The aim of this article is to examine the problematic frontier that separates the phenomenology of the body and the phenomenology of animality. The main difficulty is to differentiate phenomenologically not only between embodiment and animality, but also between specifically human embodied experience and what is accessible to us through empathy in relation to the corporeality of the animal. I will tackle these questions by considering relevant textual material from the writings of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. On the one (...) hand, I will show that although embodiment and animality are convergent on the level of the naturalistic attitude in Husserl’s Ideas II, they are divergent as soon as we place ourselves in the personalistic attitude, where the body enters into a different conjunction—namely, with the idea of person and of the spiritual world. On the other hand, Heidegger claims that, in spite of the abysmal bodily kinship with the animal, there is an essential difference between the human body and the animal organism, thus opposing the tendencies to humanize the animal and to animalize the human. (shrink)

In this article, I will discuss the Husserlian phenomenology of animality, by focusing on several texts of the 1920s in which the animal is determined as an abnormal variation of the human being. My aim is to address the question of the abnormality of the animal by reintegrating it in its original context, which is Husserl’s theory of normality. I will sketch the general framework of this theory, its articulations and strata, in order to eventually raise some paradoxical issues, specifically (...) in relation to how the question of animality is interpreted through the couple normality/abnormality. (shrink)

The present article intends to show that genetic phenomenology, as conceived by Edmund Husserl, implies an essential biological dimension. In his later research manuscripts, from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl not only reflects on the conceivability of forms of intropathy regarding animal and plant bodies, based on dismantling reduction, but also on the embeddedness of the human monad in ontogenetic and phylogenetic generative becoming. On that basis, the article aims to locate the place of bio-generative phenomena within the field of (...) genetic analysis in the theories of monadic gradualism and of somatic anomalism. However, by taking into consideration that new attempts to approach biological generativity from a Husserlian perspective are only partly successful, the article ends with a delimitation of certain elements that require further elaboration, namely the investigation into the biological implications of monadology, the determination of forms of corporeal anomality, and the vindication of the notion of essential limit-phenomena. (shrink)

La cuestión del método en la filosofía temprana de Martin Heidegger ha sido objeto de estudio de varios trabajos académicos importantes. A pesar de un análisis profundo de su procedencia, operatividad, sentido, etc., la literatura académica no ha logrado destacar un aspecto fundamental de este método, a saber, su potencial filosófico independiente, esto es, su capacidad de ser usado para una reflexión filosófica que no se compromete con las investigaciones concretas realizadas por su autor. En este contexto, el presente artículo (...) persigue dos objetivos. Por un lado, se procura describir de manera clara y ordenada los aspectos metódicos de la fenomenología hermenéutica a partir de las motivaciones propias que le dan forma y, por otro lado, se busca fundamentar la posibilidad de un uso filosófico de este método para investigaciones independientes. (shrink)

Speaking about the influence Husserl had on his early thinking Heidegger later on always referred to Husserl's 'Logische Untersuchungen', emphasizing the attitude of critical distance he had towards the "Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie" and Husserl's transcendental phenomenology pointed out there. Nevertheless, as shown in this paper, it is evident that in 'Being an Time' Heidegger took over some essential issues from Husserl's later work. But it is also clear that he was also essentially changing their character.

Abstract It is widely recognized that Heidegger's analysis of Dasein outlines a novel dissolution of the epistemological problems of modern philosophy. However it has not been fully appreciated that this analysis presupposes a conception of human beings which radically separates them from all natural, animal life. Focusing on Heidegger's analysis of Mitsein it is argued that this separation prevents Heidegger from achieving a conception of human existence which avoids the distortions of the humanist tradition against which it recoils. Against Heidegger, (...) it is argued that a philosophically satisfactory conception of human existence must be more smoothly naturalistic. (shrink)

Is it possible to speak of a Husserlian phenomenology of the animal? In his phenomenological analyses, Husserl thematizes animals as a case of “abnormality” in order to investigate the subjectivity that constitutes the human world as a normal world. With respect to other perspectives—such as the Heideggerian one—which imply a drastic separation from animality, Husserl’s standpoint has the advantage of keeping a path of communication open between the phenomenological and the scientific investigation of the problem, in the multifarious forms taken (...) on today by the latter. However, what is the original contribution of phenomenology on this issue, in comparison with that of the empirical sciences? Phenomenology addresses the experience of lifeworld as its own field of activity and as the implicit ground for every scientific observation and reconstruction. Phenomenology, thus, provides a new approach to animal life, avoiding naive ontological assumptions about it. (shrink)

This article identifies already existing theoretical and methodological commonalities between evolutionary biology and phenomenology, concentrating specifically on their common pursuit of origins. It identifies in passing theoretical support from evolutionary biology for present-day concerns in philosophy, singling out Sartre’s conception of fraternity as an example. It anchors its analysis of the common pursuit of origins in Husserl’s consistent recognition of the grounding significance of Nature and in his consistent recognition of animate forms of life other than human. It enumerates and (...) exemplifies five basic errors of continental philosophers with respect to Nature, errors testifying to a philosophical fundamentalism that distorts the intricate interconnections and relationships of Nature in favor of a preferred knowledge rooted in ontological reductionism. It shows that to discover and appreciate the common ground, one must indeed study “the things themselves.”. (shrink)

La indagación husserliana sobre los animales constituye un importante aporte para pensar tanto la relación del hombre con la naturaleza como el vínculo entre la actividad y la pasividad de la conciencia. Existen dos direcciones de investigación: por una parte, aquellas que toman al nóema “animal” como tema de una descripción fenomenológica y, por otra, las que encuentran en la animalidad un momento en el desarrollo teleológico de la monadología trascendental.