Edmund Husserl

Die neuere Phänomenologie ist durch eine intensive Auseinandersetzung mit theologischen Fragestellungen gekennzeichnet. Das vorliegende Buch will die bislang noch kaum beachtete rezeptionsgeschichtliche Verbindung zwischen Husserls Egologie und Meister Eckharts Intellektmystik in den Vordergrund rücken.

This article seeks to reconstruct and critically extend Jacques Derrida’s critique of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Derrida’s critique of Husserl is explored in three main areas: the phenomenology of language, the phenomenology of time, and the phenomenological constitution of ideal objects. In each case, Husserl’s analysis is shown to rest upon a one-sided determination of truth in terms of presence—whether it be the presence of expressive meaning to consciousness, the self-presence of the temporal instant, or the complete presence of an (...) ideal object through intuition. At every juncture, Derrida’s reasoning is deployed in order to demonstrate how presence is irreducibly bound up with absence and otherness and thus how the ideal of a phenomenological self-presence of consciousness is itself an abstraction from the contingency of history and our concrete embeddedness within a particular lifeworld. The article concludes with an appraisal of reason’s limits in a time of technological domination and the threat of global annihilation. Rather than a flight into irrationalism or skepticism, the author advocates a deepening of philosophical responsibility and an ethics of undecidability as essential for meeting the challenges of modernity. (shrink)

The Introduction to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (B&N) contains a condensed, cryptic argument – the ‘ontological proof’ – that is meant to establish a position ‘beyond realism and idealism’. Despite its role in establishing the fundamental ontological distinction of B&N – the distinction between being-for-itself and being-in-itself – the ontological proof has received very little scholarly attention. My goal is to fill this lacuna. I begin by clarifying the idealist position Sartre attacks in the Introduction to B&N: Husserl’s idealism as (...) interpreted by Aron Gurwitsch and Roman Ingarden. I then propose a new interpretation of the ontological proof that gives a central role to the transparency of experience. On this interpretation, Sartre argues from the ‘emptiness’ of consciousness – its purely relational nature – to the existence of mind-independent substance (being-in-itself). In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Sartre’s case against idealism, I put him in critical dialogue with contemporary work in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The unsettling, humiliating, and often threatening experience of feeling oneself ‘invisible’ before the gazes of other people in one’s social world has obvious potential as a theme for collaborative efforts between social theorists and phenomenologists. This chapter proposes one way of approaching such an engagement, drawing in particular upon three authors who offer detailed analyses of social visibility and its potential pathologies: Axel Honneth, Frantz Fanon, and Edmund Husserl. The specific phenomenon is first be located by way of Honneth’s treatment (...) of social invisibility as frequented by behaviour that expresses an attitude of nonrecognition towards other persons immediately present. Drawing from Fanon (and others), it is then argued that Honneth’s generally perceptive analysis, by focussing primarily on cases involving the seeming absence of all emotive recognition, underestimates the role of certain (dehumanising) emotional responses in conveying to persons their ‘invisibility.’ While the exact relationships holding between perception and affect remain largely unexplored in Honneth’s work, the chapter goes on to consider these relationships phenomenologically by drawing upon Husserl’s unpublished writings on emotion and social experience. Moreover, it is suggested that the form of nonrecognition involved with social invisibility can be understood as a manifestation of a broader danger implicit within affective life, that is termed ‘emotional blindness’. Briefly put, it is proposed that the ‘invisibilising gaze’ manifests an affective response that, while sometimes partially co-responsive to social perception and understanding, is contaminated with associative configurations that lead our feelings astray. (shrink)

