Edmund Husserl

Consider two experiences, one a veridical perceptual experience of a black cube in front of one, and a matching hallucinatory experience. From the perspective of the subject undergoing these experiences they at least can be phenomenologically indistinguishable. Call this the phenomenological indistinguishability claim (PI for short). My aim in this paper is to argue for a distinctive view which I call phenomenological disjunctivism, drawing on the works of classical phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. Phenomenological disjunctivism significantly qualifies the PI claim, and in (...) doing so is able to establish, through phenomenological analysis of the relevant experiences, an intrinsic difference in kind between veridical perception and (matching) hallucination, that is a difference in ‘essence’ purely on phenomenological grounds. Phenomenological disjunctivism accepts that veridical perception and hallucination either are or at least can be phenomenologically indistinguishable at a time but argues that due to a key difference in the possibilities of fulfilment of their ‘horizon structure’ are nonetheless phenomenologically distinguishable as fundamentally different types of experience over time (i.e., diachronically). This is the key Husserlian insight I will be reconstructing and attempting to make sense of in an articulation of phenomenological disjunctivism. (shrink)

De Sartre à Derrida, en passant par Lacan ou Ricoeur, la scène de la pensée au XXe siècle a largement été animée par la confrontation de la phénoménologie et de la psychanalyse. Le présent ouvrage tente à son tour une comparaison de ces formes de pensée, mais selon une méthode originale qui n'altère pas leur spécificité. On tente ici de mettre en rapport ces pensées parallèles sans occulter leur singularité, en envisageant les parcours de Husserl et de Freud en tant (...) qu'ils sont à la fois de pensée et d'existence. Sont ainsi mis en lumière l'arrière-fonds rigoureusement philosophique de la métapsychologie freudienne, la portée fondamentalement éthique de la phénoménologie, ou encore leur signification politique dans le contexte de la montée du nazisme. En portant attention à leur judéité, en interrogeant leur rapport à la religion, en mesurant la portée de leur rencontre avec la philosophie de Brentano ou en considérant la signification que revêtit pour eux la figure de Nietzsche, le présent ouvrage renouvelle la compréhension de certains aspects centraux de ces deux formes de pensée. (shrink)

Offers a reconsideration and re-evaluation of the philosophical exchange between Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. Angela Ales Bello highlights the depth and breadth of the philosophers' thinking on questions related to subjects such as ethics, religion, personhood, and psychology.

The publication of Husserliana XXIII "Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung" in 1980 and John B. Brough's translation of it in 2005 increased interest in Edmund Husserl's philosophy of depiction. This volume is the first comprehensive book collection in English that provides a systematic reading of Husserl's theory of depictive image consciousness. The book explains the meaning of various concepts in Husserl's philosophy of depiction-such as f - and examines the range and limits of the application of Husserl's depictive image consciousness to various (...) art practices and media, and to other mental acts, e.g., phantasy, memory. The book discusses, among other topics, empathy, symbolic presentation and the aesthetic experience of depictions. Additionally, the book compares Husserl's theory of depiction with that of other philosophers, notably Franz Brentano, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Roman Ingarden, Leopold Blaustein and Jean Baudrillard. Husserl on Depiction will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, philosophy of art, aesthetics and pictorial representation. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze several recent attempts to marry (cognitive) science and (classical) phenomenology. I argue that some of the most prominent proposals of such marriage are based on a conflation of two fundamentally different claims about experience that require different theoretical commitments. The _weak claim_ is that experience is important for science and cannot be neglected; the _strong claim_ is that experience is foundational for science. In my view, this conflation is mostly based on a misinterpretation of the (...) methods and goals of phenomenological philosophy in its original Husserlian form. I further argue that, if Husserl is right, this conflation may be detrimental to both phenomenology and science as it suppresses the value of the transcendental-phenomenological enterprise and disorients the objective-scientific approach. To set the stage for my argument I examine Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson’s 2024 book _The Blind Spot_ reading it back-to-back with Husserl’s _Crisis_. (shrink)

