This publication is the translation of the first fragment of F. W. J Schelling's Presentation of Philosophical Empiricism accompanied by the analytical translator's preface. In his treatise, Schelling assesses the history of modern philosophy. Namely, he treats it as history of experiments, the goal of which was in the search for the primary fact in the world. In Schelling's opinion, this fact is in the growing over-weight of the subjective over the objective. Only his philosophy of nature was able to (...) find this fact. However, it is not genuine fact but only pure fact, because it does not content in itself any ground for the over-weighting of the subjective over the objective. For resolve this problem, Schelling starts to use the concepts formed by Ancient philosophers, namely by Pythagoras and Plato. The concepts of the limitless and the limit are belonging to the series of the mentioned concepts. Accordantly, Schelling associates the notion of the objective with the one of the limitless being and the notion of the subjective with the one of the limit or limiting instance. His inquiry into the correlation between the limitless being and the limit, i.e. between the objective and the subjective leads him to the declaration of the existence of the free efficient cause, which determinates their interplay and the rise of that-what-should-be from that-what-should-not-be. Since the limitless is the objective and the limit is the subjective in accordance with Schelling, such efficient cause is also the cause of the progressive over-weighting of the subjective over the objective as well. It can explain the fact, which the Schelling's philosophy of nature has only found but not explained. The in his preface, the translator puts the question of the possibility as well as of a relevance of the Schelling's late philosophy to the phenomenological thought. In this context, he emphasizes few moments, by which the later Schelling' philosophy could be of interests for phenomenologists, namely the following ones: the concept of philosophical empiricism itself, the Schelling's division between the pure fact and the genuine fact, his treatment of history of philosophy as history of experiments. Moreover, he speaks about main difficulties connected with the translation of Schelling's text into Russian and gives a German-Russian glossary for utility of Russian readers. The translator gives also the commentaries by Arthur Drews, who reedited the Schelling's treatise in 1902, in their Russian translation. (shrink)

The author of the article framed the question of the possible relevance of the treatment of the Schelling's philosophy in the context of a phenomenological one. Thereby, he points its problematic character, referencing Husserl's treatment of German idealism after Kant (including the thought of Schelling) as the romantic idealism. At the same time, he also states the influence of Schelling on the few phenomenologists who made their careers after Husserl. The article's author reviews the concept of the «being outside-itself» or (...) «ecstasy» in Schelling and Heidegger (as one of the phenomenologists) for the further concretization of the theme. The ecstasy in Schelling is the new name for the idealistic intellectual intuition, by which a singular subject loses its own position as subject and thereby gets to the position of the absolute subject. The absolute subject is one which cannot be an object already. Schelling identifies the ecstasy understood in this way with the wondering as philosophical initiation in Ancient Greece. Such ecstasy leads to unknowing knowledge in Schelling's words. The concept of being outside-itself means the structural element of being of human Dasein, i.e. of temporality in Heidegger. This philosopher thinks that a human being is always already outside itself ontologically, before any intuition both sensual and intellectual. The human subject is not closed in on itself, for then it has to transcend from its immanence to the outside. It is always outside itself, it is ecstatic. In its ecstasies, it is always in the world, instead of being inside the world and other people. Heidegger bases his critique of the traditional metaphysics of the subject on such understanding of the ontological structure of Dasein, i.e. of the true «subject». In conclusion, the article's author states that the approaches to the problem of being outside-itself of both mentioned philosophers are in principle, quite different. Schelling tries to rehabilitate the subjectivity by the reduction of the singular subject to the absolute one. On the contrary, the finitude of human Dasein is the necessary condition of its being in Heidegger. The ecstasy is interiorization in Schelling, but it is exteriorization, which has been always already realized, in Heidegger. However, the author of the article also pinpoints a certain isomorphism of the treatments of ecstasy in both thinkers. In the different ways they attempt to overcome the crisis of the understanding of the subject as closed in itself, create the conditions of this isomorphism. (shrink)

Within the phenomenological tradition, one frequently finds the bold claim that interpersonal understanding is rooted in a sui generis form of intentional experience, most commonly labeled empathy (Einfühlung). The following paper explores this claim, emphasizing its distinctive character, and examining the phenomenological considerations offered in its defense by two of its main proponents, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. After offering in section 2 some preliminary indications of how empathy should be understood, I then turn to some characterizations of its distinctive (...) structure, considering, in section 3, the Husserlian claim that certain forms of empathy are perceptual in nature, and in section 4, Stein’s insistence that empathetic experience frequently involves explicating the other’s own intentional experiences. Section 5 concludes by assessing the extent to which their analyses lead support to a conception of empathy as an intuitive experience of other minds. (shrink)

In Moran, D. (ed.): Routledge Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Routledge, 2008.

