Phaenomenologica – serie

The Origins of Husserl's Totalizing Act At noon on Monday, October 24th, 1887, Dr. Edmund G. Husserl defended the dissertation that would qualify him as a university lecturer at Halle. Entitled "On the Concept of Number," it was written under Carl Stumpf who, like Husserl, had been a student of Franz Brentano. In this, his first published philosophical work, Husserl sought to secure the foundations of mathematics by deriving its most fundamental concepts from psychical acts.! In the same year, Heinrich Hertz published an article entitled, "Con­ cerning an Influence of Ultraviolet Light on the Electrical Discharge." The article detailed his discovery of a new "relation between two entirely different forces," those of light and electricity. Hermann von Helmholtz, whose theory guided Hertz's initial research, called it the "most important physical discovery of the century," and Hertz became an immediate sensation. He lectured on his discovery in 1889 before a general session of the German Association meeting in Heidelberg. In this lecture that, as he wrote beforehand to Emil Cohn, he was deter­ mined should not be "entirely unintelligible to the laity," Hertz explained that light ether and electro-magnetic forces were interdependent. He went on to tell his audience that they need not expect their senses to grant them access to these phenomena. Indeed, he said, the latter are not only insusceptible of sense perception, but are false from the standpoint of the senses.

The principal differences between the contemporary philosophic traditions which have come to be known loosely as analytic philosophy and phenomenology are all related to the central issue of the interplay between predication and perception. Frege's critique of psychologism has led to the conviction within the analytic tradition that philosophy may best defend rationality from relativism by detaching logic and semantics from all dependence on subjective intuitions. On this interpretation, logical analysis must account for the relationship of sense to reference without having recourse to a description of how we identify particulars through their perceived features. Husserl' s emphasis on the priority and objective import of perception, and on the continuity between predicative articulations and perceptual discriminations, has yielded the conviction within the phenomenological tradition that logical analysis should always be comple­ mented by description of pre-predicative intuitions. These methodological differences are related to broader differences in the philosophic projects of analysis and phenomenology. The two traditions have adopted markedly divergent positions in reaction to the critique of ancient and medieval philosophy initiated by Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes at the beginning of the modern era. The analytic approach generally endorses the modern preference for calculative rationality and remains suspicious of pre-modern categories, such as formal causality and eidetic intuition. Its goal is to give an account of human intelligence that is compatible with the modern interpretation of nature as an ensemble of quantifiable entities and relations.

Fragestellung und Losungsansatz der folgenden Untersuchungen 2 HUSSERL UND COHN Die vorliegende Arbeit vergleicht die Position des neukantianischen Dialektikers Jonas Cohn mit derjenigen des Phanomenologen Edmund Hus- serl. Bevor auf die thematischen Zielsetzungen der einzelnen Kapitel einge- gangen wird, seien einige Bemerkungen vorausgeschickt, die zeigen sollen, inwiefern einem solchen Vergleich Bedeutung zukommt. Grundsatzlich ist ein Vergleich philosophischer Positionen nur dann durchfuhrbar, wenn in irgend einer Hinsicht eine Gemeinsamkeit vorliegt. Sinnvoll wird ein Vergleich nur dann sein, wenn sich die Relata nicht in je- der Beziehung entsprechen und wenn die Grunde fur bestehende Diver- genzen und Konvergenzen durchsichtig gemacht werden konnen. Dabei kann, je nach Problemlage, mehr ein philosophiehistorischer oder ein kri- tisch-systematischer Blickwinkel den Vergleich bestimmen. Die vorliegende Arbeit legt den Schwerpunkt auf den letzteren Aspekt. Dies liegt nicht nur daran, dass letztlich philosophische Forschungen, an der Sa- che orientiert, sich argumentierend stets um das bemuhen sollten, woruber Ubereinstimmung herrschen kann.Wenn dem nicht so ware, bliebe alle Philosophiegeschichte bloss eine Aneinanderreihung beliebig austauschbarer Positionen. Gerade weil es aber eine Vielfalt philosophischer Ausgangs- punkte und Methoden gibt, sind die Philosophen herausgefordert, zu mogli- chen Gemeinsamkeiten Stellung zu nehmen -und dies auf eine Weise, die fur den anderen nachvollziehbar ist. Daruber hinaus ist aber gerade im Falle Husserls und Cohns eine systematisch-kritische Betrachtungsart angemes- sen.