While Husserl is widely recognised as the founder of the phenomenological movement, and as responsible for important positions on a number of central philosophical topics (such as, for instance, perception, intentionality, self-consciousness, and the tenability of naturalism), he is frequently regarded, even within phenomenological circles, as having a fairly impoverished understanding of the emotions. And indeed, there is some validity to the observation that, while essential roles are accorded to emotion in Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of personhood, (axiological) reason, value-theory, and (...) ethics (to name just a few examples), it emerges less frequently in his writings as a central theme of inquiry. The following chapter offers the reader an opportunity to reconsider such an assessment, by highlighting and explicating a number of key claims that emerge in those writings where Husserl deals directly and thematically with the phenomenology of emotional life. Focussing mainly on his most productive and significant period as a phenomenologist of the emotions—dating between the publication of 'Logical Investigations' in 1900 and 'Ideas I' in 1913—it indicates that Husserl’s published and unpublished writings contain important contributions to the phenomenological study of emotional life, and to our understanding of the emotions more broadly. (shrink)

This text explores how self-consciousness and self-understanding differ phenomenologically from the experience and comprehension of others, and the extent to which such relations are constitutively interdependent. -/- Jardine argues that Husserl’s analyses of selfhood and intersubjectivity are animated by the question of what's at stake in recognising an agent’s engagement as the situated response of a person, rather than simply as the comportment of an animal or living body. Drawing centrally from the freshly excavated Ideas II drafts and manuscripts, the (...) author develops Husserl’s often fragmentary investigations of attention, habit, emotion, freedom, the common world, and action, and considers their implications for subjectivity and the experience of others. Empathy, Embodiment, and the Person also brings Husserlian phenomenology into dialogue with twenty-first century philosophical concerns, from accounts of selfhood and agency from analytic philosophy to the treatment of social experience in critical theory. -/- The book shows the reader that transcendental phenomenology can be rejuvenated by engaging with a broader philosophical landscape and will appeal to researchers, students, and instructors in the field. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has shed more light on the relationship between Husserl and Lotze. And Husserl indeed claims of Lotze that “his inspired interpretation of the Platonic doctrine of Forms […] put up a bright first light and determined all further studies” ( 2002a, 297). In this paper I will try to answer the question what exactly Husserl saw in this “bright light”—the answer being much more complicated than “Platonism.” As I will show, Lotze misreads Plato, but in interesting ways, and (...) Husserl in turn misreads Lotze. In other words, this paper is about a misreading of a misreading—yet one fundamental for the development of phenomenology in that Husserl’s engagement with Lotze enabled him (a) to expand and differentiate his own anti-reductionism in regard to ideal entities, leading him to two forms of what he calls “Platonism,” one of which even runs contrary to Lotze’s own account, and (b) to conceive of a method to gain truths about the material apriori. After a brief introduction, I will discuss (1) Lotze’s interpretation of Plato, (2) what Husserl took from it, and finally (3) Plato’s Platonism, to substantiate my claims 1. (shrink)

This paper examines a single relevant source regarding Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and his attempt to explain how we perceive and experience the Other. In the fifth chapter of the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl describes our encounters with others through a process of non-inferential analogy and details the ways we ‘appresent’ the Other. This unique and admittedly narrow approach to understanding intersubjectivity, I submit, offers significant insights regarding the nature of interactions between competing athletes and the meanings these experiences generate. The (...) descriptive-explanatory account of the ‘appresentation’ of the Other in sport presented here will not be exhaustive. But it will, I anticipate, be informative, supplement existing works in the phenomenology of sport, and appeal intuitively to some of our intersubjective experiences in competitive sport. (shrink)

Interpretations abound about Husserl’s understanding of the relationship between veridical perceptual experience and hallucination. Some read him as taking the two to share the same distinctive essential nature, like contemporary conjunctivists. Others find in Husserl grounds for taking the two to fall into basically distinct categories of experience, like disjunctivists. There is ground for skepticism, however, about whether Husserl’s view could possibly fall under either of these headings. Husserl, on the one hand, operates under the auspices of the phenomenological reduction, (...) abstaining from use of any epistemic commitments about mind-transcendent reality, whereas conjunctive and disjunctive accounts of perceptual experience, on the other hand, are both premised on some form of metaphysical realism. There seems to be a basic incompatibility between the former approach and the latter. I examine this line of thinking and argue that the incompatibility is only apparent. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl and Ernst Cassirer rank among the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Despite the differences between their philosophical outlooks, their investigations show a common enduring interest in the exploration of human culture. This volume provides the first extensive analysis of Husserl’s and Cassirer’s approaches to the philosophy of culture, assembling contributions by leading international scholars and young researchers. The chapters offer insights into issues such as the various modalities of sense-giving in culture, the relationship between perception and (...) meaning, the place of science in culture, the dismissal of scientism, and the possibility of humanism. (shrink)

