Husserl's phenomenology has often been criticized for its Cartesian, fundamentalistic, idealistic and solipsistic nature. Today, this widespread interpretation must be regarded as being outdated, since it gives but a very partial and limited picture of Husserl's thinking. The continuing publication of Husserl's research manuscripts has disclosed analyses which have made it necessary to revise and modify a number of standard readings. This anthology documents the recent development in Husserl research. It contains contributions from a number of young phenomenologists, who have (...) all defended their dissertation on Husserl in the nineties, and it presents a new type of interpretation which emphasizes the dimensions of facticity, passivity, alterity and ethics in Husserl's thinking. (shrink)

This paper is situated in the broader context of an examination of the relationship between East and West from the particular perspective of our experience of the body. It is therefore based on two specific traditions, one belonging to the East - a particular strand of Tibetan Buddhism - the other to the West - the Orthodox tradition of the heart prayer - in order to try to show the similarities and differences in their approach to the body and attempt (...) to compare them in the light of their respective ‘phenomenology’. In this sense phenomenology, as a western philosophical discipline, plays a pivotal role in this comparison and hopefully helps to bring new light to bear on this investigation. The early Eastern church evokes the concrete experience of the body as a holy body and sees it as an exemplary route to deification via the mystical practice of the ‘heart prayer’ (hesychasm). As regards Tibetan Buddhism, it advocates the gradual experience of the body as a rainbow body, defined as a path towards illumination, by means of ‘sitting meditation’ which brings liberation in bardo. In order to carry out this analysis, I shall refer to two recent books that are authorities in both these fields, Corps de mort et de gloire, Petite introduction à une théopoétique du corps by O. Clément and Rainbow Painting: A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion by Tulku Urguyen Rinpoché. (shrink)

This book searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience. The spirit of this book is "pragmatic" and relies on a Husserlian phenomenology primarily understood as a "method" of exploring our experience. The authors do not aim at a neo-Kantian "a priori" new theory of experience but instead they describe a concrete activity: how we examine what we live through, how we "become aware" of our own mental life. The range of experiences of (...) which we can become aware is vast: all the normal dimensions of human life (perception, motion, memory, imagination, speech, everyday social interactions), cognitive events that can be precisely defined as tasks in laboratory experiments (e.g., a protocol for visual attention), but also manifestations of mental life more fraught with meaning (dreaming, intense emotions, social tensions, altered states of consciousness). The central assertion in this work is that this immanent ability is habitually ignored or at best practiced unsystematically, that is to say, blindly. Exploring human experience amounts to developing and cultivating this basic ability through specific training. Only a hands-on, non-dogmatic approach can lead to progress, and that is what animates this book. (Series B). (shrink)

This volume offers perspectives on the theme of surprise crossing philosophical, phenomenological, scientific, psycho-physiology, psychiatric, and linguistic boundaries. The main question it examines is whether surprise is an emotion. It uses two main theoretical frameworks to do so: psychology, in which surprise is commonly considered a primary emotion, and philosophy, in which surprise is related to passions as opposed to reason. The book explores whether these views on surprise are satisfying or sufficient. It looks at the extent to which surprise (...) is also a cognitive phenomenon and primitively embedded in language, and the way in which surprise is connected to personhood, the interpersonal, and moral emotions. Many philosophers of different traditions, a number of experimental studies conducted over the last decades, recent works in linguistics, and ancestral wisdom testimonies refer to surprise as a crucial experience of both rupture and openness in bodily and inner life. However, surprise is a theme that has not been dealt with directly and systematically in philosophy, in the sciences, in linguistics, or in spiritual traditions. This volume accomplishes just that. (shrink)