How is society possible? In Die Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaflen und die transzendentale Phiinomenoiogie, I Edmund Husserl is found with a pathos send­ ing out pleas for belief ("Glauben") in his transcendental philosophy and tran­ scendental ego. The traditional idea of theoretical reflection instituted in ancient Greece as the suspension of all taken for granted worldly interests has, through a partial realization of itself, forsaken itself in the one-sided development of the objective mathematical-natural sciences as they themselves have become so taken for granted, with the method and validity of their results held as so self-evident, that they appear as resting self-sufficiently on their own grounds, while pursuing an increasingly abstract mathematization of nature. The sciences are left without a foundation and their meaning within the world consequently unintelligible, while their objective and valid abstract concepts continually tend to supercede the everyday life-world and render it questionable. In the end, these of belief in the everyday life-world or reflective evolving and exchanging attitudes doubt (science) ultimately leads to a disbelief in both, and a search in one direction for idol leaders and in the other for the cult of experience. This collapse of Western belief systems becomes particularly threatening as it turns into nihilism which is the development of beliefs in societal forms which employ 2 natural and social science for the liquidation of humanity and nature. Society starts becoming impossible.

Despite, or perhaps better by virtue of, its very brevity, Appearance and Sense is a difficult text to read and understand, particularly if we make the attempt independently of Husserl's Ideas I. This is certainly at least in part owing to the intent behind Shpet's work. On the one hand it strives to present Husserl' s latest views to a Russian philosophical audience not yet conversant with and, in all likelihood, not even aware of, his transcendental idealist turn. With this aim any reading would perforce be exacting. Yet, on the other hand, Shpet has made scant concession to his public. Indeed, his text is even more compressed, especially in the crucial areas dealing with the sense-bestowing feature of consciousness, than Husserl' s own. For all that, Shpet has not bequeathed to us simply an abbreviated paraphrase nor a selective commentary on Ideas I, although at many points it is just that. Rather, the text on the whole is a critical engagement with Husserl' s thought, where Shpet among other things refonnulates or at least presents Husserl's phenomenology from the perspective of hoping to illuminate a traditional philosophical problem in a radical manner. Since Husserl's text was published only in 1913 and Shpet's appeared sometime during 1914, the latter must have been conceived, thought through, and written in remarkable haste. Indeed, Shpet had already finished a first draft and was busy with a revision of it by the end of 1913.

The question of relativism is a perennial one, and as fundamental and far­ reaching as the question of truth itself. Is truth absolute and universal, the same everywhere and for everyone? Or is truth historically, culturally, biologically, or otherwise relative, varying from one epoch or species to another? Although the issues surrounding relativism have attracted especially intense interest of late, they continue to spark heated controversies and to pose problems lacking an obvious resolution. On the side of one prevalent form of relativism, it is argued that we must finally recognize the historical and cultural contingency of our available means of cognition, and therefore abandon as naIve the absolute conception of truth dear to traditional philosophy. According to this line of thinking, even if there were univer­ sally valid principles, knowledge of them would not be possible for us, and thus an absolute conception of truth must be rejected in light of the demands of critical epistemology. However, when truth is accordingly relativized to some contingent subjective cognitive background, new difficulties arise. One of the most infamous of these is the logical inconsistency of the resulting thesis of relativism itself. Yet an even more serious problem is that the relativization of truth makes truth itself contingent, thereby undermining the motivation for preferring one belief or value to another, or even to its opposite.