Husserl’s reflections on the European crisis appear philosophically confused and politically counterproductive. After acknowledging this appearance, I make a case for their continued philosophical and political importance. I attempt to resolve philosophical confusion by clarifying the attitude that addresses the crisis as the ‘attitude of the phenomenologist’ and distinguishing this from the phenomenological attitude. The former contends with problems pertaining to phenomenology as a cultural structure. I show how Husserl’s conception of a ‘European crisis’ results from confronting one such problem. (...) After outlining what Husserl means by ‘Europe,’ I assess the relevance of the concept to the critique of Western imperialism. I argue that Husserl’s program of Europeanization opposes ethnocentrism and cultural imperialism, but remains within the framework of an unwarranted European exceptionalism. I suggest that the political and historical concepts central to Husserl’s engagement with the crisis problematic need not determine the problematic itself, which deserves further thinking through. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of the phenomenological reduction is often explained by a radicalchange of attitude. Such an explanation is useful but sometimes misleading. TheIdea of Phenomenology clearly shows that the original idea of the reduction wasachieved through a radicalized critique of evidence. Although Husserl’s appealto evidence has often been criticized as an unjustified limitation of philosophicalthinking, a close examination of Husserl’s lectures reveals that the very ‘limitation’ to the phenomenological evidence breaks our naturalinclination toward objective identities and liberates our thinking from (...) the naturalbut misleading division between ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence.’ Thus, thephenomenological reduction can be interpreted as a transition from the thinkingwithout regard to evidence to the philosophizing intrinsically mediatedby evidence, which can secure access for intuitive analysis to every conceivabletype of givenness insofar as it manifests itself. (shrink)

We present the Italian translation of a well-known contribution of Dieter Lohmar on the problem of phenomenological reduction which first appeared in German under the title Die Idee der Reduktion. Husserls Reduktionen und ihr gemeinsamer, methodischer Sinn. The different reductive strategies in the Husserlian works are traced back to a common model that shows continuity and progress of the phenomenological method from what Lohmar identifies as a reduction to the reeller Bestand up to the transcendental, primordial, life-worldly forms of reduction.

En este trabajo se analizan las nociones de esencia en Husserl y Kripke marcando sus relaciones y diferencias. Husserl excluye una definición modal de la esencia, considerando que las necesidades incondicionadas tienen su fuente en las esencias y no recíprocamente. Por su parte, la concepción de Kripke obliga a repensar nociones supuestamente evidentes sostenidas por Husserl, como la equivalencia a priori/necesario, a posteriori/contingente, así como los lazos entre concebibilidad y posibilidad. Tomando distancia respecto de la posición de Husserl, se rechaza (...) aquí la variación eidética como método único y se enfatiza finalmente el valor de la discusión razonada. (shrink)

The article examines Husserl's work On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Firstly, it seeks to show the surplus of cosmic time with regard to the temporality of consciousness. Secondly, an attempt is made to establish whether the Husserlian description of the form of the flow of consciousness is circular, i.e., whether it does not presupposes the objective time that it purports to constitute. Thirdly, a critical analysis of the self-manifestation of the absolute flow of consciousness is advanced. (...) Finally, a reference is made to the aporetics that befalls any investigation that tries to reduce one form of time to the other or to apprehend them independently. (shrink)