In this paper I trace Husserl’s transformation of his notion of phantasy from its strong leanings towards empiricism into a transcendental phenomenology of imagination. Rejecting the view that this account is only more incompatible with contemporary neuroscientific research, I instead claim that the transcendental suspension of naturalistic (or scientific) pretensions precisely enables cooperation between the two distinct realms of phenomenology and science. In particular, a transcendental account of phantasy can disclose the specific accomplishments of imagination without prematurely deciding upon a (...) particular scientific paradigm for its experimental investigation; a decision that is best left to the sciences themselves. (shrink)

Can phenomenology contribute to the burgeoning science of consciousness? Dennett’s reply would probably be that it very much depends upon the type of phenomenology in question. In my paper I discuss the relation between Dennett’s heterophenomenology and the type of classical philosophical phenomenology that one can find in Husserl, Scheler and Merleau-Ponty. I will in particular be looking at Dennett’s criticism of classical phenomenology. How vulnerable is it to Dennett’s criticism, and how much of a challenge does his own alternative (...) constitute? I will argue that there are some rather marked differences between these two approaches to consciousness, but as I also hope to make clear, Dennett’s own account of where the differences are located is off target and ultimately based on a somewhat flawed conception of what classical phenomenology amounts to. (shrink)

In the article I discuss Husserl’s conception of the Lifeworld as developed in his Crisis Book, in order to find out whether art can be especially illuminative in order to understand the Lifeworld and one’s own living in it. I draw a parallel between the sciences as discussed by Husserl as abstractions from the Lifeworld that offer a special view of what in the Lifeworld as such remains disclosed. However, scientific and artistic abstraction differs in character. Whereas the sciences establish (...) formal systems and thereby discover the world as to its computability, the arts abstract from the everyday set of meanings and go back to the primordial and original experience of the world in its perceptibility. Thus they are able to draw attention to the essential character of the Lifeworld as such. (shrink)

Despite the significant number of critical analyses devoted to the subject, the precise definition of the famed crisis-notion that lies at the heart of Husserl’s last work remains controversial. The aim of this article is to defend and expand the account of Husserl’s notion of the crisis of philosophy and of the resulting crisis of the European sciences that I have developed in a number of publications. This will be done by further exploring the notion of the meaningfulness of the (...) sciences for life as well as its relation to their scientificity. Based on this result, I will then respond to some objections advanced against my proposal, and I will present further arguments to the effect that the crisis of philosophy consists in the collapse of its pretension to be scientific, and the consequent crisis of the European sciences consists in the resulting enigmatic character of their scientificity. (shrink)

I reconstruct the notion of significance [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] in the later Husserl, with attention to his conceptions of judgment and transcendental logic. My analysis is motivated by the idea that an account of significance can help to connect analytic, Anglo-American conceptions of meaning as a precise, law-governed phenomenon investigated via linguistic analysis and Continental European conceptions of meaning in a broader “existential” sense. I argue that Husserl’s later work points to a transcendental-logical conception of a founding level of _significance_ [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] prior (...) to language, and that this conception meets characteristically analytic demands for precision and governance by logical constraints. At the same time, since it is based in descriptions of perceptual intentionality at the level of essential possibility, it leaves room for an account of meaning as a partially undetermined phenomenon of lived experience, and not just of our language and concepts, and thereby meets the characteristically Continental demand to take at face value meaning’s vagueness and indeterminacy in everyday human life. (shrink)