The paper proposes a systematic reconstruction of Oskar Becker’s interpretation of Husserl’s principle of transcendental idealism. Three phases will be distinguished in Becker’s approach. After a first attempt at understanding the principle exclusively on the basis of Ideas I, Becker tries to combine Husserl’s transcendental idealism with Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein. Finally, a third phase can be identified in which the picture that results from such combination is used by Becker to sketch an interpretation of the development of Husserl’s philosophy (...) as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an important, yet hitherto neglected, development within Husserl’s phenomenological formal ontology. The first sixteen paragraphs of Ideas 1 serve as the point of departure for my presentation. In these paragraphs, Husserl presents the category of “concretum”, or concrete individual, as the cornerstone of his whole formal-ontological framework. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss a revision of the account of the concrete individual Husserl develops in his Ideas 1 in 1918 in a (...) text that is now published as text 11 in Husserliana 41. I will also draw out some further implications from a text of the same year published as Appendix XVII of Husserliana 41. No adequate treatment of the 1918 account of “concrete individual” has been provided so far, however, and my paper aims at filling this gap in the scholarship. The relevance of the 1918 revision is phenomenological and philosophical, rather than just historical. In that text Husserl solves some ambiguities in the Ideas 1 treatment of concrete individuals, and, in doing so, he introduces an original distinction between two types of genera, self-individuating and other-individuating. He also provides elements to a phenomenological doctrine of the principle of individuation and takes a stance on the question of the individuation of essence. (shrink)

In a late manuscript, Husserl explicitly addresses the problem of depersonalization. Depersonalization is described as a rupture in a certain layer of experience, which, however, does not touch the fundamental unity of the underlying genesis. After a brief recapitulation of historical approaches to depersonalization, I’ll come to comment on this passage. To assess Husserl’s contribution to the clinical understanding, and more specifically to the phenomenology of depersonalization, it is essential to understand his concept of personhood. In Husserl’s account of personhood, (...) we can identify a tension between the unity and continuity of the transcendental genesis of the personal _ego_ and the self-alienation and de-presentation at play in this genesis. Drawing on the French reception of Husserl’s phenomenology and Eugen Fink’s notion of de-presentation, I suggest that transcendental temporalization not only cannot function as a fail-safe in the case of depersonalization but may even be at the core of the loss of the sense of personhood. To account for the fact of personalization, one must re-evaluate the notion of empathy in the relation of the self to itself. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology aims to obtain knowledge about the essential structure of consciousness and its various subtypes, and how different types of objects appear in consciousness. On a classic reading, such knowledge requires adequate evidence and apodictic evidence, which are absolutely certain or infallible. However, a trend has emerged to question this classic reading and to embrace a radically fallibilist reading of Husserl’s theory of evidence instead. A core component of this reading is that adequate evidence and apodictic evidence are either (...) non-actual, or, even if they exist, are fallible. This paper aims to resist this radical fallibilist reading and reaffirm the classic reading. In this paper, I criticize two main arguments for the radical fallibilist reading. I also examine frequently cited texts that seem to strongly favor the fallibilist reading and show that they do not serve the intended purpose. I further show that although Husserl later has refined his earlier theory of evidence, he never reversed his earlier basic position. For Husserl, adequate evidence and apodictic evidence can be difficult to achieve. However, they can be sometimes achieved in immanent perception and eidetic analysis; when achieved, they are infallible. (shrink)

Husserl investigated the topic of childhood in a small number of research manuscripts, produced around the 1930s. This essay first presents its rationale for addressing the issue – which was essentially to examine more closely the phenomenon of _Einfühlung_ in the context of his inquiry into intersubjectivity – and illustrates the method of _Rückfrage_ that guided his research. It then offers a reading of Husserl’s phenomenological descriptions of childhood and the related conceptual distinctions, organizing them under the following headings: a. (...) second childhood (_das wirkliche Kind_); b. _Urkindheit_, or primal childhood which, in turn is subdivided into: b1. first childhood outside the womb and b2. intrauterine life; c. procreation or generation (_Zeugung_), from the _UrIch_ to the _VorIch_. Throughout this reverse reconstruction, a particular focus is given to the importance of the notion of _Paarung_ (coupling or pairing) at all levels of the ego's constitution. The self-constitution of the ego (_Ich_) always implies a relationship – which differs as a function of the child's specific stage of development – with all that is alien to the ego (_Ichfremdes_), right back to the unattainable, yet constitutive alterity of birth. (shrink)