"Dans cette thèse, je démontre que la tradition phénoménologique développe une redéfinition ontologique de l'individuation du sujet fondée sur la notion d'intentionnalité opérante. J'explique comment cette redéfinition offre une nouvelle approche de la vision du monde et des relations intersubjectives qui ne serait ni réflexive ni représentative. Néanmoins, cette configuration montre le développement parallèle de l'individuation du sujet et de ses expressions, grâce à une ontologie relationnelle, aux implications épistémologiques et éthiques. Analysant la phénoménologie de Husserl, je mets au jour (...) le rapport entre individuation et intentionnalité en montrant que cette relation permet de repenser les problèmes de l'ipséité et de la différence (1). A la lumière de l'analyse heideggérienne du Dasein et de la description merleau-pontienne du corps propre, je montre alors que l'individuation doit être conçue comme un processus permanent de différenciation qui ne repose plus sur le schéma hylémorphique ou sur la représentation cartésienne du sujet (2). Je décris le type de mouvement ontologique qui caractérise l'individuation, en m'appuyant sur Patočka et Simondon, afin de montrer la corrélation de la manifestation du monde et de l'individuation du sujet (3). Celle-ci suppose la nécessité paradoxale de la contingence afin de pouvoir penser l'individuation comme ouverture radicale, modelée par une certaine forme d'altérité. En m'appuyant sur l'ontologie tardive de Merleau-Ponty, la psychanalyse et l'herméneutique, je cherche ensuite à dévoiler la structure analogique - mais non représentationaliste - du sensible et à repenser la corrélation à la lumière du processus d'individuation éprouvé par le sujet (4). Rendant compte de la généralité et de la générativité du mouvement charnel, je démontre pour finir que cette structure analogique permet d'élaborer des conceptions de l'individuation et de la réflexivité requérant moins la mort du sujet, comme dans l'optique poststructuraliste, que sa métamorphose et son advenue. Cette thèse conclut en ouvrant des perspectives utiles à la compréhension de la vie, dans les recherches épistémologiques contemporaines (5), et à l'examen éthique de nos visions du monde et de la responsabilité qui incombe au sujet, dans l'épreuve contingente de ses désirs (6). " --. (shrink)

Searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience.

The goal of this article is to put to the fore the importance and the relevance of the “second persons” in the framework of the relational ethics where the person has being related as a primacy over the individual as an isolated subject. While using the psychiatric team of an emergency unit (E.R.I.C.) as a leading thread we seek to show the anthropology of being related, which underlines the practical ethics of such emergency team.

For the most part, attention occurs as a theme adjacent to much more topical and innovatingly operating acts: first, the intentional act, which represents a destitution of the abstract opposition between subject and object and which paves the way for a detailed analysis of our perceptive horizontal subjective life; second, the reductive act, specified in a psycho-phenomenological sense as a reflective conversion of the way I am looking at things; third, the genetic method understood as a genealogy of logic based (...) on our experiential affective pre-discursive world-life. In this respect, here are some of the leading questions of my investigation: What are the differences and the proximities between these methods and attentional activity? Why is the latter not put to the fore as a method? To what extent is this secondary part played by attention linked to the constitution of phenomenology as opposed to psychology (for which attention is a central theme), and what does it mean for the impossibility of phenomenology to freeing itself completely from psychology? (shrink)

How can phenomenology describe an object as "the political"? The article endeavours to show how it is possible to apprehend such a theme from a _transcendental<D> perspective. After going through the methodic difficulties of the Cartesian way, which involves an egology intersubjectively extended to the monadology, the essay analyzes the non-Cartesian ways. Indeed, both of them pave the way for a political based on a plural structure. The way through the life-world as well as the way through psychology succeed in (...) depicting the political, either as living sociality or as the play between ethical co-attitudes. In each case, the reduction operates in a specific manner, either as a pure Cartesian bracketing, as a retrocession to social originality or as a nonparticipating in the world-interests. Nevertheless, only the way through psychology reaches the political at a strict transcendental level, whereas the way through the life-world always runs the risk of falling back. (shrink)

Le questionnement phénoménologique portant sur la sexuation, la différence sexuelle et la relation érotique est assurément ancien : au § 55 de la Krisis, à un moment où il s’interroge sur « le domaine des problèmes transcendantaux, Husserl soulève « le problème des sexes (das Problem der Geschlechter) » (Hua VI, p. 192, trad. p. 214) », et ses manuscrits de recherche montrent qu’il avait commencé à s’attaquer à ce problème – par exemple lorsque, dans les années vingt déjà, il (...) souligne combien... (shrink)

La surprise est une question qui n’a semble-t-il guère sollicité l’attention des philosophes. Trop ordinaire, trop anecdotique : minimale. À y regarder de plus près, on découvre qu’une foule d’auteurs issus de traditions philosophiques différentes voire opposées s’y sont intéressés, qu’il s’agisse d’Aristote, de Descartes, de Smith, de Peirce, Dewey, Heidegger, Ricœur ou Maldiney, sans compter certaines formules saisissantes des cognitivistes comme Davidson ou Dennett. Bref, il y a un problèm...

le statut de l'intersubjectivité comme altérité à soi chez Husserl Natalie Depraz. REMERCIEMENTS À Jean-François Courtine tout d'abord, je tiens à exprimer ma très vive gratitude pour la confiance qu'il m'a témoignée en me donnant ...