This special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the (...) Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question. These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Egosplitting. (...) My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to clarify Husserl’s critical remarks about Kant’s view of logic by comparing their respective views of logic. In his Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl criticizes Kant for not asking transcendental questions about formal logic, but rather ascribing an ‘extraordinary apriority’ to it. He thinks the reason for Kant’s uncritical attitude to logic lies in Kant’s view of logic as directed toward the subjective, instead of being concerned with a ‘“world” of ideal Objects’. Whereas for Kant, general (...) logic is about laws of reasoning. Husserl thinks that formal logic should describe formal structures. Husserl claims that if Kant had had a more comprehensive concept of logic, he would have thought of raising critical questions about how logic is possible. This kind of criticism cannot itself use forms of judgments or syllogisms of logic, nor even the ‘inferential’ [schliessende] method more generally, but should be descriptive in nature. Husserl's transcendental phenomenology is the method for such criticism. The paper argues that this results in reflection, and possibly revision, of the logical principles with respect to the normative goals governing the investigation in question. (shrink)

Autor prezentuje własną interpretację fenomenologicznej zagadki „w sobie” przedmiotu rzeczywistego i samego świata. Rozwiązanie tej zagadki ma rozstrzygające znaczenie dla właściwego zrozumienia fenomenologii transcendentalnej. Według Husserla, rzecz transcendentna jest „w sobie” w odniesieniu do faktycznego doświadczenia, ponieważ jej esse nie rozpływa się w percipi i może istnieć nawet wtedy, gdy nie jest faktycznie doświadczana. „W sobie” przedmiotu realnego nie oznacza jednak jego istnienia poza wszelkim możliwym sposobem dania w świadomości, ale jest idealną jednością daną w nieskończonej wielości rzeczywistych i możliwych (...) przejawów tego samego dopuszczającego określenia x. Wszystkie przedmioty realne są jednostkami sensu, ale sens nie przenika przedmiotu w nieskończoności jego przejawów, a w konsekwencji niewyczerpywalne x jako nosiciel tożsamości przedmiotu zawiera nadwyżkę wykraczającą poza sens. Zasadnicza teza artykułu brzmi, że „w sobie” rzeczy transcendentnej i świata realnego odpowiada czystemu x i jego nadwyżce przekraczającej sensy noematyczne. (shrink)

In the final book of Logical Investigations from 1901, Husserl develops a theory of knowledge based on the intentional structure of consciousness. While there is some textual evidence that Husserl considered this to entail a critique of Kantian philosophy, he did not elaborate substantially on this. This paper reconstructs the covert critique of Kant’s theory of knowledge which LI contains. With respect to Kant, I discuss three core aspects of his theory of knowledge which, as Husserl’s reflections on Kant indicate, (...) Husserl was familiar with. These are the cooperation of two faculties for the justification of beliefs; the concept of a priori structures of knowledge Kant operated with; and the delivered transcendental proof of these structures. Regarding Logical Investigations, I first briefly outline the intentional structure of consciousness as presented in the fifth book and then turn to the theory of knowledge in the sixth book. I then clarify, partially on the basis of manuscripts and lecture notes, the covert critique of the three core aspects of Kant’s theory which the sixth book contains. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to define reduction as the beginning of philosophy. The author considers such questions as: What motivates a phenomenologist to do reduction? Can one speak of philosophy before reduction? What is the essence of reduction? To answer these questions the author refers to Husserl, Fink and, Patočka, and tries to show that reduction is to be understood as an unmotivated expression of philosopher’s will to overcome evidence inherent to natural attitude. The author argues that reduction enables (...) one a problematization of the world as such. Finally, reduction is defined as an attempt to take doing philosophy seriously. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDuring his philosophical life, Husserl sought to develop his phenomenology as a “science of true beginnings, or origins” that is metaphysically neutral. Nevertheless, according to Heidegger and Derrida, Husserl’s phenomenology remains a kind of metaphysics of presence in that it presupposes a metaphysical notion of “origin”. This paper attempts both to correct Heidegger and Derrida’s misunderstandings of Husserl’s notion of “origin” and to clarify the reason why Husserl’s phenomenology and its pursuit of “origin” is still a metaphysical project.