McDowell shares with phenomenology the idea that experience is open to the world and that the relation between mind and world is normative. While he claims that conceptual capacities are already passively involved in experience, passive synthesis in Husserl has its own intentional constitution, which originally has a rational and normative character in a primitive sense, yet doesn’t depend on conceptual and linguistic capacities. In my analysis, McDowell’s notion of conceptual capacities enables the formation of experience in two ways: by (...) providing conceptual content, and by building up awareness that is later linked with self-critical reflection. I argue that in Husserl’s phenomenology, experience already has structural content without relying on concepts and that attention already displays a pre-reflective exercise of rationality without relying on self-critical reflection. Husserl’s rationality is not to be linked with conceptual capacities, reflection, or spontaneity. Moreover, Husserl’s notion of experience is broader than McDowell’s. McDowell denies that some second nature could count as conceptualized experience, since it is accomplished without explicit awareness. In contrast, Husserl would admit the rationality of second nature even though it lies beneath attentive awareness at the level of receptivity, because there is a deeper pre-reflective, affective participation of the I in the passive motivation that contributes to the horizonality of experience in an implicit mode. Thus rationality and normativity penetrate more deeply into second nature than McDowell thinks. In comparison to McDowell, Husserl shows how a notion of rationality in a much broader sense is involved in experience. (shrink)

Husserl investigated the topic of childhood in a small number of research manuscripts, produced around the 1930s. This essay first presents its rationale for addressing the issue – which was essentially to examine more closely the phenomenon of Einfühlung in the context of his inquiry into intersubjectivity – and illustrates the method of Rückfrage that guided his research. It then offers a reading of Husserl’s phenomenological descriptions of childhood and the related conceptual distinctions, organizing them under the following headings: a. (...) second childhood (das wirkliche Kind); b. Urkindheit, or primal childhood which, in turn is subdivided into: b1. first childhood outside the womb and b2. intrauterine life; c. procreation or generation (Zeugung), from the UrIch to the VorIch. Throughout this reverse reconstruction, a particular focus is given to the importance of the notion of Paarung (coupling or pairing) at all levels of the ego's constitution. The self-constitution of the ego (Ich) always implies a relationship – which differs as a function of the child's specific stage of development – with all that is alien to the ego (Ichfremdes), right back to the unattainable, yet constitutive alterity of birth. (shrink)

In a late manuscript, Husserl explicitly addresses the problem of depersonalization. Depersonalization is described as a rupture in a certain layer of experience, which, however, does not touch the fundamental unity of the underlying genesis. After a brief recapitulation of historical approaches to depersonalization, I’ll come to comment on this passage. To assess Husserl’s contribution to the clinical understanding, and more specifically to the phenomenology of depersonalization, it is essential to understand his concept of personhood. In Husserl’s account of personhood, (...) we can identify a tension between the unity and continuity of the transcendental genesis of the personal ego and the self-alienation and de-presentation at play in this genesis. Drawing on the French reception of Husserl’s phenomenology and Eugen Fink’s notion of de-presentation, I suggest that transcendental temporalization not only cannot function as a fail-safe in the case of depersonalization but may even be at the core of the loss of the sense of personhood. To account for the fact of personalization, one must re-evaluate the notion of empathy in the relation of the self to itself. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology aims to obtain knowledge about the essential structure of consciousness and its various subtypes, and how different types of objects appear in consciousness. On a classic reading, such knowledge requires adequate evidence and apodictic evidence, which are absolutely certain or infallible. However, a trend has emerged to question this classic reading and to embrace a radically fallibilist reading of Husserl’s theory of evidence instead. A core component of this reading is that adequate evidence and apodictic evidence are either (...) non-actual, or, even if they exist, are fallible. This paper aims to resist this radical fallibilist reading and reaffirm the classic reading. In this paper, I criticize two main arguments for the radical fallibilist reading. I also examine frequently cited texts that seem to strongly favor the fallibilist reading and show that they do not serve the intended purpose. I further show that although Husserl later has refined his earlier theory of evidence, he never reversed his earlier basic position. For Husserl, adequate evidence and apodictic evidence can be difficult to achieve. However, they can be sometimes achieved in immanent perception and eidetic analysis; when achieved, they are infallible. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an important, yet hitherto neglected, development within Husserl’s phenomenological formal ontology. The first sixteen paragraphs of Ideas 1 serve as the point of departure for my presentation. In these paragraphs, Husserl presents the category of “concretum”, or concrete individual, as the cornerstone of his whole formal-ontological framework. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss a revision of the account of the concrete individual Husserl develops in his Ideas 1 in 1918 in a (...) text that is now published as text 11 in Husserliana 41. I will also draw out some further implications from a text of the same year published as Appendix XVII of Husserliana 41. No adequate treatment of the 1918 account of “concrete individual” has been provided so far, however, and my paper aims at filling this gap in the scholarship. The relevance of the 1918 revision is phenomenological and philosophical, rather than just historical. In that text Husserl solves some ambiguities in the Ideas 1 treatment of concrete individuals, and, in doing so, he introduces an original distinction between two types of genera, self-individuating and other-individuating. He also provides elements to a phenomenological doctrine of the principle of individuation and takes a stance on the question of the individuation of essence. (shrink)