Context: The use of first-person micro-phenomenological interviews and their productive interaction with third-person physiological data is a challenging and pressing issue in order to offer an effective and fruitful application of Varela’s neurophenomenological hypothesis. Problem: We aim at offering a generative method of analysis of first-person micro-phenomenological interviews using third-person physiological data. Our challenge is to describe this generative first-person analysis with the third-person physiological framework rather than put Varela’s hypothesis into practice in a generative way (as we did in (...) another paper. Method: The present contribution is a first pioneering study as far as the exposition of such an interactive generative methodology is concerned. It is also a new issue insofar as it deals with a case study, surprise in depression, that has not been thoroughly dealt with so far, either in philosophy or in psychopathology. Results: We show that the analysis of first-person data is an intrinsic generative one, insofar as new refined categories and multifarious circular micro- and macro-processes were discovered in the very process of analyzing. They provide the initial structural generic third-person description of surprise inherited both from philosophical phenomenological a priori categories and from the experimental startle setting with a refined micro-segmentation of the dynamic of the experience. Implications: Our article could be of interest to neurophenomenologists looking for an effective application and to researchers in quest of a method of analysis of first-person data. The present limitations are due to the still preliminary data-results we need to complete. Constructivist content: The article is directly linked to Varela’s neurophenomenological program and aims at extending and reforming it with a cardio-phenomenological approach. Keywords: First-person micro-phenomenological interviews, surprise, generative analysis of first-person data, depression, cardio-phenomenology, generative categories. (shrink)

Cardiophenomenology aims at refining the neuro-phenomenological approach created by F. Varela as a new paradigm, jointly based on Husserl’s a priori dynamics of the living present and an experiment on anticipatory time-dynamics of visual motor perception. In order to do so, we will situate the paradigm of neurophenomenology at the cardio-vascular level, focusing on the emotional dynamics of lived experience and thus refining the dialogue, more precisely, the generative mutual constraints between first- and third-person analysis. In this article we present (...) the theoretical hypothesis of cardiophenomenology, which places the bodily-emotional heartsystem at its core, as an intrinsic part of the cognitive system. The latter therefore needs to be enlarged in order to include an enactive embodied cardiac-affective dimension. Here we present five main arguments for the necessary inclusion of the bodily-emotional heartsystem in the cognitive system: first, two pragmatic operational arguments, then three theoretical ones. A direct methodological-pragmatic consequence is the actual operativity of the generative mutual constraints based on an experiential -experimental continuity of the embodied cardiac-affective fold inherent in the subject. (shrink)

I would like to show here that Varela, besides being a scientist and a Buddhist practitioner, also has the stature of a philosopher. In order to do so, I chose to illuminate his thought in the light of a concept that he did not use much, at least at the beginning, but which constitutes the cornerstone of his philosophy. It is the concept of surprise. I will show first how surprise is at the core of what I call his 'Valence' (...) article; time, affect, and intersubjectivity being the main coordinates of surprise. Then I will prove how the structural concepts of autopoiesis, enaction, and co-generativity are all supported by surprise as a dynamic model. In parallel, I will indicate how some seemingly side concepts (I call 'operative'), such as creation, novelty, unpredictibility, openness, and otherness, are actually key candidates for demonstrating the relevance of Varela as a philosopher of surprise....the nature of the self is precisely its non-findability. There is nothing to grasp that would make persons and phenomena what they are (Sanscrit: anatman; Tibetan: bdag med gnyis)... The usual translation of anatman is 'non-self', or 'emptiness of self'. However, this is again too close to the original Buddhist language... For the practitioner, anatman is manifest, experienced as superabundant: it is a nonknowledge that holds a host of surprises. (Varela, 2000/2017, p. 134). (shrink)

’. . . through the epoche, the gaze of the philosopher in truth first becomes fully free. . . . [F]ree of the strongest and most universal, and at the same time most hidden, internal bond, namely, of the pre-givenness of the world.’ This paper is concerned with the method of phenomenological reduction understood as a disciplined embodied practice.