ABSTRACTThe guiding question of this comparative study is the relation between transcendental theory and common-sense realism: how to understand their compatibility, but also possible tensions between the two. This question concerns, in a broader sense, the relation between philosophy and natural life, or more precisely, what philosophy possibly can and cannot do for natural life. In the following discussion, I first introduce the idealism-realism controversy in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. I then move on to McDowell’s theory and look into a significant (...) convergence between the two philosophies, namely, their insistence on the “unboundedness” of subjectivity, and I clarify how this shared viewpoint makes their proposals compatible with common-sense realism. In a third section, I elaborate the relation between a transcendental and a natural stance by turning to Husserl’s method of phenomenological reduction. In the end, by attending to the anti-naturalism of Husserl and McDowell, I wish to shed s... (shrink)

One of the central questions within contemporary debates about collective intentionality concerns the notion and status of the we. The question, however, is by no means new. At the beginning of the last century, it was already intensively discussed in phenomenology. Whereas Heidegger argued that a focus on empathy is detrimental to a proper understanding of the we, and that the latter is more fundamental than any dyadic interaction, other phenomenologists, such as Stein, Walther and Husserl, insisted on the importance (...) of empathy for proper we-experiences. In this paper, I will present some of the key moves in this debate and then discuss and assess Husserl’s specific proposal, according to which reciprocal empathy, second-person engagement and self-alienation are all important presuppositions for group-identification and we-identity. (shrink)

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)

The implications of commonalities in the contributions of five key thinkers in twentieth century phenomenology are discussed in relation to both original aims and contemporary projects. It is argued that, contrary to the claims of Husserl, phenomenology can only operate as hermeneutic phenomenology. Hermeneutics arose within German idealism. It began with Friedrich Ast and Heinrich Schleiermacher and was further developed by, among others, Wilhelm Dilthey and Martin Heidegger. Hermeneutics claims that current understanding is created on the basis of the prior (...) understanding taken to any new situation, in that what is initially understood or believed determines the direction and scope for inquiry or action. Subsequent action and conclustions are similarly based on what has been previously understood and believed. As a consequence, however, what may, in some cases, result is the confirmation of prior inaccurate understanding. For these reasons, it is important to be clear about how initial understandings are formed and how they inform a discipline, be it the Husserlian phenomenology of intentionality or any empirical phenomenological approach. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)

Husserlian Essentialism is the view, maintained byEdmundHusserl throughout his career, that necessary truths obtain because essentialist truths obtain. In this thesis I have two goals. First, to reconstruct and flesh out Husserlian Essentialism and its connections with surrounding areas of Husserl's philosophy in full detail – something which has not been done yet. Second, to assess the theoretical solidity of the view. As regards the second point, after having presented Husserlian Essentialism in the first two chapters, I raise a serious (...) problem for it in Chapter 3. In the remainder of the thesis I endeavour to solve the problem. In order to do so, I propose to amend both Husserl's theory of essence and his theory of predication. The bulk of the emendation consists in working out an account of essence and an account of predication that do not presuppose, or in any way imply, the claims that: 1) for a universal to be in the essence of an object, either the object or one of its parts must instantiate the universal; 2) for a universal to be truly predicated of an object, either the object or one of its parts must instantiate the universal. These claims, notice, apart from being what gets Husserl in trouble, are well entrenched not only in Husserl's, but in most theories of essence and predication. It is thus interesting to see what an alternative option may be – even regardless of the Husserlian setting in which I work it out. (shrink)

