The volume Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania is the first contribution that aims at showing to the Japanese reader a sample of contemporary philosophy in Romania. At the same time a volume of contemporary Japanese philosophy is translated into Romanian and will be published by the University of Bucharest Press. -/- Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania includes several original articles in applied ethics and theoretical moral philosophy. It is representative of the variety of research and the growing interest in applied (...) ethics in the last few years in Romania. The philosophy practised here is at the same time an international activity, but also a kind of research deeply involved in Romanian realities. The contributors to the volume are Romanian philosophers from the most important Universities in the country, including members of the Romanian Academy, but also junior researchers. -/- This volume was made possible thanks to the relationship established between the Applied Ethics Centres of the University of Bucharest, Romania, and Hokkaido University, Japan. (shrink)

The main goal of my inquiry is to lay out the proximity between Patočka’s and Ricœur’s readings of Husserl’s Krisis and to stress the role played by the concept of the life-world in the unfolding of their original philosophical undertakings. In the first part, I show the importance both Patočka and Ricœur assignedto the Husserlian project of an “ontology of the life-world”. In the second part, I expose the criticism these two authors addressed to Husserl’s understanding of the life-world and, (...) more precisely, to the idea that the exploration of the life-world is merely another way of gaining access to transcendental subjectivity. In the last part, I show how the concrete descriptions of the life-world given by Patočka and Ricœur depart massively from the Husserlian perspective. (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)

Este texto presenta en un primer momento el movimiento propio de la fenomenología a-subjetiva de Patočka a partir de su crítica de la versión subjetivista del aparecer, para así posteriormente mostrar una dinámica fenomenológica que comprende la manifestación como la obra misma del mundo. En este sentido, el destino de la fenomenología se trasciende en la elaboración del a priori universal de la correlación que estipula la universalidad de una manifestación anónima. Es así que finalmente la fenomenología se modifica en (...) una cierta cosmología que nos obligará a repensar una nueva acepción del ser del sujeto y que postula un nuevo sentido de ser del mundo a partir de una concepción asubjetiva del aparecer.This text initially presents the specific movement of Patočka’s a-subjective phenomenology, itself based on his critique of the subjectivist version of the Appearing. Subsequently a phenomenological dynamic comes to light, which understands the manifestation as the very world’s work. In this way, the phenomenological’s fate is inflected by the formulation of the universal a priori of correlation that stipulates the universality of an anonymous manifestation. Finally, phenomenology is perceived as a certain cosmology which will commit us to rethink of a new meaning for the subject’s being and of the world’s being from an asubjective’s conception of the Appearing. (shrink)

In ‘Wondering the world directly’, Erin Manning criticizes phenomenology by drawing upon Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the problems of his own project and the criticisms of José Gil. Manning claims that phenomenology goes ‘wrong’ in its privileging of the subject and processes of intentionality: the ‘consciousness–object distinction’. While phenomenology on this understanding alone is inadequate to account for movement and the body, process philosophy has the ‘ability to create a field for experience that does not begin and end with a human (...) subject’. This article responds to Manning’s criticism by arguing that phenomenology never intended to perpetuate a concept of subject that fixes an inexorable gap between itself and objects. A historical assessment of subjectivity and intentionality in the work of five different authors, alongside critical points that address Manning’s misconstrual of phenomenology, leads to an understanding of movement that need not ‘outrun the subject’ or become a precarious limit to perceptual experience because of its primacy. (shrink)

El artículo analiza desde una perspectiva fenomenológica y hermenéutica el modo originario de donación del mundo y el origen del mundo en el pensamiento de Jan Patočka posterior a 1965. Primero muestra en qué sentido tanto la donación del mundo como horizonte, cuanto los movimientos de la existencia humana, implican un vínculo esencial entre el modo originario de darse del mundo y la noción de infinito, concebido como lo indefinido e inagotable. Finalmente explicita por qué el vínculo del mundo con (...) lo infinito reposa sobre un impulso creativo divino que constituye el fundamento cosmológico de la religiosidad humana. (shrink)

