy of mind, in relation to the various attempts at naturalizing the mind and the various theories of perception. I compare these views with Husserl's phenomenology, highlighting the phenomenological distinction between phenomenal contents of mental states and sensory properties of the perceived objects. I present some open issues of this view, in order to show how (...) they can be addressed in the light of some developments of the phenomenological inquiry in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

One of Michel Henry’s persistent claims has been that phenomenology is quite unlike positive sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, history, and law. Rather than studying particular objects and phenomena phenomenology is a transcendental enterprise whose task is to disclose and analyse the structure of manifestation or appearance and its very condition of possibility.