The article presents edmund Husserl’s idea of transcendental phenomenology in the perspec‐ tive of the project of science. this aspect of Husserl’s writings was pointed out by, for example, rudolf Bernet, man ed Brelage, Iso Kern, eduard marbach, eugen Fink, Ludwig Landgrebe, and roman Ingarden. the main aim, realised in the article is to prove the main hypothesis claiming that transcendental phenomenology is closely connected with Husserl’s conception of philosophy, the idea of philosophy as a science (eidetic and transcendental). the (...) project of transcendental science and knowledge is also connected with Husserl’s conception of transcen‐ dental reduction taken as a mode of revealing those constitutive achievements of consciousness which were covered in the natural attitude. In the paper, I focus on presenting the most im‐ portant points (epistemological, methodological, and transcendental) connected with Husserl’s evolution of phenomenology in the perspective of the project of science. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to grapple with the idea of philosophy as rigorous science from the point of view of Husserl‟s phenomenology in order to show that this idea may have an important contribution to the way in which the scientific character of sciences in general, and of human and social sciences in particular, is being conceived. As rigorous science, phenomenology emphasizes and investigates the a priori context of other sciences. In this way, it plays a vital role in (...) the development of every particular eidetic upon which any sciences rely. This eidetic (or the eidetic layer of any mature science) embraces the goal and strives to reach the objective of determining the valid sense of the fundamental notions used by the scientist in his research, without, nevertheless, stirring a radical questioning of this sense and of the ultimate validity of these notions. To define them requires passing from the usual level of inquiring of that particular science (the processes of dealing with facts and experiments) to the level (or meta-level) of a radical reflection on the sense or the meaning of the basic notions of the science in question (its own foundations). Philosophy as rigorous science connects the researcher´s assertions not only to the empirical state of affairs envisaged by his work, but, moreover and in a fundamental way, to their noematic content, to their intrinsic intentional meaning. Therefore, the idea of rigorous science elaborated in Husserl‟s phenomenology is heavy with the potential of clarifying the foundations and stakes of the research undertaken by the other sciences. (shrink)

Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

This article considers the possibility of articulating a renewed understanding of the principle of political idealism on the basis of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. By taking its point of departure from one of the most interesting political applications of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the ordoliberal tradition of the so-called Freiburg School of Economics, the article raises the question of the normative implications of Husserl’s eidetic method. Contrary to the “static” idealism of the ordoliberal tradition, the article proposes that the phenomenological concept of (...) political idealism ought to be understood as a fundamentally dynamic principle. As opposed to the classical understanding of political idealism as the implementation of a particular normative model—political utopianism—the phenomenological reformulation of this idea denoted a radically critical principle of self-reflection that can only be realized on the basis of perpetual renewal. In order to illustrate this point, the article considers Husserl’s distinction between two types of ideals of perfection, the absolute and the relative, and argues for their relevance for political philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall examine the evolution of Heidegger’s concept of ‘transcendence’ as it appears in Being and Time (1927), ‘On the Essence of Ground’ (1928) and related texts from the late 1920s in relation to his rethinking of subjectivity and intentionality. Heidegger defines Being as ‘transcendence’ in Being and Time and reinterprets intentionality in terms of the transcendence of Dasein. In the critical epistemological tradition of philosophy stemming from Kant, as in Husserl, transcendence and immanence are key notions (...) (see Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 1907, and Ideas I, 1913). Indeed, ‘transcendence in immanence’ is a leitmotif of Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl discusses transcendence in some detail in Cartesian Meditations §11 in a manner that is not dissimilar to Heidegger. Heidegger is critical of Husserl’s understanding of consciousness and intentionality and Heidegger deliberately chooses to discuss transcendence as an exceptional domain for the discussion of beings in his ‘On the Essence of Ground’, his submission to Husserl’s seventieth-birthday Festschrift. Despite his championing of a new concept of transcendence in the late 1920s, Heidegger effectively abandons the term during the early 1930s. In this paper, I shall explore Heidegger’s articulation of his new ontological conception of finite transcendence and compare it with Husserl’s conception of the transcendence of the ego in order to get clearer what is at stake in Heidegger’s conceptions of subjectivity, Dasein and transcendence. (shrink)

