Edmund Husserl

In the texts collected in the second volume of the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Husserl extensively discusses experiences of joy (Freude). By considering Husserl’s examples related to joy not as mere illustrations, but as a guiding thread for the identification of experiential structures, this article shows how these examples are not only significant for the general theory of intentionality of affective and emotional non-objectifying acts, but also provide valuable insights into the specific phenomenon of joy itself. Specifically, the article (...) demonstrates how the distinction between joy, sensory pleasure, and liking provides insights into the intentional structure of joy as a responsive affect. On the basis of these distinctions, the article raises the normative question about the appropriateness of affective and emotional responses. It argues that the appropriateness of joy should be assessed from two perspectives: in relation to the value that justifies an affective response and in relation to a personal motivational nexus. From the former perspective, joy can be normatively assessed. However, when only considering the latter perspective, joy cannot be assessed according to objective normative standards. Finally, building on these findings, the article explores how the phenomenology of joy and motivation may be connected to the specific experience of depth and discusses the role of joy for a phenomenological investigation of the personal self. (shrink)

Eine der grundlegenden Fragen der Philosophie ist die Frage, wie sich die Sprache zur Wirklichkeit verhält. Was steht bei dieser Frage auf dem Spiel? Es geht darum, wie wir über unsere Erfahrungen sprechen und sie anderen Menschen mitteilen können. So mitteilen, dass die Anderen das Gesagte nachvollziehen und verstehen können. Es geht dabei auch um die Frage, ob das, was wir sagen, dem Worüber unserer Rede angemessen ist. Was Martin Heidegger die "formale Anzeige" nennt, ist für ihn die Art und (...) Weise, wie sich die Philosophie mitteilen muss. Nur mithilfe der formalen Anzeige könne das, worüber diese Philosophie spricht, als es selbst unverdeckt in den Blick gebracht werden. Für Heidegger zählt dabei primär das, was etwas ist: dessen Sein. Dieses Sein könne nur formalanzeigend zur Sprache gebracht werden. Heidegger würde sogar behaupten, dass vom Verständnis der formalen Anzeige auch das Verständnis der Philosophie abhinge. Heideggers formale Anzeige wurde deshalb auch als "Geheimwaffe", als "Schlüssel" zum Verständnis Heideggers Philosophie (Kisiel) und als etwas "für sein ganzes Denken Gültiges" (Gadamer) beschrieben. In diesem Buch wird geklärt, was die formale Anzeige ist und wie sie funktioniert. Gefragt wird nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Wort und Sache. (shrink)

Im Zentrum meines Beitrages steht der Begriff einer „höheren Erfahrung“, wie Benjamin ihn in seiner 1917/18 entstanden Schrift Über das Programm der kommenden Philosophie entwickelt. Mithilfe einer ideengeschichtlichen Situierung zwischen und gegen den Neukantianismus Hermann Cohens und die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls nähere ich mich insbesondere der Denkfigur einer „Sphäre totaler Neutralität“, die es Benjamin zufolge jenseits von Subjekt und Objekt „auszumitteln“ gilt, um einen Begriff höherer Erfahrung gewinnen zu können. Ausgehend von dieser ideengeschichtlichen Verortung wende ich mich Benjamins von Johann (...) Georg Hamann inspirierter „Metaphysik der Sprache“ zu, um dafür zu argumentieren, dass die göttliche Sprache das ontologische Fundament bildet, in dem sowohl Erkenntnisobjekt als auch -subjekt in Benjamins frühem Denken gründen. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Die Brentanoschule -- Bd. 2. Die Münchener Phänomenologen -- Bd. 3. Die Göttinger Schule -- Bd. 4. Die Freiburger Schüler -- Bd. 5. Die Neukantianer -- Bd. 6. Philosophenbriefe -- Bd. 7. Wissenschaftlerkorrespondenz -- Bd. 8. Institutionelle Schreiben -- Bd. 9. Familienbriefe -- Bd. 10. Einführung und Register.