El artículo propone una línea de interpretación que articula el pensamiento de Husserl con el de Derrida a partir de la lectura que ambos realizan sobre el tiempo. Siguiendo esta línea, la intención es alcanzar un punto de continuidad entre la obra de estos pensadores, y plantear tal continuidad en términos fenomenológicos. En una primera instancia se pretende mostrar la vitalidad y posibilidad de la fenomenología de Husserl como una respuesta capaz de adaptarse a problemáticas propias de nuestra época, en (...) particular desde su trabajo sobre la temporalidad y en conexión con la interpretación de la misma realizada por Derrida. En un segundo momento, mostrar que la lectura de Derrida es una lectura fenomenológica que se desarrolla en continuidad con la de Husserl y que incluso profundiza sus planteos. En tal sentido, entenderla como una alternativa viable, no relativista y propicia para efectuar esta nueva interpretación de la fenomenología. En síntesis, siguiendo el hilo conductor del análisis del tiempo, la idea central a la que se apunta es plantear la posibilidad de una fenomenología que articule los planteos de Husserl y de Derrida y que podría denominarse «fenomenología de los márgenes». (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone una interpretación de Introducción a “Origen de la geometría” de Husserl de Derrida a la luz de la cuestión de lo literario. Con esto no nos referimos a la literatura como institución, sino a determinada comprensión de la naturaleza del lenguaje en términos no idealistas. Por un lado, se señalará la pregnancia de este tópico en los desarrollos específicos del texto derridiano, mostrando que es fundamental para abordar su crítica a “la exigencia de visibilidad” en Husserl. (...) Por otro, se otorgará una contextualización crítica al interior de su camino intelectual que secundará la relevancia otorgada a nuestro desarrollo. (shrink)

In the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger deals with two fundamental dimensions of the work of art, on the one hand, the work of art is the self-subsistence, and on the other hand, it is the being-created. Although the being-created of the work of art does not refer exclusively to the function of the creators, but also belongs with the same essential charge to the task of the preservers [Bewahrenden], those are scarcely explored. The present article (...) delves precisely into the dimension of the preservation of the work of art. From the exposition of the most relevant ideas that Heidegger develops in this respect, it proposes the Phantasía–taking into account the descriptions of Husserl–as the fundamental Mode in which the preservers carries out the preservation of the work. (shrink)

Si Levinas a souvent affiché son admiration pour le père fondateur de la phénoménologie, le rapport de filiation qui les unit semble s’arrêter au moment précis où l’analyse phénoménologique pénètre sur le terrain de l’intersubjectivité et rencontre la question d’autrui. Comme beaucoup de disciples et lecteurs de Husserl, Levinas a construit son analyse de l’altérité dans le sillage de l’échec auquel conduisait la cinquième des Méditations cartésiennes de Husserl, dans son incapacité flagrante à établir une authentique relation à autrui. Il (...) est pourtant possible de proposer une autre lecture de cette cinquième Méditation et de l’expérience de l’étranger que Husserl s’y attache à interroger et à décrire. Derrière la reconduction de l’altérité à l’ego qui en constitue le sens et en donne la mesure, ce qui se joue dans ces analyses, c’est d’abord l’effort de Husserl pour penser l’irréductibilité de la séparation depuis laquelle s’éprouve la vie en première personne du sujet. L’intolérance indépassable de l’ego, incapable de considérer autrui sans le ramener inévitablement à lui-même pour le constituer comme son double, peut alors prendre un sens positif : il ne s’agit plus du point d’achoppement ultime d’une phénoménologie constitutive en bout de course, incapable de prendre en vue la question de l’altérité, mais plutôt du point de départ d’une pensée originale de la relation à autrui à laquelle, comme le montre l’article de Chiara Pavan dans ce numéro, Levinas donnera toute sa mesure. (shrink)

