In his recent book ‘Kant and the Mind’ Andrew Brook makes a distinction between two types of selfawareness. The first type, which he calls empirical self-awareness, is an awareness of particular psychological states such as perceptions, memories, desires, bodily sensations etc. One attains this type of self-awareness simply by having particular experiences and being aware of them. To be in possession of empirical self-awareness is, in short, simply to be conscious of one’s occurrent experience. The second type of self-awareness he (...) calls apperceptive self-awareness. This type of self-awareness entails an awareness of oneself as the subject of experience. For this type of self-awareness to obtain, it would not be enough merely to be conscious of, say, an occurrent perception of a chair, one would also have to be aware that it was oneself who was perceiving the chair. And as Brook adds, when I am self-aware in this way, I am not only aware of being the subject of a single experience, but also aware of myself as the common subject of other psychological states (Brook, 1994: 55-57). I find Brook’s distinction illuminating, but it raises a question which I would like to pursue in this paper. When we speak of self-awareness, do we then necessarily also speak of a self, is there so to speak always a self involved in self-awareness, or is it rather the case, as Brook’s notion of empirical selfawareness might suggest, that there are types of self-awareness which are ‘selfless’, or to use two other related terms ‘subjectless’ or ‘non-egological’? Is self-awareness always to be understood as an awareness of a self, or can it be understood simply as the awareness which a specific experience has of itself? Ultimately, I believe an answer to these questions are important, both when it comes to an understanding of what exactly self-awareness amounts to, and also when it comes to a proper understanding of what a self is.. (shrink)

The present paper explores anew the question of Husserl’s metaphysics by contrasting H. Philipse and D. Zahavi’s respective position on the matter. I argue that these positions fall victim to opposing exegetical pitfalls. On the one hand, while I concur with Philipse’s general characterisation of Husserl as an ontological phenomenalist, I disagree that this implies Husserl was a subjective idealist similar to Berkeley. On the other hand, while Zahavi’s correlationist interpretation of Husserl avoids this subjective idealist interpretation, I argue that (...) it inadvertently succumbs to the realist alternative that construes the world as existing independently from subjectivity. The way out of this dilemma is to interpret Husserl as an experiential monist, where the phenomenal stream (Erlebnisstrom) is taken to be ontologically primary, by virtue of its antecedence over the subject-object or mind-world dichotomy. (shrink)

Translated from: W.V.O.Quine, W. H. O. (1986): Philosophy of Logic. Second Edition. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 47-61.

La phénoménologie a connu trop peu de sommets créateurs depuis Husserl et Heidegger pour qu’il soit possible d’ignorer le dernier ouvrage de Jean-Luc Marion, aussi superbement écrit qu’il est ambitieux. Certes, de très exhaustives encyclopédies conçues par nos collègues américains, pour lesquels le terme de phénoménologie sert un peu d’équivalent à celui de philosophie continentale, recenseront des légions de phénoménologues depuis Husserl et Heidegger, mais aucun n’aura eu d’impact vraiment déterminant sur la conception même de la discipline. Ces listes comprendront (...) de redoutables penseurs comme Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas et Paul Ricœur, où l’on reconnaîtra les plus illustres représentants de la tradition de la phénoménologie française. (shrink)

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

El presente artículo desarrolla un análisis crítico de papel metodológico que desempeña la libre fantasía en Ideas I. Haciendo visible la estrecha relación entre las modalizaciones de conciencia y la estructura noético-noemática de los actos intencionales, se demostrará la necesaria complementariedad de los métodos de las reducciones eidética y fenomenológica para el proyecto de Husserl de una crítica fenomenológica del conocimiento. Con ello se busca poner de relieve que el rendimiento de la fantasía tuvo un impacto metodológico decisivo para la (...) conversión trascendental de la fenomenología. (shrink)

La profundización del análisis de la relación entre el yo y la afección, propia de los estudios tardíos de Husserl sobre el campo de la pasividad, implica el abandono del esquema estático según el cual el sentido resulta de la acción del yo sobre una materia inerte. El giro genético de la fenomenología pone a la luz los procesos de constitución de la materia y su incidencia sobre el acto de donación de sentido.

There are many ways of interpreting the behaviours related to substance misuse and addiction, which can be sort out as three basic models: biomedical, legal, and social. They are corresponding to approaches built in different epistemic and professional frameworks, such as medicine, law, and social work. Confronted with the experience of addiction, these models appear as pre-determined by a specific scientific or professional ideology; they presuppose a pre-understanding of the phenomena. I directed, therefore, my investigation on those phenomenological paths that (...) might lead to, and circumscribe the experience of addiction and I propose an analytical framework based on three major phenomenological perspectives: descriptive, genetic, and inter-relational. This paper argues in favour of defining addiction without making reference to a form of failure, psycho-somatic or existential. On the contrary, it concludes that there is a need to adopt a definition of addiction which holds at its core the idea of empowering addicted persons, of re-constructing their capacity to take decisions about their own lives. (shrink)

Body image and body schema are two phenomenological concepts which generated a revival of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical heritage. In the present text I intend to inquire on the relation between these two concepts and that of Logos of life, another challenging point in the Merleau-Pontyan thought.In order to delineate the correlation between body schema, body image and my understanding of a logic of life, I will first explore how what I term “schematism of the body” is connected to an inherent (...) model of life and living and how this schematism is reflected in the body image. I will turn further to the relation between body and world and highlight how the life of the body defines itself as meaningful in the context of both the surrounding world and the lifeworld. In a third part of my analysis I shall point out how the relation between body schematism and motile intentionality redefines corporeal inten-tionality. I shall conclude by noting the role of the Logos of life, through which corporeity, in its position of meaning project, is instituted as body schematism.Los conceptos fenomenológicos de imagen corporal y esquema corporal han dado lugar a un resurgimiento del legado filosófico de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. En este texto pretendo investigar la relación entre estos dos conceptos y el de Logos de la vida, otro elemento estimulante del pensamiento Merleau-Pontiano.Con el fin de trazar la correlación entre es-quema corporal, imagen corporal y mi interpretación de la lógica de la vida, exploraré en pri-mer lugar cómo el término “esquematismo del cuerpo” está conectado con un modelo inheren-te de vida y de vivir, y cómo este esquematis-mo se refleja en la imagen corporal. Consideraré después la relación entre cuerpo y mundo y remarcaré cómo la vida del cuerpo se define como significativa en el contexto tanto del mundo circundante como del mundo de la vida. En la tercera parte de mi análisis señalaré cómo la relación entre esquematismo corporal e intencionalidad moto-ra redefine la intencionalidad corporal. Concluiré destacando el papel del Logos de la vida, a través del cual la corporeidad, en su posición de proyecto significativo, se instituye como esquematismo corpora. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Husserlian notion of “passive synthesis” can make a substantial contribution to the understanding of aesthetic experience. The argument is based on two empirical cases of qualitative interview material obtained from museum visitors and a world-renowned string quartet, which show that aesthetic experience contains an irreducible dimension of passive undergoing and surprise. Analyzing this material through the lens of passive syntheses helps explain these experiences, as well as the sense of subject–object fusion that occurs in some (...) of the most intense forms of aesthetic experience. These analyses are then contrasted with a potentially contradicting take on aesthetic experience from a recent trend in cognitive science, namely enactive aesthetics, which insists on the active subjective construction and sense-making of aesthetic experience. Finally we show that the two positions are in fact compatible. (shrink)