As a fervent rationalist, Husserl placed considerable emphasis on the delineation of the different levels of reason. Its highest form, he contends, is position-taking (Stellungnahme) understood as a critical stance towards a positional act P. Specifically, such a Stellungnahme is a three-step procedure: the subject, possibly motivated by a passive discordance, starts by questioning P (active doubt); she then seeks to validate P by returning to its originary fulfillment (active search for evidence); finally, she ratifies such a fulfillment in an (...) act of acknowledgment (active decision), thereby making P a permanent personal conviction. In the literature, the role of position-taking in the formation of persons has been aptly emphasized, but insufficient attention has been paid to its intrinsic structure and concrete functioning; furthermore, the few existing studies on this topic are limited to the theoretical domain. The aim of this paper is to fill this twofold gap by providing a comprehensive account of critical Stellungnahme in both the intellectual and the axiological spheres, drawing especially on the manuscripts from the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. The first part examines Stellungnahme in the theoretical realm, underscoring its teleological orientation towards justification and the active role played by the subject in it. The second part shows how this procedure can be extended to rationalize value-experiences, by elucidating the nature of affective evidence and approval (Billigung). Finally, the third part demonstrates how a particular value, that of knowledge, can concretely pass the axiological position-taking and thus be recognized as an actual value. (shrink)

A phenomenologically based theory of occurrent thinking called TMDOT was developed and a portion of it will be presented here because it appears to lend validation to, clarify, explicate, and further distinguish between two forms of Husserlian intentionality critical to the constitution of objects, both of which are posited as existing during occurrent thoughts. For Husserl, there is an intentionality occurring in the _substratum_ of meaning generation through intentional acts of consciousness, one that is directly linked to another _stratum_, the (...) purpose of which is to express that meaning. The theory focuses on the phenomenological differences between these two forms of intentionality, their different cognitive functions, and the phenomenally based ways in which they connect to each other to facilitate their respective roles. TMDOT appears to support Husserl’s phenomenological observations and descriptions of two types of intentional acts and how they experientially and temporally connect to each other during the occurrent thought process. In turn, his views about the nature of such acts appear to lend credence to said theory. Cognitive and neuroscientific research results incorporated into TMDOT are presented, ones which seem to support and expand upon Husserl’s understanding of the nature of intentional acts utilized in the constitution of objects and upon his beliefs about the existence and functioning of an Ego-pole in conscious experiencing. (shrink)

A book review of 'Europe, Phenomenology, and Politics in Husserl and Patočka', by Lorenzo Girardi (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).

Husserl’s thesis of absolute individuation consists of two ideas: (1) unlike experiences and mundane entities, which are individuated via spatiotemporal position, the subject has its own principle of individuation and (2) even for non-subjects, the ultimate principle of individuation is their relationship with the subject. Absolute individuation is sometimes qualitatively interpreted (even by Husserl): owing to habituation, a subject’s personal character cannot be reinstantiated elsewhere. I argue against the qualitative interpretation for two reasons. The first is its inconsistency with Husserl’s (...) account of the individuation of non-subjects. Maximally specific universals cannot individuate a non-subject because they can be multiply instantiated, at least in different phantasies. If multiple instantiation is also possible for personal characters, then this poses a problem for the qualitative interpretation. The second reason is that the qualitative interpretation cannot explain the subjective contribution to the individuation of non-subjects. I consequently propose an extra-qualitative interpretation: The relevant subject should be defined as one-off sic et simpliciter. It has no other determinations than one-offness and is, thus, pre-spatiotemporal. This can explain what individuates instances of maximally specific spatiotemporal universals, thereby addressing (2) above. It also highlights the need to recognize the respective contributions made by multiple notions of the subject. Husserl’s context-dependent distinction between constitutive determinations and principia individuationis may shed light on the qualitative/non-qualitative difference in contemporary metaphysics. The hierarchical model of individuation can also illuminate the debate around possible worlds and haecceitism. (shrink)