Um die Sache der Phanomenologie handelt es sich in den folgenden Meditationen. Sie sind aus der Uberzeugung des Verfassers erwach- sen, dass die phanomenologische Philosophie imJahre 1990nochetwas zu sagen hat, etwas Bedeutsames. Sie ist keineswegs die sagenhafte "Philosophia perennis". Es ist auch nicht so, dass sie die Losung der Probleme aller Philosophen und philosophischen Stromungen zu bie- ten hatte. Abersiespieltnochstetseine unersetzliche Rolleimintellek- tuellen Gesprach unseres Jahrhunderts. Sie verdient es nicht, zu dem alten Eisen geworfen zu werden, das lediglich als Material fur histori- sche Betrachtungen Interesse erregt. Ist im produktiven Denken derer, die der phanomenologischen Be- wegung zugerechnet werden, eine gewisse Erschlaffung eingetreten? "Die Phanomenologen werden sich etwas einfallen lassen mussen", sagte unlangst ein Bekannter. Dieser Rat, diese Mahnung sind jedoch ein wenig einseitig. Das bessere Neue soll ja jeweils aus dem guten Alten erwachsen. Eine Besinnung auf das bereits Geleistete sollte daher allem "Einfallen-lassen" vorhergehen.Die phanomenologische Bewegunghat im Laufe ihrerEntwicklung mancherlei wertvolleDenk- anstosse hervorgebracht, die bisher nicht in ihrer philosophischen Be- deutsamkeit erkannt wurden. An diese Denkmotive ware zunachst anzuknupfen. Dies gilt vor allem in Bezug auf den Initiator der phanomenologi- schen Philosophie Edmund Husserl. Wahrend einige seiner Schriften bekannt, ja uberbekannt sind, bleiben manche seiner intimen Uberle- gungen unbeachtet. Sie fugen sich nicht in das, was man mit einem gewissen Recht die "offizielle Doktrin" nennen konnte. Der Verfasser wird bemuht sein, aufwichtiges Gedankengut Husserls aufmerksam zu machen und es zu verwerten.

Um die Sache der Phanomenologie handelt es sich in den folgenden Meditationen. Sie sind aus der Uberzeugung des Verfassers erwach- sen, dass die phanomenologische Philosophie imJahre 1990nochetwas zu sagen hat, etwas Bedeutsames. Sie ist keineswegs die sagenhafte "Philosophia perennis". Es ist auch nicht so, dass sie die Losung der Probleme aller Philosophen und philosophischen Stromungen zu bie- ten hatte. Abersiespieltnochstetseine unersetzliche Rolleimintellek- tuellen Gesprach unseres Jahrhunderts. Sie verdient es nicht, zu dem alten Eisen geworfen zu werden, das lediglich als Material fur histori- sche Betrachtungen Interesse erregt. Ist im produktiven Denken derer, die der phanomenologischen Be- wegung zugerechnet werden, eine gewisse Erschlaffung eingetreten? "Die Phanomenologen werden sich etwas einfallen lassen mussen", sagte unlangst ein Bekannter. Dieser Rat, diese Mahnung sind jedoch ein wenig einseitig. Das bessere Neue soll ja jeweils aus dem guten Alten erwachsen. Eine Besinnung auf das bereits Geleistete sollte daher allem "Einfallen-lassen" vorhergehen.Die phanomenologische Bewegunghat im Laufe ihrerEntwicklung mancherlei wertvolleDenk- anstosse hervorgebracht, die bisher nicht in ihrer philosophischen Be- deutsamkeit erkannt wurden. An diese Denkmotive ware zunachst anzuknupfen. Dies gilt vor allem in Bezug auf den Initiator der phanomenologi- schen Philosophie Edmund Husserl. Wahrend einige seiner Schriften bekannt, ja uberbekannt sind, bleiben manche seiner intimen Uberle- gungen unbeachtet. Sie fugen sich nicht in das, was man mit einem gewissen Recht die "offizielle Doktrin" nennen konnte. Der Verfasser wird bemuht sein, aufwichtiges Gedankengut Husserls aufmerksam zu machen und es zu verwerten.