In this paper, I have a twofold aim: First I wish to show to what extent the Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity can be relevant for contemporary empirical research and for ancestral wisdom traditions, both in their experiences and in their conceptual tools; and secondly I intend to rely on some empirical results and experiential mystical/practical reports in order to bring about some more refined phenomenological descriptions first provided by Husserl. The first aim will be the main concern here, while the (...) second will only be broached by way of initial steps towards further development. -/- I will proceed in two stages: in the first place I will give some evidence for Husserl's relevance by giving an account of his original conceptions of (a) egoic subjectivity, (b) genetic phenomenology, and (c) lived empathy. In the second place, my purpose is to indicate how much Husserl's view on infants/children, animals/ beasts, mad people/the insane and aliens/foreigners/strangers may be of some interest for scientific empirical conceptions and for practical paths of spiritual self-development. In so doing, I hope to be able (1) to confirm the accuracy of Husserl's own intuitions and analysis, and (2) to suggest some refinements in the way Husserl described such experiences. -/- Throughout this paper I will focus on two main Husserlian discoveries: (1) subjectivity is from the very start intersubjectivity; (2) infants, animals, the insane and aliens are subjects in a full sense, precisely because they are from the very beginning always already intersubjective subjects; besides, they are limit-subjectivities, who compel me in a kind of feedback to enlarge and to deepen my own subjectivity. (shrink)

Introduction Chez Husserl, la surprise est rare, tant est courante et insistante la concordance synonyme de désir de sens et d’identification de l’objet à connaître. C’est cette pulsion de connaissance que l’on retrouve dans la visée de « remplissement » du sens qu’est l’intentionnalité et la téléologie qui lui est inhérente. Elle manifeste à plein le souci du fondateur de faire droit sans équivoque à la primauté de la compréhension sur le non-sens, ou encore de la satisfaction sur la frustra...

I won’t here sketch out completely the contentions of all phenomenologists about the question of Europe, what would rather refer to a book-project. By taking over some of the statements, I will rather try to situate Max Scheler’s original contention, while showing, to begin with, how he concurs with some aspects of Husserl’s pionneer-conception, but also strongly disagree on some others. As a second step, the map of the contentions of the different phenomenologists on Europe will allow to draw a (...) fairly enough dividing line between euro-centrists or europeo-centrists on the one side and, on the other side, the promotors of an alternative Europe, of an « alter-Europe », of a euro-excentrism, or again, in more contemporary terms, of a « globalisation » or an « alter-mondialism ». Max Scheler is clearly on this latter side of the line, as we will see. But this dividing line becomes still more complex and generates other distinctions, according to the « valence » that is attributed to Europe, positive (its opening future) or negative (its foreseen decline), or, in other terms, if it is its metaphysical meaning (principle, idea, essence, value) that is underlined, or its social, legal, economic and political historicisation. With such a multifactorial configuration in mind, I will seek to place the author of Politisch-pädagogische Schriften and, namely, of « L’idée de paix et le pacifisme » on the chessboard of Europe. (shrink)

Les phénoménologies historiques et contemporaines ont analysé la sexualité (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty), l’expérience de l’erôs et du féminin (Levinas), le phénomène de l’érotisme (Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion) en prétendant rendre compte de la structure générale de cette expérience. Toutefois, ils adoptent implicitement, « normalement » le point de vue du sujet masculin et, qui plus est, le plus souvent, celui d’une hétérosexualité dite « normale ». Et ce, sans procéder à un examen critique de c...

Le présent dossier thématique est issu initialement de trois années de séminaires (2007-2010) organisées aux Archives Husserl de Paris par Natalie Depraz et Jean-François Courtine. Ces différents séminaires furent consacrés au thème de l’attention, respectivement, à la relation entre attention et perception, puis à l’articulation entre attention conjointe et intersubjectivité, et enfin, au rapport complexe entre attention et conscience. Les textes rassemblés témoignent de la fécondité des dis...

In this contribution, I will focus on Chogyam Trungpa's presentation of the basic practice of samatha-vipassana sitting meditation, assuming that his description is almost scientifically meticulous, similarly to Husserl's phenomenological descriptions, and allows the latter to be endowed with concrete richness and practical operability. Meditation is an activity that develops attentional qualities which are extremely accurate, i.e. both very well-defined and remarkably embodied. I will first detail the different forms of attention inherent to meditation, then show how they surprisingly echo (...) some of the gestures specific to the phenomenological Husserlian reduction. In other words, I will adopt a circular method of random comings and goings between the two, in order to gradually create, in the reader's mind, echoes and resonances between practices that reveal experiential relationships between them. (shrink)

The phenomenology of trauma is a historical, epistemological, and methodic inquiry that wishes to test the validity of an already settled dynamic model of surprise as shock-rupture based on its correlated inner structures of attention and emotion. Thanks to an integrative approach, crossing phenomenological subjective experiences and empirical data, we hope to renew the understanding of the blank lived experience of trauma and the passive preconscious dynamics of traumatism, as well as to generate possible therapeutic effects.