In this article I will use Husserlian tools in order to elaborate a phenomenology of ludic experience. Following Fink, my aim here is to present what Husserl could have elaborated in a more systematic manner concerning the specificity of what he calls the ludic praxis (Spielpraxis) and the ludic construct (Spielgebilde). Firstly, I analyze the temporality of ludic experience. Play has a dilative temporal structure: it involves a momentary captivation in the present and a momentary suspension of the architectonic goals (...) of the agent. Secondly, play has its own artifacts. I begin by analyzing what I call the impermanent construct, i.e., the object whose elaboration is motivated by a self-referential interest of the poietic subject. Thirdly, play does not only erect singular entities, but also ludic worlds as a whole. My objective is to scrutinize the mode of being of these normative spaces. I conclude with a description of the ludic object par excellence, namely the toy (Spielzeug). (shrink)

The aim of this intervention is to briefly advance an interpretation of the post- COVID19 digitalisation processes as to be recognised within the philosophical framework of Vorstellung Metaphysik, “metaphysics of representation”. I would maintain that the formula, firstly indicated by Martin Heidegger, can provide us with a tool to interpret contemporary culture as founded on an “iteration” of individual and collective consciousness into non-existent digital realities. Moreover, I will argue that these concepts are philosophically relatable to those of alienation and (...) reification that come from Marxist traditions. Ultimately, the analysis will try to use the above mentioned tools to delve into an interpretation of remote working and education as potential carriers of alienation. (shrink)

Widely regarded as the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl's Ideas puts forth his revolutionary argument for phenomenology as the foundation of all philosophy and for experience as the source of all knowledge. His work has heavily influenced some of the greatest contemporary thinkers of all time including Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida, and has dramatically altered the course of Western Philosophy.

This stimulating introduction demonstrates Husserl's influence on philosophy of mind and language, on ontology and epistemology, and on philosophy of logic, mathematics and science. Essential reading for anyone interested in phenomenology, twentieth-century philosophy, and the continuing influence of this eminent philosopher.

When Derrida translated and commented on Husserl’s manuscript The Origin of Geometry in 1962, he gave a central place to what Husserl called the Idea “in the Kantian sense”. This article reflects on the use and function of this Idea in Derrida’s reading of Husserl. It critically interrogates the relationship between the Idea in the Kantian sense and mathematical ideality, as well as the use of this Idea in the interpretation of the Thing (Ding) and the stream of experience (Erlebnisstrom). (...) In the centre of the discussion stands what Derrida calls “pure thinking”, on which he tries to ground the Idea in the Kantian sense. (shrink)

I argue that Husserl’s manuscripts on intersubjectivity discover a decisive role for self-movement in the constitution of the shared world. I explore two complementary constitutive functions. The first enables empathetic apperception by closing the divergence in sense between the original ego, which does not find itself at a location, and the alter ego, which is found over there. By traversing distances with its organically articulated Leibkörper, the original ego establishes an analogy between self-movement and thing-movement that guides the recognition of (...) another ego in space. The second accounts for the exchangeability of perspectives between differently located subjects. The restricted motility of the Leibkörper is discovered against the background of ideal but motivated possibilities of going to any distant perspective. These possibilities are rooted in the purely kinaesthetic potential of the Leib. To inhabit another perspective need not involve changing the world. This evidence underlies the Weltanschauung according to which what appears from the other’s perspective is a possible appearance for me. Taken together, these two constitutive functions show how self-movement discloses a definite but accidental location from which the ego shares the world. (shrink)

In a recent series of important papers, Søren Overgaard has defended a disjunctivist reading of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perception. According to Overgaard, Husserl commits to disjunctivism when arguing that hallucination intrinsically differs from perception because only experiences of the latter kind carry singular content and, thereby, pick out individuals. This paper rejects that interpretation by invoking the theory of intentionality developed by Husserl in the Logical Investigations. It is claimed that this theory not only lacks the notion of singular (...) content, but it also entails the idea that perceptions and hallucinations belong to the same kind of experience. If that is correct, a commitment to conjuctivism on Husserl’s end follows, pace Overgaard. (shrink)

In the present article, I address the issue of categorial representative contents, which, according to Husserl’s phenomenological theory, make knowledge possible by providing fullness to intuitive categorial acts. First, I discuss Husserl’s assertion that he no longer approves of his theory of categorial representation developed in Logical Investigations. I argue that the influential interpretation of Husserl’s self-criticism advanced by Dieter Lohmar is unfortunately misleading, as Husserl does not actually claim that categorial representatives are contents of reflection belonging to the realm (...) of inner sensibility, as Lohmar contends. After offering an alternative view of Husserl’s authentic position in Logical Investigations, I examine other possible reasons for his later dissatisfaction. These reasons relate to Husserl’s changing views on the role of categorial representatives in empty thinking acts—necessarily involved in cognition—and the necessity of spontaneously repeating the passive synthesis between the intentional matters that function as categorial representatives in the predicative activity yielding knowledge. (shrink)