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

“Naturalization” is the game in town in the science of mind and consciousness. How is it possible to give a naturalistic account of consciousness without simply denying its phenomenal, experiential and intentional component? I address this question by examining Dretske’s representationalist theses, showing that their main defect is the absence of any characterization of the structure of intentional/representational states, be it perception (presentation) or intuitive presentification. I conclude these considerations by indicating a series of difficulties a programme of “naturalizing” consciousness (...) has to confront when taking seriously what is shown by phenomenological analyses of consciousness and intentionality. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the issue of how our personal life is given to us in experience as a whole to be actively shaped and determined. I examine in detail Husserl’s analysis of the kind of experience responsible for this achievement, which he terms Überschau and which thus far has never been addressed by scholars of phenomenology. First, I locate Überschau in the context of self-determination and highlight the difference between the unthematic pre-givenness of life in the phenomenon of (...) self-awareness and the actual, i.e. thematic givenness of life in acts of Überschau. Second, I contextualize Husserl’s discovery of Überschau in his analyses of ethical life and the possibility of a universal epoché. I argue that for Husserl the very possibility of ethical life and of phenomenology itself rest on the totalizing apprehension of one’s life rendered possible by Überschau. In the third section I spell out the essential characteristics of Überschau by contrasting this peculiar kind of consciousness with reproductive forms of consciousness such as recollection and expectation, which otherwise might be easily conflated with Überschau. In section four I reply to a possible objection to the very possibility of Überschau based on the consideration of the infinitely open stream of time-consciousness. I argue that the possibility of Überschau is tightly connected with the egological nature of consciousness as understood by Husserl. The ego does not coincide with its own conscious acts and thus enjoys a special vantage point on the totality of its own life. To conclude, I advance a speculative suggestion about the phenomenological origin of Überschau in the structure of self-awareness. This opens up a variety of possible lines of research that would connect Husserl with philosophers such as Augustine or Heidegger who are more immediately associated with the issue of personal life and its unity or lack thereof. (shrink)

A new form of skepticism is described, which holds that objectivity and understanding are incompossible ideals of modern science. This is attributed to Weyl, hence its name: Weylean skepticism. Two general defeat strategies are then proposed, one of which is rejected.

This essay tries to account for a certain “speculative turn” in contemporary philosophy (Q. Meillassoux, G. Harman, M. Gabriel, etc.) from a phenomenological point of view . A first objective of it will consist in exposing the link between, on the one hand, the methodological sense of Husserl’s concrete phenomenological analyses (concerning, for example, time and intersubjective structure of transcendental subjectivity,) and on the other hand, the consequences that follow from the grounding of phenomenology as first philosophy. This will allow (...) a largely underestimated research angle to be opened up, one that I call a “constructive phenomenology,” that constitutes an essential and original figure of transcendental philosophy in general. A second objective will then consist in the attempt to sketch the foundation of knowledge as knowledge , the core of a “phenomenological metaphysics.” Whereas the first part will remain within a Husserlian framework, the second will develop some elements of a “speculative transcendentalism” in a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

This paper addresses racism from a phenomenological viewpoint. Its main task is, ultimately, to show that racism as a process of “negative socialization” does not amount to a contingent deficiency that simply disappears under the conditions of a fully integrated society. In other words, I suspect that racism does not only indicate a lack of integration, solidarity, responsibility, recognition, etc.; rather, that it is, in its extraordinary negativity, a socially constitutive phenomenon per se . After suggesting phenomenology’s potential to tackle (...) the question of racism, I will focus on the experiential oppressiveness of racism, i.e., the ways in which it affects its victims’ lived experiences, in transforming their habitual ways of life and, finally, their subjectivities. My major thesis is that racism works via both inter-kinaesthetically as well as symbolically inflicted distortions of the victim’s body schema. As such a process of “negative socialization,” racism, however, influences the embodied self-conception of the oppressor, who finds himself compelled to adhere to some kind of invisible norm such as, e.g., “whiteness.”. (shrink)

Leibniz frequently argued that reasons are to be weighed against each other as in a pair of scales, as Professor Marcelo Dascal has shown in his article "The Balance of Reason." In this kind of weighing it is not necessary to reach demonstrative certainty – one need only judge whether the reasons weigh more on behalf of one or the other option However, a different kind of account about rational decision-making can be found in some of Leibniz's writings. In his (...) article "Was Leibniz's Deity an Akrates?" Professor Jaakko Hintikka has argued that Leibniz developed a new vectorial model for rational decisions which is better suited to complicated decisions, where values are complementary to each other. This model, related closely to his work in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, is a heuristic device which helps in finding rational combinations - and in an ideal case an optimum - between plural inclinations to the good. I shall argue that Leibniz applies more or less implicitly both of these models in his practical rationality. In simple situations he applied the pair of scales model and in more complicated situations he applied the vectorial model. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall's The Second-Person Standpoint converges with Emmanuel Levinas's concern about the role of the second-person relationship in ethics. This paper contrasts their methodologies (regressive analysis of presuppositions versus phenomenology) to explain Darwall's narrower view of ethical experience in terms of expressed reactive attitudes. It delineates Darwall's overall justificatory strategy and the centrality of autonomy and reciprocity within it, in contrast to Levinas's emphasis on the experience of responsibility. Asymmetrical responsibility plays a more foundational role as a critical counterpoint to (...) 'mean-spirited' reciprocity than Darwall's laudable distinction between accountability and revenge, and responsibility even founds this distinction. The experience of being summoned to asymmetrical responsibility amplifies the meaning of 'authority', which is a presupposition for Darwall. Finally, asymmetrical responsibility helps develop decentred reasoning, invites risk beyond the boundaries of reciprocity at moments when autonomy appears endangered, reconciles respect and care at the experiential level, and presses to extend the scope of moral obligation. (shrink)