The question I intend to answer is whether one can speak of a tacit metaphysics, not expressed conceptually, but nevertheless common. If the answer is positive and providing that it is specific to day-to-day life, such metaphysics may be called everyday metaphysics. To this end, I review the meaning of everyday life and its ambivalent character. Next, I present several milestones in the debate on the subject, from authors who have focused on a kind of usual, common or ‘natural’ metaphysics. (...) Lastly, I formulate the idea under consideration, namely that everyday life implies or underlies a certain metaphysics. I note that it is an implicit metaphysics – not expressed formally – and rather free. Embraced in experience with a certain degree of freedom, it is recognisable by means of certain representations active in our mind, by the manner of speaking or of understanding and by the common forms of expression. Its vibrancy, concrete and relaxed character makes it highly evocative of the mental life of an era. It ensures a truly essential difference in our everyday mode of being. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to lay out the similarities between the philosophical projects of Patočka and Merleau-Ponty, with respect to the question of the “limits of phenomenology”. We suggest that both these authors propose two complementary strategies in their attempt of overcoming the Husserlian phenomenology. The first one consists in extending the field of phenomenology so as for it to be able to encompass phenomena either insufficiently explored or misinterpreted by the conceptuality that Husserl put forth; the second (...) strategy, more ambitious, aims to overpass the very standpoint of phenomenology in favour of an ontological approach. We try to show that what profoundly motivates these attempts is a radical – and hence, ontological – reinterpretation of the Lebenswelt. (shrink)

Un primer aspecto concierne a la praxis no-intencional y primaria del cuerpo propio. A ello se añade su condición de sostén para los valores sensibles de la comodidad y la salud, y de trampolín para valores espirituales cuyo nivel superior se encuentra en los valores éticos de la persona. Estos puntos de vista husserlianos encuentran nuevos desarrollos en la fenomenología: M. Henry pone el acento en un "yo puedo" pre-intencional, y Ricoeur describe el cuerpo propio como "fuente" de valores propios (...) y "resonador afectivo" de todos los valores, y a la vez esboza una concepción de la felicidad que incluye temples particulares de la corporalidad. Por último, Husserl considera la ofrenda del cuerpo propio a los valores espirituales en el sacrificio como la afirmación positiva de la vida de la humanidad. J. Patocka y E. Lévinas han desarrollado esta línea de pensamiento. A first aspect has to do with the non-intentional and primal praxis of the living body. To this is added its status as a support for the sensuous values of comfort and health and a springboard for spiritual values, the highest level of which lies in the ethical values of the person. These Husserlian views find new developments in phe-nomenology: M. Henry highlights a pre-intentional "I can", M. Scheler analyzes the relationship between hedonistic, vital, and spiritual values, and P. Ricoeur describes the living body both as the "source" ofits own proper values and the "affective resonator" of all values, and also outlines a view on happiness that encompasses particular bodily attunements. Finally, Husserl considers the offering of the living body to spiritual values in sacrifice as the positive assertion of humankind's life. J. Patocka and E. Lévinas have developed this line of thought. (shrink)

The history of philosophy would not have needed to wait for Heidegger if Hegel had taught us that the transformation from hypokeimenon to subiectum introduced by Descartes is due to the transformation from truth to certainty, which he introduces too. So, taking for subject this certainty, which makes the certainty of subject, we aim to understand that before the truth of man was distorted, the truth itself? the ontological and antepredicative truth, i.e. aletheia? was with him.