Porter son attention sur l'attention, voilà l'urgence de notre humanisation contemporaine. Les sciences l'ont compris, qui depuis plus d'un siècle multiplient les travaux en psychologie et en neurosciences sur cette fonction complexe et globale qui forme un réseau intégré transversal où jouent mémoire, perception, veille, émotion et décision ; les techniques méditatives ont aussi leur rôle à jouer, s'adressant moins à notre intellect, comme les sciences, qu'à l'attitude fondamentale face à la vie. Elles nous proposent une clé en matière de (...) pratique de la présence à soi. Devant l'impact croissant des sciences et la visibilité actuelle des techniques méditatives, quel rôle jouera la phénoménologie? Contrairement aux autres approches philosophiques, elle possède ce plus de tenir en un regard ouvert sur le monde : par son retour à l'expérience, elle fait alliance avec la visée expérimentale des sciences et, par sa méthode de suspension, elle entre en contact avec une quête contemplative qui est prise de recul. Elle joue ainsi un rôle-charnière pour repenser l'attention en en faisant une expérience d'ouverture au monde davantage qu'un état mental interne. La phénoménologie apporte quelque chose d'inédit : une éthique de l'attention, qui réforme celle-ci en " vigilance ". (shrink)

Upshot: Thanks to the commentaries we have been able to further clarify the situation of generative first-person analysis in the general framework of neurophenomenology and more specifically of cardio-phenomenology as its extension and reformulation. We have also provided more detailed information about the way phenomenology as transcendental philosophy is genuinely operating as a practice in cardio-phenomenology and has a central function regarding the creation of categories and their suspensive questioning thanks to the epoché method. We have also drawn great benefits (...) from the questions about how micro-phenomenology allows a refinement of descriptive categories and the way new categories are generated, and we have been able to provide some answers about different scales of newness in the generative process. (shrink)

D'un philosophe comme de l'autre, on peut dire qu'ils sont tous deux, dans l'horizon contemporain, des penseurs de l'amour. Tous deux s'inscrivent en faux contre la réduction de ce dernier à la sexualité, mais, tout autant, contre sa réduction inverse, plus ancienne, à une forme de mystique éthérée de type platonico-chrétien qui a pu se formuler sous le terme d'agapè. Nous nous proposons dans cette contribution d'étudier la pensée de J.-L. Marion en adoptant l'hypothèse d'une « unité théo-phénoménologique » de (...) son questionnement. Nous faisons usage du terme « théo-phénoménologie » en référence à l'approche de l'œuvre du philosophe et théologien grec Christos Yannaras, et souhaitons ce faisant rendre justice à l'avancée de J.-L. Marion en situant son geste philosophique singulier à la lumière de la théologie orthodoxe du Christianisme grec oriental telle qu'elle est elle-même renouvelée philosophiquement par C. Yannaras. Jean-Luc Marion and Christos Yannaras are both well-known as contemporary love-thinkers. Both refuse the reduction of love to sexuality as much as its older opposite reduction to a form of platonic christian mystics sometimes named agapè. In the following contribution I wish to examine Jean-Luc Marion's approach while making the hypothesis of its « theo-phenomenological » unity. Since the expression « theo-phenomenology » is used in reference to the work of the contemporary Greek philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras, I aim at doing justice to Marion's philosophical thrust by putting his conception of love in the light of the Orthodox theology of the Eastern Church as it is nowadays philosophically renewed by Yannaras. (shrink)

« faisant retour à mon lieu propre, la scène philosophique contemporaine, après un long séjour dans ces contrées lointaines, je découvris que ce que j’avais appris là-bas me faisait à présent mieux comprendre le rivage d’où j’étais parti. »H. Jonas, « Gnose, existentialisme, nihilisme », p. 217. Introduction Jonas est-il un nouveau Janus? Un être à deux visages, qui expriment des traits contrastés et non-conciliables de sa phénoménologie, à la mesure de la gnose, communément caractérisée par...

Introduction J’ai choisi ce titre à la fois énigmatique et évocateur pour attirer votre attention sur un point très précis à l’intérieur de la relation macroscopique entre le langage et l’expérience dans les deux traditions philosophiques contemporaines, la phénoménologie et la philosophie analytique, lesquelles sont souvent appréhendées comme antinomiques : il s’agira ici de s’interroger sur le langage très particulier que requiert une attitude en première personne ; on verra que cette derni...