In recent years, the phenomenological approach to empathy becomes increasingly influential in explaining social perception of other people. Yet, it leaves untouched a related and pivotal question concerning the unique and irreducible intentionality of empathy that constitutes the peculiarity of social perception. In this article, I focus on this problem by drawing upon Husserl’s theory of image-consciousness, and I suggest that empathy is characterized by a “seeing-in” structure. I develop two theses so as to further explicate the seeing-in structure in (...) question: first, empathy as a phenomenologically sui generis act is an intentional fusion of both presentation and re-presentation; and second, empathic intentionality is in essence twofold in that it is at once directed at both the other’s sensuously given body and the other’s non-sensuously given mentality. In this light, I argue that empathy is better conceived as a quasi-perceptual act that is fundamentally different from external perception simpliciter and other complex acts such as signitive, recollective and imaginative intention. (shrink)

Several works published in the last decades defend the claim that the concept of creativity should be demystified. With the aim of showing that creativity is not an obscure power owned by only few individuals and free from constraints, authors working at the intersection field between philosophy and cognitive science have notably focused on the structure and evolution of cognitive mechanisms underlying our creative capacities. While taking up the suggestion that we should try not to mystify creativity, this article argues (...) that what is required for such demystification is primarily a transcendental and phenomenological inquiry. Kant’s and Merleau-Ponty’s works are here discussed in order to develop such a transcendental inquiry into creativity. Both Kant and Merleau-Ponty bring to the fore the conditions of possibility for creative acts, and highlight fundamental role of creativity itself in the formation of meaningfulness. The keystone of both philosophers’ inquiries is the emphasis on the interdependence between creativity and rules. Yet, due to the different approaches to the transcendental, Kant’s and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts do not fully converge, but should rather be considered as complementary. (shrink)

Husserl sostiene que la metafísica es una ciencia de hechos y vincula el problema de Dios con el análisis de la racionalidad teleológica inherente a la facticidad. El artículo analiza cuatro interpretaciones que ponen énfasis en la relación entre contingencia y la necesidad en el proceso de constitución (J. G. Hart), la significación de la hylética (A. Ales Bello), la cuestión de la fenomenalidad de Dios y su relación con el acrecentamiento axiológico (E. Housset) y los problemas relativos a la (...) idea de Dios como garantía para el logro de una armonía en la comunidad de mónadas (K. Held). El propósito es subrayar la complementariedad entre un camino filosófico-argumentativo y un camino religioso-experiencial en el acceso a Dios, y hacer frente a la objeción de que la teoría de Husserl implica una idealización que encubriría el mundo de la vida. (shrink)

In this article I consider whether and how Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological method can initiate a phenomenological way of life. The impetus for this investigation originates in a set of manuscripts written in 1926 (published in Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion) where Husserl suggests that the consistent commitment to and performance of phenomenological reflection can change one’s life to the point where a simple return to the life lived before this reflection is no longer possible. Husserl identifies this point of no return with (...) becoming a transcendental idealist. I propose a way of understanding Husserl’s claim that transcendental idealism makes a simple return to life before phenomenological reflection impossible. I then suggest that a phenomenological way of life is characterized by an epistemic modesty that follows from Husserl’s transcendental idealism and consider whether and how such a phenomenological way of life is a life worth living. (shrink)