_Phénoménologie de la perception _es, sin duda, una de las obras más potentes del pensamiento francés del siglo XX. Allí se plantea una pregunta antigua y novedosa al mismo tiempo, en el cruce de la filosofía fenomenológico-existencial con diversas disciplinas que se ocupan del viviente humano: ¿quién es el sujeto de percepción? Merleau-Ponty responderá en esta obra ya clásica: el cuerpo vivido. Éste será, a su vez, caracterizado como un tipo particular de movimiento, que, en el camino de la fenomenología (...) existencial, adquiere la forma de un _movimiento intencional_, de una trascendencia y, finalmente, de un movimiento de temporalización que es, en términos husserlianos, la propia subjetividad. Tomando como punto de partida estos análisis, buscaremos desarrollar en este trabajo la tesis según la cual el cuerpo vivido debe comprenderse, en _Phénoménologie de la perception_, como un _movimiento subjetivo transpersonal_. Para desarrollar esta idea, partiré de un panorama general sobre el problema de la relación entre cuerpo, movimiento y vida frente al cual _Phénoménologie de la perception _se presenta como una continuidad y como una ruptura. En segundo lugar, presentaré los conceptos fundamentales que conducen a la concepción merleau-pontyana del cuerpo vivido como movimiento subjetivo para, en tercer lugar, centrar mi lectura en las posibilidades abiertas por este análisis de la experiencia corporal que denomino _transpersonal_. (shrink)

This paper aims to articulate the way in which Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jan Patočka revisit the figure of Socrates as a way of overcoming what they view as the “crisis of philosophy”, discussing both their points of convergence and divergence. To this end, the paper unfolds in three sections. The first section will address the general sense of historical crisis in which the said crisis of philosophy arises. The second section turns around Merleau-Ponty’s proposal of a return to Socrates as (...) a way out of this crisis, a solution based on the understanding that philosophy is actually fulfilled in a living relationship with men, and far from its reduction into a comprehensive system of thought. The third section will revolve around the Patočkian characterization of Socrates as a model of “spiritual man” and such characterization will be worked out through the existential dialectic that constitutes the “movement of life”. (shrink)

In this paper we will highlight the Hegelian heritage in Patočka and Ricœur’s thoughts. This heritage is particularly clear in their ideas of gift of self and of community bonding. The critical resumption of Hegel leads the two philosophers to discover some forms of recognition that overtake the struggle to the death, i.e. the two figures of the gift of self: the ceremonial gift and the authentic sacrifice. Patočka and Ricœur compare to Hegel also on the political thought. On one (...) side they agree with the idea of a conflictual origin of the community connections and of the institutions; on the other side they refuse every synthetic reconciliation, whether it is the hypostasis figure of the State or the absolute subjectivity. While preserving the tragic element of the history and of the historic human praxis, Patočka and Ricœur seem to analyze and overtake the Hegelian idea of struggle in the direction of a community connection which finds its foundation in the gift of self. (shrink)

My paper aims to elucidate the emergence of subjectivity from the interplay between living beings and their environment. This attempt to give account of becoming-subject within the life itself leads to a confrontation between the phenomenology of life pursued since at least two decades by Renaud Barbaras with Canguilhem´s philosophy of biology. It starts with a criticism of Merleau-Ponty’s and Patočka´s respective failures to overcome the contrast between the level of bare life and the level of human existence. In order (...) to answer such a prejudicial separation between unexamined life and self-reflected existence, I adopt in the second part a bio-centric perspective on human existence, inspired by Canguilhem and Guillaume Le Blanc, in order to re-evaluate the notion of life in terms of normative, expansive movement that both shapes the living being itself and individuates the elements on which it acts. The final part of the paper seeks to understand the emergence of subjectivity from ordinary life-challenges such as illness and experiences of vulnerability or fragility, thus bypassing the need for stipulating a self-referencing consciousness as a primary mode of self-disclosure. (shrink)

The phenomenon of birth is here to be presented as a crucial one, discreet though, into Merleau-Ponty and Patočka’s philosophy. So it deserves a confrontation of their respective thoughts. Both of them have radicalised Husserl’s phenomenology into a philosophy of birth. This phenomenological achievement includes an ontology of birth, which feeds an anthropology in a brand new way, presented in the following pages.