In this article, I give a systematic exposition of Edmund Husserl’s account of Hingabe, a phenomenological concept that has only recently received attention. I contend that the concept of Hingabe phenomenologically reveals that the ego of the intentional correlation ego-cogito-cogitatum is not an empty pole and more than a mere ‘datum of manifestation,’ but is active, engaging itself at various depths in experience. I trace the concept in the three types of experience in which Hingabe appears in Husserl’s work. First, (...) in interested attention, the tension of interest is not a one-sided attraction of the object, but the ego is active “giving itself over” to interested objects of attention that makes possible interested engagement with an object. Second, in value experience, Hingabe refers to a way in which the ego contributes to registering genuine value in an ‘originary’ experience. In such experience, the ego opens itself and allows for the value object to impose its weight on the ego, thereby registering the value, yet Hingabe can also be a source of error in evaluation. Finally, Hingabe concerns the love for vocational objects that are at the core of the person and play out in everyday life. In these analyses, we see a way in which the subject is active in the appearing of the world. (shrink)

The primary aim of this research was to investigate the intricate relationship between the structural elements of experiences and their essential role in meaning formation. The analysis focused on understanding the nature of mental representations and the subjective, phenomenal qualities that emerge within experiences. To achieve this, an integrated approach, combining cognitive semantics with phenomenological analysis, was employed to examine the compositional complexities of the dynamic interaction between a priori and immediate experiences and their significance in meaning formation. The study (...) highlights the interconnectivity of structural elements within experience as a critical factor in shaping the phenomenal qualities of mental representations. Another key contribution of this study is the introduction of the “fulfiller” concept, which underscores the importance of absent qualities in meaning formation-an often-overlooked aspect in traditional models that focus solely on present attributes. The “fulfiller” concept emphasizes how absence, in addition to presence, influences meaning assignment. This inclusion enhances our understanding of meaning formation by considering both the tangible and intangible dimensions of the experiential-intentional process, offering a more comprehensive framework for understanding how meaning emerges from the complex interaction of present and absent qualities. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse the act of consciousness called empathy, as proposed by Husserl in Ideas II. By applying Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, I evidence three moments that constitute empathy: first, to recognize the other Ego; second, to open myself up to the other Ego; and third, to feel with the other Ego. I investigate these eidetic universalities [Wesenallgemeinheiten] within the limits of pure intuition (HUA III, 146). To recognize the other Ego is an involuntary act that happens in consciousness (...) when I come face-to-face with another human being. To open myself up to the other Ego is a spiritual act derived from freedom. I can decide whether or not to open myself up. If I do not, empathy is interrupted, incomplete, and I can react either affectionately or distressfully, or I can make a hasty judgement and decide either to distance myself from the other or to act. If I open myself up to the other Ego, I can react affectionately or distressfully, without much information. Another possibility is to comprehend, reflect, judge, agree or disagree, and decide either to distance myself from the other or to act in either a compassionate or a confrontational way. In this regard, empathy does not imply agreeing or acting compassionately. In short, I present a mental map of this reasoning and conclude by pointing out the need to develop empathy and the importance of having time to empathise appropriately. (shrink)

Body as a radical reality in human activity is a common thesis in the phenomenological thought, from its origin in the work of Edmund Husserl, in those of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry, to post-phenomenological currents, including Don Ihde and the American school. As a complementary thesis, they highlight the presence of the body in technologies: its deep interaction and integration, generating a certain bodily extension that makes the user-device an environment of intentional feedback through which flows the matter of (...) the experienced. Through the synthesis of previous techniques, digital media have deepened this capacity for integration: through embodiment and representation, hardware and software, multiple forms of bodily extension are experimentable. From the construction of these alternative corporealities emerges the narrative of a digital body as a 'real body', controlled by us, fully equivalent and similar to our own bodies. In this text we propose a brief analysis of digital corporeality based on phenomenological reflections, especially those around tactile self-perception, as a foundation for a criterion of bodily identity applicable to these technologies and which reclaims the original and carnal experience of the user. (shrink)