Although the notion of the crisis of European sciences has a general meaning, Husserl mainly focuses on this phenomenon in relation to the modern establishment of a mathematical natural science. However, he does not provide a definitive clarification of how its new method is specifically involved in bringing about such a crisis. Without trying to offer a faithful exegetical contribution, this paper further elaborates on Husserl’s analyses in the Krisis to give a possible answer to this question. After defining the (...) concept of crisis in general, I single out why algebraic thinking is the core of the method that essentially characterizes mathematical physics. Then, I compare this method to a case of pre-modern discipline (namely, Euclidean geometry) to show that the sedimentation of meaning at work in the progressive technization of algebra is exceptional and sufficient to explain the specificity of the modern character of the crisis of the exact sciences. The exclusively technical development of formal mathematics, in fact, elicits those shifts of meaning (such as objectivism) that phenomenology is required to amend to overcome the crisis and to establish an authentic form of knowledge. On the basis of these results, I conclude by suggesting a few consequences that are useful for the understanding of the project of phenomenology of the later Husserl. (shrink)

In the article I discuss Husserl’s conception of the Lifeworld as developed in his Crisis Book, in order to find out whether art can be especially illuminative in order to understand the Lifeworld and one’s own living in it. I draw a parallel between the sciences as discussed by Husserl as abstractions from the Lifeworld that offer a special view of what in the Lifeworld as such remains disclosed. However, scientific and artistic abstraction differs in character. Whereas the sciences establish (...) formal systems and thereby discover the world as to its computability, the arts abstract from the everyday set of meanings and go back to the primordial and original experience of the world in its perceptibility. Thus they are able to draw attention to the essential character of the Lifeworld as such. (shrink)

After a period in which the relation between mathematics and phenomenology was little researched, and sometimes assumed to be antagonistic, in recent decades the place of mathematics in Husserl’s t...

This article focuses on Edmund Husserl’s first and most enduring interaction with pragmatism, on the conception of habit. This began a decade before Husserl’s first writings on phenomenology, and continued throughout the time he invented and developed his new phenomenological method. Husserl first encountered pragmatic habit from the founder of pragmatism Charles S. Peirce around 1890. Husserl then further interacted with the pragmatic theory of habit through the work of William James and Josiah Royce, two scholars deeply influenced by Peirce. (...) This article explores how the theory of habit mutually influenced pragmatism and phenomenology at their origins, and how this dialogue can inform philosophy today. (shrink)

La temporalité est ce flux de conscience qui "modifie" tout donné dans un projet signifiant paramétré par une mémoire. Par cette modification tout individu vivant ou "monade" met en oeuvre à sa mesure l'ingénierie du Désir, mais seul l'homme peut s'engager à être un soi selon une résolution convaincue. C'est l'expérience intime de sa "chair" qui l'ancre dans la durée de cet effort vers une puissance d'agir optimale.

The flesh of Merleau-Ponty how is that to be understood within the context of Husserl's phenomenology? The answer provided in the book: Historicity - by the use of the method of phenomenological reduction in its unity with constitution such as Husserl's phenomenology exhibits it. Thus the reversibility as the ultimate truth - time and time-consciousness, the coexisting and interweaving of sedimentations and original formations of meaning - experiencing evidences, history and the historicity - finally: Life-world, Body and Flesh.

De Husserl à Patocka, en passant par Heidegger, la phénoménologie s’interroge sur le phénomène tel qu’il s’offre, se donne pour être saisi, recueilli, rassemblé en une proposition, un énoncé dit apophantique. Comment une telle ouverture à la phénoménalité, au donné, est-elle possible? Comment dire ce qui se donne, dans son caractère le plus originaire, sans le déformer ni l’écraser sous les schèmes ou les catégories hérités d’une longue tradition aristotélicienne? L’entreprise qui tend, avec Heidegger, à accéder à une strate « (...) archaïque », en deçà de la logique et de la grammaire de l’être, passe par une « destruction de la logique » et la ré-ouverture d’un rapport herméneutique aux choses et au monde. Herméneutique, non pas au sens d’une théorie de l’interprétation des textes ou documents lestés de sens, mais comme le trait fondamental qui rapporte l’homme au monde. Le propos de la phénoménologie ainsi radicalisé peut alors s’entendre comme « Weltlogik », logique-du-monde. (shrink)