This volume sheds light upon the omnipresent discussion of 'crisis' in our times by returning to the thought of the two philosophers upon which much of this talk is consciously (or unconsciously) based, namely, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. By tracing the narrative of the 'crisis' from Husserl's early treatment of arithmetic and logic through to Heidegger's meditations on the essence of technology, the author not only proposes a unified reading of both Husserl's and Heidegger's work, but points to important elements of the often underplayed continuity between these phenomenologists. At the same time, the concept of 'crisis' also illustrates the difference between Husserl and Heidegger. Though both define the crisis as one of 'forgetting', and both view this 'forgetting' as a matter of philosophical responsibility, essential divergence emerges in their interpretation of this phenomenon. Three questions uncover these points of convergence and divergence. First, does not the 'forgetfulness' reveal itself as a type of felix culpa, a necessary decay that now reveals itself in a positive light, indeed, as the precondition of history itself?Second, what is presupposed when the subjects is held responsible for forgetting? Third, what are the political consequences of such 'crisis'-philosophy? This last question allows access not only to hidden political aspects of Husserl's thought, but opens a further perspective for considering Heidegger's overt political activities.

What follows attempts to synthesize Husserl's social ethics and to integrate the themes of this topic into his larger philosophical concerns. Chapter I proceeds with the hypothesis that Husser! believed that all of life could be examined and lived by the transcendental phenomenologist, and therefore action was not something which one did isolated from one's commitment to being philosophical within the noetic-noematic field. Therefore besides attempting to be clear about the meaning of the reduction it relates the reduction to ethical life. Chapter II shows that the agent, properly understood, i. e. , the person, is a moral theme, indeed, reflection on the person involves an ethical reduction which leads into the essentials of moral categoriality, the topic of Chapter IV. Chapter III mediates the transcendental ego, individual person, and the social matrix by showing how the common life comes about and what the constitutive processes and ingredients of this life are. It also shows how the foundations of this life are imbued with themes which adumbrate moral categoriality discussed in Chapter IV. The final Chapters, V and VI, articulate the communitarian ideal, "the godly person of a higher order," emergent in Chapters II, III and IV, in terms of social-political and theological specifications of what this "godly" life looks like.

The articles in this book display the originality and creativity of Eros and Eris, and their important role in the history of our culture, particularly in the history of philosophy and its role in today's systematic philosophy. Although these contributions to a hermeneutical phenomenology in this compilation are organized in a linear-chronological order (treating Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Cusanus, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas), they all carry out their own hermeneutical movement in the history of philosphy on the basis of a commitment with out life, here and now, and a thematic, professional interest. Among the contributors are: R. Bernasconi, J. Colette, J.F. Courtine, L. Dupre, Kl. Dusing, J. Greisch, J. Kockelmans, P.-J. Labarriere and G. Jarczyk, E. Levinas, Al. Lingis, J.-L. Marion, O. Poggeler, W. Richardson, P. Ricoeur, J. Sallis, M. Theunissen and S. IJsseling.

Reconstructs the "Phaenomenologie der Instinke" from published works and the unpublished manuscripts of Husserl. It shows the implications of this text for the system of phenomenology, concluding that transcendental phenomenology can no longer be considered a one-sided philosophy of consciousness.

Merleau-Ponty in contemporary perspective: this was the theme of the conference at the Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K. U. L. ) from 29 November to 1 December 1991. Thirty years after Merleau­ Ponty's untimely death, it seemed appropriate to bring together scholars from Europe and from the United States of America to reappraise his philosophy. In fact, a significant body of scholarship has emerged which would seem to attest to the continuing importance of his thought for a variety of disciplines within the humanities, the social sciences, and the philosophy of nature. In the present volume, Gary Brent Madison addresses the issue whether Merleau-Ponty can be considered to be a classical philosopher. The fact that his work is one of the highlights of the phenomenological tradition and is of continuing inspiration for researchers in various domains seems to justify that claim. Yet, it is the feeling of many of the contributors to this volume that the so-called "second Merleau-Ponty" is still not really known. The unfinished state of The Visible and the Invisible and the cryptic condition of many of the "Working Notes" may be responsible for that. More research should be done, to uncover "the unsaid" of Merleau-Ponty. lowe to a remark of Paul Ricoeur in his introduction to the work of G. B. Madison, La Phenomenologie de Merleau-Ponty. Une recherche des limites de la conscience (Paris, Klincksieck, 1973, p.