Due to the reflective character of phenomenological approach (because consciousness inquires for itself as an object) the question related to the most basic self-experience that precedes any reflection and makes it possible acquires main importance to the phenomenology. The search of this experience throws us to a terrain to transit and with visible importance to Husserl: The passive dimension of consciousness. In that encounter, appears the phenomenon of self-affection as a sphere of experience worthy of been explored and described. This (...) research highlights the temporal character of consciousness, in specific, the self-awareness of the absolute flux of experiences due to his retentional aspect. This, however, brings a path to deepen in key concepts to Husserl’s phenomenology like hylé, affectivity, body, sensing [empfindniss], kinesthesia, and also to problematize the possibility and accuracy of this kind of search at a genetic level, the necessity to bring a prominent place to the living body in this transcendental investigation and at least to remember the interest in describe the experience of the living organism. The current thesis intends to defend, in general, the idea according to which any description of these original experience of itself must recognize, since the beginning, the basic principle of animation: Only understanding that the frame of self-affection is the animality can come to light aspects like his dynamic character and his instinctive origin.. (shrink)

Extensive and critical review of Perception and Reality in Kant, Husserl and McDowell, written by van Mazijk, Corijn focussing on his discussion of McDowell.

The following proposes an interpretation of Husserl's sustained exegetical commentary on Leibniz's metaphysics from 1922 (Hua XIV 298300), with reference to textual and historical resources. The leading historical index for the following interpretation is a minor contribution to Leibniz scholarship from 1917 by Dietrich Mahnke, a work with which Husserl was intimately familiar. Textual references are to works by Husserl which would have been available to Mahnke- i.e., the Logische Untersuchungen and Ideen—I as well as relevant notes and lectures from (...) the period ni question. Husserl's brief manuscript from 1922, I claim, can be read as a critique of the Mahnke interpretation that attempts to provide a more expansive and thorough-going phenomenological explication of Leibniz' doctrine of universal harmony. Thereby, Husserl offers some important clues as to how he himself understands his own uses of the terms "monad" and "monadology." The phenomenological reformation of Leibnizian Monadology must be understood as a methodological reconception with internal reference to Husserl's own theory of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The phenomenological notion of attitude has gained new traction in recent years, as it proliferates beyond its initial distinction between natural and phenomenological attitudes, notably to describe multiple meanings to critique and reflection. In this paper, I present an account of the concept of an ethical attitude in Husserlian phenomenology. First, I argue that the ethical attitude is best understood as a practical orientation toward personal life as a whole: someone strives to become the best possible person through self-reflection, self-variation, (...) the renewal of values and ends, and resolve. Second, I interpret Husserl’s accounts of the ethical reduction and the practical neutrality modification through the notion of the ethical attitude. This allows me to elaborate on questions of motivation for striving to be a good person, even if the world seems inhospitable to that effort. The question of the motivation for the ethical attitude reveals that Husserl grappled with existential and theological issues, including the valuelessness of existence, the problem of contingency, and the idea of God. Ultimately, interpreting Husserl’s ethical writings through the notion of the ethical attitude brings together several aspects of his ethics, thereby clarifying the many senses of critique and reflection at play in ethical and social life. (shrink)

This article critiques Husserl’s idea of grounding through an exploration of his notion of the lifeworld. First, it sketches different senses of the lifeworld in the Crisis and explains in what sense it is taken to be a universal foundation of all sense-formation. Second, it criticizes Husserl’s idea of grounding and shows that it fails because the alleged foundation—namely, the lifeworld as a perceptual world, or rather lifeworldly experience as perception—is inadequately determined. Perception cannot function as a universal foundation because (...) it is always already interpretation. “The groundlessness of sense” means that the process of sense-formation can in no way rest upon an ultimate ground because contingent presuppositions and historical circumstances influence it from the very beginning. The paper concludes by discussing the consequence of this view for the relation between philosophy and sciences. (shrink)

-- 05.04.2024 -- Intervention held at the Italian Philosophical Society’s national congress’ section entitled "Texts, Words and Images: Philosophical Traditions and Translations", at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy -- -/- The aim of this intervention is to briefly advance an interpretation of the post- COVID19 digitalisation processes as to be recognised within the philosophical framework of Vorstellung Metaphysik, “metaphysics of representation”. I would maintain that the formula, firstly indicated by Martin Heidegger, can provide us with a tool (...) to interpret contemporary culture as founded on an “iteration” of individual and collective consciousness into non-existent digital realities. Moreover, I will argue that these concepts are philosophically relatable to those of alienation and reification that come from Marxist traditions. Ultimately, the analysis will try to use the above mentioned tools to delve into an interpretation of remote working and education as potential carriers of alienation. (shrink)

The paper argues that the structure of expression prevails in Husserl’s social phenomenology. We begin by considering Husserl’s concepts of _Individuum_ and _Urgegenstand_, and his project of grounding the human sciences. We then explore the expressive structure of the person in three interrelated aspects. First, expression indicates the peculiar manner of the constitution of the person as a spiritual subject. Second, there is an essential relationship between the person and her surrounding world, and hence not only is the person always (...) given as a system of expressions, but also is a cultural object given as such. Third, the system “person–surrounding world” can also be an expression of communal spiritual life and culture—what Husserl calls “higher order personal unities”—once they are constituted through appropriate communal acts. (shrink)

The first part of this entry details what is known about the personal encounters between Rudolf Carnap and Edmund Husserl. The second part looks at all the places in Carnap’s works where Husserl is cited.

