Things make sense to us. The identity of a thing is a meaningful style that expresses the usability of the thing. The usability is a dynamic order of the praxis in which the thing is embedded and in which we are ourselves de-centered. According to Merleau-Ponty, this sociocultural and psychosocial order is a formation of practical understanding and interpretation that rests upon and resumes the elementary, perceptual-expressive structuring of being. The Spiel is one of the three dimensions of corporeal intentionality, (...) in which this entire organization of meaning and experience unfolds. So, the Spiel of usability is a corporeal and practical intentionality that reaches from an aesthetic-ontological structuring of meaning to the order of the things in modern everyday praxes. (shrink)

This paper places Husserl’s mature work, The Crisis of the European Sciences, in the context of his engagement with – and critique of – experimental psychology at the time. I begin by showing (a) that Husserl accorded psychology a crucial role in his philosophy, i.e., that of providing a scientific analysis of subjectivity, and (b) that he viewed contemporary psychology – due to its naturalism – as having failed to pursue this goal in the appropriate manner. I then provide an (...) analysis of Husserl’s views about naturalism and scientific philosophy. Some central themes of the Crisis are traced back to Husserl’s earlier work and to his relationship with his teacher, Franz Brentano, with whom he disagreed about the status of “inner perception” as the proper scientific method for a phenomenological analysis. The paper then shows that Husserl was well aware of at least one publication about the crisis of psychology (Bühler’s 1927 book), and it teases out some aspects of the complicated relationship between Husserl and members of the Würzburg School of thought psychology: The latter had drawn on Husserl’s writings, but Husserl felt that they had misunderstood his central thesis. I conclude by placing Husserl’s work in the wider context of scientific, cultural, and political crisis-discourses at the time. (shrink)

Due to great importance in the construction of theories it is imperative to analyze the nature of time and space and their use by scholars, societies and subjects. This text is the product of such analysis. My claim is that the validity of an argument depends on the spatial and temporal conditions that it is produced in. Moreover, I posit that time and space have been used in order to impose regimes of oppression over different collectives. My intention, however, is (...) not only denounced these uses because the oppression of the societies, to present the lack of such arguments. In other words, arguments based on universality of time and space have been the cornerstone of modern knowledge. This knowledge justifies regimes of oppression in different parts of the world. However, the intention of this analysis is not to denounce the lack of humanism in this knowledge, but to present the falsehood or incompleteness of this knowledge. It is not only wrong because its lack of humanity which justifies the inhuman regimes of oppression. It is also wrong, since its premises are false. (shrink)