This book is a monograph study of Ingarden's investigations into existence. Its aim is to give a clear and formally precise account, as well as a critical evaluation, of his contributions. In the first chapter the basic principles of Ingarden's ontology are reformulated and, contrary to Ingarden, a nominalistic point of view is adopted. Chapters 2 to 4 give a reconstruction of the arguments for the following Ingardenian theses: (1) Existence is not a property; (2) The concept of existence is a principle sui generis of classification; (3)"exist(s)"is an equivocal word. On the basis of this critical doxography Chapters 5 and 6 provide a systematic examination of the Ingardenian position, by confronting it with the results of analytic philosophy (such as early Husserl, Frege, Russell, Moore, Meinong, Bergmann, Hochberg, Castaneda).

In the sixth Logical Investigation, Husserl defines meaning, objectivity, and knowledge by appealing to "syntheses of fulfilment": each act of conscious­ ness has a meaning-intention whereby it anticipates a range of fulfilling intuitions, whose ongoing synthesis would identify intended objects in the face of their changing appearances. Synthesis is essential to phenomenological description. But what does it mean to say that one experience is combined with others? This monograph is a speculative-exegetical Husserlian analysis of the ground, the mechanisms, and the results of synthesis. Focusing on Husserl's Logical Investigations, I argue that synthesizing consciousness must be a self-propelling, self-explicating system of interpretative acts driven by ongoing forward and backward references, grounding its structures as it proceeds, and positing its origins as that which must have been given "in advance". To this end, I develop a dialectical reading of Husserl's largely untreated category of "referring backward" (zurückweisen). Treatments of Husserl's concept of synthesis have tended to focus on Husserl's later work on passive synthesis. By drawing out the centrality of the concept of synthesis in the Logical Investigations, I show how synthesis is at the foundation of intentionality as such, and also indicate the continuity of descriptive categories that run through both the early and the late Husserl. The Introduction to this study schematizes the modem history of the concept of synthesis, and reviews the secondary literature on Husserl's concept of synthesis.

Adolf Reinach was one of the leading figures of the Munich and Göttingen circles of phenomenology, and Husserl's first real co-worker. Although his writings are highly original and remarkably clear, Reinach's tragic death in the First World War prevented him from formulating a definitive statement of his phenomenology, leaving his name virtually unknown to all but a small circle. In his ground-breaking study, Judgment and Sachverhalt, DuBois shows how Reinach succeeds in developing a realist ontology and epistemology based on rigorous argumentation and phenomenological elucidation. Drawing from numerous texts and the developments of Reinach's students and colleagues - Roman Ingarden, Alexander Pfänder and Dietrich von Hildebrand above all - DuBois presents, refines and defends Reinach's `phenomenological realism'. Confrontations of Reinach's theories of states of affairs, concepts and speech acts with the work of contemporary authors like Chisholm and Searle allow readers to evaluate Reinach's philosophy, not only in the light of the later developments of Husserl, but also in the light of certain Anglo-American developments.

For both continental and analytic styles of philosophy, the thought of Martin Heidegger must be counted as one of the most important influences in contemporary philosophy. In this book, essays by internationally noted scholars, ranging from David B. Allison to Slavoj Zizek, honour the interpretive contributions of William J. Richardson's pathbreaking Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. The essays move from traditional phenomenology to the idea of essential (another) thinking, the questions of translation and existential expressions of the turn of Heidegger's thought, the intersection of politics and language, the philosophic significance of Jacques Lacan, and several essays on science and technology. All show the influence of Richardson's first study. A valuable emphasis appears in Richardson's interpretation of Heidegger's conception of die Irre, interpreted as Errancy, set in its current locus in a discussion of Heidegger's debacle with the political in his involvement with National Socialism.

This text contains a translation and interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy, deemed to be one of the most original of modern times, opening other perspectives of understanding and application.