The following essay seeks to deploy, from Husserl to Levinas, the centrality of the problem of temporality. In truth, the understanding of temporality constitutes, properly said, that which identifies and differentiates all the authors of the phenomenological tradition. Which means: temporality is that from which all phenomenological breakthroughs are signified and given their very possibility. Our task is thus, through a reading of Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas, to reveal how temporality is reassessed in the history of phenomenology as well as (...) to show how the philosophy of E. Levinas opens, beyond Husserl and Heidegger but by rendering justice to them both, to a novel and unedited temporality: an irreducible temporality of alterity from whence 'presence' is suspended by another source of meaning than the intentional constitution of phenomenality. (shrink)

Why should philosophy, or even thinking, get in the way of seeing? In attempting to address this question, this paper identifies post-Romanticism as a phenomenologically inflected response to the failure of both pre-Romantic Reflexionsphilosophie and Hegelian speculative overcoming, one that seeks to express our relation to the world in a way that does not rely on a reflection model of consciousness and gives no support to the notion of a cognitively inaccessible absolute. It will be suggested that the poetry of (...) Fernando Pessoa offers lessons in such a post-Romanticism, showing how a phenomenological attentiveness to the world-disclosive power of poetry and to the everyday mereness of things constitutes a more coherent way of relating to the world. With reference to Heidegger and Jean-Luc Nancy, it will be argued that Pessoa’s poetry shows us that it is by reining in the reflection model of consciousness that we achieve a greater sense of the world and our position in it. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Husserl identifies naturalism as the greatest threat to both the sciences and philosophy. In this paper, I explicate Husserl’s overall diagnosis and critique of naturalism and then examine the specific transcendental aspect of his critique. Husserl agreed with the Neo-Kantians in rejecting naturalism. He has three major critiques of naturalism: First, it (like psychologism and for the same reasons) is ‘countersensical’ in that it denies the very ideal laws that it needs for its own justification. Second, naturalism (...) essentially misconstrues consciousness by treating it as a part of the world. Third, naturalism is the inevitable consequence of a certain rigidification of the ‘natural attitude’ into what Husserl calls the ‘naturalistic attitude’. This naturalistic attitude ‘reifies’ and it ‘absolutizes’ the world such that it is treated as taken-for-granted and ‘obvious’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis, however, discloses that the natural attitude is, despite its omnipresence in everyday life, not primary, but in fact is relative to the ‘absolute’ transcendental attitude. The mature Husserl’s critique of naturalism is therefore based on his acceptance of the absolute priority of the transcendental attitude . The paradox remains that we must start from and, in a sense, return to the natural attitude, while, at the same time, restricting this attitude through the on-going transcendental vigilance of the universal epoché. (shrink)

Progressively Husserl started referring to the whole sphere of the life of intentional acts in terms of praxis. Perception, imagination, judgement, scientific consciousness, etc., are all seen as practices. What is the meaning of this move? A seemingly self-evident possibility is that intentionality is praxial, because even perception is not completely free from empty intending moments that demand fulfilment; and all fulfilment is attained by means of bodily activities that enable our senses to acquire the relevant contents. I reject this (...) approach as insufficient and misguided. I argue that perception and intentionality in general is praxial because consciousness, in all of its constituting syntheses, is or becomes organized as a practice-structure. Intentional consciousness organizes its contents according to rules so as to accomplish the evident or true givenness of its intended correlates. (shrink)

In this paper, which is situated in the broad stream of the confluence between analytic philosophy and phenomenology, I shall attempt to articulate the relation between self-consciousness and time consciousness. I shall show that the primary meaning of time entails a self-conscious being, and that time and change are related, but in an analogous way. Different forms of life—with concomitant different forms of self-consciousness—are qualitatively different in their capability of experiencing the flow of time. In making this claim, I shall (...) discuss Husserl’s distinction between pre-reflective or tacit self-awareness (inner-consciousness) and reflective self-consciousness (inner perception), and I shall show that this view is similar to Augustine’s distinction between nosse and cogitare and Aquinas’ distinc­tion between ”habitual” and “actual” self-knowledge. It will also be intimated that simultaneity is associated with empathy. (shrink)