In this paper, I interview Francesca De Vecchi (Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Vita-Salute San Raffaele University) about her qualitative ontology and its social and normative implications. If at the foundation of our lifeworld there are significantly qualitative experiences, phenomenology can investigate the most important contemporary issues, such as gender disparity, socio-virtuality depersonalizations and political urgencies.

What corresponds, in contemporary feminist and decolonial usage, to the demand to “return to experience,” or rather “to the lived experiences” of oppression - a distant echo of Husserl’s call to return to the things themselves? Beauvoir and Fanon appear to have laid the first foundations of a critical phenomenology of oppression - or of a phenomenologization of social critique. Later, Young and Ahmed took up a similar approach, reading history and politics in bodies, and habitus and structures in intimate (...) experience - an approach that is now discussed in the United States under the label of “Critical Phenomenology.” But is this still, really, phenomenology in the strong sense? This article contributes to an understanding of the path taken by the field of Critical Phenomenology from Husserl to Lorde, and of the shifts that can be observed both in the field and in the method that it presupposes. Finally it undertakes to clarify the horizon of this field, which is essentially concerned with the defence of a life that is both deeply corporeal and open to a total meaning. (shrink)

Las Lecciones sobre teoría del significado (1908) constituyen un valioso documento a la hora de estudiar el pensamiento de Edmund Husserl a propósito del lenguaje. Sin embargo, este texto ha sido escasamente considerado por la crítica. En este trabajo, intentaré mostrar que el estudio de los planteos desarrollados en dichas lecciones resulta de gran interés para el análisis de las continuidades y cambios en el pensamiento de Husserl, así como también para la discusión filosófica sobre el lenguaje. Me concentraré en (...) dos temáticas que considero fundamentales y que servirán, a mi entender, para dar cuenta de su espíritu y relevancia: 1) la distinción entre dos conceptos de significado y sus repercusiones en la distinción entre significado y objeto; 2) la relación entre nuestras dinámicas de trato con las cosas y las formas gramaticales en que dicho trato se expresa lingüísticamente. (shrink)

Although Husserl’s analyses of the unconscious are scattered throughout various writings, many of which have been published in Hua III/2, Hua VI, Hua X, Hua XI, Hua XV, Hua XVII, Hua XXXIX and _Experience and Judgment_, nowhere else has he addressed the unconscious in such fascinating detail as in the manuscripts collected in Hua XLII. The publication of this volume has made it patently clear that the unconscious has many meanings in Husserl. A clarification of the different ways in which (...) Husserl has spoken of the unconscious is still missing in the literature and it is much needed. With the aim of developing a taxonomy of the unconscious in Husserl, here I trace the different meanings Husserl has given to this concept and I argue that in his phenomenology, the unconscious can be understood at least in seven ways: as the horizonal unconscious, the time-constituting unconscious, the sedimented unconscious, the repressed unconscious, the absorbed unconscious, the dormant unconscious, and the instinctual unconscious. Besides articulating the essential features of each determination, I also clarify what they all share. With the aim of showing what is distinctive of Husserl’s approach to the unconscious, I offer some reflections on what differentiates Husserl’s phenomenology of the unconscious vis-à-vis Freud’s psychoanalysis. In general, I maintain that while it is a limit problem in phenomenology, the unconscious should also be considered a central phenomenological theme, for as Husserl’s reflections show, without offering a phenomenology of the unconscious, phenomenology can only operate with a preliminary and insufficient conception of consciousness. (shrink)