This work analyzes the transcendental relevance of intersubjectivity, arguing that an intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophy can already be found in phenomenology, and especially in Husserl. Husserl eventually came to believe that an analysis of transcendental subjectivity was a "conditio sine qua non" for a phenomenological philosophy. Drawing on both published and unpublished manuscripts, the book examines his reasons for this conviction and delivers a detailed analysis of his radical and complex concept of intersubjectivity, showing that precisely his reflections on transcendental intersubjectivity are capable of clarifying his phenomenological core-concepts, thus making possible a new understanding of his philosophy. Against this background, the book then attempts to establish the extent to which the phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity can contribute to the current discussions of intersubjectivity. This is achieved through a systematic confrontation with the language-pragmatical positions of Apel and Habermas.

Following the thematic divisions of the first three volumes of Alfred Schutz's Collected Papers into The Problem of Social Reality, Studies in Social Theory and Phenomenological Philosophy, this fourth volume contains drafts of unfinished writings, drafts of published writings, translations of essays previously published in German, and some largely unpublished correspondence. The drafts of published writings contain important material omitted from the published versions, and the unfinished writings offer important insights into Schutz's otherwise unpublished ideas about economic and political theory as well as the theory of law and the state. In addition, a large group contains Schutz's reflections on problems in phenomenological philosophy, including music, which both supplement and add new dimensions to his published thought. All together, the writings in this volume cover Schutz's last 15 years in Europe as well as manuscripts written after his arrival in the USA in 1939. Audience: Students and scholars of phenomenology, social theory and the human sciences in general.

Ce travail ambitionne inaugurer la thématisation d'une phénoménologie de la perception chez Heidegger. En prenant le contre-pied de bien des interprétations récentes concernant de questions cruciales de l'ontologie heideggerienne, notamment celles de l'articulation temporelle du présent et de la distinction entre Zuhandenheit et Vorhandenheit, il défend la thèse inattendue que la temporalité de la perception sert de fil conducteur de l'ontologie heideggerienne du temps, dans la mesure où elle impose la scission de la temporalité en modes authentiques et modes inauthentiques. Notre commentaire serré sur les textes de l'époque de Marbourg fera apparaître que l'opposition entre la temporalité authentique de la perception `naturelle', identifiée positivement à la circonspection, et la temporalité inauthentique de la perception `théorique' ne résume pas simplement la critique heideggerienne de Husserl, mais contribue, avant tout, à ouvrir un espace critique dans la problématique phénoménologique de la perception dans son évolution de Husserl jusqu'à Merleau-Ponty. This book claims to inaugurate the thematization of a phenomenology of perception in Heidegger. Running counter to many recent interpretations concerning crucial questions of Heideggerian ontology (particularly the temporal articulation of present and the distinction between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit), it defends the unexpected thesis that the temporality of perception serves as a conductor of the Heideggerian ontology of time, by splitting temporality into authentic and unauthentic modes. Concise commentary on the texts of the Marburg period show that the opposition between the authentic temporality of `natural' perception (positively identified as circumspection) and the unauthentic temporality of `theoretical' perception does not merely summarize the entireHeideggerian critique of Husserl but, above all, helps to open a decisive path in the phenomenological account of perception in its evolution from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty.

This work employs Husserl's concept of responsibility as a guiding clue for the clarification of the self-understanding of phenomenology as a `rigorous science'. Originally an appeal for radical accountability and ultimate foundation in the field of philosophical theory, Husserl's concept of responsibility culminated finally in a philosophy of human self-renewal. This philosophical telos of ultimate self-responsibility, which was also fuelled by a striving towards cultural reform, was realised for Husserl in a transcendental field of transparent self-evidence, linguistic univocity and transhistorical ideality. With reference to J. Derrida's reading of Husserl, the author shows, that the elements singled out as those for which phenomenology cannot assume responsibility - exteriority, passivity and contingency - are not only delivered over to the interminable process of being worked upon, but remain rather constitutive for the endeavour of phenomenologising itself. This becomes manifest in the inevitable linguisticality of phenomenology, its `secondary enworlding', as it is conceived in E. Fink's project of the VIth Cartesian Meditation. In the context of this linguisticality it is the explosive power of the metaphor, which vouches for the openness, that fulfils the mission of phenomenology to carry in its innermost nature responsibility for a space of transgression.