In his work through the early 1930’s, Heidegger determines what it means to be an authentic self through fundamental attunements such as anxiety, boredom, uncanniness and guilt, and equi-primordially via understanding and thrown projection. The way that attunement and understanding structure authentic disclosure of being involves paradoxical gestures juxtaposing meaning and meaninglessness, presence and absence, affirmation and negation, possibility and reality, holism and individuation, normativity and own-ness. The key to navigating and unifying this tangle of contradictory moments, as Heidegger reminds (...) his readers, is in understanding the dynamics of temporality. In this paper I discuss common ways that contemporary readers of Heidegger render authenticity inauthentic by interpreting such tropes as anxiety, the self and the nothing by reference to what Heidegger calls the ordinary conception of time, the sequential emerging, lingering and passing away of beings. Thought via ordinary time, nothingness opposes itself to presence, making authentic anxiety appear similar to depression as the breakdown of possibilities. I contrast these readings with my interpretation of authentic temporality, and explain how my reading of time changes the way the authentic self, attunement and projective understanding disclose themselves. In choosing the particular authors that I cite in support of my representation of inauthentic interpretations of authenticity, I do not mean to imply that these writers are united in their approaches to Heidegger. On the contrary, they differ amongst themselves concerning many aspects of his thinking. My purpose is to highlight what I take to be key points of intersection among their differing accounts. (shrink)

말년의 후설은 유럽이 위기에 빠졌으며 그 위기의 뿌리는 학문의 위기이자 이성의 위기라고 진단한다. 이 논문은 후설의 이러한 문제의식이 오늘날에도 여전히 유효하다는 판단으로부터 출발한다. 19세기 말엽 이후 확산된 지적 경향, 즉 절대적인 진리에 대한 거부, 혹은 반형이상학적 상대주의는 실제 현실에서 극단적인 의견의 대립을 유발하는 파생효과를 낳았다. 오늘날 공감과 연대가 다양한 사회적 갈등의 해법으로 제시되는 까닭이기도 하다. 이 논문은 포퍼의 방법론을 참조하여 후설의 현상학적 방법론이 인식론적이고 이론적인 논의를 넘어 사회적이고 실천적인 영역으로 확장될 수 있음을 보이고자 한다. 우리는 이를 현상학적 사회공학이라고 부를 수 (...) 있을 것이다. 그것은 절대적인 진리를 주장하는 낡은 형이상학으로 되돌아가자는 것이 아니라 현실의 문제를 해결하기 위한 방법론으로서 이성에 대한 신뢰를 포기하지 않는 절차적 방법론이다. (shrink)

본 논문은 에드문트 후설의 전기 윤리학과 후기 윤리학의 변모를 살펴보며, 특히 후기 윤리학을 특징짓는 사랑가치의 본능적 지향성에 주목한다. 이러한 과정에서 본 논문은 ‘본능과 충동’이 후설의 전기 윤리학에서와는 달리 후기 윤리학에서 그 윤리적 규범성을 부여 받게 되는 근본적인 이유를 추적하며, 그를 후설 그 자신의 지향성 개념에 대한 이해의 심화에서 찾고자 한다. 이를 통해 후설에게서 본능적 지향성은 초월론적 대상구성 그 자체를 가능하게 하는 초월론적 조건으로서 여타의 감각적인 충동들과 구별된다는 점이 밝혀진다. 또한 본능적 지향성은 그러한 구성작업에 의해 가능해지는 습성적 삶의 전개 양상을 규제하는 (...) 목적성으로 기능한다는 점에서, 인간의 능동적인 실천적 삶의 궁극적 목적인 행복의 이념을 제시한다. 그럼으로써 본능의 충족은 실천적 참인 행복한 삶의 필요조건으로서 드러난다. (shrink)

It is a familiar story that, where Kant humbly draws a line beyond which cognition can’t reach, Husserl presses forward to show how we can cognize beyond that limit. Kant supposes that cognition is bound to sensibility and that what we experience in sensibility is mere appearance that does not inform us about the intrinsic nature of things in themselves. By contrast, for Husserl, it makes no sense to say we experience anything other than things in themselves when we enjoy (...) sensory perception. Kant’s conception, then, by doing just that, is nonsensical. I argue that Husserl’s account does not deliver on its promise. Things as they are in themselves are just as cognitively out of reach on Husserl’s understanding of them as they are on Kant’s. Further, the charge of nonsense Husserl raises against Kant’s conception of things in themselves applies—indeed, with greater force—to his own. (shrink)

A number of claims made by Derrida concerning Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Husserl will be carefully considered and evaluated here. First, Derrida’s claim that Merleau-Ponty’s mis-interprets Husserl’s letter to Lévy-Bruhl will be challenged. Secondly, Derrida’s claim that his criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology can be applied just as well to Merleau-Ponty’s will be challenged. Thirdly, it is a careful consideration of textual evidence that will be used to support these challenges. Finally, Merleau-Ponty’s late lectures will take us back to the Lévy-Bruhl letter (...) and finally to Merleau-Ponty’s own phenomenology of language, one that integrates perception and language and yet that still privileges not eidetic essences or linguistic expression but perception as its primary term. (shrink)